I’ve always been fascinated by ethics and moral philosophy; the kind of questions that are impossible to answer definitively. I’ve gotten lost pondering ethical dilemmas, imagining hypotheticals and what I would do in a tough situation. As I got older, more and more grey areas started popping up. The cut and dry, good and bad, black and white had disappeared; what remained was a series of complex interpersonal relationships. This made me wonder what answers the experts have.

I was immediately interested in The Good Place on NBC. It was a comedy based on the exact questions I had speculated on for hours on end. More than that, it came with a reading list. It posed a stark contrast between Kantianism and utilitarianism, with a touch of moral relativism. This made me reflect on how moral philosophy has been a constantly evolving beast in the Western world. But what about Eastern philosophy?

My father was born in Taiwan. This fact has inspired a yearning for knowledge about my heritage. I want to learn more about a culture, a piece of myself, that lives thousands of miles away. I know very little about that part of my identity. My parents stopped Mandarin lessons, so there exists a language barrier, on top of my father himself being distanced from his birthplace having emigrated as a young child. I hope to open a window into the mind of an Eastern scholar. I hope to understand the foundation of the culture of interpersonal relationships that exists worlds away. I hope to connect to a piece of my identity through one of my greatest passions.