Yesterday I was once again thinking about some things concerning doing philosophy and being a philosopher. The trigger was a segment of discussion on a QQ group chat; I’ll excerpt it here:
Gǔ Chǔ 22:55:08
In order to study the spirit of the Party’s Seventeenth National Congress, to encourage the broad student masses to pay attention to national affairs and the livelihood of the people, and to strengthen students’ ideological and political education, the Department of Philosophy will carry out a series of study activities under the theme “Study the Spirit of the Seventeenth National Congress, Pay Attention to National Affairs and the Livelihood of the People.” The specific contents of the first lecture are as follows:
………………
Gǔ Chǔ 22:56:09
It says that students with no class must all attend; students with class can get an excused absence slip……
……omitting a great deal of discussion……
Gǔ Chǔ 23:44:15
Everyone with no class should go
Míngzi 23:44:42
What do you mean, “everyone with no class should go”?!
Míngzi 23:44:50
So if you have class, you can skip it?
Gǔ Chǔ 23:45:03
Yes, of course
Mist|Míyáng|Wú 23:45:05
If someone is willing to sit my quantum mechanics class and take the exam for me, I’d be very happy
Gǔ Chǔ 23:45:13
If you have class and want to go, you can get an excused absence slip
Gǔ Chǔ 23:45:26
But if you don’t want to skip class, then of course you should respect your studies
Míngzi 23:45:29
Finally it’s clear
Xuělí 23:45:50
Have you lost your mind!
Xuělí 23:45:55
…………
Gǔ Chǔ 23:46:32
I was already very clear from the beginning, classmates
Xuělí 23:46:37
…………
Xuělí 23:46:45
I’m not scrolling back through the chat log
Míngzi 23:46:51
Shit!
Míngzi 23:47:04
You say it so clearly that even pears can climb trees!
Xuělí 23:47:16
Pears are already on trees……
Gǔ Chǔ 23:47:26
It says students with no class must all attend; students with class can get an excused absence slip……
Gǔ Chǔ 23:47:34
“Students with no class must all attend; students with class can get an excused absence slip……”
Gǔ Chǔ 23:47:45
The logic is very clear, isn’t it
Gǔ Chǔ 23:47:53
Students with no class must all attend
Gǔ Chǔ 23:48:03
Students with class can
Xuělí 23:48:23
It seems someone interrupted and said something like “students with class can get an excused absence slip and skip class……”
Gǔ Chǔ 23:48:35
Students with class getting an excused absence slip and skipping class is fine
Gǔ Chǔ 23:48:46
I never said students with class must get an excused absence slip and skip class
Míngzi 23:48:48
All right, all right, enough already, can we stop?
Míngzi 23:49:04
I’m going back to dashing off my 6W
Gǔ Chǔ 23:49:24
All the words I write down can absolutely stand on their own, and I’ve always been extremely confident about that~
Míngzi 23:50:13
I can see that
Míngzi 23:50:27
Especially the second half of the sentence
Mist|Míyáng|Wú 23:54:03
Same here
Gǔ Chǔ 23:54:11
??
Mist|Míyáng|Wú 23:55:08
All the words I write down can absolutely stand on their own, and I’ve always been extremely confident about that~
Gǔ Chǔ 23:55:26
[handshake]
Xuělí 23:55:56
Sigh, sigh. You bunch of philosophy-of-science logic people
Gǔ Chǔ 23:56:25
No, no, being able to make one’s words stand on their own is a philosopher’s basic requirement~
Tángyù Xiǎobǎo 23:56:46
。。。
Mist|Míyáng|Wú 23:57:25
[handshake]
Xuělí 23:58:16
I’m never drinking with you two again
Xuělí 23:58:25
Drinking with such confident people, I’m afraid
Míngzi 23:58:36
I’m never watching you three drink together again
Gǔ Chǔ 23:58:36
Mm, let’s eat then
Míngzi 23:58:48
Drinking with people who call themselves philosophers, I’m afraid
Gǔ Chǔ 23:58:48
Let’s go drink tea
Gǔ Chǔ 23:59:00
Who’s calling themselves a philosopher?
Tángyù Xiǎobǎo 23:59:47
Affectatious.
Xuělí 23:59:59
No tea, unless it’s top-grade pu’er. And we don’t have the money. Eating is something I can consider
About my way of expression, I still want to say a few more words. In daily conversation I often speak incoherently or whatever, but I attach tremendous importance to all my statements, especially written ones. Moreover, this also involves some of the most basic basic skills of a philosopher, such as “making one’s words stand on their own,” “expressing oneself clearly,” and so on.
This basic requirement of “making one’s words stand on their own” can also be called “systematicity” or the like: that is, a philosopher’s various statements are coherent and consistent, and can verify and support one another. This also makes possible secondary research on philosophers by scholars of philosophy. Although such systematicity is not always “rigid,” as the topic changes, the context changes, and the stage of a philosopher’s scholarly career changes, philosophical texts inevitably become full of “tension.” This, too, is what makes secondary research by philosophy workers meaningful. The meaning of texts has never been fixed; the construction of meaning needs to be continually updated by the philosopher’s own subsequent work as well as by the work of researchers and readers. Therefore, my present confidence in “making my words stand on their own” does not mean that I believe my position is mature. My “system of thought” still needs a long period of growth before it can bear fruit, and only then will the system truly have realized itself and finally become a “philosophical system.”
“Expressing oneself clearly” is not only a basic skill for philosophers, but for all theoretical workers. For the “product” of philosophical activity is mainly those texts; besides thinking, philosophical activity is about expressing what one thinks. And on the other hand, thinking itself is also some kind of process of “clear expression,” that is, through conceptualization and organization, sorting out the threads in one’s originally chaotic thoughts and feelings.
Just as with “making one’s words stand on their own,” there is no formal standard for what counts as “clear expression.” Some people think formal language is the clearest, but formalization often comes at the expense of content; in the process of simplification much information will be lost, and so “clarity” may perhaps have been achieved, but “expression” has not. In fact, under different circumstances there may be different tastes concerning what counts as clear expression. In this way, “clear expression” is often a paradox. For instance, in some matters perhaps a single brief sentence is already clear enough (such as my notice in the QQ group), but readers may be dissatisfied and say that you haven’t made yourself clear. Of course I think this is plainly the readers’ misunderstanding, but after all readers participate in the process of constructing textual meaning, so philosophical writing sometimes cannot avoid considering how to make things easier for readers to understand. But if one repeatedly re-examines and reinterprets one’s own text, that then seems exceedingly wordy, and readers become dissatisfied again…… In short, readers are always hard to please, which is no wonder: the greatest philosophers are often monologists, brief when they want to be brief and verbose when they want to be verbose,
Another important basic skill for philosophers is one that Wu Lao once mentioned—apparently in the last section of a journalist interview in Let Science Return to the Humanities—which is “to connect things that seem unrelated.” I very much agree.
Let me then chat about something else:
I don’t mind if others “fear” me. In fact, any kind of life ideal may be frightening to people; not to mention ideals like “I want to be a gang boss,” even ideals such as wanting to be a soldier, a police officer, a leader, a hero, a poet, a writer of literature, a scientist, and so on may all make people feel “afraid.” In fact, in many cases the key is not what you want to be, but that you have grand ideals. Those who have no ideals, or whose ideal is ordinariness (which is not a bad thing), are the ones who will not be frightening.
On the other hand, whether we like it or not, our identity as the “talented men and talented women” of Peking University’s Department of Philosophy will also make many people feel “afraid” of us.
However, there is a question here worth pondering deeply: why is it that even among us who study philosophy, the word “philosopher” seems to have become something taboo, so that once, when talking about the characteristics of philosophers, one links them back to oneself, one is met with fear, disdain, or ridicule? What, exactly, does “philosopher” mean in relation to philosophical work?
Isn’t a “philosopher” just like a “scientist,” a general designation for a kind of profession, or more properly speaking, a way of life? Regardless of how much one has achieved or how deep one’s accomplishment is, one may be called a “scientist”; as for those scientists with the highest achievements, they are often given the special laurels of “great scientist,” “distinguished scientist,” and so on, while the word scientist itself does not carry such an unreachable feeling.
But the word “philosopher” sits high above us. When ordinary people mention “I want to be a philosopher,” it is often seen as an extremely serious act of overstepping; let alone anyone daring to call themselves a philosopher.
So does that mean that philosopher specifically refers to those most outstanding philosophical workers? If so, why is it that ordinary philosophical workers also avoid saying “philosopher”? Obviously, when we talk about the basic characteristics of the most outstanding scientists, we naturally think that these characteristics are also worth, or ought, to be learned by ordinary scientific workers. Other professions are similar. For example, when we say that fairness and strictness are the “basic” qualities of a “good” judge, we are also saying that any judge ought to strive to achieve fairness and strictness, and by no means could we say: “How dare you say you are the greatest judge? Since you can’t become the greatest, how can you use the basic requirements of the best judges to compare yourself? You are simply not worthy of uttering the words fairness and strictness!” But philosophy is precisely different. Those things that are the most basic skills of a philosopher (such as systematicity) are, for me, things that can’t even be mentioned, things that will provoke laughter as soon as they are mentioned—you are worthy of that?
It could even be said that one of the requirements for becoming a good philosophical worker is that you should not imitate or pursue the behavior of philosophers.
Thus it can be seen that a philosopher is not a philosophical worker, nor is a philosopher one of the most accomplished philosophical workers; rather, philosophers and philosophical workers are fundamentally two different types of people, different undertakings.
I take the philosopher as my ideal. Saying this will probably once again draw mockery or disdain from some people, and perhaps out of goodwill they will also want to advise me to return to the right path. This can only show that philosophy’s present situation in society is so worrying—not only are great philosophers no longer appearing, but even taking philosophers as one’s ideal is no longer permitted—so then those who take philosophers as their own ideal are probably the so-called “folk philosophers”——in a certain sense, I still maintain that compared with many academic philosophical workers, folk philosophers are closer to philosophers. Of course, I am not saying that folk philosophers have a better future than philosophical workers; by analogy, lunatics are also very close to artists.
In the chat, I obviously was not “calling myself a philosopher,” because if philosophers are understood in the ordinary sense as those most outstanding philosophers, then of course I would not dare compare myself to them. After being steeped in a philosophy department for so many years, if I still had not developed even this bit of “reverence,” then I probably would have studied in vain. But in another sense I am entirely willing to call myself a “philosopher.” This is in the sense of regarding “philosopher” as a unique “way of life” or attitude toward life.
I prefer to regard the category of “so-and-so -ist” more as a depiction of a way of life rather than as a mark of honor for achievement. Take “naturalist,” for example: someone who spends years devoting themselves to nature, appreciating and observing it, may never discover a single new species in their entire life, but they are certainly worthy of the title “naturalist”; at the same time, a lumberjack might accidentally discover a new species that shocks the world and go down in history, yet in no way would he be worthy of the title “naturalist.”
Although philosophers often also need a certain degree of arrogant temperament, insofar as I “call myself a philosopher” (and moreover I have never done so in any public setting), this is a very natural expression of self-identification, and it is nowhere near arrogance or conceit. If anyone still feels uncomfortable, then I am entirely helpless.
October 28, 2007
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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