Bits and Pieces, Episode 1

Thinking of things in passing from time to time, it seems not bad to jot down a few stray words and phrases. However, if I were to post every little paragraph as a separate entry, my blog would inevitably become cluttered and fragmentary, so I will wait until each collection of stray words has accumulated more than a thousand characters before posting it. Below is the first entry.

l If one gives up Darwinism and believes that survival and reproduction are not necessarily the most important, or even the only important things. Then, for a nation or a culture, seeking to live and survive is certainly important, but by no means the only thing worth caring about. To abandon one’s convictions and cling to life by using national destruction and ethnic extinction, by invoking a nation’s mortal crisis as an excuse, is not truly admirable. Haven’t great civilizations such as ancient Babylonia, ancient Egypt, and ancient Greece all been “destroyed as states and wiped out as peoples” by others? Yet their splendor is eternal. In particular, the spirit of ancient Greece will be handed down for a hundred generations. “Being destroyed as a state and wiped out as a people” is not what is pitiable; what is more pitiable is a nation that has lost its soul.

l “My system of thought…” — Although some people have criticized the arrogance of my wording (apparently only great philosophers are worthy of being called a “system”), I still gladly use this word: “My thought is a system, only I have not yet written it down in full (that is to say, it is a system of thought rather than a theoretical system).” — It is precisely by holding fast to this conviction that I write; this conviction makes me constantly attentive to the consistency of the views I express in different fields, on different topics, and in different contexts — every position I articulate should be able to find its place in my “system.” As perspectives and contexts change, my statements may well show certain conflicts, but such conflicts are reconcilable; they are a moderate tension that ensures my thought’s vitality, rather than a rupture. Do those who dare not claim that their thought is systematic lack the confidence to “make things add up” under any circumstances? I have this confidence, and I also have this persistence. My thought is always developing in the process of endlessly defending what I have said in the past; therefore, I like to say, “I once said…”

l My pluralism is not indifference toward my own standpoint and convictions; on the contrary, pluralism cares about establishing one’s own standpoint and convictions just as it respects those of others. So pluralism does not eliminate standpoints and convictions; rather, it seeks to emphasize them. Pluralism, in itself, is less a standpoint than an attitude. Nor does pluralism seek to eliminate argument; rather, it emphasizes the equality of the two sides in a debate. Pluralism is also not a contempt for “truth”; on the contrary, it emphasizes reverence for truth — small as we are, we cannot hold truth in our own hands; those who think they possess truth are the ones who truly despise truth.

l The behavior of a country or a nation can in many cases be compared to that of a person: some are introverted, some extroverted, some cold, some fervent. National characters each have their own distinctive features, but just like human character, there is nothing that is absolutely excellent or absolutely vile. Perhaps some nations are especially crazy or paranoid at certain times, but if we are able to sympathize with madmen and lunatics — genius and madman, philosopher and mental patient, artist and paranoiac are often only one step apart — then look at Nazi Germany’s madness and Japan’s paranoia: did they not seem like complete madmen? And look again, before they went mad, were they not precisely countries full of philosophy and romance? Brutality and slaughter of course do not deserve indulgence; however, just as one cannot, merely by seeing Nietzsche only in the aspect of his later years as a mental patient, or merely by seeing Van Gogh only in the rudeness and aggression he displayed during bouts of mental illness, forget their extraordinary greatness.

l Anthropocentrism is not the crux of the problem; the crux lies in modern people misplacing their own position — capitalism, which glorifies greed, reduces human nature to the standard of animality, while science and technology enable people to wield the authority of gods.

l Scientific inquiry is less about “knowing” or “predicting” than about “understanding.” And what is the point of seeking understanding? For no reason.

l Human beings have a knack called “taking things for granted,” or “not being surprised by what one sees as strange.” Imagine a tribe living near the equator that moves northward; the first time they see ice and snow, they would probably be astonished and awed, and they would find the fact that water freezes into ice mysterious and wondrous. Yet once they become accustomed to it, or when it comes to their descendants, and their descendants’ descendants, people probably will no longer find the ice and snow they have grown used to strange, even though they may never have figured out why water freezes into ice. The knowledge of the descendants has not increased beyond that of their ancestors; in fact, they have less experience of the equatorial regions than their ancestors did. But their reverence and astonishment have disappeared… If the “disenchantment” of the world is merely the result of the increase of human knowledge, then so be it; however, in many respects this is not the case — people have never figured out those things that originally made them astonished, and yet, because they have grown used to them, they have forgotten astonishment and awe. … Have we really figured out why water freezes into ice?

August 29, 2007

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Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.