Last time I was writing my Mumford paper, I posted a writing plan. Going by a pace of one chapter a month, it was obvious that I would only be able to finish the paper roughly after the summer vacation, and at the very least I wouldn’t be graduating until spring 2014. In other words, I have already decided to delay graduation by half a year.
Although I also wanted to strive to finish my PhD in three years, I ultimately chose to postpone. This was something I had long anticipated, of course, but it is still worth explaining on the blog~
The reason for postponing is, first and foremost, naturally to complete the thesis better. Of course, if I had pushed a little harder before, three years would probably still have been enough, but because of laziness and my habitual procrastination when writing papers (I can’t write unless I’m forced into a corner), I still didn’t get it done. Although I’ve now bought myself another half year, to complete the thesis to a high standard I still need to study hard for another half year.
In fact, I don’t really count this as a delay. After my cohort, the length of the philosophy department’s integrated master’s-doctoral program has already been adjusted to 2+4, and for my cohort, taking four years is considered normal anyway, with no extra tuition required.
Of course, whether I delay or not, I still have to look for a job in the end. Many classmates will say: to do academic work or to find a job—I’m not doing academia, I need to find a job. That way of putting it is problematic. In fact, doing academia also means finding a job; the only question is which trade you find work in. Some people want to be civil servants, some want to be corporate office workers, some go into tutoring, accounting, sales, and so on. Academic workers are just one trade among many.
Apart from the few “unorthodox” trades (for example, urban management officers. This occupation itself is established within an environment where power and law have been distorted and deformed: either you are in a coercive organ of state power as a policeman, or you are spontaneously maintaining order in a civil organization. The very existence of the urban management profession is unreasonable; thus I can say that urban management officers are simply people without dignity, a profession without a way upward. By contrast, peddlers, and even beggars and thieves, can have a way; even henchmen and lackeys of the underworld can have a way. They can speak of the way of loyalty, but urban management officers cannot even figure out whom they are loyal to, and so they are not even as good as lackeys. The prerequisite for a profession having a way is that the profession has a foundation for its existence. An urban management officer can be a “good person,” but cannot be a “good urban management officer”), academia is no higher than any other kind of work—whether in the sense of lofty or elegant. Some people say, “I don’t want to do academia; I want to be an ordinary person.” That too is a misunderstanding. There are plenty of “ordinary people” in the academic world as well. Some kinds of ordinariness are lowbrow or servile, such as those studies of the Scientific Outlook on Development and the like done merely to curry favor with the “mainstream” ideology—utterly tasteless indeed. But more academic workers are merely worldly in the ordinary sense: they regard academic work as a “job” to earn their living, yet if they treat research with the same conscientiousness and solidity as any down-to-earth worker or employee treats their own work, then there is nothing to criticize in such academic workers. Some people—especially those who have been influenced by a philosophy department—may develop a kind of cleanliness fetish, thinking that anyone who stays on to do academia must be the type who pursues truth and scales the heights, as if a person who is content with being ordinary and living as a little commoner should not do academia. That, of course, is even more of a misunderstanding. Just like in academia, every trade can have a path that is content with ordinariness, and can also have a path that pursues excellence. And even when choosing the road of excellence, there is also a difference between the way of the common person and the royal way. For example, within the same journey, what Usopp seeks is completely different from what Luffy seeks. The road of pursuit may have “different routes leading to the same destination,” and may also have “the same route leading to different destinations.” A “lover of wisdom” does not necessarily have to choose the academic road. It is only that, for now, the academic road is the one closest to the needs of philosophers. But can’t there be lovers of wisdom in other trades? Of course there can, not necessarily. The road to truth converges by different paths. On the other hand, even when walking the academic road, even people riding on the same boat and supporting one another may not be yearning for the same destination. On Luffy’s pirate ship, there aren’t even two people whose dreams are the same.
So why do I say academia is relatively suited to the needs of philosophers? Because in this trade it is easier to find people who are traveling the same road yet seeking different destinations on the road to truth. The way of loving wisdom is not a way of solitary meditation; it has never been a matter of simply thinking in seclusion, alone and cut off from the world. Philosophers need companions and opponents.
I need a whole set of companions, or rather “crew members” or followers, because I am a man who is going to become the Pirate King; inevitably, I must first become a captain. Of course, right now I am on the Wu school’s ship, working my heart out as Professor Wu’s follower, but once I have enough experience and have contributed enough, I will surely want to start my own outfit.
Of course, finding crew members doesn’t necessarily have to be through recruiting students. Still, relationships formed in ordinary interaction are often more improvised and loose. Recruiting students, on the one hand, would allow them to become my “crew members” in name as well as substance, sharing weal and woe with me; on the other hand, that bond would be stronger too. Of course, I am also very willing to recruit those who likewise harbor royal ambitions. After sending them along for a stretch, they will become competitors. What I need more are followers who carry different dreams and possess different talents—at least 10 of them. Among them there should be “idiots,” perverts, and ordinary people (those who haven’t read One Piece, please ignore this).
Professor Tian Song, in his recruitment notice, quoted Wheeler: “Why should a university have students? Because teachers have questions they don’t understand and need students to answer.” I fully endorse this view. Good students will surely bring support and nourishment to their teachers. This is also why I am more inclined to go to a university rather than a research institute. Although the Chinese Academy of Sciences or the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences can also recruit graduate students, their academic atmosphere and the degree to which they value teaching are certainly far inferior to those of a university. I hope that my future work will be teaching-centered, not because I am some selfless devotee bent on ruining others, but because I believe teaching is the best way of doing academia. Especially in terms of my own style, I am confident in my powers of comprehension and judgment, but I have significant shortcomings in the meticulousness of my argumentation and the solidity of my textual research. These are precisely the things that students may be able to make up for me.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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