Author: 胡翌霖

Selected Philosophical Aphorisms

Philosophy & Thought2006.09.02
Selected Philosophical Aphorisms
《蔡志忠哲理漫画》系列，三联书店 Montesquieu: Everyone has a sense of shyness! But one must know how to overcome it, and never abandon it. ////—To overcome it without abandoning it: nicely put. Pascal: It is no shame for a person to yield to pain; it is shameful to yield to pleasure. ////—Much admired. Pascal: Man’s greatness lies in the fact that humanity knows itself to be unhappy; a tree does not know itself to be unhappy. Thus, to know oneself unhappy is unhappiness, but man’s greatness lies precisely in knowing himself unhappy. Pascal: Man is like a reed, the most fragile thing in nature, yet a thinking reed. In the universe, anything can destroy…
philosophy book reading notes faith
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2006年9月2日
It is when the sky is darkest that people see the stars. — Emerson

Life & Notes2006.08.31
It is when the sky is darkest that people see the stars. — Emerson
As the title says.
book reading notes nature stars
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2006年8月31日
Everything Is Unprepared, Yet the East Wind Blows Quite Fiercely—Disappointed Once Again in Education Reform

Culture & Public Commentary2006.08.30
Everything Is Unprepared, Yet the East Wind Blows Quite Fiercely—Disappointed Once Again in Education Reform
Hayek: In this world, there is always a difference between treating people equally and trying to make them equal. The former is a prerequisite of a free society, while the latter, as Tocqueville described it, means “a new form of servitude.” This passage is truly well put. Freedom, democracy, equality—these concepts sound stirring, and of course they are all good words. Yet how exactly are they to be understood, and how are they to be pursued? That is a big question. The United States, waving the banner of freedom and democracy, carries out its “new form of servitude” across the globe, and in China, too, the concept of equality is…
freedom commentary education equality
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2006年8月30日
A Complete Guide to Buying Books in Shanghai, Beijing, and Online

Life & Notes2006.08.29
A Complete Guide to Buying Books in Shanghai, Beijing, and Online
Shanghai: Having grown used to living at Peking University, when I came back to Shanghai I felt that finding books was really not very convenient. Still, Shanghai is after all a big city, so there are quite a few bookstores. From my home it’s a very short walk to First Yaohan, and in the basement of First Yaohan there is the so-called “Oriental Book City,” advertised as the largest in Pudong. There are quite a lot of books, but the layout is too chaotic; as a general bookstore, it doesn’t have many academic books. On Fuzhou Road: Shanghai Book City is the most famous, but it is also a general…
everyday life China book review script
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2006年8月29日
Draft Text for a Philosophy Popularization Display Board

Philosophy & Thought2006.08.29
Draft Text for a Philosophy Popularization Display Board
The images were too hard to match! I first rushed out a text draft: ten panels in all, each centered on a single “question.” Nearly five hundred Chinese characters, including three excerpts of philosophers’ own words. Doing academic work in Shanghai is really inconvenient. All my books are at school, and after several days of buying and borrowing books I didn’t gain much. With resources this scarce, this is about as far as I can get. Draft Text for Philosophy Popularization Display Panels Xingding published on 2006-08-29 03:52:57 1. What is philosophy? “What is philosophy?” This is precisely the most fascinating, and most bewildering, question in philosophy. Like philosophy’s many…
philosophy Aristotle Marx Plato
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2006年8月29日
Wristwatch

Life & Notes2006.08.28
Wristwatch
The original watch was running slow, so this time when I went home I needed to get a new one. I left the matter of buying a watch to my parents; after all, I don’t care much about style or anything like that, only that it would be better if it were more water-resistant—the previous watch had been tormented by me to the point that rust spots covered both the outside and the inside of it. Nowadays people like to check the time on their mobile phones. After all, almost everyone has one, and using it as a watch along the way is indeed convenient; watches, on the other hand,…
everyday life ritual relationism memory
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2006年8月28日
Constellations and Self-Confidence

Life & Notes2006.08.26
Constellations and Self-Confidence
Pluto has been demoted; now the solar system has become the eight major planets. This news counts as one of the most eye-catching science and technology news items of the past few days, but today I saw a rather interesting report: it said that Pluto’s demotion caused only limited shock in astronomy, yet stirred up quite a commotion in “astrology.” The ones most affected are probably us Scorpio folks, because it is said that Pluto is Scorpio’s “ruling planet.” I don’t know what exactly this ruling planet is supposed to do, but it does sound like the problem is indeed quite serious… Pluto being included among the major planets was…
everyday life tradition intellectuals free will
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2006年8月26日
The Mathematical Roots of Postmodern Thought

History of Science & Scholarship2006.08.25
The Mathematical Roots of Postmodern Thought
[Addendum] Vladimir Tasic: _The Mathematical Roots of Postmodern Thought_, translated by Cai Zhong and Dai Jianping, Fudan University Press, October 2005 Page 5: I think we can subdivide the theoretical edifice of postmodernism. First, one may regard postmodernism as influenced by Romanticism, as a revival—or, to use slightly different terminology, a reinvention—of the ideas of those mathematicians who once challenged logical inductivism; second, one may regard postmodernism as an extreme departure from Romantic humanism, a departure whose roots can in part be traced back to mathematics, and whose postmodern version has become a rather extreme form of formalism. ////——Tasic’s perspective is highly distinctive. Indeed, whenever philosophy discovers that something has…
philosophy book reading notes mathematics
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2006年8月25日
Do Not Forget Popularization

Life & Notes2006.08.25
Do Not Forget Popularization
Whether in philosophy or in science, “popularization” is needed—that is to say, the public outside the field needs to be brought to some degree of understanding in some way. Most people would agree with this; the question is only—who should popularize, to whom should it be popularized, in what way, how should the effects of popularization be defined, and so on. In modern times, learning has become increasingly specialized, increasingly profound, and thus increasingly distant from the grasp of ordinary people. In such circumstances, “popularization” instead appears ever more important. But the current state of popularization is worrying. Looking at science popularization: in fact, modern times can be said to…
philosophy everyday life scholarship science communication
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2006年8月25日
Spoofs, Media, and Random Reflections

Culture & Public Commentary2006.08.24
Spoofs, Media, and Random Reflections
The biggest advantage of being in Shanghai is being able to enjoy air conditioning; the second is being able, now and then, to watch the TV news. I just saw two news items that were rather interesting. One was the “first blog lawsuit in China,” saying that an associate professor at some university had sued Blogcn because, in a certain blog post, someone had insulted him and attacked him personally by name…… In fact it was just a little log entry of three to five hundred characters, with a title like “Rubbish Book, Rubbish Person” or something of the sort. It said: today there’s an exam, so hurry up and…
culture blog internet
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2006年8月24日