This is the Proceedings of essays presented at "The Second International
Conference on University General Education: University General Education and
Hermeneutics: East and West" in 1998, jointly sponsored by the Chinese
Association for General Education and the National Taiwan University. Let me
recite here the background, purpose and intent of this Conference.
We have been achieving great successes throughout Taiwan m university
general education since its inception in 1984. One of its abiding key issues is
promotion of the Great Classics, East and West, to provide students with the rich
cultural reserves of mankind's insights accumulated through the ages.
Incorporation of the World Classics in general education curriculum gives us a
coherent and comprehensive grasp of fundamental cultural themes, to provide the
basis fOr our continuous critical reflections on today's great pressing problems.
Our insistence on the essential importance of the Great World Classics m
anything but an irrelevant anachronism. Studying the Classics is the first step to
their critical examination and enhancement, both for our self-cultivation and for
effective world-management. This is very much in line both with the hurnanisitic
ideals of the Chinese Classics, and with the spirit of the invaluable cultural legacies
of humankind. This is the meaning, value, and significance of "inheriting the
tradition" as the core of university general education.
For this end, we must attend to three important tasks. (1) Against
ethnocentrism we promote widening of our horizon by stretching our studies
beyond Chinese Classics to include non-Chinese Classics, so as to bring out the
distinct values and contributions of respective cultures. (2) Critical readings must
be applied to the Classics to manifest their eternal significance, ever relevant to our
modem times. (3) Pluralistic parallelism is to be kept up in studying the Classics,
to release us from one-sidedness.
It was in the above spirit that the Conference was held, May 18-19, 1998,
National Taiwan L'niversity in Taipei, centered as it was on the theme, "Chinese
Classics as Core Curriculum." Noted scholars of Classics in multiple fields
attended the Conference from various parts of the \VOrld, and delivered their rich
and carefully crafted essays collected here. These essays w·ould surely help to
raise to a higher level our university general education. We offer our sincerest
gratitude to their scholarship and their conscientious labors. |
