This independent study will be mostly a “seminar style class.” This means that it will be like graduate-level courses are structured in the humanities. However, it will be much less reading material than a typical graduate course! Most graduate-level classes require one full academic book per week. I made sure to keep your reading around 60 pages per week.

本项独立研究将主要采取“研讨课”的形式。这意味着它的课程架构将类似于人文学科领域的研究生课程。然而，其阅读材料将远少于常规的研究生课！大部分研究生课程要求每周读完一整本学术专著，而我已确保将大家的每周阅读量把控在60页左右。

Because of the format, thoughtful reading is the core requirement of this class. Make sure to set some dedicated time in your schedule for a few consistent hours of reading per week.

由于这种授课形式，“带有思考的阅读”是本课程的核心要求。请在你的时间表中预留出专门的阅读时段，确保每周能有数小时稳定、连续地阅读。

It is important to note that “thoughtful reading” does not mean reading for perfect understanding.

 同时需要说明的是：所谓“带有思考的阅读””，并不等同于“必须读到完全懂”。

This is a difficult thing for many students to trust! Often, I see students get really anxious when they don’t understand the reading, because a lot of their education has been based around the expectations of knowing the “right answer” or coming prepared with a perfect understanding.

 这一点对不少同学来说确实需要时间适应。我经常看到同学因为一时读不明白而紧张甚至焦虑，因为过去的学习训练往往强调“正确答案”，或要求大家上课前已经形成完整、清晰的理解。

For a class like this, the expectations are very different. It might feel uncomfortable for a while! So, don’t be surprised if I remind you often that “thoughtful reading” does not mean reading for perfect understanding.

 但在这样一门课程中，我对大家的期望有着天壤之别。起初，你或许会对此感到有些别扭或不适！所以，如果在未来的课堂上我反复提醒大家“‘带有思考的阅读’不等于‘追求完美的理解’”，请千万不要感到意外。

Instead, thoughtful reading means:

 相反，“带有思考的阅读”意味着：

a) Scheduling time to read rather than reading for completion. Instead of starting an article and ending when you’ve read the whole thing (don’t do this!!), block out a set time frame and read within that frame. This might involve skimming some parts of the article and reading other parts in more detail. It also might mean not reading every single line. Underlining key sentences or marking down questions and confusions can help you to leave with a good basis for discussion. I recommend spending no more than three hours per week on your reading, and possibly a little more for the weeks you are presenting.

 a) 安排固定的阅读时间，而不是为了“读完”而读。不要一翻开文章就抱着必须读到最后一个字的执念（千万别这么做！！），而是应该预留出一段固定的时间，并在这个时间框架内进行阅读。这可能意味着你需要略读文章的某些部分，而对另一些部分进行精读。这也意味着你不必逐字逐句地死读。划出核心句子，或是把你的疑问和困惑标记下来，这些都能为你参与课堂讨论打下良好的基础。我建议大家每周花在阅读上的时间不超过三个小时，只有在你负责做课堂展示的那几周，可以稍微多花一点时间。

b) Seeing how your thoughts and feelings are affected by your engagement with the text. In addition to reading for comprehension, focus on what comes to mind as you read. Do the concepts remind you of other readings from this class, or something you learned in another class? Do they bring to mind anything you have observed or experienced in your own life? Also, what emotions come up for you? This is all really important “data” for further exploration! These thoughts and feelings will provide avenues for a rich group discussion.

 b) 关注文本如何影响你的想法与感受。除了以理解内容为目的的阅读，还要关注在阅读过程中你脑海里涌现了什么。这些概念是否让你联想到了本课程的其他阅读材料，或者是你在其他课上学过的知识？它们是否唤起了你在现实生活中的观察与经历？此外，你引发了怎样的情绪反应？对于我们进一步的探索而言，这些都是极其重要的“资料”！这些想法与感受将为我们开展丰富深入的小组讨论提供绝佳的切入点。

c) Sitting with discomfort. If you find it really difficult to understand what is going on, that is okay. If you get confused or annoyed, that is okay!! I’ll say it again here: you don’t have to come to class with a perfect understanding. What is better is to bring an honest account of your engagement with the text. For example, “I read the Introduction many times but was really confused. Why does Leiter say that realism comes from a “positivistic” culture? I thought that realism was opposed to positivism. I don’t understand this at all.” If this was your experience, this is a much better contribution to a seminar discussion than coming in with a list of points to summarize the article, especially if the summary was generated with external aids like LLMs.

 c) 学会与不适感共处。如果你觉得很难理解文本在说什么，没关系；如果你感到困惑或烦躁，也没关系！！我在这里再强调一次：你不需要带着“完全理解”来上课。更好的做法，是如实带来你与文本互动的过程与体验。比如：“我把导论读了很多遍，但还是很困惑。为什么 Leiter 说现实主义来自一种‘实证主义’文化？我以为现实主义是反对实证主义的。我完全不理解。”如果这就是你的真实体验，那么这类发言远比带着一份“要点总结”进入研讨讨论更有价值——尤其是当这种总结是借助 LLM 等外部工具生成的时候。

Altogether, the only expectation is for honest work. Take some time to wrestle with the material, think through confusions, process what comes up for you, and let yourself make mistakes! If you do this, you will be successful.

总而言之，我唯一的期望就是大家拿出真诚的治学态度。花点时间去和材料“较劲”，去梳理你的困惑，去消化涌现的情绪，并允许自己犯错！只要做到这些，你就能在这门课上取得丰硕的成果。

And again, putting yourself 100% into this work does not mean working 100% of the time. Please set limits for your work time, do not aim for perfection, and ask me for help any time.

最后还是要强调，100%地投入这项课业，绝不意味着你要把100%的时间都花在学习上。请为你的工作时间设定明确的界限，不要强求完美，并且随时向我寻求帮助。

What is the basic structure of a seminar class? For the first thirty minutes or so, the presenters / facilitators will provide an introductory overview of the readings for that week. For the overview, a good way to go about it is using a “compare and contrast” method. How do the readings differ from each other? What do they share in common? And then, how do these differences or similarities affect broader themes from the class? Then, after a short break, you will provide a list of questions (maybe about six to ten questions) that you will use to guide an open-ended discussion. For the questions, try to avoid “yes or no” questions and get your classmates to think about connections across the material. For example, we have an article on graffiti vandalism in week 10. Instead of asking “do you think graffiti is just or unjust?”, you might ask something like “would Plato and Confucius have differing approaches to graffiti?” Or “how might the identity of the graffiti writer make a difference for whether the vandalism is just or unjust?”

研讨课的基本流程是什么？在前30分钟左右，负责主讲/主持的同学需要对当周的阅读材料做一个总览式的铺垫。要做好这个总览，一个行之有效的方法是采用“比较与对比（求同存异）”的分析框架。文本之间有哪些分歧？又有哪些共识？进而，这些异同点如何与我们课程的宏观主题产生共鸣？随后，经过短暂的休息，你需要抛出一份问题清单（大概六到十个问题），以此来激发一场开放式的发散讨论。提问时，请尽量避开那种只需回答“是或否”的二元对立问题，而是要引导同学们去挖掘不同材料之间的内在关联。比如，我们在第10周会读到一篇关于涂鸦破坏公物的文章。与其干巴巴地问“你认为涂鸦是否正义？”，不如这样设问：“对于涂鸦，柏拉图和孔子会不会有截然不同的应对逻辑？”或者“涂鸦者的身份特征，会在多大程度上影响我们对其破坏行为正当性的评判？”

I will lead the first seminar discussion so that you can see what it looks like!

我会先主持第一场研讨讨论，大家可以直观地感受一下具体的模式!

For the weeks that you are presenting and leading discussion, of course, you have to do a little more work than your classmates. For the other weeks, you just have to read and take notes.

当然，轮到你上台主讲和主持讨论的那几周，你理应比平时多下点功夫。至于其他几周，你只需完成阅读、做好笔记就足够了。 

However, I recognize that this material is difficult, and it will be extra difficult to read texts in English. In this age of generative AI, I will provide some guiding suggestions for how you might navigate your reading and learning in this context.

不过我也清楚，这些文本本来就不容易，而用英文阅读会进一步增加难度。处在生成式 AI 迅速发展的时代，我也会针对大家在这种背景下该如何把控阅读与学习节奏，给出一些引导性的建议。

Of course, in some ways, technological developments have made your job as a student easier. And yet, they also pose greater challenges to your learning than students previously faced. AI outputs are incredibly prone to error, because they are not designed to be sources of accurate information; though often, the errors will seem as though they are correct. Just as problematically, the ease by which you can produce a “product” (for example a presentation, a discussion guide, questions, a course paper) means that you can bypass the things which cause a lot of stress but that actually help you learn and grow: struggling through the material, being confused, and making mistakes.

不可否认，在某些层面，技术进步确实给你们当学生“减了负”。然而，它们也给你们的学习带来了前辈们未曾遭遇过的严峻挑战。AI的生成结果极易出现偏差，因为其底层设计根本就不是为了提供精准的信息源；但可怕的是，这些谬误往往披着“看似正确”的伪装。同样棘手的是，正因为你们如今可以轻而易举地生成一个“学习成品”（比如展示文稿、讨论大纲、提问清单甚至期末论文），这使得你们极易走捷径，从而避开那些看似折磨人、实则真正能催人成长的必修课：在艰涩的文本中痛苦摸索、经历困惑，以及在试错中前行。

For your readings, I will provide a professional Chinese translation wherever possible (e.g., for the Plato readings), but for the other texts, I recommend that you work with the original source material in English. When you come across words you do not know, you may be able to skip over them and still understand the meaning of the passage through other terms and context. For the words that are more integral to the main point (for example, in your first set of readings you will read about “copulative verbs,” which play a central role in the argument), I suggest looking them up individually using an online dictionary or web search rather than asking AI.

关于阅读材料，只要条件允许，我都会尽量为大家提供专业的中译本（例如柏拉图的文献）。但对于其他文本，我建议大家直接去读英文原版资料。当遇到不认识的单词时，你大可以跳过它们，试着通过其他词汇和上下文来揣摩段落的含义。只有当某些生词对理解核心论点至关重要时（例如，在第一组阅读材料中，你们会读到关于“系动词（copulative verbs）”的内容，这个词在整个论证中起着核心作用），我才建议你使用在线词典或搜索引擎去逐一查阅，而不是直接去问AI。

I know that you can have all of your webpages translated instantly into Chinese. This reduces “friction” or difficulty, but it is also prone to error, and it will leave you struggling more with the meaning of the English terms that we use in seminar discussion. If you cannot work without a full-text translation, I do not judge you, but I would simply recommend spending some time first reading through in English, and then reading the automated translation in a separate window side-by-side the English version.

我知道，大家现在可以一键将所有的网页瞬间翻译成中文。这确实减少了阅读的阻力，但机翻也极其容易出错；更麻烦的是，这会导致你在课堂研讨中听到我们使用这些英文学术术语时，感到更加吃力与脱节。当然，如果你觉得没有全文本翻译就实在读不下去，我绝对不会用有色眼镜看你。我只是建议你，先花点时间读一遍英文原文，然后再开一个分屏，将机器翻译与英文原版对照着阅读。

Finally, I am going to recommend something difficult. I recommend that you please do not use an LLM to summarize a text, either in part or in whole, or to generate discussion questions or presentation ideas, etc. I am also going to ask that you do not rely on it too much to unpack background on the historical context of the text, or to unpack a school of thought (such as legal realism or legal positivism).

最后，我要给大家提出一个有些“艰难”的建议。我恳请大家，不要使用 LLM 来对文本进行局部或全局的总结，也不要用它来生成讨论问题或展示思路。 同时，我也希望大家不要过度依赖AI去梳理文本背后的历史语境，或是去拆解某个思想流派（比如法律现实主义或法律实证主义）。

Please remember that my expectation is for thoughtful reading more than a 100% accurate understanding. Even if you are presenting/facilitating and you don’t fully understand what the texts are referencing, or the wider political or cultural movements that serve as their background, you can still prepare a presentation based on your understanding of the texts’ structure, arguments, and claims, and you can bring your questions and confusions to the group for a generative discussion.

请记住，我的期望是你们进行“带有思考的阅读”，而不是追求“100%精准的理解”。即便轮到你做主讲或引导讨论，哪怕你没有完全搞懂文本中引经据典的深意，或者不了解其背后的宏大政治与文化运动背景，你依然可以基于你对文章结构、论点和主张的理解来准备展示；你完全可以带着你的问题和困惑来到课堂，和大家碰撞出一场富有启发性的讨论。

Also, if you are presenting and are so confused about something you can’t even figure out how to present on it, my door and wechat are always open to help. I know that it is very confident (and even arrogant) for me to say, but I do still believe that I will be more helpful with your political philosophy questions than Deepseek will be. This is what I was hired for! Please use me and make me earn my salary :)

 此外，如果在准备展示时你实在太过困惑，甚至不知道该从何讲起，我的办公室大门和我的微信随时为你敞开。我知道接下来的这句话可能听起来过于自信（甚至有些傲慢），但我依然坚信：在解答你们的政治哲学问题上，我绝对比 DeepSeek 更有用。毕竟学校雇我就是干这个的！请尽情“使用”我，让我对得起我的工资吧 :)

Because I want to approach your situation as a student in the age of AI with care and respect, rather than policing, I will make you a promise that the more you approach your learning in this course by doing the “difficult thing” (writing your own questions, asking me for questions, using Google or Baidu for key terms and looking at trustworthy sources rather than the AI summaries), the more open I will be to working with you and giving you leeway, including on your grades.

正因为我想以关怀和尊重的态度，来体察你们在AI时代作为一名学生的处境，而不是像警察一样防贼与监控，所以我向你们郑重承诺：在这门课上，你越是愿意迎难而上，去做那些“艰难的事”（自己构思问题、找我探讨疑问、老老实实地用谷歌或百度查专业术语、查阅可靠信源而不是直接看AI生成的摘要），我就越愿意为你提供各方面的支持，并在包括成绩评定在内的各项事务上，给予你最大的宽容与通融。