On the first day of class every year, Harvard professor Michael Puett makes this promise to his students: “If you take the ideas in these texts seriously, they will change your life.” Judging from the course’s popularity, students agree. The class is “Classical Chinese Ethical and Political Theory” and it is now the third most popular at Harvard – only after intro to economics and intro to computer science. The course offers counter-intuitive ideas on how to live a better life, based on the thinking of Chinese philosophers who lived thousands of years ago. Now Michael Puett and East Asian history scholar Christine Gross-Loh have turned the teachings into a book called ““The Path: What Chinese Philosophers Can Teach Us About The Good Life”. They join Diane to talk about why these ideas are resonating, particularly with young people today.
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