Philosophy’s Critical Spirit and the “Critical” Spirit of Folk Philosophy

14,335 characters2005.12.28

Philosophy is the most meticulous about criticism and questioning. Every great thinker possesses a strong sense of skepticism and a critical spirit. Marx said, “doubt everything,” and Kant also carried out a comprehensive critique of traditional metaphysics in three massive volumes; Mr. Lu Xun, meanwhile, thoroughly exposed the inferiority of the Chinese national character… Many people find this immensely satisfying and gratifying; criticism, exposure, nitpicking—these became a kind of fashion, and “cursing and swearing at every turn” became trendy… Someone says: criticism is always a good thing, isn’t critique the most important philosophical spirit of all? Little do they know that this critique is not that critique; the so-called “critique” of the folk philosophers is entirely a different matter from the critical spirit of philosophers!

That “someone says” in the previous paragraph was actually me too—I once wrote: “Criticism is always a good thing. Rather than receiving a hundred words of praise, even if all one hundred are correct, I cannot gain much from them; but if I receive a hundred criticisms, even if ninety-nine of them are distortions, so long as one hits the crucial point and points out, like a needle piercing flesh, a problem I had not noticed, then I have truly made progress through those hundred evaluations.” —I wrote that when I was in high school, before I had yet seen how formidable the folk philosophers could be. But that sentence has never been wrong, because I was speaking about myself. For the individual, one should be good at listening to others’ criticisms; likewise, of course, a doctrine ought to welcome criticism from others. However, this is still a different matter from the folk philosophers’ “critique”!

Criticism is not wrong, but the folk philosophers have put their critical fire in the wrong target!

The so-called “folk critics” (my own term; below I abbreviate it as folk critique) have two styles. One is a mindset of “picking a fight,” that is, when one sees a doctrine, an institution, or a person, one ignores everything else and picks only at faults. For example, when seeing Einstein, such a great scientist, one takes no interest in anything else and insists on looking for what is wrong—if one can’t find any shortcomings in scholarship, then: ah, there are flaws in life! Problems in private life! Good!—and then one treats it as if one had discovered a treasure and makes a big fuss over it. It is the same with anything: the greater and more radiant a thing is, the more this is the case—one does not look at where it is good; if one can find even a single defect, one becomes quite pleased with oneself. This is a kind of distorted jealousy, as though one feels that because someone is great, and I have managed to find faults in him, I thereby look greater than he does. Such petty-bourgeois habits, once seen through, are not actually very harmful; they merely reveal the impatience and restlessness of our age.

More dangerous is the second style: railing at tradition and railing at philosophers. If such railing, like the behavior of the first type, merely takes the form of nitpicking jealousy, that would still be manageable. But in fact many people are spiritually quite grand. They feel deep sorrow for China’s present predicament and are eager to contribute to rescuing China. Their sense of mission is quite strong, and they realize that in order to emerge from the predicament of the age, Chinese feudal tradition must be criticized. From the May Fourth era to the present, this spirit of “critique” has become the mainstream current in society. But even though both are “criticism,” even though both are in the May Fourth era or today, the true critical spirit and the folk-critique spirit of abusive railing are always utterly different.

A couple of days ago I wrote an article about attitudes toward “Chinese traditional values” and “Western modern values,” in which I discussed the problem of how to treat traditional culture, so I won’t repeat my position here. What I want to say here is this: my rejection of those behaviors that take pleasure in criticizing the ancients—does that mean that when we do Chinese philosophy or Chinese culture, we do not need a critical spirit? Of course not. The inheritance and development of traditional culture certainly require a critical spirit, but criticism must be “internal,” that is, first we must be internal to the thought itself before we can criticize it, and the critical spirit is also internal to our own thinking; it does not necessarily need to be expressed through abusive denunciation. The reason Lu Xun was able to launch such fierce criticism of Chinese tradition was that he was first and foremost a pure Chinese, fully entering into Chinese culture, and only then could he conduct a profound analysis of that culture with a pain as if cutting into his own flesh. The present-day folk critics, by contrast, need not even be said to have “entered in”; they do not even have basic understanding—people who have hardly read a few pages of the Four Books can still, with great fervor, launch fierce attacks on Confucius and Mencius! Their attitude can be called “keyword sensitivity”: I do not need to know his thought, I do not need to read his texts, I just look at the “keywords”—look! Didn’t Confucius talk about “the ruler as ruler, the minister as minister” (君君臣臣)? Then that must be the feudal hierarchy; look! Didn’t Zhu Xi talk about “preserve heavenly principle and destroy human desires” (存天理灭人欲)? Then that must be a denial of human nature!… They also have no patience to look at the context before and after those words in the writings of the sages, and thus assume that the minds of those sages were as simple as their own. In fact, the thoughts of the sages certainly contained many problems, but even if they were wrong, they were wrong in a great way. If one does not combine their ideas with their historical context and does not examine the development of their thought, but merely sees a few words and, with nervous excitement, starts spouting nonsense, is that not a bit too ignorant of the heavens and the earth? Confucius, Mencius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, Cheng, Zhu, Lu, Wang, and the others were all the “essence” of the spirit of their times. Even though thousands of years have passed and human knowledge has advanced, the functions of the human brain surely have not evolved all that much, have they? As the ordinary people of this ordinary age, can we fail to be awed when compared with the greatest wisdom of those great ages? Many people simply do not understand this. They think that because we stand higher than the ancients, the ancients ought therefore to be despised by us. Little do they know that the reason we stand higher is because we “stand on the shoulders of giants”; but if anyone imagines that once we stand on the shoulders of giants we thereby become taller than the giants, that is simply talking in one’s sleep! In fact, we stand higher than the giants, but we ourselves are by no means giants.

So what, after all, is the critical spirit of philosophy? What is the object of philosophical criticism? —Not defaming one’s ancestors, nor trading insults with one’s peers. What philosophy criticizes is the “existing”—that is to say, it criticizes itself. Lu Xun first criticized tradition fiercely only because he was first and foremost a pure Chinese; Kant criticized the metaphysics popular in his day, criticizing the philosophy of his own age; Marx criticized the social institutions of his time… Taking Marx or Kant—arguably the greatest critics in history—as examples, did they curse the traditional thought of the past? For example, it would be easy to pick out a few faults in Plato, Aristotle, or the Bible and find some stale, backward elements there; did they do so? Of course not! They knew such work was utterly meaningless! Marx certainly studied ancient Greek philosophy; wasn’t his doctoral dissertation about Democritus and Epicurus? Did he curse those two ancients as stale, foolish, and good for nothing? No! The tone Marx used in evaluating those two ancient philosophers was nowhere near as sharp as his criticism of the contemporary philosophers of his own day; in fact, Marx cared more about the good and profound things in ancient thought. We can stand on modern ground and say how absurd Aristotle’s physics was, or how Plato’s views placed men above women, and we can make a whole case out of it—but which Western thinker delights in such a thing?

Chinese traditional culture certainly contains much dross, and we need to criticize some of that dross; but that is when the dross still exists within our present culture. What we criticize has always been ourselves, not the ancient people with whom we are trying to settle scores. Some things are worth criticizing precisely because those thoughts still exist within the culture of us moderns. We are reflecting on ourselves—why have we not properly developed the tradition? It is just like when I did something foolish as a child, and then I make the same foolish mistake again now. Then I can only blame the present me for still failing to grow up, for still being so immature, or for not knowing how to learn a lesson; to point an accusing finger at my childhood would be pointless.

2005年12月28日

A Supplement to the Article “The Critical Spirit of Philosophy and the Folk Philosophers’ ‘Critical’ Spirit”

Star-Setting 发表于 2005-12-29 11:18:40

Last night I had a long conversation with ZW that lasted nearly two hours, and we discussed many issues from which I benefited greatly. First, regarding the “critical spirit,” some supplementary explanation is necessary. First, there is the problem of my imprecise wording. The “critique” in this article follows the line of thought of the folk philosophers; I used it in its literal sense, or rather in the sense understood by the public—that is, “critique, denounce, criticize, condemn, rebuke: a critical commentary, usually expressing strong dissatisfaction or condemnation.” But a critique carried out in order to elucidate one’s own philosophy is, in terms of attitude itself, something quite different. ZW mentioned Marx’s critique of Kant and Hegel, and Popper’s critique of Hegel and Marx; these do not contradict what I am saying—first, in these critiques, the critic and the object of criticism were still contemporaries. If one makes a rough division (I myself do not like simply drawing historical boundaries, so this can only be said in a rough sense), Marx and Kant both belonged to the modern period[1], while Popper and Marx both belonged to the modern age (Marx himself can be regarded as a figure who marked an epoch). Therefore their contest was still taking place on the same stage. What I am saying is that criticism and condemnation that cross over historical eras are pointless. For instance, to say that Plato was male-centered and female-suppressing, or that Ptolemy’s geocentrism was absurd and ignorant—this attitude of standing on the shoulders of giants and speaking condescendingly about the past is not to be allowed. Another very important distinction is that I am not saying ancient doctrines cannot be criticized. If criticizing and analyzing the thought of a figure whose views are very close to one’s own, or on the contrary quite opposite, can better express one’s own thought, then such criticism is not only meaningful but also necessary. For example, Daoists criticizing Confucians would naturally need to work out contradictions from within Confucius and Mencius, from within Confucian thought, from its sources and core; this is a highly effective way of unfolding one’s own thought. However, what must be noted is: which kind of thing is truly worth savoring? Certainly not the fact that I criticized someone’s doctrine and found so many faults, thereby making my own achievement seem brilliant, because if I have not thereby brought forth my own thought, then my criticism of others is utterly not worth mentioning, whether in the case of Marx or Popper. Moreover, I maintain that criticism (more precisely, criticism) must be a form of “self-criticism.” This does not mean, in the narrow sense, saying that one is wrong until one falls into self-contradiction; rather, it means a kind of “self-reflection.” What I mean by a critique of the “present age” is that first of all the thinker himself is already a member of that age, even an embodiment of the essence of that age, and only then does he unfold questions and criticism directed at his own age. What flashes forth in such criticism is a strong awareness of reflection, not the posture of standing as a bystander and talking without pain. Of course, many folk philosophers may also claim that they are engaged in self-reflection. If, when they ask themselves sincerely, they can still say that they are indeed deeply reflecting on themselves (self-reflection requires one to seek ways to correct oneself, not only to identify the crux of the problem but also to prescribe a remedy), then at least in this respect their spirit is not bad; one might even say that many scholars shut away in their studies nowadays are precisely lacking this kind of deep and intense awareness of the present age. I have never said that folk philosophers are entirely without merit. Scholars who have stayed too long in their studies often forget the true conditions of this mundane world and lack a sense of urgency about the times and a sense of historical mission. Once we have stayed too long in the ivory tower, consorted too long with academic peers, and browsed too long through high-end academic bookstores such as Boya Hall and Wan Sheng, it becomes very easy to forget what the world “outside” is like! One might as well go back and browse an ordinary Xinhua bookstore, and see what kinds of things are popular and best-selling now; one might as well go back and debate with folk philosophers and ordinary people—do not flaunt profound philosophical knowledge or keep invoking Kant and Hegel, but discuss questions like outlook on life and values in the language of everyday life. We will discover that people who have spent too long in academia truly find it hard to go back and communicate with those fashionable notions. Scholars often hold folk philosophers and vulgar culture in contempt and disdain, but those things are precisely the reality of our age! Nihilism, relativism, arrogance, self-righteousness, individualism, worship of money… these are all realities we need to face head-on in our age, realities we philosophers need to change! So, to do philosophy requires the courage to face these things, rather than to intoxicate oneself and amuse oneself in the ivory tower. We may disdain folk philosophers and popular vulgarity, but we cannot forever avoid talking with them. This is one thing I have only recently come to realize—since doing philosophy means facing the predicament of the age, then when the predicament of the age stands before us and wants to talk with us, why should we evade it? What must be faced will be faced sooner or later. Therefore, the way I write these essays is completely different from the way I write papers. ZW says my expression is unclear; in fact the problem is not that it is unclear, but that it is imprecise—I am entirely using the language of daily life to write these things, and many of the terms are used in their everyday meanings, so naturally this can lead to problems of ambiguous definition. What I can express with the simple language of “different” will not be expressed with “heterogeneous,” because what I am addressing is the thinking habits of ordinary people outside the study. Moreover, the thinking habits of ordinary people, the thinking habits of amateur scientists and folk philosophers, and the thinking habits of scholars are all products of the background of this age. What is present among ordinary people—for example scientism, nihilism, relativism, individualism, and so on—also profoundly influences the thinking habits of scholars. To face the masses is also to face scholarship; of course, the tone and manner of speaking in academic circles are completely different from these essays of mine. 2005年12月29日

[1] In fact, according to some impressions I got from skimming the Selected Works of Marx and Engels, at least when Engels once spoke of Kant, his tone was rather respectful. Marx and Engels’ critique of Hegel and others’ philosophies was precisely because those philosophies reflected the mainstream of that age; what they were criticizing was still their own age. We can see that when Hegelian philosophy fell from the mainstream to become an object of attack and abuse, Marx once again firmly stepped forward to affirm Hegel’s value—that is the true embodiment of the critical spirit.