張晨 Chen Chang

專案講師 Project Instructor
國立中正大學哲學碩士、Tufts University 碩士班
E-mail: chenchang@ntu.edu.tw

Human beings are the only creatures on earth that engage in reflection activities. They reflect on themselves, their behavior, and their connections to each other, their surroundings and the world. Some highly intelligent non-human animals may appear to be capable of engaging in the like activities, but what makes human beings distinctive from those animals is that only the former reflect on their own reflections, and take these first and higher-order reflections to be central to their lives. In order to facilitate the reflections they need an essential medium: the act of writing. Through this act their reflective capacities grow, and this in turn helps refine what they write. So given the capacity for reflective thought every person is, or at least could be, a writer. And yet a writer can be a good, bad, or competent one. A judgment like this relies on how the writer reflects on himself, his behavior, and his perspectives of others and the world.