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Academic exchanges at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey (6)

author: Li Muyuan Date: 2023-11-03 View:

During the exchange and visit of Rutgers University, I experienced different cultures, different landscapes and different teaching methods from China. Now, I will talk about my feelings about the impressive courses.


Firstly, the class that impressed me deeply is normative ethics. The class style of Professor Trip McCrossin shocked me, it is different from the class style in China, I like this light style very much. And professor started with Tramway problem, describing a condition that a train comes, on both sides of the track are one person and five people, if you press a button, you will kill one person and save five people, if you do not press, you will kill five people and save one person. The answer to this question embodies the views of effectualism, obligation theory and virtue ethics. When I study in China, I watch some video about that, in Rutgers I am very happy to listen to the teacher explain the trolley problem face to face.


The other class that impressed me deeply is politician philosophy. In China, I am interested in politician philosophy and have read some Rawls’s Theory of Justice. Professor Alex Guerrero introduced justice, equality, freedom and happiness, which deepening my understanding of them. About justice, the professor talked about distributive justice and reward and punishment justice. For equality, the professor told me equal power, equal resource, equal opportunity and equal needs. We should analyze the reasons for a person's weakness, if it is irresistible, then the strong need to help the weak. If he is lazy, then there is no need to help him. The professor also talked about different freedom, such as physical freedom and spiritual freedom. Prison limits people's physical freedom, and people's consciousness may also be limited to a certain extent by others. The professor also taught us his view about different systems of government.


All in all, the communication in Rutgers University enabled me to broaden my international vision, understand the frontier academic content, and appreciate the foreign philosophy teaching methods, from which I gained a lot.