The Philosopher’s “Manifest” and “Hidden”

20,133 characters2008.10.10

In the comments received not long after the posting of “Pinned Post 2,” one mm mentioned that I was “a manifest type” rather than “an implicit type,” and so on. The specifics can be seen directly in that post, so I won’t repeat them here.

Typical feminine-style comments are headache-inducing, because they are hard to deal with. As that mm said, “…more intuitive”: once a comment is made “from intuition,” then it becomes very hard to criticize. Only when a theory is built on “reasons” is it possible to inspect and criticize it, because “reasons” are public, whereas “intuition” is always private; I cannot criticize another person’s “intuition.”

In addition, as in that mm’s comment, feminine-style comments are often also lacking in determinacy. They are more willing to compare some “specific” impressions with one another—for example, “more ‘Russell,’ even a bit like ‘Yu Qiuyu,’ rather than the hidden silence of someone like ‘Wittgenstein’ or the自在自为 of someone like ‘Duchamp.’” —this is indeed a typical feminine pattern. They do not like to use concepts that are more universal or supposedly objective to make comments; instead, they bring out one concrete figure after another to make their point. This only increases the difficulty of criticism. Because as to any given person—for instance, what Wittgenstein really was like—such impressions vary from person to person, and a concrete object contains too much complexity: Wittgenstein had a silent side, but also a manic side, and different people will likewise have vastly different perceptions. Yet what exactly she means to comment on here, apart from herself, is something that others can hardly grasp with any certainty.

For this kind of comment, I generally can only respond by “taking the occasion to elaborate on something else”…

But all this is natural, because from the standpoint of its most important trait, feminine discourse is private, in contrast to the public tendency of masculine discourse. The difference between these two language modes was well displayed in Tannen’s Intimate Conversations between Men and Women; readers may refer to my related reading notes and comments. I won’t quote them further here.

Still, let’s return to the main topic: what I want to mention here in particular is the philosopher’s so-called problem of “the manifest” and “the hidden.” I have brought this up many times before, but it seems I have not yet discussed it in a dedicated essay.

People often imagine the philosopher’s typical image to be one of silence and concealment, withdrawal from society and escape from the world, calmness and detachment, and so on. Especially among Chinese people, perhaps because of the cultural tradition surrounding hermits, this impression of philosophers is even more widespread. Yet, just as portraying scientists as wild and crazed “eccentrics” (which is more common in the West) contains a good deal of prejudice, so too does this.

First, this view does not fit historical fact. Historically—whether in the West or in China, though here I am mainly referring to the West—the most important “philosophers” were for the most part active figures on the public stage. At the very least, within their own cultural circle or aristocratic milieu, they were certainly not people living in isolated seclusion. Even philosophers such as Kant, who have been portrayed as rather rigid, expressed appreciation for and often participated in social gatherings and dinners of fewer than ten people; much less need it be said that they were willing to teach in the academy, and always eager to exchange views and argue with others through salons, correspondence, journals, and publications.

From ancient times to the present, the flourishing of philosophy has been related to the environment for public exchange within the culture and period in which it exists: the more widespread and open public exchange is (for example, ancient Greece, the Renaissance, Vienna in the early 20th century, contemporary America), the more active scholarship becomes.

There are, of course, philosophers who live in seclusion, but numerically they are a very small minority, and as for their works, they are seldom the most classic kind.

Philosophical works, from the very beginning, were also mainly written in a public, or rather “report-like” (Tannen), masculine mode of language. Of course feminism can from this point criticize the entire Western philosophical tradition, but in any case, that is how it is: philosophy from the outset developed out of a public mode of discourse.

This so-called public mode of discourse differs from the private style mentioned at the beginning of this article. Compared with concepts that rely more on private experience, philosophers prefer concepts that are more easily publicly recognized—for example, words with clear determinations and more lucid logical structures—so that what they say is open to rebuttal, and therefore contentious.

Of course, there are also very rare instances of private utterance, such as diaries written only for oneself, which, once sorted out by others, have also become classics in the history of philosophy. But on the one hand these are extremely rare, and on the other hand they are also highly idiosyncratic. More typical philosophical works are often written in the style of public speech or debate; even if the author may have been working alone with head down when writing, in terms of textual form they are nevertheless public.

In addition to public exchange through media such as the academy, salons, correspondence, journals, and books, the more important life or work of the philosopher may be the so-called “study” life—that is, reading and writing alone in one’s own study. But this does not mean that people of the philosopher’s sort possess a pronounced character of “hiddenness,” “quietude,” and the like. We can look at various other professions or trades—for example, a boiler worker’s job may also consist of being shut up all day in the boiler room, working away in earnest, in sharp contrast to the noisy public bathhouse next door to the boiler room. But do we often ascribe characters like “hidden” and “quiet” to boiler workers? In short, when we speak of a philosopher as being so-and-so quiet and worldly-fleeing, it always feels somehow as if this were not the same as a boiler worker—but what exactly is the difference? Just like boiler workers, chefs, and the like, the relative independence and enclosure of a philosopher’s working environment does not tell us much. If a philosopher’s solitude simply means that he must sit quietly and labor away in his study alone, then in this sense the boiler worker and the philosopher are no different.

But the philosopher’s “solitude” is not limited to this. The philosopher’s “solitude” is precisely not manifested when they are isolated from others. When we say philosophers are solitary, it is not because their environment is isolated like that of a person stoking boilers; it is precisely because philosophers are always on the public stage, and yet still always alone. Every philosophical path is unique, every philosopher’s thought is unique, and the ultimate questions each person faces are likewise non-transferable. Boiler workers can cooperate and rotate shifts, but philosophers can only stand on their own and fight a lone battle.

Let us stop comparing them to boiler workers here. In fact, some people more often compare them to artists, as the mm mentioned above referred to Duchamp and further suggested that “whether one is an artist, thinker, or writer, after seriously completing a work, one should let it be what it is, without adding a single word.” Of course, there is nothing unreasonable in this view. Philosophy can indeed be compared with art, and I myself often do so. However, I must point out: the most obvious difference between philosophical works and works of art or literature should not be overlooked either—that is, commentary on a work of art is not art; commentary on a novel is no longer a novel; commentary on a poem is no longer a poem… whereas commentary on a philosophical work is still a philosophical work! One might even say that what is called philosophical activity takes its principal form precisely in commenting on and explicating other philosophical works. If this is not the whole of philosophy’s labor, it is at least its foundation and point of departure.

I often say that “the question” (the act of inquiry) is the core of philosophy, and that is correct. But that is only at the level of the point of departure or the focus of concern, just as artistic creation and literary creation can each have their own motives and starting points. Yet in terms of the actual way creation is carried out, painting uses brush and ink to depict some scene, fiction uses words to depict some story, whereas philosophical creation is mainly unfolded in the form of commentary.

Of course, many philosophers also treat their own works with “let it be what it is, without adding a single word.” But this often involves other issues. For example, when one does not add a word to one’s own work, it often draws more, and more widespread, controversy and annotation. On the other hand, philosophers’ commentary on their own works need not be visibly marked as such. These are all matters of strategy and preference, and do not involve much in the way of right or wrong, superiority or inferiority. And, to reiterate in passing: I personally have not completed any work that I believe can stand on the public stage. If I really did confidently complete a work and were satisfied with its entire argument and expression, then I too would “let it be what it is,” and would only cite it in later texts rather than concern myself with defending it—because I would already have made myself clear. But the problem is that I know my own limitations: at present I have neither a complete system nor anything that I can clearly and definitely explain with confidence. My desire for discussion and response is because they can help me grow, just as school and teachers do.

But as I already mentioned in a previous response, the manifest and the hidden in philosophy are both matters of the “ivory tower.” The philosopher reveals, or opens, himself within the ivory tower, yet the activity of philosophy as a whole remains hidden within the ivory tower and thus keeps its distance from the masses. Of course, any given amateur may be admitted into philosophical exchange, but on the whole, as the “masses,” most people are content with common sense and too lazy to pursue inquiry. The masses can reach many shared understandings and judgments on the basis of common sense, whereas philosophers must stand apart at such times and not let themselves be driven by fashion. But the “hiddenness” of the “ivory tower” is completely different from the hiddenness of retiring into mountains and forests. Entering the ivory tower is not about fleeing the world; it is precisely about seeing it clearly and grasping it.

October 10, 2008

Latest Comments

physis
2008-10-15 00:58:08 Anonymous 220.176.144.202

The books you recommend are still pretty good, whether it’s Men Are from Mars or Intimate Conversations between Men and Women, or the earlier An Invitation to Ethics; even just reading your quoted commentary makes one know the gist of the book.
古雴
2008-10-15 02:32:45

Uh… An Invitation to Ethics was the one I recommended most recently, while Intimate Conversations between Men and Women was the “earlier” one; as for Men Are from Mars, I never recommended it. I didn’t buy it and didn’t read it; I only mentioned it incidentally when recommending Intimate Conversations between Men and Women, saying that perhaps it was also not bad.
physis
2008-10-15 13:51:16 Anonymous 220.176.146.128

Also, today it suddenly occurred to me: I wonder whether you, blogger, have any familiarity with Strauss’s distinction between the “exoteric” and the “esoteric”? After Socrates’ death, beginning with Plato, philosophers began to learn how to write esoterically, supposedly in order to protect “philosophy,” and also to protect philosophers themselves. Since you seem to have the zeal of an Enlightenment philosopher, I just want to remind you that perhaps the so-called popularization of philosophy, its dissemination to the masses, is fundamentally a false proposition.
古雴
2008-10-15 15:19:16

What is a “false proposition”?
What is it to “protect philosophy”?
I am not familiar with Strauss’s distinction between the “exoteric” and the “esoteric”; please make it clear.

In fact, this is precisely a request that you “popularize” it. You know Strauss, I do not, and if you are going to address me, you need to convey it to me in a mode that is more public, and also more private (belonging to you yourself, rather than to Strauss). Only when you can restate Strauss’s view in your own mother tongue—which is also the “everyday language” of our society and our age—can it count as truly grasping its meaning. Otherwise, you are merely relaying someone else’s words, not saying your own.
In this sense, philosophy must be “everyday-ized.”
However, philosophers are not people who unthinkingly accept ready-made language systems; philosophers must reflect on and criticize concepts, and ask questions of common sense. In this sense, philosophy must again transcend the everyday and transcend the masses. Yet this reflection is a kind of “self-reflection”: it does not mean that I use a strange, other person’s system to contemplate myself, but rather that I myself reflect on myself. It is everyday language itself that is still asking questions about and reflecting on everyday language. So-called everyday language is by no means a monolith; everyday language has no fixed standard that transcends specific environments and histories, and thus language changes itself in self-reflection.
Some philosophers’ reflection has gone so deep that the language system they have transformed seems so distant from everyday language. Yet any relatively independent language system, even the language of the most abstract formal logic, if it is after all meant to be “intelligible,” must ultimately be rooted in everyday language and everyday life.
What I mean by the public character of philosophy, or by its everyday character, is philosophy’s intelligibility, transmissibility, contestability, and so on, rather than so-called “readability” or “easy to understand” and the like. Whether a text is difficult or fluent has no direct relation to whether it is public and everyday. A poem that merely expresses very private emotions may read very smoothly and beautifully, or it may read very obscurely and dullly.
physis
2008-10-15 23:00:31 Anonymous 218.95.120.119

What I mean by popularization is not the intelligibility of philosophical writing, but the opposition between philosophers and the public. (Philosophy is in essence the enterprise of a minority; science, once the obscuring veil of utility is removed, is similar. The reason why there is popular science in a country probably has to do with its utilitarian demands. And philosophy does not even have the veil of “usefulness.” I remember you once had an activity of popularizing philosophy, but the audience was sparse.)
Of course, this distinction of “elitism” is not mine, but that of old Plato himself. Strauss brought this point up again. His doctrine is very complex, and very obscure. Below I will merely speak about my understanding of his distinction between “esoteric” and “exoteric.”
Strauss believes that philosophers’ public statements are responsible to political society, while the basis of political society rests on “opinion” rather than “knowledge.” (This opinion, in plain terms, refers to a country’s “god,” such as that country’s morality or religious system.) Such opinion plays a foundational role in maintaining national stability and in educating the masses.) By virtue of the virtue of their thought, philosophers can see through the knowledge beyond opinion (for example, relativism and historicism), but in order to educate future philosophers and the masses separately, a certain art of writing is needed to transmit what they have gained; this is the distinction between “esoteric” and “exoteric” writing. Philosophers obtain knowledge through esoteric reading, while the masses receive exoteric instruction to sustain society.
If interested, you can look at an article by Gan Yang, “The Political Philosopher Strauss,” which serves as a general introduction.
古雴
2008-10-16 00:07:41

Not only philosophers, but scholars or intellectuals in general, are meant to “stand in opposition to the public.” My doing “popular philosophy” does not mean opposing this kind of elitism. For example, with “popular science”: does a scientist who is enthusiastic about popular science thereby give up using those professional methods in scientific research that the public finds difficult to understand?
A certain viewpoint, body of knowledge, or learning needs to be “popularized” precisely because it is estranged from the public. If it were the public’s “common sense,” then there would be no need to go out of one’s way to “popularize” it. To “popularize” philosophy for the public is precisely to say: philosophy is different from common sense.
As for the “exoteric” and “esoteric” distinction you introduced, it is a different matter from the manifest and the hidden that I am talking about. I also look askance at the passage you quoted. If the masses absolutely must have a “god” in order for society to be sustained, then the task of providing the masses with a “god” has nothing to do with philosophers. Philosophers are enemies of blindly erected “gods”; philosophers must tear down their stage. Philosophy should teach people freedom, not superstition.
Of course, philosophers’ public statements must be responsible. Yet if the maintenance of a certain society is so intolerant of intellectuals’ frank speech that scholars’ free expression would actually damage that society’s continued existence, then is such a society even worth preserving? If philosophers truly have such great power, and must be responsible for it, then I would rather bear the guilt of being a revolutionary.
physis
2008-10-16 12:50:36 Anonymous 59.55.250.212

I don’t want to say any more. I found a few passages; just take them as they are and read them:
Strauss would first acknowledge that the kind of negative freedom Kant speaks of is indeed a state human beings can reach, but he would immediately stress that this is by no means, as Kant presupposes, a potential in everyone. In his view, this thoroughgoing freedom is not only beyond the reach of all; it is not even desired by most people, because what most people pursue in fact is an affirmative institutional order. The path to founding freedom can therefore never, as in Kant or Rawls, first elevate everyone to the state of “absolute freedom,” for that is tantamount to uprooting everyone; it is tantamount to having to found the political and social order on “nihilism,” and the result can only be the complete destabilization of the foundations of political society. And this, in Strauss’s view, is precisely where the greatest danger of modernity lies. In Strauss’s view, the whole problem of Western modernity lies in the fact that philosophers like Kant erased the distinction between the philosopher’s freedom and the ordinary person’s freedom; they took it for granted that what philosophers desire is also what all humanity desires. In Strauss’s account, the “crisis of Western civilization” comes from the decline of Western “classical political philosophy,” or more precisely, from the rebellion of Western modern political philosophy against Western classical political philosophy; and “the crisis of modernity is first of all the crisis of modern political philosophy.”
“Philosophy aims to replace opinion with knowledge, but opinion is an element of political society, or the city-state; therefore philosophy is subversive, and therefore the philosopher must write in such a way as to improve, rather than subvert, political society. In other words, the virtue of the philosopher’s thought lies in a kind of madness (mania), whereas the virtue of the philosopher’s public speech lies in moderation (sophrosyne). Philosophy itself is supra-political, supra-religious, and supra-moral, but political society is forever and ought to be moral and religious. The problem of modernity is first of all the problem of “modern political philosophy” rebelling against “classical political philosophy,” and at its core lies the replacement of “intellectual sincerity” with the “noble lie.” Since “intellect” itself is “amoral,” it is no surprise that the beginning of modernity is first Machiavelli’s “amoral view of politics” (Machiavellianism), which then evolves into Kant’s “amoral view of history,” and finally into Nietzsche’s individual view of life “beyond good and evil” and Weber’s “amoral view of society” (social rationalization), a twin-peaked confrontation, until Heidegger at last lays it bare: under modernity, “ethics is impossible.”
The strangeness of modernity lies precisely in its assumption that it can use “philosophy” to transform “politics,” raising everyone to the level of “philosophy,” only for “philosophy” itself to be “politicized” and turned into a “civil religion,” while “politics,” in turn, is “philosophized” and becomes so-called “scientific political understanding.” “Politics” itself has almost become “invisible and intangible”; the true face of politics is wrapped up in “philosophy, science, theory.” Political philosophy must first, in a phenomenological way, reduce itself to the “pre-philosophical, pre-scientific, pre-theoretical political world”; the first question of political philosophy is first of all a return to the political world, that is, a return to the “naked political world before philosophy, before science, before theory.”
ps: Strauss’s stuff is too bizarre and too labyrinthine; people working in philosophy of technology probably aren’t very interested in paying attention to it. In fact, after Liu Xiaofeng passed his philosophy on to China, many people have already “not taken it seriously.” Personally, I just find it intellectually fascinating, and based on my own life experience, I can’t help agreeing with many of its arguments.
Gu Chu
2008-10-16 17:50:36

Indeed, the more I read, the less I take it seriously.
If a philosopher ought to write in a way that “improves political society,” then what counts as “improvement”? What counts as better? Is a society in which the plurality of thought and speech is suppressed, and everyone lives and works peacefully under the guidance of the same god, really what “improvement” means?
In other words, does Strauss want a “Brave New World” (Huxley)?
A philosopher should neither write in a way that “improves political society” nor in a way that “subverts political society”; none of that is the philosopher’s mission. The philosopher’s mission is reflection and self-reflection; the philosopher’s mission is to bear freedom.
The real political and social order is not built on philosophical speculation. Since that is so, philosophy does not possess the power to subvert politics. And the reason we see certain people using a certain philosophy as a banner to subvert politics and transform society is precisely because they—as politicians and revolutionaries, not as philosophers—have deprived philosophy of freedom and reduced philosophy to a “means.” A free philosophy will not set as its purpose, in its speech, the improvement or subversion of political society; only by insisting on the freedom of philosophical speech can one avoid the usurpation and abuse of philosophy.