Theoretical Weekly, Page 12, November 27, 2006, Guangming Daily
http://www.gmw.cn/01gmrb/2006-11/27/content_513411.htm
http://www.gmw.cn/01gmrb/2006-11/27/4453_b.htm
In our country, work on the popularization of philosophy once received a high degree of attention and produced enormous influence, though of course it also had certain problems and shortcomings. Since the 1990s, owing to changes in philosophy’s status, work on popularizing philosophy has no longer been taken seriously, and an academicized orientation has become the sole pursuit, bringing with it even more problems. This article offers a few of my personal views, in the hope of prompting people to rethink this issue.
Both philosophy and science need popularization; that is to say, they need to enable people outside the circle to gain some degree of understanding of what they are doing, in some way or another. Most people would agree on this point. The question is only: who should popularize, to whom should it be popularized, by what means should it be popularized, and how should the effects of popularization be defined, and so on.
Under contemporary conditions, scholarship is becoming increasingly specialized and increasingly profound, and thus increasingly remote from the grasp of ordinary people. In such circumstances, popularization instead appears even more important. But the current state of academic popularization is worrying. From the standpoint of science popularization, we can say that this is the most “popularized” age of science and technology. The influence of science and technology has penetrated every corner of society; even those with the least cultural refinement know that science is a “good thing.” But this does not mean that the level of science popularization has thereby risen, because people mostly look at science from the perspective of effects or utility, while their understanding of the scientific spirit and scientific method remains quite inadequate.
Philosophy popularization has similar problems. China is not indifferent to the popularization of philosophy; on the contrary, China may well be one of the countries in the world most actively promoting philosophy popularization. In particular, the “popularization of philosophy” in the 1960s and 1970s once produced enormous social influence and played a considerable role in improving the theoretical thinking capacity of the entire nation. Of course, there were also certain shortcomings in the philosophy popularization work of the past, chiefly a failure to grasp the proper measure of vulgarization, so that explanations of certain philosophical truths became vulgar and superficial, leading people to misunderstand philosophy popularization. Thus, the first task of philosophy popularization today is to dispel the misunderstandings caused by the “popularization” of that era. But because of the flaws in past work, it would be wrong to lurch to the opposite extreme and neglect, or even slight, philosophy popularization.
In recent years, some writers, journalists, and philosophy enthusiasts have begun to join the ranks of philosophy popularization and have gradually become the backbone of such work. However, philosophy popularization has consistently been cold-shouldered in mainstream philosophical circles in a way it should not have been. In their view, philosophy popularization seems at most to be merely a philosopher’s spare-time activity; doing popularization not only does not count as doing scholarship, but may even be criticized as neglecting one’s proper business.
In my view, academic popularization is not merely a need of outsiders; it is itself also a need of insiders, part of scholarship itself. Someone might say: why do popularization at all? I do scholarship; anyway, as long as I produce results, gain recognition from insiders, and make some contribution to society, that is enough. What does it matter whether others understand it or not? Indeed, for a specialist, popularization is not his obligation. But for the academic field as a whole, popularization is indispensable.
First, from the standpoint of scholarship itself, popularization is indeed part of scholarship. On the one hand, popularization is an important academic ability; to do academic popularization well in a real sense, it is impossible without a comprehensive and profound grasp and understanding of the relevant knowledge. We can see that many scholars are content merely to make statements in professional language—for example, scientists use the language of mathematics, while philosophers prefer obscure writing. Indeed, many profound contents are difficult to express fully and clearly in plain language. However, any mature theory can, or at least should be able to, be introduced in plain language, if only in summary form. Those professional symbols and terms are not some mysterious spells; they too are languages created by us. Perhaps to outsiders these professional languages are even harder to understand than foreign languages, but that does not mean they have no way of learning the meanings of those languages through “translation.” Translation is sometimes inevitably distorted, but that does not prevent effective communication between the two sides; on the contrary, through such communication the “distortion” in the translation process can be corrected. Academic popularization is similar. It should be acknowledged that, whether for scholars or for the public, everyday language is always our mother tongue. Explaining technical terms in everyday language will of course inevitably involve distortion, but only when one clarifies the relation between profound philosophical speculation and ordinary life can one be said to have truly understood its meaning.
On the other hand, what often goes unnoticed is that what needs popularization is not only the mass public outside the circle, but also colleagues within it. From a certain perspective, popularization within the circle is even more important and more urgent than popularization toward the outside. The trend toward specialization in contemporary scholarship is deepening day by day, and the gulf between different disciplinary fields is growing ever wider. For example, a physicist’s knowledge of biology may not be much greater than that of an ordinary university student. Yet the development of science is also revealing to us that science has always been a whole, and dialogue and interpenetration across multiple disciplines and fields are of great significance; exchanges among fields often open up new and broad horizons. So how can interaction among disciplines be promoted? The first thing is still popularization. Popularization within the circle is in fact exactly analogous to popularization aimed at the public—stimulating the other’s interest, helping him understand the more complete situation, communicating with him, and mutually inspiring one another… For philosophy, this point is especially important. Marxist philosophy, Chinese philosophy, Western philosophy, philosophy of science, logic, ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of religion, and so on—these current secondary branches of philosophy are mainly differences of perspective and resources; yet in the fact that their existence and development are all based on philosophy’s nature as the “love of wisdom,” they have always been interconnected. The eternal major problems facing humanity, or the special predicaments of the present age, are also the same for them. They need exchange, and they must exchange. Yet the situation now is that perhaps merely being separated by one teaching-and-research office is enough for people to grow old without ever having anything to do with one another, and within the academic circle of philosophy—which is not all that large to begin with—one small circle after another has been carved out. Such a situation is obviously bad.
The reasons for popularization have been mentioned above, and these reasons are in fact all considered from the standpoint of scholarship itself. Popularization is not only for the public, not only to help outsiders; in fact, it is first and foremost for the development of scholarship itself. While developing itself, to provide knowledge to the public and inspire one another with the public—what is there not to like about that? (Author’s affiliation: Department of Philosophy, Peking University)
Latest Comments
- Gu
2006-11-27 22:23:20
This is the first article I have published in the print media.
As everyone can see, this article is really quite ordinary; I myself feel that at present I still cannot write any truly “presentable” article, although I know that many articles printed in newspapers and magazines are just as unremarkable.
This article came out of email chatter while helping Lao Yang make a philosophy popularization display board. Lao Yang was extraordinarily considerate; there is really nothing to complain about. He said my writing had the prospects of being published, so he guided me through many revisions and finally recommended it to an editor friend of his (if not for Lao Yang’s recommendation, I’m afraid my article would never have been taken seriously).
Originally I did not want to publish an article during my undergraduate years, because I knew that my current thinking and foundation were far too immature. But at the time I mainly hoped that if it were published I could show it to my grandfather. Who would have thought that grandfather would leave so soon, and who would have thought that from submission to publication it would take so long… - unic
2006-11-29 00:22:02
How delightful, heh heh….
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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