Respectable guests, colleagues, and dear students,
Good afternoon!
It is a great pleasure to welcome the School of Philosophy's Class of 2029 today. We are thrilled to have 281 new members joining our academic community this year: 81 undergraduates, 12 Politics, Economics, and Philosophy (PPE) majors, 78 academic master's students, 68 doctoral candidates, and 42 students in our Master of Applied Ethics program. On behalf of the entire faculty and staff, I extend our warmest welcome to each of you.
Last week, you attended the University's opening ceremony, where President Jin Li highlighted that you are the first cohort under Fudan's comprehensive new educational reform initiative. This Reform 3.0 emphasizes cultivating top academic innovators while providing ample space for personal choice and self-directed development. President Jin identified "learning to choose" as a central challenge for your years here.
For those of you who have chosen Philosophy, a deeper challenge awaits: How do we transform initial intellectual curiosity into genuine academic inquiry and research capability? This is perhaps the most pressing question you will face. Let me illustrate why.
Firstly, consider undergraduate motivations. Our surveys show a growing number of students list Philosophy as their first choice, reflecting strong major identity. This stems partly from Fudan's reputation and the School’s efforts, but more profoundly from a genuine need for philosophy in our complex modern era. As modernization accelerates, revealing societal contradictions and complexities beyond common sense, deep intellectual engagement with life becomes not just attractive but necessary. Our students arrive with this profound concern for understanding modern existence.
However, raw concern from life experience does not spontaneously mature into reasoned thought about life itself. As Hegel noted in the preface to his Elements of the Philosophy of Right, having hands ready for painting doesn't make one a painter. Similarly, primary concern for life's meaning requires rigorous training to become conceptual understanding. This gap is evident today. I recall young professionals asking why philosophy often appears as obscure jargon orsuperficial cliche in public, even though a real hunger for wisdom exists.
Secondly, observe graduate student trajectories. Recently, a few students with overseas philosophy backgroundschose to return to China for doctorates. They sought programs that better integrate substantive thought with scholarly rigor—a path to transform concern into research. Their choice wasn't based on our global ranking or immunity to academic industrialization, but rather the sheer complexity of contemporary life in China. This reality, unlike neat theoretical boxes, forces scholars and students here to maintain original concerns and forge a path uniting thought and scholarship.
Given this central challenge, how can you address it during your time here? I offer two recommendations.
First, consciously embrace Fudan Philosophy's distinctive academic tradition. For nearly 70 years, our School has balanced scholarly rigor with deep intellectual engagement. Our scholars address pressing contemporary issues, transcend disciplinary boundaries, and equally value history of philosophy, foundational texts, and cutting-edge theory. To help you inherit this tradition, our reformed curriculum pairs a robust course system with a strong academic support framework. This includes close faculty mentorship, classic text reading groups, state-of-the-art seminars, and academic paperworkshops—all actively guided by faculty. These structures are designed to help you translate concerns into research questions and carry forward Fudan Philosophy's academic legacy.
Second, consciously move beyond atomized relationship models and fully integrate into our academic community. A trend among students is to act as self-sufficient monads, engaging others instrumentally. This leads to superficial interaction and isolated scholarship, particularly acute in the humanities. To counter this, consider Kant and Hegel.
Kant taught that independent thinking requires a public platform—"to think independently means to think publicly." While each rational being possesses a priori reason, we access universality through thinking with others. Hegel further linked thought and life: the modern individual must, within ethical life, concretely embody connections to others, achieving a universality beyond selfish particularity. Only then can we transcend subjective opinion in thought. In practical terms: Be open in learning—voice your ideas, listen carefully to peers and teachers, and allow your frameworks to be challenged. In life, give up the "monad" self-image; strive to integrate into a community larger than yourself, sharing its responsibilities.
We sincerely hope that your time here at Fudan will enable you to find your path from concern to scholarship, to become true members of our warm philosophy community, and to experience profound intellectual and personal growth.
Thank you.
