Confucian thinkers discourse at length on the nature of the learning process for adults (da xue 大學), and the Confucian conception has been influential on traditional educational practices such as those incorporated in the traditional academies (shu yuan 書院). This lecture examines the four main components of the learning process under this conception, which might be abbreviated as “depth,” “breadth,” “aspirations,” and “moral transformation.” The four components are integrated in a process that leads to a total transformation of the person, both intellectually and ethically.
On the basis of this discussion, the lecture responds to certain misconceptions of Chinese educational practices, such as those recently voiced by Richard Levin, former President of Yale University. It also relates this conception to contemporary Western discussions of university education, such as those by Cardinal John Henry Newman and by philosopher John Dewey. While aligned with some of these discussions in certain respects, the Confucian conception also goes beyond them in important respects, such as its emphasis on the inseparability of the intellectual and the ethical, and the depth to which it probes the nature of these four components of learning and their interconnections.

Speaker
Prof. Kwong-loi Shun
Prof. Shun received his doctorate from Stanford University in 1986 and started teaching at UC Berkeley in the same year. He was Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the Undergraduate Division in the College of Letters & Science when he left UC Berkeley for University of Toronto, where he was Professor of Philosophy and East Asia Studies and Principal of the University of Toronto at Scarborough. He then joined the Chinese University of Hong Kong where he was Chair Professor of Philosophy, Sin Wai Kin Professor of Chinese Culture, Head of New Asia College, and Director of the Institute for Chinese Studies. He returned to UC Berkeley in 2014 as Recalled Professor, and has been teaching courses on moral psychology and on Chinese philosophy.
Prof. Shun’s current research is a five-volume work on Confucian thought. The first volume, Mencius and Early Chinese Thought, was published in 1997, and a manuscript of the second volume, on Zhu Xi and later Confucian thought, is undergoing final revisions. The third volume, which discusses methodological issues in transitioning from philological studies to philosophical studies, is close to completion. The fourth and fifth volumes jointly provide a comprehensive study of Confucian moral psychology, revolving around the idea of “no self” (wu wo 無我); the former is primarily philological and the latter, primarily philosophical. The main ideas of the final two volumes were presented in “On the Idea of ‘No Self’,” a presidential address he delivered in 2018 as President of the American Philosophical Association (Pacific Division).