If I were recruiting a crew, of course I would need to explain what sort of style and route this ship more or less has.
When it comes to a program, it is actually a rather ambiguous thing: it is either too general or too specific. It can be condensed to a single character, “love” or “I”; to two characters, “freedom” or “seeking”; to three, “play games” or “possibility”; to four, “preserve sameness while seeking difference” or “strive for excellence”; to five, “know yourself” or “that old bear of a mother-in-law,” and so on. Any of these could be posted as a slogan at the entrance to Suixuan. Of course, such words are undeniably too vague and indistinct.
If one were to say it more completely, one could use many articles, even all the articles, to explain style and route, but that would of course be far too verbose.
I also can’t think of some slogan like “existence is being constructed” or “return to the things themselves” that is at once concise and resounding enough to mark myself out. Perhaps labels like “preserve sameness while seeking difference” and “philosophy of online games” count as relatively fresh? Hmm? Maybe “that old bear of a mother-in-law” has never been used by anyone either. But in any case, just a few words are ultimately still rather thin.
To strike a balance between brevity and completeness, I can list a number of programmatic propositions to display the orientation of my philosophy. But it should be noted that these programmatic statements are not independent of one another, nor are they mandatory, because their meaning still has to be further interpreted. Merely agreeing with or opposing them on the level of literal wording does not mean much. Still, in any case, a passerby can at least read from these items, on the literal level, some rough sense of my style, right? Those who board my ship do not need to agree with every item, or even with any item at all; as long as you look at them and think they’re interesting, and you also make me feel that you’re interesting, that is enough.
I’ll jot down a few for now, and later gradually revise and simplify them.
But although I’m writing them down casually, don’t think they are just a random patchwork. In fact, in my view there are inner connections among every one of these claims. Although those connections are not logically necessary, they are indeed unified, just like the nodes and strands in a web: any single missing or broken point is not enough to destroy the whole web, yet they are indeed maintaining the tension of the entire web.
The draft program is as follows; the total number is a rather auspicious number, isn’t it?
1. Philosophy is a way of life with aspirations—whatever those aspirations may be.
2. What philosophy demands is understanding, not answers.
3. The mission of philosophy lies in knowing oneself (I).
4. Every person’s philosophy is unique, and in the end only oneself can face one’s own problems.
5. Philosophy is a conceptual game; the way it is played is by weaving a web with language, but meaning (that which is captured) lies outside the web.
6. History and the classics show us possibilities; only by taking root in history can one transcend history.
7. Aside from the mother tongue and the historical-cultural situation into which each person is thrown, philosophy has no ready-made foundation.
8. Preserve sameness while seeking difference: the goal of debate is not to reach consensus, but to clarify disagreement.
9. Philosophy is vulgar; one should be ashamed of verbosity and profundity-for-profundity’s-sake, rather than proud of them. Humor is the most ingenious philosophy.
10. Philosophy has only masters, no experts (and of course no professions either).
11. Discuss philosophy in our mother tongue, in modern Chinese.
12. The world is interesting, life is interesting, philosophy is interesting.
13. Love, not hate.
December 31, 2008
- mist
2008-12-31 19:22:40 Anonymous 124.205.78.223
Post it on Xiaonei; there’s no one here…
Do you still want me to repost it to the BBS?
If there are many people, you can just set up a club yourself.
2008-12-31 19:36:34 Anonymous 124.205.78.223
1. Nonsense; almost any activity has its aim—except for being bored and daydreaming.
2. This is where you and I differ: once you have an answer, then understanding is there too.
3. I don’t know about this one… a mission? Maybe there isn’t any mission, just like a child sitting on the beach playing with sand.
4. A unique philosophy must have common points of its own; otherwise this ship might have only you on it~~
5. I am increasingly inclined to think that meaning is the symbol itself…
6. My attitude toward history is still the same as before: we are doing philosophy, not history of philosophy; note that basic philosophical training and training in the history of philosophy are two different things, similar to geometry and the history of geometry; if your “taking root in history” and my “mastering basic philosophical training” mean roughly the same thing (grasping philosophical content), then there is nothing to dispute on this point.
9. So you’re preparing to change your previous writing style and mainly go short-form now…
10. As a discipline, philosophy has only experts; only as an attitude toward life does it have masters—masters of character.
11. If one is only seeking understanding from a modern-Chinese audience, then on this point I am very much in favor.
12. What is “interesting”?
13. What are love and hate? What about liking? Disliking? Loving and hating mixed together?
2008-12-31 19:56:25
Writing it here is just to plant a foreshadowing. I don’t want to advertise it elsewhere, so as not to attract some inexplicable people.
2008-12-31 20:27:52
I don’t want to offer more explanation or defense of these items here. In fact, I’ve discussed most of them on the blog already. Of course I can keep updating the interpretation later on, but I won’t say much here. Still, since you wrote them one by one, I’ll try to reply as briefly as possible:
1. This sentence is indeed nonsense. But the issue is that some nonsense is often ignored or forgotten.
2. It seems to be in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where some machine calculates the ultimate answer to the universe as 42… I believe anyone who likes doing math problems can appreciate this point: very often, when a problem tells me the answer, or when I randomly cobble an answer together, it has absolutely no meaning at all. Even if I can substitute the answer back into the problem to verify that it is indeed correct, I still won’t be satisfied, because I want to know much more how it was actually obtained.
3. Indeed, the word mission is a bit heavy-handed; in fact it more or less means “mission,” and “task” might be better. A game also has its mission; playing with sand can also have its mission—for example, piling the sand into some shape. This child of mine who plays games is not so young as to be capable only of random fiddling; he is supposed to play with a bit of style.
4. Life and language are both public in nature. So we preserve sameness while seeking difference; don’t forget that sameness comes first as the premise—only with commonality can there be difference.
5. Have you switched from logicalism to formalism?
6. Not the same thing. I think that what is called grasping philosophical content actually does not require appeal to history, because philosophy is precisely about knowing oneself; standing at the place where one is situated and reflecting on oneself is enough to understand philosophy’s themes. What one gets from history is possibility. I won’t say more here.
9. It has nothing to do with length or brevity. Guo Degang’s crosstalk is very vulgar, but he speaks longer than anyone else. And vulgarity does not necessarily mean easy to understand. A crosstalk routine may lay its groundwork for a long time before springing a punchline, and if you start listening only from the middle and know nothing about the earlier setup, then you very likely won’t get it.
10. The philosophy I care about is a way of life, not a discipline.
11. I do not seek an “audience” to understand; the key is only that I understand it myself. I think in my mother tongue and understand in my mother tongue.
12. “Interesting” is a pun. It means both “meaningful” and “fun.”
13. I admit that this sentence is the most ambiguous one, and in a sense it was added merely to make up an auspicious number. But in my view the most ambiguous word is not love or hate, but “want” or “need.” This sentence merely expresses an attitude; you could also think of it as empty talk.
Correction: in item 9, “necessarily not” should be “not necessarily.”
2008-12-31 20:53:20
I revised items 1 and 10 (so item 1 is no longer merely nonsense); previously they were
1. Philosophy is an activity of pursuit—whatever it is pursued for.
10. Philosophy has only masters, no experts.
2008-12-31 23:18:12
I’m not boarding the ship; I’m swimming in the sea. Your item 13 indeed has the significance of summing up December 31. I’m just a newcomer; all I can do is accept, reflect, and argue within the system, but I don’t have the ability to build another system. So I’ll just follow your ship and swim along.
Anyway, boarding the ship still requires the captain’s approval; it’s not something you can just do by showing up, haha. This threshold is much higher than the conditions for me to court mm~
I’ve just set out, and there isn’t even a ship yet—I’m drifting in a little wooden barrel, and we’ll have to see who picks me up first…
2009-01-01 00:37:30 Anonymous 124.205.78.223
Happy New Year~~
2009-01-01 22:03:46
All right, I’m not mm to begin with.
Happy New Year
I never said you were mm, and I don’t care about your gender either. What I wanted to say is that recruiting crew members is not unconditional the way me courting mm is.
2009-01-01 22:22:50
Thanks to the two above; happy New Year to you both.
2009-01-04 13:43:14
Revised item 9, adding “Humor is the most ingenious philosophy.”
Humor is neither like some Continental philosophies, obscure and murky, shrouded in clouds and mist, nor like many Anglo-American philosophies, monotonously rigorous, mechanical in appearance. Humor is at once plain and ambiguous, at once transparent and implicit. Only thus can one capture flowing, lively meaning.
2009-03-11 13:31:28
A true man
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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