标签：culture

How Do I Read?

History of Science & Scholarship2009.01.21
How Do I Read?
About reading and writing, I said earlier that these two activities alternate in a cycle and become my mode of thinking: thought begins in reading and comes to a pause in writing. But that is too general a way of putting it, so the essay “The writer, one who pours forth” described my style of writing, and the more recent “How I choke out a paper” added a discussion of the specific mode of writing called paper-writing. Now, if I add a note on my method of reading, the picture is even more complete. Still the old saying: my style is not worth boasting about, much less imitating. In particular,…
philosophy culture scholarship writing
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2009年1月21日
JOKER! — The Clown, the One Who Tells Jokes, the Wild Card, the Big Joker, the King.

Life & Notes2009.01.16
JOKER! — The Clown, the One Who Tells Jokes, the Wild Card, the Big Joker, the King.
I am merely an unclaimed street performer, roaming the noisy, clamorous streets of the city, using the crudest props I happened to pick up to ply the cheapest tricks before passersby hurrying past, only hoping that busy modern people might stop for a moment now and then. —— Gu Cha He is neither arrogant nor deferential to others; he is simply striving to pursue true wisdom. A true joker is very different from the other cards. —— Sophie So, Sophie, now you must make a choice. Are you a child whose curiosity has not yet been worn away by the world? Or a philosopher who can never be such a…
philosophy culture autobiography civilization
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2009年1月16日
There Are No Experts in Philosophy

Philosophy & Thought2009.01.01
There Are No Experts in Philosophy
I said very early on—sophomore year, maybe freshman year?—something like, “I don’t want to be an expert; I want only to be a master.” At first it was just something said privately among friends, but then it spread, and so I could only regard it as public speech. Of course I have always been able to stand behind that sentence. It is based on how I situated myself and on my understanding of philosophy. Over these years I have, I think, come to understand philosophy more deeply, and so now I can offer some more penetrating interpretation of what I said back then. First, we need to ask: what exactly…
philosophy culture scholarship experts
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2009年1月1日
[Collection] A Small Subset of Japanese Loanwords in Modern Chinese

Culture & Public Commentary2008.11.08
[Collection] A Small Subset of Japanese Loanwords in Modern Chinese
I guess I’m just remembering to add some background material for Professor Chen’s lecture~（http://hps.phil.pku.edu.cn/bbs/read.php?tid=523 ） Liu Zheng (Tuyan) et al. (1984) compiled 890 loanwords of Japanese origin; I am citing this from Yang Xipeng, *Research on Chinese Loanwords* (汉语外来词研究), Shanghai People’s Publishing House, 2007, pp. 149–154. I have merely selected some of the words that are more related to scholarship or reasoning, for everyone’s enjoyment: — if it weren’t for these concepts introduced from Japan as Western learning moved eastward, could we still reason things out? implication, hegemony, saturation, insurance, guarantee, pessimism, tragedy, background, essence, proportion, necessity, organizational structure, dialectics, specimen, slogan, vote, phenomenon, doctor, museum, visit, inspect, refer to,…
book reading culture notes Chinese
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2008年11月8日
This Episode’s Music: Mussorgsky – A Night on the Bare Mountain

Life & Notes2008.11.07
This Episode’s Music: Mussorgsky – A Night on the Bare Mountain
http://course.szu.edu.cn/yinyue/xinshang/jiaoxiangyue/bjjc/mussorgsky/s15-57.mp3 It’s been a long time since I last posted music. Why? I forgot. Anyway, let’s pick one~ I’ve posted two pieces of serious classical music in a row, so this time let’s change the flavor and go with something eerie~ Halloween has already been over for a week, but let’s just barely count this as seasonally appropriate~ http://www.xici.net/b340764/d38035860.htm The fantasia *Night on Bald Mountain* was originally named “The Night of St. John’s Eve on the Bare Mountain.” It is a famous work by the Russian composer Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky. *Night on Bald Mountain* is a single-movement programmatic piece, with narrative and pictorial qualities; its structure is free, close to…
everyday life culture music works
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2008年11月7日
【This event has ended】[Paused][Unpinned][Pinned 3] Seeking mm~【This event has ended】

Life & Notes2008.11.01
【This event has ended】[Paused][Unpinned][Pinned 3] Seeking mm~【This event has ended】
一、Announcement 1. Male. Born in ’85. Philosophy of science and technology at Peking University. Suixuan Gucha. Born in Shanghai, settled in Beijing. I love wisdom, books, and cartoons. 2. Seeking one mm. 3. No conditions, no requirements (except those conditions that are analytically included within the ordinary understanding of the concept mm). 4. This post will remain in force until the blog entry is closed. 5. Reposting and circulation are welcome, but only this announcement section may be reposted, with the source indicated as EPR.ycool.com. 6. Aside from interested parties or people interested in introducing someone to me, I will not report related progress to any other friends. 7. Contact…
philosophy culture freedom autobiography
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2008年11月1日
The Philosopher’s “Manifest” and “Hidden”

Philosophy & Thought2008.10.10
The Philosopher’s “Manifest” and “Hidden”
In the comments received not long after the posting of “Pinned Post 2,” one mm mentioned that I was “a manifest type” rather than “an implicit type,” and so on. The specifics can be seen directly in that post, so I won’t repeat them here. Typical feminine-style comments are headache-inducing, because they are hard to deal with. As that mm said, “…more intuitive”: once a comment is made “from intuition,” then it becomes very hard to criticize. Only when a theory is built on “reasons” is it possible to inspect and criticize it, because “reasons” are public, whereas “intuition” is always private; I cannot criticize another person’s “intuition.” In addition,…
philosophy culture scholarship public sphere
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2008年10月10日
The replacement of “freedom” by “equality” is the common root of the predicament of modern science and modern democracy

Culture & Public Commentary2008.10.07
The replacement of “freedom” by “equality” is the common root of the predicament of modern science and modern democracy
This little essay was scribbled down when I had an itch to comment on a recent post by Professor Wu; see: http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_51fdc0620100bi39.html#cmt_1382340 Since the issues involved are rather important, I am not recording this passage in the usual “repost—archive” way, but tentatively pasting it here again. Since this passage is both rough and hasty, there is plenty of room for questions. ———————— Science and democracy can be said to be of the same origin and current, with their roots in ancient Greece, their modern versions in the Enlightenment, and their contemporary forms both taking the United States as a model. And their contemporary forms both differ markedly from ancient Greece….
culture freedom modernity equality
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2008年10月7日
An Essay on Freedom of Speech

Culture & Public Commentary2008.10.05
An Essay on Freedom of Speech
“Freedom of thought” is reflected at the social level as “freedom of speech,” and “freedom of speech” at the legal level appears as the principle that one can never be “punished for what one says.” It is necessary to distinguish “punished for what one says” from crimes committed by means of speech, such as incitement, defamation, insult, agitation, deception, and so on. There are countless offenses carried out through speech, and these convictions are not necessarily unreasonable. But one must always remain clear-headed in distinguishing this: none of these charges can be “punished for what one says”; the basis for conviction can never be the speech alone, but must rest…
culture freedom trust law
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2008年10月5日
Violent Sanctions Are a Helpless Compensation for the Limits of Reason

Culture & Public Commentary2008.09.09
Violent Sanctions Are a Helpless Compensation for the Limits of Reason
I once said, “Violent revolution is unreasonable”—because “violence” is always non-rational, and revolution is always illegal. Yet this gives rise to a still more severe problem: if violence may be lawful, then how is the rationality of law possible? We know that laws are made by the government (whether that so-called government represents God, the emperor, or all citizens), and the implementation of law often has to appeal to violence. It is hard to imagine a rule-of-law society maintained without violent institutions such as police and prisons. Even if a social order established without bodily violent sanctions is at least conceivable in theory, once a public “law” is instituted, it…
culture politics public sphere reason
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2008年9月9日