Year: 2012

Western Learning as Substance, Chinese Learning as Application

Culture & Public Commentary2012.03.28
Western Learning as Substance, Chinese Learning as Application
Previously I mentioned that I wanted to write about “why study the West,” and that made me think of the phrase “Western essence, Chinese utility” (西体中用). A quick search online showed that Mr. Li Zehou had already brought it up. He explained “food, clothing, housing, and transportation” as the “essence,” and what he meant by Western essence, Chinese utility was “the ‘Western essence’ of modernization put to use on Chinese soil.” Some of Mr. Li Zehou’s ideas are excellent, but my line of thought is different from his. Mr. Huang Yinong also seems to have mentioned “Western essence, Chinese utility,” but in a more general way. What I mean by…
culture China scholarship education
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2012年3月28日
Night Reading Mencius: The Traitor Faction

Chinese Civilization & the Way of Chinese2012.03.21
Night Reading Mencius: The Traitor Faction
This article arose from the explanation in the previous post. Of course, apart from taking issue with one particular junior classmate, my more important intention is to emphasize that interpretations of the Confucian classics are plural, and the Mao left can forget about monopolizing the right to interpret the Confucian classics. When I was a freshman, under Yang Zi’s influence, I read some chapters of the Mencius. Though I have little recollection of them now, I did come away with a rough impression: even though the Mencius is not as invigorating to read as the Analects, it still felt pretty good. The night before last I dug it out and…
philosophy culture China freedom
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2012年3月21日
Democracy Against the People-as-the-Basis: A Debate on Weibo

Culture & Public Commentary2012.03.21
Democracy Against the People-as-the-Basis: A Debate on Weibo
Some days ago, I had a rather spirited debate on Weibo with a left-leaning junior fellow. I’m not very fond of slapping labels like “right-wing” and “left-wing” on people, but this argument was indeed representative in a certain sense, so I need to note this junior fellow’s left-wing background. As for me, who sparked the argument, I was not aiming my dissatisfaction specifically at him; rather, I took the opportunity to express my long-standing opposition to the rhetoric of the so-called Mao left. I once stated my personal position in the essay “Liberty vs. Equality—I Am a Right-Wing Socialist,” but that was mainly constructive rather than refutational. Still, I’m willing…
culture China freedom tradition
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2012年3月21日
The Mediality of “Natural Seeing”

AI & the Future of Technology2012.03.21
The Mediality of “Natural Seeing”
Originally, I had planned to put up this article after the proposal defense, but while writing it I realized that in fact it was nothing more than citing some things I had written before, so I shelved it. But today a troll came by my Theses on Media Ontology, which just happens to give me a good occasion to post this article as a response. In fact, this troll’s objection was similar to the question Professor Sun raised back then. Of course, Professor Sun always poses his questions haughtily but without losing decorum, whereas internet trolls are different. I very much welcome criticism and questioning, especially the sort Professor Sun…
technology media phenomenology nature
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2012年3月21日
A History of Technological Thought Between the Legs

AI & the Future of Technology2012.03.15
A History of Technological Thought Between the Legs
In today’s seminar, I presented Levinson’s essay. Though the essay was short, the discussion was quite extensive, and in the end we had only twenty minutes left for reading—unexpectedly enough. As for Levinson’s positive significance, I really did write too ambiguously in the paper, or rather, too falsely; I even felt embarrassed saying it myself…… But the one theoretical element in Levinson that truly deserves to be called positively meaningful is indeed something I mentioned in the paper, and also what I first brought up at the start of the lecture: his kind of unselfconscious “Hegelian” line of thought. I first mentioned Wu’s “walking on two legs”: one leg is…
technology media phenomenology historiography
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2012年3月15日
Where Is the Journal Conservative? — A Brief Note on Submitting a Manuscript

Life & Notes2012.03.13
Where Is the Journal Conservative? — A Brief Note on Submitting a Manuscript
A few days ago, from the end of February into the beginning of March, I fired off 12 articles to 9 core journals in one go, including a few book reviews and some papers written during my undergraduate years. At first I submitted a few newer, more important papers, but I didn’t bother to revise the format properly. Later I gradually sent out some older papers; those I did properly reformat, though I didn’t make many textual revisions. In that sense, my sincerity in submitting was still not quite sufficient, after all, at heart I remain rather reluctant about the whole business of submitting articles. But if I want to…
everyday life scholarship tradition value
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2012年3月13日
The “Natural Selection” of Technology—A Critique of Levinson’s Theory of Media Evolution

History of Science & Scholarship2012.03.13
The “Natural Selection” of Technology—A Critique of Levinson’s Theory of Media Evolution
The “Natural Selection” of Technology — A Critique of Levinson’s Media Evolution Theory Hu Yilin© (Department of Philosophy, Peking University, Beijing 100871) Abstract: Levinson inherits the tradition of media ecology, but only superficially. He believes that traditional critics of technology merely focus on technology’s drawbacks and do not evaluate technology from an evolutionary perspective. Levinson thinks that the drawbacks inherent in technology in its infancy will be eliminated or remedied in the course of evolution. But Levinson’s evolutionism faces three problems: Who is doing the selecting? By what criterion is selection made? How are the results of selection evaluated? Levinson’s answers to these three questions are all “nature—human nature,”…
technology media value human nature
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2012年3月13日
Notes on “Being and Time” II: “Being and Media”?

Philosophy & Thought2012.03.01
Notes on “Being and Time” II: “Being and Media”?
The portion I read today is, in my view, not especially important; Heidegger lays out the framework of “the book” (including the unfinished second part). To me, this framework is open to question. What I admire most is the first half of *Being and Time*; but once “temporality” is unveiled and the whole thing is repeated on the basis of temporality, I can no longer keep up with Heidegger’s train of thought. Still, broadly speaking, my line of thought remains corresponding to Heidegger’s—only, starting from “time,” perhaps more revisions are needed. Last week I said that what Heidegger calls “that which is asked about” (问之所及), “that which is questioned” (问之所问),…
philosophy book reading technology notes
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2012年3月1日
Revised the Blog’s Copyright Rules

Site Matters2012.02.28
Revised the Blog’s Copyright Rules
An exception clause has been added for articles published in print media; see: https://yilinhut.net/about/published The essence of Suixuan’s copyright policy is this: in addition to being allowed to reprint and quote it as one would treat an ordinary academic work, one may also freely adapt and distribute it. According to the copyright terms, adaptations must credit both the original author and the adapter, but there is no need to cite line by line; it is enough simply to indicate something like “originally written by Guci, adapted by Zhang San.” At the same time, such adapted versions must also abide by the same terms—that is, they too must allow others to…
blog website writing copyright
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2012年2月28日
Notes on Being and Time, Part I: The Questioning Path That Illuminates the Light

Philosophy & Thought2012.02.24
Notes on Being and Time, Part I: The Questioning Path That Illuminates the Light
Last year, when our reading group read *Being and Time*, I had already thought of writing reading notes as we went along. But at the time I talked quite a lot while reading, so I more or less used up my urge to express myself on the spot; when I got home, I was too lazy to write it all out again, and in the end I never managed to do it. This semester, as we read *Being and Time* again in the Wumen discussion seminar, maybe I can take the opportunity to make up those notes. The introductory part of *Being and Time* is very important, but also not…
book reading notes media Heidegger
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2012年2月24日