Confucianism, the Human Being, and Education: Paper 1

‍One 1000-word (maximum) paper analyzing the Confucian authors' account of the human being and of education. (20 percent of final grade)

On these authors’ account: (1) What is a human being? (2) What is a flourishing human being—i.e., What is a life worth living? (3) What is an education for and what ought it to look like—i.e., How does an education contribute to the flourishing of a human being? Finally, in your encounter with this tradition, what have you learned about what you believe a human being is, what it takes for a human being to flourish, and what sort of education you’d need to flourish?

The best papers will also comment on the following questions: How does this tradition help you better understand yourself? How does this help you better understand your education and what it is for? (The tradition might help you refine these understandings either because you are persuaded by the tradition's account or because you are not—or some mix of both!) The very best papers will integrate this sort of reflection into the paper as a whole. You may even want to begin with your own personal reflection and then focus the rest of your paper around the features of the tradition that have been most helpful in refining your own thoughts.