On the afternoon of Dec 4^th, DONG Ping, a speaker from the well-known Chinese television program ‘Lecture Room’ and professor from the Philosophy Department of Zhejiang University, visited Tongji University and gave a lecture on ‘The Unity between Inner Knowledge and Action - The Realm of Life’ at the Sino-French Center.

DONG expounded his views on ‘The Unity between Inner Knowledge and Action’ in his lecture. The meaning of the ‘Inner Knowledge’ includes four different but interweaving layers: Perception, Sense, Knowledge and Conscience. The ‘Perception’ refers to one’s self-awareness, with the ‘Sense’ dealing with his/her interaction with the outside world. The ‘Knowledge’ concerns one’s acquisition of knowledge, with the ‘Conscience’ centering around the moral cultivation. DONG shared with his audience the importance of returning to one’s inner nature and remaining the unity of knowledge and action. Only in this way can one fully live up to the highest expectation, be it from within himself or outside. He also claimed in his lecture that, while knowledge remains the beginning of any action, it is the latter that will ultimately bring the former into actual realization. Therefore, under no circumstance should the action be separated from one’s acquisition of knowledge. It was exactly in such a way of self-cultivation that WANG Yangming, one of the most influential philosophers in Chinese history, transcended ideological boundaries and reached a new realm of life.

At the end of the lecture, DONG interacted with his audience and answered the questions raised by them. He then closed his lecture by referring the idea of ‘The Unity between Inner Knowledge and Action’ to further many aspects of today's society, engaging the audience into a deep thinking.