I have always used the “history-thought-poetry” classification system, corresponding to three kinds of textual form: reflection, record, and lyricism. This classification system is logically sound, but for me personally it is not very practical: some categories have especially many articles, while others remain in a state of abandonment year after year.
Recently I have been thinking about building a classification system centered on “columns,” no longer subdividing things into specific directories. If you need to search, just use keywords. But we can also establish some “columns”; not every article has to belong to one. The articles under a column would be selected pieces or serialized pieces with a specific theme. For example, a series of lectures on “the general history of science” could be set up as a column, “Bitcoin” could also be a column, and book reviews and current-affairs commentaries could likewise be made into columns. Columns can be divided more finely; some columns are simply a course, some are just a book, and some are serialized articles on a specific theme or in a specific style.
“Philosophical storytelling” is a column I plan to open anew, and it ought to be one of the signature columns of my “philosophical teahouse.”
What is called “pingtan” is Suzhou storytelling, which I listened to quite a bit as a child following my grandfather. If I were to say “philosophical storytelling with songs and narration” or “philosophical storytelling,” it would be a little ambiguous, as if this column were mainly about reviewing books, but what I want to convey is simply the feeling of telling stories in a teahouse, and it has nothing to do with books.
The positioning of this storytelling is to be spoken for the general public, aiming to explain philosophical questions in a popular, plain, interesting, and exaggerated way. In the process of popularization, I will try not to let philosophical thought lose its flavor. The key point is that philosophy is “love of wisdom,” not “showing off wisdom,” so no matter how much philosophy is popularized, it should not turn into the kind of thing that motivational stories or soul-soothing chicken-soup essays are made of. Philosophy cannot teach people “the wisdom of life”; on the contrary, studying philosophy may well stimulate us to question or overturn the “wisdom” that has long become second nature to us.
Philosophy is a reflection on life, and this means two things: first, philosophy transcends life. If life is like nested games, or a composition of scene after scene of drama, then philosophical reflection is reflection on the rules of the game or the script, not merely thinking, in the course of the game, about the previous move or the next one. Second, philosophy does not stand apart from life. Activities such as discovering, exploring, reflecting on, and changing the rules of the game are often carried out while playing the game. When we first enter a certain game, we often do not understand all of its rules; we often learn by playing, through communication with other players, through exploring the game environment, and only then do we gradually “learn how to play.” But both the rules of the game and the game environment are open, and players, according to the situation in play, will at any time open up new game environments and design new rules of the game. Obeying rules and reexamining rules do indeed belong to different levels, but there is no strict boundary between them.
Philosophers often cannot perform exceptionally well in the “game,” but they also cannot detach themselves completely from it. To let someone lacking in gaming experience examine the rules of a game may perhaps be done with great rigor, great refinement, self-consistency, and harmony, but if it is fundamentally “not fun,” then what is the point? A philosopher is, at the same time as a reflector on the game, always still a “player,” or rather, first and foremost always a “player.”
The game environment, the rules of the game, and the actual activity of playing the game look very different. The environment and the rules both look like cold, hard apparatus or clauses, but the activity of the game is lively and dynamic. People may therefore think that life is lively, whereas philosophy is cold-blooded, but this too is a misunderstanding. For what philosophy does is not mechanically to produce or arrange a game environment, nor to recite ready-made clauses. What they need to do is precisely to reveal the “room for maneuver” latent in environments that have already sedimented into ready-made objects. What they attend to is neither the problem of the game itself (for example, what move comes next), nor the problem of the game environment itself (for example, whether this rule is grammatically sound), but rather the relationship between the activity of the game and the game environment. Within the tension between activity and environment, they discover contradiction or discordance, predicament or deficiency, and thereby reveal the “possibility” of life—how else might we play?
When the philosopher’s work finally settles down, its fruits are often still cold texts. These texts look far removed from real life, and ordinary people generally cannot bear to read them, yet they are all capable of living well. But this does not mean that these texts have no relation whatever to life. Just as most people do not need to read and understand rigorous football rules in order to play football well, and even many people, without strictly observing those rules, can still enjoy themselves—street football is like this. Yet the meaning of these texts has never been detached from the life-world. Or rather, the reason great philosophers are great philosophers lies precisely in the fact that each of them provides a “world.” Some people provide a world by establishing a rigorous system of rules; others unfold a new world by putting forward some immensely inspired or subversive ideas. In short, every philosopher, through his texts, displays a certain distinctive “way of life,” or rather, “way of playing.”
So when we read or write philosophical texts, if we become entangled in the text itself but forget life and forget the world, that is undoubtedly a case of mistaking the secondary for the primary.
Cold rules and lively games look profoundly different, but all rules ultimately belong to the activity of play. A rule that finds no instantiation in the activity of play is meaningless; conversely, an action not explicitly listed in the rules may well be meaningful in the game.
So this “philosophical storytelling” column aims to make philosophy “down to earth,” trying to reduce philosophical questions to plain everyday language, or place them in everyday life situations for discussion. Whether it is grand words like truth, goodness, beauty, freedom, equality, and fraternity, or so-called “technical terms” such as the transcendental, Dasein, and Gestell, they ought all to be “approachable.” From the very beginning of this column, I have been preparing to do some tidying up of these intimidating words, so that they may return to the life-world.
In addition, as storytelling in a “teahouse,” apart from one person self-accompanying on an instrument and singing alone, audience interaction is always welcome, and anyone is welcome to “request a performance.”
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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