The World As I See It

Dear Boss,

Since you asked about my progress on Plato’s Republic twice, I’m finding a chance to share with you something on my reading plan, but each time it looked inappropriate to engage you. Hence, I resort to writing.

There are 3 concerns in my venture into a new field of knowledge:

1. I do not understand the basic concepts or terms, nevertheless I pick some classics and drift along for first few chapters to get a rough view.
2. I do not know where I stand - or rather where the author and his ideology stand - in that field of knowledge or in the historical development of the knowledge.
3. I tend to enclose my quest to a few authors (composers in the case of music) that I like or are famous, thus not getting a full coverage on the subject as a foundation or an overview.

To illustrate, having gone through Economics classes in NTU (currently pursuing a Minor in Economics), it enables me to evaluate government policies, follow the rationales of central banks’ moves and IMF reports, with an awareness of the difference between Keynesian, monetarist, neoclassical etc approach. An introduction in International Business Law enlightens me on the issues of WTO Doha Round, anti-dumping of China, farming subsidies of France and the US etc - the role of law in international order. My past efforts in Relativity and Quantum Mechanics allow me to follow the lines of theoretical physicists (Richard Feynman, Stephen Hawkings) and some arguments of Bertrand Russell - the extent of human understanding of the nature.

I am unfamiliar with political science and philosophy. An objective text would lay the ground to address my 3 concerns, and help to construct a holistic picture. Nonetheless, concurrently, I am also browsing through some classics, which can be likened to "scratching an itch" in my impatient desire to plunge myself into the great writings. They include the works of Russell, Paine, Mill, Kant, Marx, Rousseau, PLATO etc.

So that’s it, the roundabout way of my answering your question, which, I think, better reveal my thoughts. The Republic is one of the books that I flip, not with the intention to fully understand it now, but to scratch my itch and to get a rough view. I will come back to all these books again after having an overview of the political and philosophical concepts, and their developments. And back to your question, how is my progress on The Republic? Seriously… Alas! No progress yet

Regards,

LOH YI ZHENG