I said very early on—sophomore year, maybe freshman year?—something like, “I don’t want to be an expert; I want only to be a master.” At first it was just something said privately among friends, but then it spread, and so I could only regard it as public speech. Of course I have always been able to stand behind that sentence. It is based on how I situated myself and on my understanding of philosophy. Over these years I have, I think, come to understand philosophy more deeply, and so now I can offer some more penetrating interpretation of what I said back then.
First, we need to ask: what exactly is the difference between the two words “master” and “expert”? In many situations, they seem interchangeable, both referring to someone especially skilled in a certain field. So where lies the difference?
Of course, one difference that cannot be ignored is that “master” seems to be one level higher than “expert”; it sounds more formidable. Another point is that the field in which a “master” is proficient is often relatively broader, and this is indeed one of the meanings I want to emphasize: namely, that “philosophy” is not, and does not include, some specific “profession.” A person’s achievement in philosophy is always manifested by his whole philosophy, rather than by some small subfield within philosophy. I will discuss the relation between philosophy and “expert” again later, but before that, let us talk a bit more about the word “master.” Beyond the difference in intensity and breadth, what other difference is there between a “master” and an “expert”?
We can first ask ourselves: in what situations is it only suitable to use “master” rather than “expert”? Or rather, when do we most often say “master”? Well, in the arts. It is common enough to call scientists, historians, and so on either masters or experts, but we only say “art master,” “conducting master,” “piano master,” “literary master,” “chess master.” We do not say “art expert,” “conducting expert,” “piano expert,” “literary expert,” “chess expert,” and the like! Or rather, when we say “piano expert,” the meaning clearly tends in a completely different direction—for instance, a piano tuner, or someone especially knowledgeable about the structure and kinds of pianos, and so on; it is hard to think of a great pianist. But once we say “piano master,” it unmistakably refers to someone who plays the piano. In the arts, the title “master” also seems unrelated to the narrowness or breadth of the field: even if it is limited to a very small domain, such as “landscape painting,” one still says “master of landscape painting” rather than “expert in landscape painting.”
So, plainly speaking, the “philosophy” I understand is an activity closer to art, literature, and chess. Therefore, there is simply no such thing as a “philosophy expert.” Or rather, so-called “philosophy experts” are not necessarily people who “do philosophy”—just as so-called “piano experts” are not necessarily people who “play the piano.”
Let us savor the difference more carefully. When we say “expert,” it seems to tend toward referring to someone’s familiarity and mastery of something that is external to him, something taken as an “object”; “master,” by contrast, tends more toward referring to someone’s “command” of something that has already been internalized as his craft. This tendency is especially clear in the difference between “piano master” and “piano expert.” The former excels by taking the piano as something “ready-to-hand”; the latter masters it by taking the piano as something “present-at-hand.”
For me, “philosophy” is my way of life, something internalized into my blood, not an object I need to study and research from the outside.
The path by which a piano master grows is also entirely different from that of a piano expert. In a certain sense, a piano expert needs to learn more things and grasp broader knowledge; a piano master not only does not need to be versed in the structures of various pianos and related knowledge, he can even know nothing about the internal structure of his own piano, and that is no problem at all. He only needs to play his own piano well enough. Although the work of a piano expert may be beneficial to a piano master, and a piano expert ought to understand a piano master; conversely, a piano master can completely ignore experts, and his process of growth need only consist in listening to and imitating other piano masters and ordinary pianists, and then practicing on his own.
Other fields are similar: an artist need only pay attention to other artists, and need not care about art “experts”; a writer need only pay attention to other writers, and need not care about literary “experts.” Of course, occasional attention may also be beneficial, but just as one might say that a writer occasionally paying attention to a vagrant may also be helpful to his creation, it is hard to say whether there is any deeper connection here.
In philosophy, the distinction between these two kinds of people is not so absolute—because I have also said that philosophy differs from literature and the arts in an important respect: a commentary on a novel is not a novel, a commentary on a poem is not a poem, a commentary on a painting is not a painting, a commentary on music is not music… yet a commentary on a philosophical work is itself also a philosophical work.
Although philosophy is an activity that belongs wholly to oneself, philosophical works may still be manifested wholly through interpreting the works of others. Therefore, merely from the formal representation of one’s works, it is not enough to distinguish the philosopher/master from the philosophy “expert.” What makes the distinction is that most basic difference: whether one takes philosophy as the activity internal to oneself, or as an object of study external to oneself.
Even when studying and interpreting a certain philosopher, a philosopher is certainly driven by some inner pursuit of his own, and not by the mere desire to study that philosopher for the sake of studying him, or for some other external utilitarian goal. Of course, “studying for the sake of studying” is noble; it is a free kind of scholarship. So I do not mean to disparage “philosophy experts.” If someone simply takes pleasure in studying a certain philosopher, then one can say he is an excellent scholar, but in any case, that is still a different matter from being worthy of the title “philosopher.”
A philosopher engages in “philosophical research,” not in “research on philosophy.” Whether a kind of research can be called philosophical does not depend on what its object is.
The above is the most basic meaning of what I mean when I say “philosophy has no experts.” But this view contains further considerations as well—namely, that in a certain sense, at most one can speak of “textual experts” on a certain philosopher or a certain philosophical field, and there can in fact be no “philosophy expert” at all.
“Philosophy,” unlike “piano,” is not some definite thing; it is a concept that is far too vague and unsettled, so it itself simply cannot be taken in a general way as an object of study. If there were such a thing as a philosophy expert, then at most it could only refer to an expert in some specific domain of philosophy. And is an expert in that sense possible?
In history, we can speak of experts in particular fields, such as “Newton expert,” “Galileo expert,” “expert on the history of medieval theology,” “expert on the history of ancient Greek science,” and so on. Experts in this sense are basically still “textual experts,” meaning that I am very familiar with the relevant literature on a certain person or field, and have become an authority on it, and so I can be called an expert in X.
However, even experts in this sense are not suitable for extension to the field of philosophy—indeed, not even “experts on philosophical texts” are possible!
We should note that “textual experts” on a certain philosopher or a certain philosophical field are not the same thing as experts on the relevant “philosophical texts.” The latter adds one requirement: you must study them as “philosophical texts,” not as literature in the ordinary sense. But once you take them as bona fide “philosophical works” and study them, you are doomed not to become their “expert.”
To put it simply: think about it—if the object is a great philosopher, could an ordinary person possibly grasp the profound world of thought of that philosopher as a whole? If you merely know all his texts at the level of their wording, at most that makes you a “textual expert,” not someone who grasps those texts in the philosophical sense. If one is to grasp the works of a great philosopher as a whole in the philosophical sense, then the researcher himself must also be an extraordinary philosopher. Yet any extraordinary philosopher would not become the research expert of another great philosopher. For either he need not interpret the other person at all, or if he does interpret him, it must certainly be in order to elaborate his own philosophy through that interpretation—because the thought of each great philosopher is necessarily unique, his creative interpretation of another person will inevitably be too partial or too extreme, and thus as an “expert” he will be incompetent; the history of philosophy has confirmed this as well. In short, unless one greatly weakens the meaning of the word “expert,” reducing it to no more than “specializing in this area,” and no longer including further implications such as “insider” or “mastery,” then an expert who researches the philosophical works of a certain great philosopher is impossible.
On the other hand, an expert in one specific philosophical field is also impossible. Unless once again we mean only a “textual expert” on a certain philosophical field, which is different from being an expert on the “texts of philosophical discussion pertaining to a certain field”; the reasoning is similar to the above. The key point is that if you want to read the literature discussing a certain field as philosophical works, you must confront this fact: “philosophy” is a whole; philosophy has only differences of “theme,” not differences of profession. Every philosopher has his own unique philosophy, and his views on a specific field can only count as philosophical claims when seen within his whole philosophy, because philosophical claims are by no means isolated assertions.
In my view, all disciplines can be subdivided into specialties, and each specialty can mind its own business and have no dealings with the others; but philosophy alone cannot be like this, because philosophy is self-reflection and self-understanding, and the “self” is unified. Unless I say that my life can be completely unrelated to politics, then there is no need for political philosophy in my philosophy—but in a certain sense that is still a kind of political philosophy: its basic claim is that politics is entirely unimportant. In short, so-called “philosophy of a certain field” is independent only as a topic or object of philosophical inquiry, but philosophy itself is always a whole—whether in terms of one person’s philosophy or the philosophy of a certain era—grasping its overall line of thought is the precondition for grasping its specific problems. Philosophy is a net; any thread pulled will bring out the whole philosophy. Unless philosophy is dismembered and destroyed, an expert on the philosophy of a particular field is also impossible.
In short, this is my personal understanding of philosophy.
January 1, 2009
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2009-01-28 01:55:38 Anonymous 128.252.78.82
Heh, that’s awfully naïve.
A truly professional pianist would never casually use the title “master,” just as a professional philosopher would never casually use “philosophy master.” These terms are precisely what outsiders use to bamboozle other outsiders, and they still work on freshman undergraduates. May I ask which piano master was not trained up from a professional pianist, if you really know anything about playing the piano? - Guta
2009-01-28 10:08:59
I have never used the title “master”; I have always said “want to be…,” not “already am.”
Did you not understand what I meant in the essay? “Piano expert” and “piano master” are fundamentally two different paths: the former refers to someone who knows the piano, the latter to someone who interprets the piano. How could a piano master possibly be trained up from a piano expert? You changed it to “professional pianist,” and the flavor becomes different; that question needs to be discussed separately—because “professional philosopher” and “philosophy expert” are two different things, and the former is not necessarily the latter.
Also, when understanding philosophers, do not use vulgar notions to take things for granted. Go look at the history of philosophy, look at those masters who played with philosophy, look at Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Marx, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Wittgenstein… see how they positioned themselves. Of course they may not use words like master; the language is different to begin with, but which major philosopher positioned himself as a “professional doing philosophy”?
Of course, masters also all need to start by practicing the basics. If I want to range across the four seas, then first I should have the ability to strike down a mountain stronghold at will; I have always emphasized this point, and you can see it in writings such as my dialogue with the science hobbyists. http://epr.ycool.com/post.2893532.html.
But the key is that even if I take down a small mountain stronghold, I would not stop there and be satisfied with occupying a mountain and declaring myself king. While practicing the fundamentals conscientiously, do not let your dreams wear away to nothing. I am not telling others to call themselves “masters”; on the contrary, it cannot be that way. If you were already a peerless master, then what would become of your dream? The commenter above, what about your dream? Do you have a dream? If your dream is only a small island, then of course it deserves respect, but my dream is to ride across the whole sea. - Guta
2009-01-28 10:48:55
Whether one is an expert or a bungler, a master or a mere name, these are things to be judged by others and by history; one cannot choose them for oneself. But what we can choose is the path we pursue: the path of the expert, or the path of the master. Is it to confine one’s future within some particular specialty and call oneself an “insider,” reveling in the professionalism of insiders and the superficiality of outsiders; or never to confine oneself, never to become an “insider,” always to know one’s ignorance and keep on seeking?
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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