标签：responsibility

Joining the Party Burdened by Guilt

Life & Notes2012.06.04
Joining the Party Burdened by Guilt
On this special day today, I served as a Party introducer for the first time and signed the recommendation statement. Why am I not only willing to join the Party, but also willing to recommend others to join? I need to explain. Indeed, this is not only something I am willing to explain, but something I must explain. I joined the Party when I was in high school; if I had not joined then, I would probably be too lazy to apply now. But I would never simply attribute that decision to youthful ignorance. Certainly, as I have grown older, my life plan has changed enormously: from initially wanting to…
China history autobiography tradition
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2012年6月4日
Third Winter Vacation Essay: Will and Responsibility

Philosophy & Thought2010.02.01
Third Winter Vacation Essay: Will and Responsibility
Speaking of which, Kantian ethics contains a very rigid conception of duty—for example, the command “do not lie.” This injunction is an absolute duty: even if a murderer asks you where your beloved is, and you know that if you tell the truth and do not lie to mislead him your beloved will be killed, you still must not lie. Moral duty is that hard. For, in any case, murder is the murderer’s fault, whereas lying is your fault; whether or not there is a murder, lying is always wrong. If your beloved happens to appear at the very place you falsely claimed she was, then would her being killed…
philosophy Kant human nature emotion
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2010年2月1日
The Responsibility of the Communicator

Culture & Public Commentary2009.05.22
The Responsibility of the Communicator
Today, while riding my bike in the rain on the 21st, as usual my thoughts drifted about, and I connected up a few threads I had recently run into, and so I wrote this essay. As for my attitude toward plagiarism and literary theft, I already made it clear in my undergraduate post “Why Suixuan Is Not Afraid of Plagiarism and Theft.” Now that I compare my own writing to excrement, that too signals my attitude that I am not afraid of plagiarism. And yet, of course, I have always held a deep contempt for paper plagiarism. In a certain sense, plagiarism or theft in academic papers is, in my…
culture freedom media value
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2009年5月22日
Choosing Peking University, Taking on Freedom

Enlightenment & the Spirit of Freedom2008.05.22
Choosing Peking University, Taking on Freedom
The original writing plan for “Yanyuan—The Four Schools” had stalled for a long time because I shut myself away and hid from the blog. Now that graduation is practically upon me, it’s time to restart this task. Just then the student union was organizing a “My Yanyuan Memories — A Commencement Essay Collection for Peking University’s Class of 2008 Excellent Graduates,” asking each department to nominate writers. Although I do not like taking part in essay contests, especially those initiated by official bodies, I was going to write something anyway. So I might as well take part. There was also a call for submissions from 《Communist Youth Garden》, and perhaps…
philosophy scholarship freedom education
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2008年5月22日
Sense of Responsibility

Culture & Public Commentary2008.01.25
Sense of Responsibility
I remember that when I first entered the preparatory class in junior high school (sixth grade in elementary school), in the first “weekly journal” assigned by our homeroom teacher (the politics teacher) — that is, a way of “snitching” (though I always talked only about “problems,” never about any specific person) — I emphasized two concepts: “the sense of right and wrong” and “responsibility.” I thought teachers should focus on cultivating these two things in students. All along, my indignation toward my peers has been far greater than my indignation toward teachers. I thought that my classmates only knew how to mock and resist teachers’ discipline, that they were self-righteous,…
culture freedom responsibility power
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2008年1月25日
Whose Responsibility? — An Excerpt from a Case Study

Philosophy & Thought2007.11.18
Whose Responsibility? — An Excerpt from a Case Study
I’ve lately found myself from time to time recalling a passage in An Invitation to Philosophy; I might as well excerpt it here: Page 113 … responsibility is the necessary product of freedom, the opposite of freedom, or perhaps, as Hume pointed out, responsibility is itself the basis of the demand for freedom: actions must be free in order for it to be possible that someone be responsible for each action. The subject has the freedom to carry out a certain action, but not the freedom to escape the consequences corresponding to it. Both Sophocles and Shakespeare like to speak of a “guilty” freedom; this is by no means…
philosophy book reading notes freedom
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2007年11月18日
Words and Fragments, Episode 4

Philosophy & Thought2007.11.13
Words and Fragments, Episode 4
l What is called the conflict between theory and practice, or the contradiction between ideal and practice, and the like, has since antiquity been a hard-to-resolve opposition. But one cannot simply equate these oppositions with the irreconcilable opposition between philosophy and life; these are not the same thing. In the first place, the problems of conflict, contradiction, or opposition themselves—these views themselves—are already philosophical problems. Philosophy permeates life; a life with not the slightest bit of “philosophy” in it would not be human life. l The preceding paragraph seems to refer to a case I once saw in *Freakonomics*; I have occasionally thought of it lately, and it is still…
philosophy reason intellectuals logic
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2007年11月13日
Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth (2006) / A Truth Hard to Ignore

History of Science & Scholarship2006.11.21
Al Gore: An Inconvenient Truth (2006) / A Truth Hard to Ignore
Al Gore An Inconvenient Truth Highly recommend this film. A documentary about global warming. Starring former U.S. Vice President Al Gore (the same one who ran against George W. Bush back then). It’s deeply shocking. Even though I already had some awareness of the environmental crisis, I was still very shaken. For some people who remain unmoved by the environmental crisis, or who keep speaking in vague and equivocal terms, it is truly “their duty” to watch this film. Screenshot: the upper line shows changes in the level of carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere over the past 650,000 years, as examined through Antarctic permafrost ice cores, while the lower…
book reading notes environment responsibility
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2006年11月21日
You chose it yourself, and you’ll still refuse to admit you were wrong

Life & Notes2006.08.11
You chose it yourself, and you’ll still refuse to admit you were wrong
A true brave person will not regret the choices he made on his own; a coward, by contrast, is just the opposite: he finds it easier not to regret the choices someone else made for him, because in the end he can always dump the responsibility on somebody else. Weigh the options yourself, choose for yourself, decide for yourself, and bear it yourself. Listen appropriately to other people’s opinions, but never “seek help” from others, and even less should you depend on other people’s opinions. If the final result turns out as you wished, go thank those who selflessly offered you advice; if the final result is less than satisfactory,…
freedom autobiography self responsibility
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2006年8月11日
On the South China Tiger Incident

Life & Notes2006.01.08
On the South China Tiger Incident
http://hps.phil.pku.edu.cn/bbs/read.php?tid=282 Lately it’s felt a bit like repressed feelings have suddenly burst out in one concentrated explosion, with momentum gushing up from the stomach~ Maybe it’s borrowed from Schopenhauer’s stimulation? As for the South China tiger affair, I’d long wanted to say a few things, but had never managed to get them out. Taking the repost on the forum, and riding this surge of momentum, I finally can’t keep quiet anymore. This is a joke post—surely I can see that, can’t I? Of course I can. The moment I saw “reposted from XX forum” and “repost MP,” I knew it was only a joke, and a really brilliant one at…
everyday life internet public sphere responsibility
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2006年1月8日