Fragments, Episode 3

3,240 characters2007.11.03

l He—I—you; “I” — freedom; “you” — love; “he” — the real. (Don’t ask me; I don’t know just what I want to say.)

l When you complain that others have not understood you, or even suffer because no one understands you, the first thing you should ask yourself is two questions: first, do you understand others (has anyone received your understanding, just as you hope others will for you); second, do you yourself understand yourself? If you never try to understand others, how can you deserve to expect understanding from others? And if even you cannot understand yourself (for example, if your thoughts are always hazy, ambiguous, changeable, so elusive that even you cannot quite grasp them), then how could others possibly understand you? To seek understanding and recognition, one should not first demand that others understand or recognize oneself. If someone you deeply detest says that he recognizes you, would you feel happy? In short, what you need is to try to understand others and recognize others. Of course, the first, or the most fundamental, or perhaps at once both, thing is that you must first try to understand yourself and recognize yourself.

l I once said that Kant’s mantle had no true heir—because Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and the Neo-Kantians all tried, in different ways, to eliminate the “thing-in-itself.” But now it seems perhaps there is one: Schopenhauer is a worthy heir, and his development of and rebellion against Kant’s philosophy is indeed more qualified to be called a continuation of Kant. Although I do not like his specific doctrines… Schopenhauer criticized Kant’s way of introducing the “thing-in-itself” as incorrect, because since the thing-in-itself lies beyond the limits of cognition and beyond causality, one cannot introduce the thing-in-itself on the grounds that “phenomena always need a cause.” Yet Kant can deal with this criticism; I mentioned this in an earlier article as well. What Kant provides is not a proof of the thing-in-itself. The thing-in-itself cannot be proved, whether by empirical means or by transcendental means. We cannot obtain any knowledge of the thing-in-itself, including whether it “exists” or not. Eliminating the thing-in-itself would not affect any existing knowledge at all (though the expansion of knowledge would lose its limits). Kant merely emphasizes that the thing-in-itself is something humanity (by nature) requires.

l Perhaps the replacement of Japan’s original methods of timekeeping by Western methods of timekeeping can be attributed to cultural conquest, that is, Westernization; but this case has been selectively chosen. We can equally find many contrary examples, such as the replacement of Western timekeeping methods by Arabic numerals, yet this does not seem to have been caused by Indian culture or Arab culture conquering Western culture.

l At today’s discussion session organized in Gongqingyuan, Duck Pear, Uncle, and I happened to agree on a point: philosophy does not always bring people a feeling of “calm.” Quite the contrary, contact with philosophy often makes a mind that was originally steady become agitated, anxious, and uneasy. Of course, there are also many people who come close to philosophy because of their confusion, perplexity, and unease about life. Yet such people had better be psychologically prepared, because what philosophy is likely to bring you is a worsening of the “condition.”

l Where does one begin to enter philosophy? One can enter from anywhere. Philosophy is like a vast net that encompasses everything: no matter which thread you find, if you follow it to the source, you can pull out the whole of philosophy.

2007年11月3日