Course Evaluation

Last lecture.Professor asked us to write a reflective piece on the distance we have traveled with this "Conversations of the West". As someone who is always fascinated by this class, I surprisingly found myself stumbled at...nothing concrete really, to put on paper at that time. The first line is lame: "I have learnt about what it takes to be part of the humanity." Well well, who is to be fooled. Probably I will never understand what catalyzed the consciousness of my own existence.Finally I penned down something that truly touched me: Never take any virtue for granted. Even after we fabricated these models, fairy tales and hells, what did we use (advantage or weakness) to commit ourselves to seeking these ideals?

Most puzzling of all, since when did our ancestors realize Mother Nature is not an ally as important as some tribes of brutal force and ambitions?

Since we never had a chance to appreciate the acquaintance with other earthlings, did morality really make us one of the kind or we are just satisfied at the top of the ecological pyramid--essentially a creation of our own?

I believe philosophers, as a more or less impartial generalization, have more daring minds than their fellow human beings. Like the magician who grabs the rabbit out of the hat when most of us are still crawling and enjoying the warmth in the fur, philosophers venture to confront with the seemingly trivial but ever present imperfections in our life, behind lying the reality no one is excited about. We dislike to be disoriented. How blissful if our life is full of auspicious signs pointing to the direction we first set our mind to! It seems one thing we definitely share with other communities is inclination towards expediency, simply put, laziness. Don't mess this with that, don't complicate it when there is a straight way out! Why are we so afraid of complications, fusions, transformations...

They say most people only use 1/10 of the brain for the whole life.Try to imagine a brain that travels above spatial and time limits in "Symposium", or one that embraces absurdity as what it is, or those that pierce through what we pride ourselves with, find disturbingly nothing there and still affirm a positive prospect of future. In my view, this course is not to help me make any choice or make the confounding mysteries of life any easier experience. I am still looking at the shadows even I read Plato. Unpleasant and inescapable indeed, but it is more pathetic to trick and trap the mind in order to summarize the view of life with a few adjectives.

It is simply wrong to try to fit the profound into the mundane life. If necessary, I may be able to say I realize how hard it is to believe and have faith at the same time, just like to do something good without emotional motives.

Enough rambling. For the only class I never ever skipped a single time, I wrote at the "comments": The best class I had at NYU so far.