was told about a series of philosophy principles like materialism, idealism and agnosticism many times from junior school to senior school, but not for once I matched the right principle with the right philosopher. They were just empty and metaphysical words to me. I learned nothing from them because I didn’t give a thought to it.

But when I read Sophie’s World, for the first time I started to think about these words, though still confused, in that it made me realize I was able to touch upon at least the surface of these thoughts with my own limited understandings of the world and my life and then rebuild a more significant world view on reflection. As what is said in the book, ‘Philosophy is not something you can learn; but perhaps you can learn to think philosophically.’

So I started from the most fundamental question ‘Who am I?’. Give a second thought, and I realized the question is not about name, family or nationality. Instead, it referred to a broader concept called human being, i.e. I am a member of humankind, which is one of the species of the vast nature. It is interesting to think this way. I was used to identifying myself as a person with individual characteristics and feelings. I tended to find something unique of myself but ignored the common nature with others. However, humans share most characters with each other. Ze Frank, a public speaker, once asked his audience, ‘Have you ever tried to guess someone else's password so many times that it locked their iPhone?’; ‘Have you ever hoped that there was some ability you hadn't discovered yet that you were naturally great at?’; ‘Have you ever woken up blissfully and suddenly been flooded by the awful remembrance that someone had left you?’; ‘Have you ever had a nagging feeling that one day you will be discovered as a fraud?’ To these daily life questions, I consider 99 percent people will give a ‘Yes’. That is human nature. Though complicated indeed and hard to define, it helps individuals know themselves. That is why people endeavor to explore what is human nature.

But how to explore? Socrates used questions and Christianity turned to God while Francis Bacon resorted to science and experiments. As a non-religion modern person, I instinctively agreed with the Bacon’s method based on experimental data and induction. I would believe human was evolved from apes rather than created by God; I would believe people like chocolates because they contained sugar with high energy which is preferred by our brain; I would believe I was like a dust in the immense universe and a dot in the long history. That is the acknowledged scientific ‘truth’ about human nowadays. But the day before I took my college entrance exam, I prayed to god for good luck; if I was upset, I would have some chocolates to cheer me up; when reading classics, I realized people were able to be great and immortal. That is the complexity of my nature. And I also regard it as the limitation of science. Though it can explain most phenomenons of human, both physically and psychologically, the human spirit is inestimable and unpredictable. I don’t think, or say I’m not willing to agree, scientific data can explain why a mother with two kids never wept during the two-year civil war but burst into crying when a stranger gave her a kind hand on their way to fleeing to another country. However, human beings can understand it tacitly. So, the spiritual world is not about objective reality and settled rules which can be taught or learnt as Thomas Hobbes pointed out but about good and evil which can be understood and felt.

Then, where are the good and evil from after all? Hobbes said humans were evil like wolves in natural state, cruel, selfish and aggressive while John Locke held there were certain kindness and mutual help between humans in natural state. But both of them thought conflicts came into being because of the limited natural resources, an innate sense of competition and a lack of authoritative and effective rule. Nevertheless, living in the 21^st century, with a relatively steady governance and life pace, I still found myself struggle between good and evil sometimes since competition continued existing and both virtue and selfishness was inherited inevitably. For example, if I saw a kid drowning in the river and cloth to death, should I jump into it immediately and save him or not? According to the social morality, it would be yes absolutely. But the selfishness of my nature also made me fear about the dangerous situation. That was beyond reproach as well. Which decision I would make I think depended on the living environment which would either enhance the sense of kindness or help selfishness grow. I realized that I was on the way to finding a balance between these two sides with the help of knowledge.

‘Who am I’ is really a deep question and much is left to discover along with my life, but at least I tried to think about it philosophically. Other common characteristics shared by human beings, other ways to explore human nature and other explanations for the good and evil are yet to be given some deeper thoughts to know myself better.

The author is a student at the School of English Studies, Shanghai International Studies University.