Forcibly rushing to exonerate Nurse Liu Fan has stirred anger. The so-called rumor enraged some people; they furiously denounced how terrifying rumors can be, and then produced the so-called refutation. Yet this “forceful, well-grounded” refutation seemed instead to confirm that she was indeed a nurse, that she was indeed fighting the epidemic, that she indeed died of the disease, and that her whole family indeed fell ill as well… So what exactly was wrong? The rumor-refuters emphasized that protective suits were not in short supply. The implication was that she had ample protective conditions, and was not infected because resources were tight; she could only have been infected because she was careless herself.
Then one line in the rumor-refutation video—“she was just a nurse who gave injections”—made people even more chilled. It was as if to say that she, merely a second-line nurse, got infected and died as she deserved, and was even less worthy of mourning.
In fact, if one straightens out the logic, this sentence may perhaps mean: supplies really are scarce; even the medical staff directly performing operations lack protective suits, and she was only a nurse who gave injections, so lacking protection was normal.
Yet they insist on biting down hard on “adequate supplies.” Ever since the Hubei governor declared “supplies are adequate” at the time of the lockdown, the authorities have never been willing to坦陈坦陈 the shortage of supplies, and have even suppressed private distress messages posted by medical personnel in every possible way. By all means they simply would not allow anyone to say that supplies were difficult.
But what, exactly, is the point of such insistence? The epidemic was raging and supplies were scarce; this is an objective fact. Precisely because conditions were difficult and the situation grim, support from all directions and unity of the masses were needed. But why, when facing such a hard predicament, did those people still insist on stressing that everything was going smoothly?
This paradoxical attitude, in fact, has long existed and is deeply rooted. A casual look at those anti-Japanese fantasy dramas is enough to know it: those scripts always make our side’s strength appear extraordinarily powerful—our army lacks neither guns nor grain and even knows martial arts—while the enemy is stupid, clumsy, and incompetent. As a result, some of these fantasy dramas even leave viewers puzzled: how did the Japanese devils manage to hold out in China for eight years?
When I was studying philosophy in middle school, I had this same feeling. Textbooks and teachers portrayed the so-called idealists as absurdly stupid and ridiculous, as though any middle-school student could defeat them utterly in argument. Yet at the same time they also had to say how materialism won out, by twists and turns.
There is a basic paradox here: when you belittle the enemy, you are at the same time belittling yourself. If the enemy is so vulnerable, and yet you need to struggle so hard to defeat them, then that only shows that you are not all that formidable either. The person who has to work hard to beat an idiot is most likely an idiot too.
Of course, the “enemy” need not be a specific person. Fighting viruses, earthquakes, floods, and so on is similar: the enemy surges forward menacingly + our side is in difficult circumstances, and this highlights our heroism; by contrast, the enemy is utterly unthreatening + our side has abundant conditions, and then we are beaten so badly that we drop our helmets and shed our armor, which only makes our incompetence more obvious.
But such a simple truth is not easy to recognize. And then to go a step further and do the opposite—rather than belittling the enemy, to elevate them—that is even harder to accomplish.
The so-called “despise the enemy strategically, take them seriously tactically” is, of course, the proper attitude toward an enemy. But let alone how hard it is to carry this out in actual combat, once we get to the level of “narrative,” it becomes even harder to implement.
The key issue is: how can we distinguish between “strategic historiography” and “tactical historiography”?
The “a priori history and actual history” we have often spoken of seems able to serve as such a distinction. In the sense of a priori history or intentional history, we can speak of some grand trend; but at the level of actual history, we must respect those opponents who are ultimately defeated. We have recently been reading Technics and Time 1, and the two levels of technical history it discusses—“trend” and “event”—can also be used as an analogy here.
In the field of history of science, there are the concepts of “Whig history” and “anti-Whig history.” Whig history refers to the Whig Party’s mode of narration: describing history as the inevitable course by which the Whig Party defeats all sorts of opponents and ultimately wins, treating historical narrative as a tool for proving the Whig Party’s legitimacy, and then in turn using existing legitimacy as the basis for selecting history.
There has long been much debate about Whig history. Some people use Croce’s “all history is contemporary history” to argue that “Whig history” can never be completely escaped. We always have to re-examine history from the standpoint of modern people, and that is also where the significance of history lies. But on the other hand, historians of science such as Koyré and Kuhn did indeed demonstrate anti-Whig methods of historiography, which simply means returning to historical contexts and sympathetically understanding the thought-world of the ancients.
We know that the key event that inspired Kuhn was his discussion of Aristotle’s physics. Kuhn discovered that Aristotle seemed especially stupid on issues of physics, but unlike others, he did not take pride in modern people’s brilliance and despise the ancients for their stupidity. Instead, he tried to stand within Aristotle’s context and think through how such a great, such a wise person could possibly have arrived at these seemingly foolish views.
Thus Kuhn discovered “eras” in the history of science, discovering that people of an era often share a certain research paradigm. And the development of an era is not simply the repeated triumph of truth over error, or wisdom over stupidity, because within a specific historical context, those ideas that are ultimately defeated are likewise great and reasonable. The Ptolemaic system still had formidable force in the age of Copernicus.
The historiographical strategy of “respecting the loser,” established in Koyré and Kuhn, was further strengthened by postmodern scholars. They believed that there was not the slightest basis for speaking of winners and losers at all; various worldviews ought to be regarded as equal. Postmodernism then went on to oppose traditional historians’ “grand narratives,” opposing the insertion of some grand theme or major thread into historiography, dissolving the presence of protagonists and main lines in the narrative, and fragmenting history.
In short, postmodern history no longer has a grand “strategic” level. But while accepting the idea of “respecting the loser,” can we still insist on some kind of grand narrative?
I think this is possible. In this sense, we are not opposing Whig-style “grand narrative”; rather, we are opposing the fact that it is not grand enough. The flaw in “Whig history” is not that it sings hymns of praise to heroes, but precisely that the hymns it sings are not grand enough. It treats each enemy defeated by the hero as a clown doomed from birth to perish, and the hardships and dangers faced by the hero as a smooth road that can certainly be passed through. Then the hero it constructs cannot really be called great. In this sense, “a grander narrative” must not only elevate the Whigs; it must also elevate the Tories. It must not only elevate Copernicus, but also elevate Ptolemy.
We may still acknowledge that above fragmented individual events there exists a magnificent “overall trend of the era,” and beneath that “trend” there are also great heroes. But at the same time, the reason the trend is “grand” is that the era is undergoing “dramatic change,” undergoing revolutionary rupture; and the reason the heroes are “great” is that the opponents they defeat are likewise so great.
In this sense, we might even accept some kind of narrative of “conquering nature,” provided that “nature” is a worthy and awe-inspiring opponent, and humanity challenges her—and wins again and again—on the premise of respecting nature and revering nature. Such a narrative does not seem modernist (torturing nature), nor premodern (submitting to nature), nor postmodern (there is no nature at all). Perhaps it is closest to the heroic epics of the oral age, though compared with oral narration it is more logical and orderly.
Such a narrative greater than grand narrative is at least possible. But what meaning does it have? At the very least, it can rescue “meaning” itself. For only by marking a direction through some purpose or trend can meaning be measured. Preceding death gives human actions meaning; a preceding “completion” gives historical events meaning.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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