I had long since gotten too lazy to care about Fang Zhouzi’s business, but this time, riding on Han Han’s fame, I had no choice but to take a look at Fang Zhouzi’s disgraceful performance as well. My sins, my sins……
Since I’ve already joined the crowd, I might as well jot down a few things while I’m at it~ Of course, I don’t need to take a side here; I believe the readers of my blog are absolutely incapable of thinking I would support Fang Zhouzi. In my view, Han Han and Fang Zhouzi simply do not have a reciprocal “vs.” relationship at all. Fang Zhouzi is nothing but a mad dog, not even worthy of licking Han Han’s shoes.
I’ve accidentally said some vulgar things—sorry about that. Of course, for men of letters and scholars to engage from time to time in some ridicule or even abuse is, in my view, perfectly proper; the words on a writer’s page are things with blood and flesh and emotion. Calling him a mad dog shows that I utterly look down on him and expresses my indignant feelings. If you look down on Han Han, you can also curse him and mock him; I believe Han Han would not seriously hold it against anyone who curses him.
But cursing someone is altogether different from slander. I can say Fang Zhouzi is psychologically twisted, basically a eunuch, and everyone will understand those expressions as the venting of my emotions. But if I were to pretend to be objective and calm, put on a solemn show of presenting facts and reasoning, and in the name of science and rationality question Fang Zhouzi, “expose” him as indeed lacking certain organs, and then even mobilize the masses to expose him together with me, then that would be slander, not cursing.
Of course, reasonable academic questioning can very well fail to produce any result, or end up showing that the questioner was wrong. So how do we distinguish reasonable questioning from unreasonable slander? The point is precisely that the reasonableness of questioning is not measured at all by the “result.” For example, before the mechanism of heredity had been clarified, it was entirely reasonable to question Darwin’s theory of evolution on the basis of the blending inheritance theory; even if the result proved Darwin right, even if those questions even dragged Darwin down, one still cannot say the original questioners were being unreasonable troublemakers. Another example: if, because Newton was bourgeois, because he was a big landowner, because Newton played political games and had a bad heart, you accused Newtonian mechanics of being flawed, then that would be mere chaos-mongering; even if it later turned out that Newtonian mechanics really did have defects, that still would not mean those “questioners” had any redeeming quality whatsoever.
In other words, even if it were eventually discovered that Han Han really did have a ghostwriter, that would in no way affect the fact that Fang Zhouzi was entirely just making a nuisance of himself—of course, that is absolutely impossible; just look at Han Han’s writing and you’ll know. The “I” in his writing is vivid and alive. In those essays, just like in Suixuan, Han Han’s “I” does not hide behind cold text but steps forward boldly, springing vividly into view. The “I” is like the soul of the text, and the text is like the flesh and blood of the “I”; it can by no means permit transplantation by a ghostwriter.
Reasonable questioning is in no way built on the basis of a “presumption of guilt.” When I question in the name of reason, I am obviously not simply venting my emotions. Even if my starting point may still be anger or contempt toward the other side, once I begin weaving my argument and unfolding my explanation, what I am concerned with is no longer merely “take him down, take him down, take him down……” Even if I look down on him, I must still take my own words seriously. Even if I despise his mind, I do not dare slight my own reason. Therefore, when I enumerate an opponent’s charges in the name of reason, I must bear responsibility for every single word I say.
Reasonable questioning is reasonable not because “you” are or are not brought down, but because “I” can stand upright or not. If the questions I raise are self-contradictory and riddled with holes, but I do not care in the least, moving immediately on to the next question as soon as one has been refuted, then that is nothing but making a racket.
Of course, the problem with Fang Zhouzi is not only that he makes a nuisance of himself, but that he does so with absolutely no level whatsoever. Although robbery-thug logic is Fang’s strong suit, this time his use of it has reached the point of the ludicrous. One does not need to know at all what kind of person Han Han is, nor does one need to do any additional verification; merely by looking at the several articles Fang Zhouzi published under the banner of “questioning,” one can see how absurd, how childish his “argumentation” is. I truly cannot imagine why Fang Zhouzi still has so many fans.
This situation is much like how, today, we can hardly imagine why the masses during the Cultural Revolution were so crazy. Presumption of guilt, dazibao-style attacks, taking conjecture as evidence, using one’s own shallow and vulgar mindset to infer the words and deeds of gentlemen and scholars, a farce-like performance…… Master Fang’s manner can be described as a Cultural Revolution leftover.
Even in that most frenzied of times, the people presumably were not quite so brainless. What still played the key role was some kind of “teleological” thinking—maybe this piece of evidence was placed wrong, but bringing him down is not wrong! Maybe this person was beaten up by mistake, but the direction of exposing fakes is not wrong! The result of this kind of “teleological” thinking is this: as long as the direction is correct, any means whatsoever may be used. I don’t even need to care whether my means are self-consistent or dignified; after all, I am exposing fraud, and fraud ought to be struck down, so I am right.
And the knight-errantry of literati and scholars with a spirit of the intellectual aristocracy is something those teleological types find impossible to understand: I can poison you, use hidden weapons on you, or gang up to beat you up—all to kill you—so why must I insist on fighting you openly and honorably? Aren’t we still going to end up killing you anyway? Teleological people can understand fairness as an end (you get to eat taro pie, I cannot have none), but they have difficulty understanding justice as a means; they cannot understand what “openly and honorably” means, nor what “upright and aboveboard” means.
Now Han Han is going to sue. From the standpoint of the outcome, this is indeed a foolish move. Because even if Han Han wins, Fang Zhouzi can instead win sympathy by presenting himself as a victim of the system and rake in sponsorship—just as after Xiao Chuanguo won his case, Fang Zhouzi became even more prosperous, so much so that Professor Xiao was eventually angered into a fit. But I believe Han Han never intended revenge or bringing Fang Zhouzi down in the first place. Formally speaking, Fang Zhouzi is the “object” of the lawsuit, and the lawsuit is the means of counterattacking that object. But for Han Han, perhaps the means themselves are more important. He must choose what he sees as a proper, legitimate, and serious means to handle this dispute; what he is considering is by no means how to strike Fang Zhouzi more effectively, but from beginning to end how to make good on his own position.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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