The images were too hard to match! I first rushed out a text draft: ten panels in all, each centered on a single “question.” Nearly five hundred Chinese characters, including three excerpts of philosophers’ own words. Doing academic work in Shanghai is really inconvenient. All my books are at school, and after several days of buying and borrowing books I didn’t gain much. With resources this scarce, this is about as far as I can get.
Draft Text for Philosophy Popularization Display Panels
Xingding published on 2006-08-29 03:52:57
1. What is philosophy?
“What is philosophy?” This is precisely the most fascinating, and most bewildering, question in philosophy. Like philosophy’s many other questions, this one also has no definite and authoritative answer. Is philosophy universal law? Reflection on knowledge? A state of life? Linguistic analysis? Cultural critique? Practical theory? … On this question, every philosopher will offer a unique set of answers; indeed, it is the first question that will determine the distinctiveness of their philosophical theory.
Having rich and varied opinions on a question, without any unified and dogmatic answer, is precisely where philosophy’s charm lies. It shows that philosophy is the most open and the freest of disciplines, a living wisdom and insight, not rigid knowledge and dogma.
However philosophy is understood, philosophers’ way of working is more or less the same: posing questions, thinking and discussing, forming views and positions, expressing those views clearly in writing, responding to possible objections, and thinking through deeper questions.
For many concepts that we habitually take for granted in daily life—such as knowledge, the self, life, time, the good, and so on—we seldom reflect. Scientists care about how to increase knowledge, but philosophers also ask: “What, in fact, is knowledge?” People usually only care about how to arrange their lives, whereas philosophers ask what life is and why we live…
Philosophers are not inherently stubborn or perverse; they are more like children in temperament, filled with curiosity about everything and liking to ask about this and that. Inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge are precisely human nature, and the driving force behind all branches of human knowledge.
Plato: Wonder is the philosopher’s feeling; philosophy begins in wonder.
Democritus: One should strive to think more, not know more,
Voltaire: One should judge a person by the questions he asks, not by his answers.
2. What is knowledge?
It is obvious that we possess quite a bit of “knowledge,” for example, I “know” Newton’s law of inertia, the formula for the area of a triangle, that water is H2O, that oxygen’s atomic number is 8, that the solar system has nine planets… These are all “knowledge.”
Wait a moment: we also know that Newtonian mechanics was improved by Einstein; that triangles in Euclidean geometry and those in non-Euclidean geometry differ greatly in their properties; that astronomers recently voted to declare Pluto no longer a planet… Much of what we once knew may be revised or even rejected.
Even if we set aside the limitations of the tools through which we acquire experience—our senses—we will still find that what we obtain from experience can only be mutually isolated “events,” such as “it rained” and “the road is wet.” Yet we are able to assert: “Because it rained, the road is wet.” Where, then, does this added causal relation come from?
Which item of knowledge derived from human experience can be proven to be “absolutely correct”? If knowledge is only relative, then where does its reliability come from? By what standard, or by what taste, do people ultimately accept knowledge? And how can knowledge display such enormous power?
At the same time, we discover that knowledge always enters my mind through “my” senses or my thinking; such “knowledge” may be “I saw,” “I thought,” “I heard,” and so on. But what, exactly, is “I”?
Socrates: I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.
Aristotle: The desire for knowledge is human nature.
Kant: The aim of thinking is not objective knowledge. Rather, it is a kind of confidence within the domain of objective knowledge.
3. What is the self?
The following view seems pretty good: human beings are also made of material stuff, and their mental states are merely the physiological states of their brains.
But if we stop there, that is still far from enough. It still has not made clear: how, exactly, does “self-consciousness” arise?
Brain science can show us this: when one feels hot, a certain region of the brain responds in this way; when one feels cold, it responds in that way, thereby proving that consciousness is a product of the brain. Is that enough to settle the matter? What about a thermostat? When it is “hot” it responds by cooling, and when it is “cold” it responds by heating; is that also “consciousness”?
Besides observing the other party’s “responses” under various stimuli, is there any other way to determine whether the other party has “consciousness” or a “self”? Why can I be sure that my brother, too, has self-consciousness just as I do, while my home air conditioner does not? And how could I prove to others that I am not a complicated “thermostat” but rather a “self”?
Is self-consciousness unique to human beings? From me, humankind, animals, plants, computers, all the way to thermostats, where exactly are the boundaries of “self,” “consciousness,” and “life”? What is life? What is a human being?
Descartes: I think, therefore I am… But if so, what am I? A thinking thing.
Marx: Human beings affirm themselves not only through thought but through all their senses in the world of objects.
Sartre: Man first exists, encounters himself, emerges in the world—and then determines the self—at the start, he is nothingness.
4. What is humanity?
Who are you? — If this question came from an extraterrestrial visitor, how would you introduce yourself? “My name is Zhang San, I am Chinese, I graduated from high school…” Such an answer probably would not satisfy the other party. In fact, the first thing that needs introducing is: I am a “human being” — this special kind of creature.
So, what exactly is special about “human beings”? Are human beings the masters of the earth, the representatives of terrestrial life? In terms of destructive power toward the earth’s environment, humankind is indeed enormous, but its influence is far less than that of microorganisms, which are the true masters of the planet’s entire ecology. To say that human beings are the most intelligent, the most emotional, the most moral, and so on, all makes considerable sense, but which of these is the decisive characteristic?
Equating humans with animals and refusing to distinguish between them is probably evading the issue. It is reasonable to believe that “human beings possess a unique and valuable quality that other animals do not.” So, what is the most valuable, the most worth cherishing, and the most worth mentioning before extraterrestrials, about being human?
One point may be important: besides survival and reproduction, human beings may have certain pursuits that transcend life itself; human beings do not live merely in order to live.
Aristotle: In essence, human beings are a social animal.
Pascal: Man’s greatness is man’s misfortune; the tree does not know its own misfortune.
Marx: Animals are directly one with their life activity. They do not distinguish themselves from their life activity. They are their life activity. But human beings make their life activity itself the object of their will and consciousness.
5. What is life?
What is life? This concept seems self-evident—we eat, work, entertain ourselves, sleep… That is life. Yet the problem troubling us is: what is the meaning of life?
What is a clock? To answer this question, one might describe the clock’s working principle and structural features, and finally point to several examples: these are clocks! Yet such an answer still leaves something unsatisfactory. “A clock is for telling time!” — Only after adding this sentence does the entire explanation finally seem complete. But what about life? What is life “for”?
The meaning of life is the hardest question to answer, and also the most necessary one to answer. Almost everyone, at some stage of life, will encounter this question intensely. Probing it deeply is undoubtedly tormenting, and most people ultimately choose to avoid and forget it amid busyness.
But philosophers cannot avoid it. The answer to this “ultimate question” cannot always be accomplished through literal reasoning and argumentation; nevertheless, it is precisely reason that makes answering possible, and makes the questioning of this issue inevitable.
Pythagoras: Life is like the Olympic Games: those who gather here usually have three aims—some flex their muscles to win the laurel crown, some do business to make a profit, but there are also some who are simply spectators, watching everything coolly and quietly.
Nietzsche: Live life as a work of art.
Hölderlin: Full of merit and toil, yet poetically man dwells on this earth.
6. What is hope?
“What can one ultimately hope for in life” is another way of expressing “What is the meaning and purpose of life?” Traditionally, religion often provided the answer to this question; you may reject religion, but the questioning itself is something human beings cannot avoid.
Lacking a proper place to invest hope can easily cast a person’s life into confusion. When a person’s actions are always directionless, he will either drift along in a daze or be driven by desire.
For the reward of the afterlife, the progress of society, the happiness of future generations, and so on; or simply in order to seek truth, goodness, and beauty, pursue love, pursue happiness, and so on—these can all become vessels for meaning. The former category leans toward the rational, while the latter is comparatively more emotional.
Everyone can and needs to have something to hope for; this will make his life certain and full. But it is not necessary to have a single unique authoritative answer and force everyone to accept it. People’s beliefs and ideals should be free.
Augustine: Anything worthy of being called an ideal must have the essence of truth, goodness, and beauty. Do not try to understand what you can believe; believe what you can understand.
Martin Luther: Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would shatter, today I would still plant my apple tree.
Schopenhauer: Money represents humanity’s abstract pleasure; therefore, those who can no longer have concrete pleasures often put all their mind on pursuing money.
7. What is freedom?
Revolutionaries shouted, “Give me liberty or give me death!” The word freedom always makes people’s blood boil; it seems to be one of the few things worth fighting for, even to the point of sacrificing one’s life. But what, exactly, is freedom?
People usually understand freedom as being unrestrained in word and deed. However, being free from “any” restraint is obviously impossible, so people interpret freedom as being free from “unreasonable” or “excessive” restraint. But what kind of restraint counts as unreasonable? Is leaving a person in the desert freedom? Can you make a decision that depends entirely and absolutely on yourself?
From the standpoint of physics, if everything is deterministic, then my behavior was already determined before I was born—where does freedom come from? If everything is non-deterministic, influenced by probability, then my choices too are pulled by probability; how can there be freedom in the roll of dice?
And yet, if there is no freedom, there can be no choice; if all human behavior is completely determined by the outside world, where would morality and the rule of law come from?
Rousseau: Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are, in fact, more enslaved than anyone else.
Pythagoras: One who cannot restrain himself cannot be called a free man.
Hayek: In this world, there is always a difference between treating people equally and trying to make them equal. The former is a precondition of a free society, whereas the latter, as Tocqueville described it, means “a new form of servitude.”
8. What is the good?
What is the good? What is morality? People often connect the good with “selflessness,” believing morality to be altruism. But is there really such a thing as pure altruism? Is so-called selfless action not also a way of obtaining spiritual satisfaction for oneself? What essential difference is there between that satisfaction and the satisfaction brought by pursuing money?
Perhaps it is indeed possible, even inevitable, to do good selfishly, but one still has to face the question of what counts as good. Is the good determined solely by the ultimate consequences of an action? Even if that were so, how is the effect of an action to be measured?
Perhaps the good has no single universal standard, and the diversity of history and culture supports this. But what cannot be denied is this: the idea of the good truly exists for a society and for an individual. As Mencius probably said: the heart of compassion, the heart of shame and dislike, the heart of deference and compliance, and the heart of right and wrong—that is, the heart that tends toward good and avoids evil—is possessed by everyone. Where does the good come from? How should we understand and evaluate morality?
Kierkegaard: Most people treat themselves subjectively and others objectively. The truly correct attitude, however, is to treat oneself objectively and all others subjectively.
Descartes: Conscience is the thing most equally distributed in the world; even the most fastidious person in the world would not complain that he has too little conscience.
Kant: Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.
9. What is beauty?
In philosophy, “beauty” is one of the most “hard to say clearly” concepts; yet at the same time it is also one of the most self-evident. When appreciating a work of art, a natural landscape, or a pretty girl, the word “beautiful” always seems to surface in people’s minds.
No one can deny the relativity of “beauty,” but few can deny that there is something universal in “beauty.” What factors, exactly, influence people’s aesthetic sensibilities? And where should we seek beauty?
Artistic activity, older than philosophy, expresses humanity’s pursuit of beauty, while people’s pursuit of truth and goodness will ultimately unite with beauty: scientists believe that nature is harmonious and perfect, and therefore worth exploring; thinkers always connect the highest good with perfection; beauty and the good, ugliness and evil, always appear in pairs.
The pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty ultimately leads to the same destination by different paths. In the final analysis, philosophy has always been a whole; the close connection between philosophy and science, and between philosophy and art, will never be severed.
Hume: If a person has never had the opportunity to compare different kinds of beauty, then he has no right at all to evaluate any object presented before him.
Poincaré: If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing,
Emerson: We travel the world searching for beauty, but if beauty does not exist within us, it cannot be found.
10. What use is philosophy?
This question is often quite lethal—“Mm, it sounds nice, but what use is it?”
It is regrettable that philosophy really does not seem to be of much “use.” However, that depends on how you evaluate “usefulness.” Philosophy will ask in return: “What is usefulness?” For example, what is the significance of increasing wealth and productive power?
If a useful discipline is required to bring predictable, tangible products or profits, then obviously philosophy does not meet the requirement. A small consolation is that mathematics cannot do this either.
On the one hand, like basic science and artistic creation, philosophical activity arises from human nature’s pursuit of truth, goodness, and beauty, and is one of the constitutive elements of human culture. At the same time, by reflecting on those concepts we take for granted, and on the phenomena in reality that we take for granted, philosophy promotes people’s observation, thought, and insight. What philosophy “produces” is thought and inspiration, and through its direct and indirect influence on the thinking of scientists, thinkers, politicians, and everyone else, philosophy becomes one of the most important forces shaping social change.
Kant: Philosophy is, in fact, a kind of knowledge of human practice.
Marx: Philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.
Russell: The value of philosophy is, in fact, to point out the various possibilities of which people are not suspicious.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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