l What is called the conflict between theory and practice, or the contradiction between ideal and practice, and the like, has since antiquity been a hard-to-resolve opposition. But one cannot simply equate these oppositions with the irreconcilable opposition between philosophy and life; these are not the same thing. In the first place, the problems of conflict, contradiction, or opposition themselves—these views themselves—are already philosophical problems. Philosophy permeates life; a life with not the slightest bit of “philosophy” in it would not be human life.
l The preceding paragraph seems to refer to a case I once saw in *Freakonomics*; I have occasionally thought of it lately, and it is still quite interesting. Roughly speaking, it was about a statistical survey at a kindergarten in the United States, asking what proportion of parents used to be late when they came to pick up their children. The kindergarten then adopted a measure: if parents were late, they would be fined 3 dollars. And the result? The lateness rate surged! What does this show? — Originally, the moral self-reproach produced by being late could perhaps be eased by paying this negligible fine, which shows that economic constraints are sometimes no match for moral constraints. Of course, if the penalty were set at 300 dollars, that would be another matter altogether.
l What is called “reason” originally probably referred to some kind of ability manifested in debate and persuasion; “reasoning” has always been inseparable from “speaking.” Reason, as a uniquely human capacity, is expressed in human beings’ ability to influence others through speech and debate. As for the techne of speech and debate, from antiquity it could probably be divided into two branches: one is the logic of the syllogism, the other rhetoric. Originally, the skill of logical deduction could also be seen as an adjunct to rhetoric; however, since modern times the situation has reversed: it seems to have become as though only deductive logic counts as a rational capacity, while the art of rhetoric is classified under literature or art and excluded from science, and at the same time excluded from “reason” as well. In this way, science seems to monopolize reason, while anything that touches rhetoric is shut out from reason. But in fact, what science has occupied is precisely only one-sided reason, its hollowed-out form. Only by facing up to the other side and admitting rhetoric can reason become sound. Bringing questions of rhetoric, analogy, and metaphor back into science is not irrationality at all; on the contrary, it is a return to reason.
l Wittgenstein’s “family resemblance” is meant to cancel out the theory of Ideas: if we say a class of things is called “horse,” then surely there must also be an abstract “horse” as a universal, and any particular horse is a horse only because it participates in the idea of horse. But Wittgenstein says language is not some transcendent thing; human language is nothing more than human forms of life, arising from customs and habits. So what about “universals”? There is simply no need for any common image at all. Family resemblance means that, for example, A has the properties AB, B has BC, C has CA; they are pairwise similar, and in linguistic usage they may all be called X, yet among the three of them there is no common feature. That is to say, the fact that certain kinds of things are all called X merely means that the things called X are interconnected in the history and life of this linguistic community, as if a loose net were tying them together; it does not mean that they necessarily share some common, abstract Idea, no one knows where! And when I see people say that the theory of family resemblance is unimportant in the later Wittgenstein, I really think: how can that be? Such a sharp move—how could it be unimportant?
l Fundamentally speaking, social and cultural problems are always institutional, and under institutions every screw and bolt is at the mercy of forces beyond its control. But if one only says this—if one only says, “Ah, everyone is at the mercy of forces beyond their control, there’s nothing to be done, one person’s strength doesn’t affect the big picture…” —then who is going to bear history? Everyone pushes responsibility onto the institution; then who is going to bear history? Whether in the humanities or the sciences and engineering, as long as one is an intellectual, one is the “conscience of society.” However fatefully the times may be arranged, intellectuals cannot simply attribute the ills of the age once and for all to the institution and consider the matter finished; intellectuals must shoulder their own mission—intellectuals are not screws in the great social machine, nor are they the “mouthpiece” of the masses or the government, and still less are they armchair bystanders hurling abuse from across the river. Whether it is the faults of institutions or the maladies of culture, institutions, culture, and the age themselves are not subjects capable of “taking responsibility.” Only human beings can be responsible, can shoulder burdens.
l Editing is really not an easy job; sometimes it is thankless and exhausting. I am not deliberately trying to pick a fight (with *Gongqingyuan*), but when I see the inner logic of my writing—I mean that every sentence I say can be embedded in its corresponding context, with very few leaps—being damaged by certain subtle revisions, I cannot help feeling dissatisfied. This is not to say that not a single word of my writing may be altered; in fact, I know full well that my speaking ability and prose are both ordinary, and I truly long for a good editor to polish my text a bit. Some changes can indeed be done very well, seeming to express my original intention more clearly and smoothly; but some changes are really not worthy of praise. Some revisions make me feel that the result seems more pleasing to the eye than my original wording, but other revisions, though only subtle adjustments, are extremely jarring… To be honest, this experience made me realize that my tolerance for editors is very limited (I am easygoing about other things, but with my own writing, my “making it internally consistent,” I am truly extremely stubborn). I wonder how I will cope when I encounter a real editor in the future…
November 13, 2007
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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