At 4:00 PM on March 1st, 2021, China time, Jilin University -- Cambridge University Philosophy Short-Term Course Programme officially started through the online teaching model. In the first class, Professor Christian Keime briefly introduced ethics and taught the main virtues by narrating Homer's Epic, which proved that ethics existed before Socrates. This class guided students to study the thoughts of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in the future. It not only allowed students to have a deep understanding of ancient Greek philosophy but also allowed students to know the teacher and get familiar with each other. This class played a laying role for the seven-day course.
The second online course of the Cambridge Exchange Programme starts at ZOOM on March 2nd at 4 pm. The main topic of this course is the thoughts of Socrates. Professor Christian Keime first introduced the life and background of Socrates, and then explained the related content of Wisdom, Virtues, and Definition. Finally, he introduced Meno's Paradox through the dialogue Meno and explained Socrates' solution to this problem -- recollection. This course cited the contents of Plato’s dialogues such as Apology, Georgia, and Meno, which helped us to naturally transition to the next course about Plato’s philosophy. It also enabled us to get in touch with the English literature of Socrates' thought, which helped us to better connect our study of ancient Greek philosophy with western scholars’ research in the future. The professor spent two hours connecting the main thoughts of Socrates from a relatively macro perspective, which made our understanding of Socrates' ethics more systematic and provided an overall framework for us to study Socrates' philosophy in the future. Meanwhile, the explanation of "knowledge of knowledge", as the second type of knowledge, is of great help for us to understand Plato's "Form", which will be covered in the next course.
The third section of the course content introduction: This course mainly demonstrates the existence of Form, that is, the idea through the method of contradiction, and finally, the highest and best idea is the idea of goodness. It is to understand Plato's ethics by understanding the professional basis of idea theory learn. This course is a key link to the project. Plato's concept of good is to formally regard good as the purpose of the ethical system since Socrates put forward the concept of good, which is also the core concept of Plato's teleology.
On the fourth day, we studied Aristotle's ethical thought, including his life story, physics and metaphysics, theology (God is the primary cause of all movement), the concept of happiness, political theory, and the idea of friendship. In the course of our study, we were struck by the depth and breadth of Aristotle's thought, and the differences between Plato's and Aristotle's ideas on what constitutes objective reality can be seen and distinguished. In studying Aristotle's doctrine of friendship, we learned about the three different kinds of friendship and therefore want to have and value true friendship, which is friendship based on virtue.
During the fifth day of study, six students presented their final presentation ideas and structures to everyone. According to the advantages and disadvantages are shown by the students, Professor Christian pointed out them one by one and gave detailed guidance. Supervision is the characteristic course of Cambridge, which aims to strengthen the communication between teachers and students, improve the students' academic ability, and broaden the thinking of both teachers and students. After the fifth day of study, the students found that the argumentation can be improved, the content can be enriched, and have a clearer direction to the final presentation, and have more full confidence in the following study.
March 7 is the last day of the project. By the arrangement of the teaching assistant, everyone conducted a final preparation exercise between 10:00 and noon. They listened to the suggestions of Mr. Roy and were proficient in the presentation and perfected the content of the PPT. The report of final preparation officially started at 4 pm. According to the order of speaking, each student has about 15 minutes to give a speech, and Professor Christian has about 5 minutes to communicate and discuss with the reporting students. After all the students completed the report, Professor Christian asked about each student’s plans and encouraged everyone to work hard according to their plans. He hoped to continue to keep in touch with the students and the School of Philosophy and Social Sciences of Jilin University, and finally sent it. sincere blessing.
