Yesterday, at a dinner gathering, we happened to mention publishing books. I heard that in some places one book counts for the equivalent of three papers; in others it counts for nothing at all. But in any case, it can at least be regarded as one kind of achievement. For me, perhaps writing three books would be easier than publishing ten papers, so if writing books could also earn me some credit, that would be a good thing.
Of course, I am indeed willing to write books, and not only for the sake of credit. Although, in my view, philosophical texts in the pre-network era may have been mainly in the form of blogs, just as scholarship in the print era took printed books as its principal medium. But that does not mean the old media disappeared on the spot. Just as in the print era, the tradition of oral philosophical teaching still existed—and perhaps even became more active. Before the print era, scholarship was transmitted mainly through oral communication and copying by hand; after the print era, scholarship still relied on oral communication and note-taking, only now with an added new link: the printed book. This new medium was not simply a matter of using the printing press to reproduce content that had originally been oral; rather, it in turn affected the form of oral tradition. Philosophical teaching after the invention of printing took on a completely different form. Oral media and print media did not replace one another; they reconfigured one another and formed a new scholarly tradition.
Of course, if one were to divide things more finely, then within these broad historical divisions there are also some tributaries—for example, the form of the paper depends on the letter medium and its publicization in the print era. In a certain sense, the paper is a kind of “open letter.” The formation of the modern scholarly community depends on the establishment of the journal system, with papers as its main form.
Yet although the paper is historically important, I still regard it as a tributary. Of course, this may partly be because I myself do not like this form, but I also have some lofty-sounding reasons. That is to say, the status of the open letter, and even of letters and magazines as media, is not as stable as that of speech and books. In the age of writing, people still had to communicate orally; in the age of the internet, people are still reading books (whether the book’s medium is parchment, paper, or disk). But letters may well die out. Of course, I do not mean to say they will vanish completely. Any ancient medium will leave traces, and in the end will at least retain some value as a certain kind of artistic activity, but the artwork is no longer a necessity.
By the time we reached the electronic age, with the successive rise of telegraphy, telephones, mobile phones, and then e-mail, instant messaging, forums, blogs, social networks, and other forms of communication, letters, that indispensable means of long-distance communication since antiquity, rapidly died away, and so the so-called “open letter” lost its basis of existence. I have mentioned before that the lingering custom in academic journals of printing the authors’ postal codes hints at the secret connection between journals and the postal medium; if scholars no longer rely on the post as their main, or even merely their least important, means of communication, then the journal’s mission has also come to its end.
In a certain sense, the posts people now make on forums, or the entries they post on blogs, play the role of “open letters.” Only through media such as forums and blogs is it possible to rebuild the circle of scholarly communication in the network age. Thus the academic form of the paper, rooted in journals and magazines, will inevitably be transformed into network form.
Relatively speaking, I have greater confidence in books. That is to say, although the new media of the network age and the new scholarly forms that arise along with them will inevitably, in turn, change the way scholars write books, the form of the book itself will not disappear.
Of course, I need to explain what I mean by the form of the book. I mentioned that whether the book’s medium is parchment, paper, or disk, it is still a book. This means that the book has a certain identity that transcends any particular medium, and this is precisely the unique characteristic that makes a book a book and makes it difficult for other new media to replace.
That characteristic is self-sufficiency. A book is a completed, independent, self-sustaining work. Of course, we can collect papers into a book, transcribe lectures into a book, or print blogs into a book, but if it merely serves as a carrier for some other form, then the book is still dispensable. However, the form of the “monograph” is something that belongs specifically to books. A monograph, just like a novel, constitutes an independent, complete world. A book constructs a self-consistent, complete narrative, with beginning, development, turn, and conclusion, with a start and an end. The reader can immerse himself in the entire narrative and take a tour through the world unfolded by that book.
The world presented by a book is self-sufficient, or rather, closed. Although it can give rise to endless reverie and endless commentary, the narrative always has a beginning and an end. Even when we are reading a long serial work whose ending we have not yet seen, we still believe it is either a great work still to be continued, or a piece of work that has collapsed at the end, rather than a work that will never be completed. In any case, the author’s life is finite, and the book will always appear before our eyes as a completed, independent thing.
Media such as speech, forums, and blogs all have a strong openness. The paper is also, in a certain sense, an independent work, but it is not substantial enough to constitute a self-sufficient intellectual space; rather, it must occupy its place within an existing scholarly space. Thus, writing a paper always requires considering the background of the reader, considering what counts as common knowledge in the field and what counts as the frontier of the field, and one must mark one’s own position in this public scholarly space through citations. Of course, writing a monograph also requires considering these things, but in a certain sense it does break away from them and carve out a space of its own, speaking to itself as if in a monologue. Lectures and blogs are, of course, also forms of talking to oneself, but that self-talk is more contextual and more open. Blogs are constantly updated; their words are always in motion and are never severed from the author. But a book can stand there in its fullness; once written, it can even break free from the author’s own interpretation and become an independent, even obstinate, thing.
In a certain sense, this self-sufficient, independent, immersive form of the book is a product of the print era. Books in the manuscript era had not yet acquired such independence, just as the ancients had not yet fully formed the concept of “private space.” After the print era, individual, immersive, secluded silent reading (rather than reading aloud) gradually became common, and ideas such as private space, privacy, and personal freedom also became popular. The network age has greatly transformed the ways people communicate with one another, but as long as “private space” still exists, books still have their foundation.
This is even more true for philosophy. Philosophical works—I mean philosophy other than analytic philosophy—are an extremely personal kind of creation, a philosopher’s private monologue. Every philosopher is creating a philosophical system or a mental space that belongs only to himself. Although this world is, after all, rooted in public space and in daily life, it also transcends them and acquires a certain independent self-sufficient quality. And just how strong this independence is, how deep the unique space it constructs is, how vast the world it unfolds is—this is precisely the measure of how great a philosopher’s achievement is.
In this sense, a philosopher must write monographs; he must carve out, in the boundless public space, a garden or castle of his own. This is of course not to say that one should build a castle in the air detached from the earth, nor that one should build an air-raid shelter cut off from the world. But in any case, although it preserves open entrances, it also has to complete, in some way, a self-enclosure and draw a line separating itself from the vulgar mainstream.
Of course, a philosopher will write many books, just as a castle or garden will always have many relatively independent rooms or arrangements. Each relatively independent small area can let visitors immerse themselves in it, but not so as to suffocate them.
Lectures, papers, blogs, and so on can form the squares, corridors, platforms, plaques, gateways, and so forth within a castle, playing the role of communication and openness. But where there is opening, there must also be closure; where there is communication, there must also be separation; where there is strolling, there must also be pausing. If there are no self-sufficient spaces, one after another, made up of monographs, it would be like a castle without a single room—at most it could attract a few passing travelers, but it could not make people linger.
Therefore, I will write many books. These books will be linked together with my oral teaching and my life as a blogger, forming a complete playground.
Yesterday I also mentioned that I hope to find an academic job that allows me to teach, rather than going to an institute. This wish is directly related to my plan to write books. I hope that each time I teach a course, I will also write a book; of course, one course may be taught several times, but ideally no more than three times. Once the book is written, I will no longer repeat that course; at most I will teach it one more time in a form with a textbook, and then, when it needs revising or rewriting, I will look back over it. Of course, while teaching or writing, my blog will keep up with the teaching progress at any time. Under this arrangement, the three forms—oral, print, and network—will complement one another: rising from the course, established on the web, completed in the book. It is to this rhythm that I will slowly expand my garden bit by bit.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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