Assignment

Brief Writing Assignment #1 for CCCH9024

Zhang Li (3035029536)

Tutorial group: Tuesday, 14:30-15:30

The distinctions between learning and thinking can be described in three ways. Firstly, learning is a process in which people get information, knowledge and experience. Learning has a resource or a root. At the same time, thinking is the process of extracting information, absorbing knowledge and then forming a new idea. It does not necessarily have a resource and/or a result. In summary, learning is accepting while thinking is generalizing and creating.

Another distinction is that learning will enrich you but thinking may not. Learning without thinking gives you some information and knowledge although you would get bewildered. You will certainly get something from learning. But thinking without learning, even for a whole day, gives you nothing (15.31), and also does harm to you (2.15).

The last distinction is that learning is limited but thinking is limitless. It's connected with the arguments above. Since learning has a resource, no matter how huge the resource is, it is finite, which means learning is actually a limited process. But in the contrast, thinking does not necessarily have a resource, so thinking is limitless. The product created by thinking can become new resources of learning and learning makes thinking broader and more efficient. Thinking and learning are two different processes that help each other and finally result in the development of a person even a society.

The Analects’ focus on learning means that we should follow tradition mostly, but it is also essential to think for ourselves.

Confucius’s answer to the question “how to become a good person” is that if you don’t follow the trace, you can’t get into the room. That means if you don’t follow the tradition, you can’t learn the correct things (11.20). And if you do not learn the correct things, it is impossible to become a good person. That shows how important the...