In all honesty, Confucianism isn’t something that I’ve thought about a whole lot throughout my entire life, but that changed when Dr Melissa Inouye donned her Harvard graduation robes and came to share her knowledge on just that.
Dr Inouye drew upon Robert Eno’s translation and analysis of Confucius’ The Great Learning for the bulk of her seminar, and gave us great insight into a non-western view of the world – something incredibly rare in a New Zealand university. The Great Learning is set out to be a sort of guide to present oneself to the world and how to achieve “self-realisation” through “the Eight Stages” of self-cultivation. I couldn’t help but feel slightly ashamed that I had never come across this text in my life, and it really opened my eyes into how much western history I have been taught throughout my education. The Great Learning is such a central text to Chinese culture and in our connected and “rapidly globalising world,” we should be making more of an effort to include other cultures and their education – rather than expect others to industrialise, urbanise and conform to western standards.
If anything, the most important thing that I took away from the seminar is to be open to different perspectives, and to always be challenging western ideas and ways of thinking. The world goes beyond English, and it’s really time we caught up with it!
