The Good Life: What ancient philosophers can tell us about living well today

Please join us for the first guest public lecture of this academic year run jointly by the OU Online Confucius Institute and the Open Centre for Languages and Cultures. We are delighted to welcome Dr Jingyi Jenny Zhao, ISF Senior Research Fellow at the Needham Research Institute, Cambridge and Needham Research fellow at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge to deliver a fascinating talk which considers some of life's key questions from the perspective of ancient philosophers. What makes a good life and how do we achieve it? 

About the talk:

Over two thousand years ago, philosophers East and West contemplated a series of fundamental questions in life relating to the human condition, including: What makes us human, as distinct from other living things? How should humans cultivate themselves so as to fulfil their potential? What makes a good life and how does one achieve it?

Recent years have seen a globalising movement in the fields of Classics and Philosophy, reflecting a realisation of the enormous intellectual rewards that can be gained through a cross-cultural engagement with the ancient worlds. This talk discusses some of the critical questions in ethics that have lent themselves to “Sino-Hellenic” comparison and reviews the implications of such research for how one might live today.

About the speaker:

Dr Jingyi Jenny Zhao is ISF Senior Research Fellow at the Needham Research Institute, Cambridge and Needham Research fellow at Clare Hall, University of Cambridge.

Dr Zhao holds BA, MPhil and PhD degrees from the Faculty of Classics at the University of Cambridge and her research takes a comparative perspective on the philosophical traditions of ancient Greece and early China. She is contributor and co-editor of Ancient Greece and China Compared (Cambridge University Press, 2018). Her book Aristotle and Xunzi on Shame, Moral Education and the Good Life is forthcoming with Oxford University Press in 2024.

Alongside her research, Dr Zhao has worked extensively in public outreach, including filming for the BBC Documentary Story of China, writing children’s books on philosophy, and producing academic journalism via her WeChat public account ‘Jingyi fangtan’ 静一访谈.

Please register on Eventbrite to attend the talk. The Zoom link will be emailed to you prior to the event. The talk will also be recorded and made available afterwards on this page. 

Please see the recording from the talk below. The transcript is available here.