User:Lcorporan/Preparatory Assignment

On Practice
I'm actually somewhat surprised that Wikipedia doesn't have a page on this already. I guess that it isn't a particularly long work, being like half the length of On Contradiction. I feel, however, that there might be some tidbits of that essay that can be important and that could be linked to the article for On Contradiction, making them both stronger. I could also try to find articles that review Mao's philosophical works. There are those that do not like him. On the other hand, it is possible that the amount of information in the twenty pages of On Practice simply not enough for a full article. I could just be surprised that no Wikipedia article exists for it.

Liang Shuming
The article on Liang Shuming is quite brief. It gives an overview of his life which is accurate, I think, but also quite brief. I feel like there isn't enough concerning his political or philosophical views. It mentions that he does think that Western civilization is doomed, but it only makes the slightest implication that Western technological methods should be adopted (it merely says that he was for reform). It also fails to mention the hierarchy of civilizations (Western, Chinese, Indian) that Liang believed existed. I definitely believe this article could use some more work, some more information on Liang's philosophy, some on how his views seem to connect up with some of Karl Marx's views, and more information on why he disliked the idea of cultural blending.

Human Rights in the People's Republic of China
Human Rights in the People's Republic of China is an existing Wikipedia article. It, however, seems to have no discussion about the idea of Rights Consciousness, or its history on it. I feel like this article does a good job at covering many aspects of the rights of people in China and most of it links to separate pages, which cover specific rights issues in more depth. Alternatively, I could write an article on Rights Consciousness itself. I'm not completely sure how I'd go about writing about this. Perhaps I could write very briefly about what Rights Consciousness is and then have a large section titled "Rights Consciousness in China" and write about some of the authors we have read over the course of this semester. I would leave the article open so that more could be added to it, of course, especially when it comes to information about the talk of Rights Consciousness in not-China. The one issue there is, I guess, that I do not know how pervasive the talk of Rights Consciousness is in Western philosophy. That question may be a very silly one. I know that rights are a common topic, but I'm not sure if Rights Consciousness itself is talked about. I would need to read more about it.

The Final Paragraph
I guess I'll use this space to mention that I really like the idea behind this assignment. As a person who almost always has at least one tab of Wikipedia open on his browser, I think it is fantastic. I feel like the challenge, which is also is one of those things that makes a Wikipedia submission different from a philosophy paper, is grasping the right style of language. You should always assume that your reader has no idea what you are talking about, but even then some technical language always manages to sneak in, not everything is perfectly fleshed out because you also know that your professor will know what you're talking about. With Wikipedia, however, the person reading your article could be anyone. It could be a professor emeritus who lives and breathes Chinese philosophy or it could be a middle school student who got stuck writing an essay on Mao Zedong that he really doesn't want to write. The article must be intelligible and understandable to both of them. The challenge the appears when writing about modern Chinese philosophy specifically is that a lot of it is so contextual. There's a lot of history and it's all very important when discuss who thinks what and why. It might be difficult giving context to some ideas without rambling on forever.