Note: The author is a girl I met back then when I was a TA for the “What Is Science?” course, and of course I was very honored to accept the interview. This should count as the first time I was written into an interview article, though of course one can still find an interview from when I was in middle school, as the “Dong Gezhi Star,” but that interview was fake; what I said was made up. This piece, however, really was the product of an actual conversation, and the author also used a lot of material from my blog. She showed it to me before publication, so it basically can count as an expression of what I truly meant, though the specific choice of what to write was entirely from the author’s perspective.
The “Profiles” column in Peking University Youth is excellent; the most wonderful thing about Peking University is precisely this. Besides those world-famous masters, there are also many obscure little people at Peking University, yet each person lives out a distinctive character, and each person can find a way of life that belongs to them alone. To see all kinds of possible lives at close range is a uniquely favorable condition at Peking University. As for leaving campus and entering society, perhaps you only sink deeper, but you may not necessarily see more; infinite possibilities will no longer come flaunting themselves around us as they do now.
http://page.renren.com/601288118/note/870873486
Lovers of wisdom, the things you don’t know
— On Hu Yilin, PhD student in the class of 2010 in the Department of Philosophy
Zhou Ruixuan
Editor’s note: Hu Yilin, undergraduate class of 2004, master’s class of 2008, doctoral class of 2010 in the Department of Philosophy.
After reading the “Editor’s note,” did you suck in a cold breath, then immediately let out a few sneers? Has this person gotten sick of the Department of Philosophy or what? Philosophy—can philosophy put food on the table? Is philosophy useful?
No sooner had you spoken than the person opposite me replied at once: That’s right, I am precisely a street performer with no audience, using the crudest props picked up at hand to play the lowest of tricks in the noisy, bustling market streets, hoping only that busy modern people will occasionally pause for a moment. He finished this long sentence defining himself without a pause, and without the slightest change of expression.
That was not because he was broad-minded and stout-bodied, able to live among the crowd without anger, but because he truly agreed with the theory that philosophy is useless: lovers of wisdom are street performers, or jokers.
The lovers of wisdom who have fallen under a spell
This lover of wisdom is not the ethereal, floating sort you imagine; he is tall and big, and calls himself the Demon King. In the Demon King’s eyes, philosophy is black magic or treasure, while philosophers are magicians or Pirate Kings.
Whether black magician or Pirate King, to ordinary people these do not sound like very good terms; they always carry a whiff of crooked ways. Yet the philosopher he idealizes is exactly like that. “Without a bit of Pirate resolve, what kind of philosopher are you?” When he said this, his swagger nearly burst forth; his voice was not loud, but the momentum was such that it seemed he was proclaiming to the whole world: I want to become the Pirate King. There are very few pirates so unrestrained, but it precisely suits his rebellious temperament. If one is to be the Pirate King, then one must be a pirate who does not follow the usual path. “A philosopher is not the spokesperson of the masses; in the end, a philosopher must go against the grain of the masses, and must have the resolve to be denounced as heterodox and evil.”
Some people think philosophy belongs to the healing kind; does one not see endless streams of inspirational self-help? But he says philosophy is black magic: it has no healing power and instead has destructive power. “Serious philosophy cannot comfort your soul; it can only overturn your worldview,” and after saying this, the old doctoral student gave a “heh-heh” laugh. In his view, philosophy will intensify a person’s doubts about the original world. “It tells you that doubt is correct, that the things you take for granted may be illusory, that the base you think is secure may collapse at any moment. Then what are you supposed to do?” And so one after another, teams of philosophers appear, casually picking up the most commonplace props, playing tricks and casting spells, turning over and over those things you have long ceased to find strange. “Nothing much here, right? Nothing much here either, right? Huh—lift it up, and a new world opens before your eyes.” The old doctoral student said this while gesturing as if he were performing magic, his rising and falling voice betraying a little pride. Meanwhile the masses are dazzled, and become even more bewildered.
You think lovers of wisdom know the answer to the riddle, but in fact they too have merely wandered into a spell. “Love” means “to seek”; “seek and not obtain,” and so one “longs.” Thus the Pirate King sets sail on the “Grand Line” to pursue the “One Piece,” while the black magician quietly allies with the Demon King. “The intuition of a simple person may be noble, while the philosopher, having carelessly glimpsed the colorful world, becomes bewitched by it and cannot return to the beginning, only continuing to ask.”
From then on Pandora’s box is opened, lovers of wisdom lose Eden, and once one falls under a spell, desire is hard to fill. “If I do not go to hell, who will?” The old doctoral student said this loudly and firmly; it was self-mockery, but even more self-assertion.
So can this group of lovers of wisdom who have fallen under a spell do anything besides destruction? They should be able to, perhaps. “Philosophy cannot serve as a tonic, but it can serve as a vaccination, letting you take the initiative to overturn your own worldview, rather than waiting until setbacks come to overturn it for you. Besides, what it destroys is disguise and concealment; what remains may be even more real.” The lover of wisdom did not make solemn promises, because he also knew that if someone who has wandered into a spell does not keep it under control, they can go mad and be lost beyond all salvation.
Don’t expect lovers of wisdom to charge into battle
You may still be able to recite by heart the high school political science explanation of philosophy’s function, but the lover of wisdom before you has come specially to smash the place up and overturn your worldview. “A philosopher is someone who stops in the midst of social change; they do not bear the mission of rushing forward.” When everyone else is surging ahead, lovers of wisdom stand by with a cool eye and a warm heart, watching quietly; though deep inside Dionysus and Apollo coexist, just like the lover of wisdom opposite me.
Looking on coolly and from the side may seem like taking God’s-eye view: the human world is flat, with no depth whatsoever, and naturally no concern either. But in fact it is not so. “The philosopher is the one who pauses. The distance he keeps from the marching crowd is actually so that he can see more clearly where the crowd came from, and whether there are other roads besides this one.” The one who does nothing is thinking about more distant questions, yet he stands there as if idle. Conservatives think he is a revolutionary, while revolutionaries think he is a conservative. Old Doctor expressed some helplessness about this: “Philosophers are pleasing to neither side.” But he remained light as cloud and breeze, because he had already seen clearly the predicament of lovers of wisdom, and therefore became even more unconcerned, still obstinately gripping the spear in his hand, expression unchanged, elegant and composed.
He loves wisdom and he loves his country. On the one hand, he pursues Greek-style freedom and pure knowledge. “To say that the knowledge I seek is useful is an insult to me.” The “pausing” is of course to see clearly; seeing clearly is its own meaning. On the other hand, he can never let go of Chinese-style concern, nor escape the entanglement of real-world problems, because the position from which he looks is China, so what he sees is forever stamped with China. China is his bond, his here-and-now. He does not deny that these two are contradictory. “There is certainly tension between loving wisdom and loving country, but one must accept this tension and let it exist within oneself. On the one hand we are moved by pure knowledge and yearn for pure knowledge; on the other hand we are also pulled by the suffering of reality. This tension has to be maintained—taut, but not snapped. Human beings are inherently full of contradictions.”
The old doctoral student said that he wants to be a relatively pure scholar, but that he will still maintain concern for real circumstances. “But one does not participate in them oneself, does not get swept along with the current; rather, one must keep one’s distance from the crowd.” The inaction of the lover of wisdom has meaning for the self, because he stands there expressionless, as if doing nothing, seeming redundant, yet this redundancy gives him room for freedom. Lovers of wisdom and everyone else are all on the same boat; without this superfluous person, the boat would still sail on, and everyone would not stop moving forward just because he was absent. But with this superfluous character like a joker, he plays ridiculous tricks and tells clumsy jokes, providing a different dimension by which to measure meaning in an otherwise monotonous world.
The love of lovers of wisdom is like loving wisdom
Lovers of wisdom watch the world with cool detachment, and the world thinks they are untouched by ordinary concerns. I used to think so too. This lover of wisdom opposite me thinks every day about the stars in the sky—how could he possibly have the mood to look at the flowers on the ground? But later I saw several times that he parked his bicycle in front of Gongzhu Building—Building 31, and that he rode around the campus with great effort, with a beautiful MM sitting on the back seat of the bike.
He boasted about himself: “My philosophy is as vivid, lively, romantic, passionate, and colorful as falling in love; my love life is as serious, steady, reliable, free, and focused as doing philosophy.” Has your worldview been overturned again? Lovers of wisdom only know academics—how could they know how to date? Their love should all be like Socrates’s, shouldn’t it?
And yet this old doctoral student’s love really is like loving wisdom, because all philosophical problems can in one way or another be reduced to the problem of love, and since he leans toward classical philosophy, he also leans toward classical love, though not by adopting the classical attitude wholesale.
He used the language of philosophy to articulate his own attitude toward love. “Modern philosophy doubts the grand narratives of classical philosophy and the fairy tales of philosophers, believing that truths expressed in language are false, and that power relations and genuine practical ‘doing’ are more fundamental. Just like love nowadays: ‘doing’ is primary, ‘talking’ is secondary.”
At the same time he acknowledges that truth is fluid, and to assert something absolutely is, in a sense, self-deception. Just as love does not happen between two unchanging puppets, and promises are not inscriptions existing independently of time. People change, so love changes. “But the firmness of love does not lie in both sides being nailed there unchanged; rather, it lies in mutually participating in each other’s changes. It is not that because I am there, you therefore do not change; rather, your change from then on is inseparable from my participation.” Just as truth is not suspended outside history, waiting to be discovered and then held in the hand, tucked into the pocket, once and for all.
You who toss and turn over the vicissitudes of love, should you still laugh at the lover of wisdom as a pedant who does not understand love? He loves wisdom, and therefore understands love even better, because loving wisdom can never be cut off from life; otherwise human nature would be torn apart. Loving wisdom itself is a part of rich life, and lovers of wisdom have always been complete human beings, not alienated tools. So they may seem useless, yet precisely because they are useless they are free.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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