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Objectives and InformationI intend this introduction both to prepare you for advanced philosophy courses and to give you an introduction to comparative philosophy. We will sample six schools of thought focusing on one important thinker each. I choose the schools from both Chinese and Western Philosophy. I cannot cover any of them in depth, but the class should give you a "taste" of a range of different philosophies available for further study. We hope it helps you make an informed selection among future courses that best suit your interest. The department offers courses that explore each style of though in greater depth. This introductory survey presupposes no previous knowledge of philosophy. Please let me know if you come across unexplained technical terms. After each section, you will find some further questions for thought and discussion. The topics range over the world of philosophy in both time and space.
We concentrate on the Chinese and Western philosophical traditions because
they are distinctive, rich traditions (and have obvious importance in
Text and Course StyleThe text for this course is in manuscript form. It will be available for sale in the philosophy office 305 MB. I encourage students to buy and read some of the original texts which are excerpted in the manuscript and find some other readings by visiting Professor Hansen's homepage (http://www.hku.hk/philodep/ch). The text includes all the required reading. Large chunks of the original author's words (in translation) are included in quotation boxes. For Chinese texts, much of the quoted material is reproduced in Chinese in the footnotes. If you find yourself particularly interested in any thinkers, you may want to go to the bookstore or library and buy other books by them to get more of a flavor of their writing. You can often find electronic texts on the web for further reading. Since you have the readings in advance and will have done the quizzes, we should have more time in class for questions and free discussion. Each class will begin with a brief review of the material covered in the last class. That is a particularly good time to raise any questions you have not figured out. Please ask questions immediately about terms, names or examples that you do not understand. Usually if you do not understand, others will not either and you will be doing them a favor by asking. The course schedule is included here. The course has been spread out to occupy days that were left blank in earlier year to have more lecture time. This time is yours to take up in more questions and discussion. It means there is room to recover if meetings are cancelled for any reason. All cancellations will be announced in class and on the website. Check the announcement page regularly for these. The current approximate schedule of lecture dates, topics and readings are presented in the table below. I will update the schedule periodically to reflect our progress through the topics. You can also find readings and handouts for some of the topics by clicking on the topic name in the website.
Mechanics and course requirements:Philosophy grades are determined by 100% coursework, but the coursework includes class tests. The coursework will be divided in three equal parts: 1. The score on the highest six of eight quizzes on the readings 2. a take-home mid-term examination, and 3. a final in-class hour test. None of the components will be “surprises” – all quiz questions will be distributed the weekend before they are due and both tests will use a list of ten questions distributed in advance. The quiz questions will be due usually on a Tuesday. If they are due on Thursday, they will be announced on Tuesday. They will also be placed on the web site. You are to write only one page, answering the question from the readings and hand it in at the beginning of class. The questions will be graded from 1-5. A good answer should get a 4. For answers that are especially clear, well argued, detailed, precise, thoughtful, creative or otherwise outstanding, you may bet a 4.5 or a 5. For answers that get some important part of the answer but miss the crucial point, you get a 3 or 3.5. For answers that reflect having done the readings, you should get a 3. If the answer creates doubt that you have done the readings, you will get a 2 and papers with your name on it get a 1. We will deduct 0.25 points for each day your quiz is late starting from the end of the class period on which it was due. We add the scores from your 6 best quizzes and translate to a letter grade. If you have 24 points, that will count as a 69.5 points. We scale other totals up and down from that point. The take-home mid-term examination will consist of ten questions distributed at least one week before it is due. You should select and answer eight of the ten questions, limiting each answer to about one type-written page. Again a lateness penalty of 4% per day will be deducted from the resulting score. The final examination will also consist of ten questions that I will hand out at least a week in advance. On the day of the examination, I will have selected five of the ten and will ask you to answer two of them during the exam time. Contact Information:Your course instructor is Professor Chad Hansen. He is in room 307 Main Building and has office hours from 9:30-10:30 on Tuesdays and Thursdays. His office phone extension is 2797. His e-mail is chansen(at-sign)hku.hk and his home page is http://www.hku.hk/philodep/ch. You can find further readings on many of the Chinese Philosophy topics there. The course home page is http://www.hku.hk/philodep/courses/cwintro. The instructions for students who have signed up for Information Technology credit (PHIL1007 in conjunction with PHIL1004) can be found on that page.
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