叶秀山老师has passed away. On the occasion of Teachers’ Day, I am writing a few words in remembrance.
Teacher Ye and I had two layers of relationship. First, he was Teacher Wu’s advisor—in other words, my academic grand-teacher. The other layer was that Teacher Ye was the teacher for my first philosophy course in college, namely Introduction to Philosophy. The relationship of seniority did not give me much direct feeling; the image of Teacher Ye in my memory was mainly formed in that Introduction to Philosophy class. When I heard the sad news, what kept flashing through my mind was the scene of him pinching an orchid-finger gesture while reading Da~sein.
Back then, in that Introduction to Philosophy class, I openly challenged Teacher Ye on an online forum. I had posted the relevant content on my blog earlier here. I went back and read it again these past couple of days, and it felt as if, in some respects, I really haven’t changed at all. My first post was written on September 10, 2004; exactly twelve years have passed to the day. In these twelve years, I have come to understand philosophy in many new ways, but some basic attitudes about how to do philosophy had already taken shape then.
Teacher Ye’s way of teaching was extremely intimidating. You have to know that back then we were merely first-year students who had just emerged from the exam-oriented education of high school, and many of us had been unwillingly reassigned into the philosophy department. Our concept of philosophy might still have stopped at middle-school textbooks. But the manner in which Teacher Ye came at us was basically at the level of graduate students: he directly listed three books—Critique of Pure Reason, Phenomenology of Spirit, and Being and Time—and told the students to read them. Although I had not read those three books either at the time, I at least had some idea of them, and so I felt terrified. I felt that the gap between high-school exam training and the Critique of Pure Reason was simply too great; this course might well have stirred up more confusion and helplessness among the students than interest and enthusiasm for philosophy.
So my challenge to Teacher Ye began right there. Of course, at first I did not even realize I was challenging him; I merely hoped to make some “supplements.” Put simply, the point was not to understand this course in the manner of exam-oriented education—not to aim at reading comprehension and mechanical memorization, but at forming one’s own questions:
“I believe that in attending this introductory course, it is not necessary for us to fully accept Teacher Ye’s views, nor is it even necessary to completely understand his thought or fully grasp the concepts he mentions; the key is that, in listening to the class, we can come into contact with the questions Teacher Ye raises, Teacher Ye’s thought, and ultimately generate our own questions, our own understanding, and a desire for further thought and inquiry—if that is achieved, then the purpose of this course will already have been largely accomplished!”
At the same time, I suggested that students make greater use of online forums, actively express their views, and point things out to one another and argue with one another. I believed this was a shortcut to stepping outside the exam-oriented mode and forming independent thinking. Since I had already broken away from exam-oriented education in middle school and had not suffered its poison too deeply, I rather complacently thought I had some experience to share with my classmates. Looking back now, these experiences were indeed effective: autonomous learning and free discussion—that is precisely the greatest difference between Western university education and Chinese exam-oriented education. Teacher Wu has also always been actively promoting small-group discussion, and my ideal of the teaching environment is very much in tune with Teacher Wu’s.
But this was precisely where I differed with Teacher Ye. Teacher Ye plainly said that he did not encourage debate. His concern had a certain point, because blind debate often degenerates into sophistry, getting mired in verbal disputes and never really striking at the heart of the matter.
In fact, the so-called “debate” between idealism and materialism depicted in middle-school philosophy textbooks is completely empty. I had long had this experience. But the problem is, how do we get beyond emptiness and gradually find the right question or method? In my view, the way in at the beginning is still through debate. The key is that the meaning of debate does not lie in its result or in winning and losing, but in clarifying oneself within the activity of debate itself; debate exists in order to form oneself, not to persuade others.
Everyone has a personality, and will always think that their own understanding is correct. We can and should bring our thoughts out to share with others, but we must not impose our understanding on others; while tolerating disagreement, if it is merely you saying your piece and me thinking mine, with nothing to do with each other, that is not good either. When there are different viewpoints, they should be brought out and argued over: although many times argument will not have any result, and it is very difficult to persuade someone to change their mind, and even more difficult for many questions to reach a fully satisfactory conclusion—the value of argument is often precisely shown in the process of arguing itself; the meaning of argument is not to change other people’s views, but to temper and deepen one’s own thought! Toward other people’s views, one must dare to question and rebut, and at the same time be good at understanding and accommodating—that is the attitude toward scholarship and life that I admire.
My attitude was later summed up as “preserve common ground while seeking differences.” As for my views, Teacher Ye did not seem to reject them entirely either, but gave some affirmation: “I’m glad you can have such a systematic and clear set of ideas.” Still, overall, a discussion atmosphere did not really take shape in that course; truly enjoying the atmosphere of free discussion among classmates came only after I entered Wu’s circle.
Teacher Ye agreed that philosophy could be debated, but he
wanted to emphasize “what” is being debated; not every debate has meaning.
In Teacher Ye’s view, and in the view of many classmates as well, before one has a full and accurate grasp of that “what,” one should not launch into debate.
But in my view, even if you strike east while I strike west, the environment of debate itself is meaningful. The “what” that philosophy inquires into is never something that can be grasped in a ready-made and definite way; constant contention and speaking are precisely the necessary environment for bringing it to appearance.
The attitude of wanting to fix the “what” before debating is, in fact, still a denial of the meaning of debate, because if you have already grasped it in hand, then further debate adds nothing to your grasp. In that case, the purpose of debate is at most to persuade others, and the meaning of a philosopher’s speech is reduced to promulgating doctrine.
So those who think that one should not discuss philosophy without precise grasp are, rather than modest, arrogant. I said at the time:
Actually, I feel that the “caution” of certain moments—thinking that one is not qualified to speak about philosophy—is, rather than “humility,” more a manifestation of a certain kind of “arrogance.” They imagine philosophy to be lofty and above everything else; once they feel that they have entered the gate of philosophy, they easily become self-righteous, look down on “ordinary people,” and even look down on the thoughts of other philosophy colleagues who are not as “profound” as they are: “He doesn’t even understand what issue I’m talking about; I don’t have the time or interest to discuss it with him!” I do not want philosophy to become closed off—I do not approve of reinforcing the boundary between philosophy and so-called “ordinary people,” the boundary between philosophy and other sciences and disciplines, or even the boundary between one school of philosophy and another. Everyone faces the same problems, and everyone has the right to think and the right to speak; a so-called “philosopher” is not someone whose questions are so profound that others cannot understand them and thus makes him impressive, but someone who can straighten out various kinds of thought, systematize his own views, and explain them clearly and explicitly!
On this point, I did not much agree with Teacher Ye’s style of quotation marks. Putting quotation marks around some important terms to mark them is absolutely necessary, but if there are more quoted words than unquoted ones in a sentence, if two out of three words are in quotation marks, then quotation marks no longer serve well to indicate the specialness of a particular word; instead, they begin to indicate the specialness of one’s entire utterance. It seems as if my whole discourse stands outside ordinary language, as if every sentence and every word is a lofty philosophical word rather than a shallow everyday word, and people who speak in everyday vocabulary cannot take part in my discussion.
A page full of quotation marks, in a manner of brandishing one’s power, proclaims the distance between philosophical language and ordinary language, flaunting the distance between oneself and common mortals. Does such a distance exist? Of course it does. Not only is there distance between philosophy and the everyday, there is also distance between different philosophical schools; the same word has very different meanings in different contexts. It is meaningful to point out these distances. However, the place where distance opens up is precisely the place where communication still needs to be established, not the place where others are to be kept at arm’s length.
My disagreement with Teacher Ye, on the surface, lay in whether to encourage in-class debate as a learning method; at a deeper level, it was about differing understandings of philosophy and its meaning. But this disagreement was not all that great. It did not prevent me from appreciating and agreeing with some of Teacher Ye’s specific views, especially his *Thought, History, Poetry*, which had quite an influence on my understanding of phenomenology. But I won’t say more about that here.
The way one commemorates a philosopher is different from the way one commemorates an ordinary elder. Ordinary commemoration is nothing more than reciting his merits and virtues, whereas for a philosopher, engaging in dialogue with him is the best way to remember him. As long as someone keeps talking with them, and arguing with them, their thought will be immortal. Teacher Ye said back then that if philosophy is to be debated, then rather than debating with classmates, one should debate with the philosophers who have passed away. Now he has also entered “the history of philosophy,” so from now on, he too should welcome debate, shouldn’t he?
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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