- Today the throne was actually occupied; apparently it had been booked two days in advance. So I had no choice but to sit in the middle seat by the window next to it instead of in the corner. If a stranger happened to come by looking for me and failed to find me, then there was nothing to be done.
- This time it was even more miserable than last time: there was practically no one at all. Of course, it is perfectly normal for comrades to be busy and lazy in the latter part of the semester, and this sort of fluctuation in turnout was something I had expected from the start anyway; as long as it does not go on like this forever, that will do.
- May seems to be a time when I am about to be busier than ever, so besides turning up every Saturday as usual, I presently have no heart to plan any new moves. If no one comes, then no one comes… Of course, I still hope everyone will spread the word and bring more new people by. The greatest significance of my café salon lies in “chance encounter,” not in making appointments -_-…
- I can’t be bothered to mark which parts were spoken about and which parts were added afterward.
- The recent swine flu is called the H1N1 virus, which is precisely the name of the virus of the great influenza pandemic of 1918. Of course, they are only distant relatives.
- Speaking of the problem of Platonism in the Scientific Revolution, it was said that this new Platonism differs greatly from Plato himself in many respects. A supplementary note: as for egalitarianism in science and egalitarianism in political thought, their relation is less one of who caused whom than of a common source shared by both, namely the Christian concept of God. It was only through the establishment of God as an absolute Other that absolute “equality” became possible. (This question seems to have been mentioned in a certain New Island session as well. For the substitution of equality for freedom, see: “Equality” Has Replaced “Freedom” as the Common Root of the Predicament of Modern Science and Modern Democracy)
- Plato’s “rational seeing” may well be that “frenzied seeing,” that “seeing out of the body.”
- Master Xianglong did not pay enough attention to the elements of “looking up at the starry sky” in ancient Greek philosophy—leisure, curiosity, and the desire to know—thereby failing to further sort out the internal connections among the various differences between Eastern and Western philosophy.
- History books can be written in many, many different ways. When reading such history books, remembering the historical facts is not important; what is more important and interesting is to appreciate the various different perspectives from which history is observed and the different methods by which it is narrated. “Historical facts” themselves are chaotic and muddled, whereas various perspectives and narratives make history present itself before people in rich and interesting forms.
- Philosophy, history, or any kind of “rational” learning ultimately aims at nothing other than establishing connections between phenomena in all kinds of ways. Any so-called “X behind the phenomenon” is nothing more than some tools, techniques, knots, viewpoints, and so on established by human beings. They are not themselves an independent kingdom cut off from the real world and drifting ever farther away from it. Their significance lies in enriching the world before our eyes, so that our feelings can remain fresh and abundant. In this sense, philosophical works are in no essential way different from poetry, painting, bonsai, architecture, and so on. They all face the web of the world in one way or another; people, through their different methods, reconnect and rearrange all sorts of different sensations and impressions, and sincerely and naturally express them in some outward form.
- Philosophers and poets are very different ways of living. In a certain dimension, of course, you can regard them as utterly opposed; and yet any “dimension” is itself a perspective on the world, not some essence behind the world. From one angle, a philosopher may be most like a poet (for example, in “emanation”); from another, he may be closer to a sweeper. No single dimension is absolute.
- Philosophy, like any way of life, will guide the way people feel the world. At some times philosophy will make a person more indifferent; at other times it will make a person more sensitive; at some times it will make a person more tranquil; at other times it will make a person more impulsive… But these changes are less a problem of philosophy than a problem of the person.
- For my part, when I have soaked philosophy into my blood and let it run through my whole life, I have not made abstract thought intervene more deeply into my feelings and experiences; on the contrary, I have increasingly found myself able to forget thought within feeling, and to simply feel phenomena, leaving behind any entanglement with concepts. Nor has there ever been any time when so-called philosophical thinking has been conspicuously embedded in my life. I never think deliberately, except when riding my bicycle and hurrying along, when suffering from insomnia, and when reading—those things floating up naturally in my mind. Even if I do not always associate fallen leaves with the bleakness of life, I am even less likely to associate them with some philosophical problem behind them. When events happen in front of me on the spot, I often simply feel them in their entirety. Only when “reflecting” do I perhaps revisit and sort out those feelings and experiences in another way. I think that this re-sorting is not a negation of what I felt at the time; rather, it is a way of making some long-vanished feelings, memories already estranged from us, spring back to life in reflection. In these reflections, forgotten experiences become vivid again, and experiences that are no longer novel reveal new astonishments.
- “Philosopher” and “poet” are both external labels. Their significance, like that of the aforementioned “X behind the phenomenon,” lies in providing various dimensions for viewing and connecting things. When their use makes the world in your eyes richer, they are good things. But if they become overly fixed and obsessive, so that they make the world more monotonous, then we can cast off those stickers at any time.
- The key still lies in this. What I pursue is not those things supposedly behind phenomena themselves; I seek the clues that can connect originally isolated phenomena because they can enrich my world and broaden my horizon, not because they in turn should obscure the living real world and make everything dull and monotonous.
- Take topics such as “East-West comparison,” “ancient-modern comparison,” and “the difference between philosophy and poetry.” The point of discussing them is not to summarize and extract some sharply fixed essence behind the phenomena. Only when those so-called divergences serve as clues that help us re-sort and re-contemplate more primordial matters does talking about such dualistic oppositions become interesting.
- Without reason, the world before us is a mass of chaos, and our emotions are likewise a mass of chaos. This is like standing before boundless original historical materials without any editing or arrangement, where people can only be utterly at a loss. To make the world rich, to make feeling rich, to make history rich, people must use the power of reason to cut up and integrate the disorderly world anew. Thus people gradually established some abstract concepts, such as “human,” “yellow flower,” “thin,” “East,” “West,” “philosopher,” “poet,” and so on. These concepts reflect the ways in which people organize the chaotic world. And any artist who works with concepts is, in different ways, stirring their inextricable relationships, allowing things to present themselves in the world in more primordial or more novel ways.
- Ethics is not a tool for indicting others, nor is it a tool for excusing oneself. As a philosophical question, ethical inquiry is a pursuit that comes from the depths of the “I”’s own heart. As for related questions, besides consulting my undergraduate thesis Kantian Ethics and “Anthropocentrism” and other articles in the Ethics—Politics folder, the following two reading notes may also be useful: Ethics and Life (9th edition), An Invitation to Ethics, Why I Need Ethics.
- Appearing here this week: dr
- Let’s blow some pure water next week… (Come on, people~~~~)
Latest Comments
msfan
2009-05-02 23:59:37 Anonymous 219.234.81.66
Am I the only one today?? Only me????
omg…
2009-05-02 23:59:37 Anonymous 219.234.81.66
Am I the only one today?? Only me????
omg…
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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