“This course will change your life.” This is the claim that Michael Pruett makes to his classes at Harvard.Pruett teaches a class called Classical Chinese Ethical and Political Theory and students are flocking to it. One student said, “The class absolutely changed my perspective of myself, my peers, and of the way I view the world.”
The core idea of Pruett's class is that we all think of ourselves as rational, reasonable creatures, but if we use that as the basis of our decision making process, we wall ourselves off to all the other, sometimes more enriching, parts of life. He teaches that the smallest actions can have the most profound consequences and urges his students to become more self-aware.
In Chinese, the word for heart and mind are the same and they believed that the two are inextricably linked. They also believed that when making a decision, the integration of head and heart would give the best result.
Adam Mitchell, one of Pruett's students, summed it up this way, “We’re expected to think of our future in this rational way: to add up the pros and cons and then make a decision. That leads you down the road of ‘Stick with what you’re good at.'”
He added that this was the path of little risk and little reward.
Here's a link to the Atlantic article where I found this.
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