On March 26, 2018 at 10:00 am, a very exciting lecture, "The Way of Heaven and Earth-Rereading The Mean", was hosted by the College of Arts and Letters, in the Liberal Arts Building, Room 1100.
The lecture was given by a professor from the Jilin Provincial Institute of Education, who is now the executive vice president of the Jilin Province Chinese Culture Research Association. He is also a Jilin Province Special Model Worker and National Excellent Teacher. His main field of research is ancient Chinese philosophical thought, and the National New Curriculum Standard Language Textbook (Grade 8 Upper and Lower Books/Changchun Edition), which he edited, has had a great influence in China.
In this lecture, Prof. Liu talked about his personal research on "The Mean" around the theme of "What is the Way of the Mean". In the first part of the lecture, Prof. Liu talked about how we should be able to make our own judgments and form our own views on history, starting from the modern society's mixed views on Confucius and his ideas. The relationship between literature, history and philosophy is closely related to each other. Then, Professor Liu mentioned a new proposition - "learning from the East and learning from the West", and through this, he talked about oracle bone characters, the ancient way of scholarship, the influence of Confucius' thought on the Enlightenment, the philosophical ideas in Confucius' thought and other aspects, which inspired people. Finally, through the analysis of the first chapter of The Mean, Professor Liu described his own understanding of "Zhong", compared the differences between God in Western culture and God in Eastern culture, and also described "existence" and "reality". This was truly a thought-provoking and impressive lecture.
(Written by Yan Joran)
