标签：language

What Is “Ideal”?

Life & Notes2008.08.31
What Is “Ideal”?
Today in the freshman group for the 2008 cohort, I mentioned this question (the 08 freshmen are really interesting): what is “ideal”? The concept of “ideal” is one I use fairly often, though I haven’t made many distinctions about it. In “Scattered Notes on Love and Hatred During the Period of Seclusion,” I brought up the connection between “idealism—subjective idealism—philosophy”; in an earlier article I probably mentioned it too (though I couldn’t find it); and more than two years ago, when I talked about “My Life Ideal,” I was using the word ideal entirely in everyday language; while two and a half years ago, in one of the articles that…
philosophy history autobiography knowledge
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2008年8月31日
Ways of Creating Concepts (Jottings)

Philosophy & Thought2008.08.09
Ways of Creating Concepts (Jottings)
Passive creation (mass communication) and active creation (scholarly invention). There are two active modes of creation: the natural-history style of “defining by pointing to the thing” and defining concepts through concepts. The latter is a way of abbreviating some meaning that was originally associated with a long string of concepts like A, B, C, D, E, F, or even with an allusion, or even with an entire philosophical system, into a convenient concept. Why create new concepts? Very simple: because the old concepts are not enough. If an intuition is so unfamiliar that people cannot naturally and smoothly place it in its proper position within the net of concepts, then…
philosophy knowledge Chinese language
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2008年8月9日
Writing Is a Kind of Outpouring

History of Science & Scholarship2008.07.18
Writing Is a Kind of Outpouring
I often hear people say “write, leak.” This is not merely a coincidence of shape; in fact, “write” and “leak” were originally the same character. Jinshan Ciba says: “写，置物也。——《说文》。俗字亦作泻。” Perhaps the evolution of “写” into the meaning of writing merely stems from its original sense of “to place,” but Chinese characters are, after all, endlessly subtle. Whether or not this is a coincidence, these two characters have in any case been deeply bound together. People say good prose is “flowed out,” and I know that my own articles really are flowed out. In this way, I suppose they at least satisfy the necessary but not sufficient condition for becoming good…
scholarship Chinese language writing
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2008年7月18日
Seven Subjects of Moral Education (How to Do Moral Education?)

Culture & Public Commentary2008.07.17
Seven Subjects of Moral Education (How to Do Moral Education?)
Moral education is not the task of the university. By the time they enter college, most students are already adults, and their individual character has long since taken basic shape. A university ought to build a stage on which all kinds of different personalities can coexist, guiding each character to shine in its own distinctive way; it should not then try to remake students’ personalities. Primary and secondary education are different. Primary and secondary schools, together with parents, bear the mission of cultivating and shaping children’s character. The “not yet complete” in “minors” refers precisely to the fact that their personality and character have not yet taken shape, and their…
philosophy culture freedom education
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2008年7月17日
A Loose Talk on “Reasonable” and “Lawful” — Why Is Violent Revolution Unreasonable?

Culture & Public Commentary2008.06.21
A Loose Talk on “Reasonable” and “Lawful” — Why Is Violent Revolution Unreasonable?
I want to note first that what I am saying is that violent revolution is “unreasonable,” not that I will never support violent revolution, but rather that there is no reason to support violent revolution. Although philosophy’s mission is to probe reasons, it is not the case that every one of a person’s preferences must be given reasons. For example, I like eating vegetables; then I like eating vegetables, that is enough, there is no need to come up with a whole lot of reasons to argue for the reasonableness of liking vegetables, as if those who do not like vegetables were somehow at fault. Even if 99% of the…
philosophy culture Kant language
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2008年6月21日
[U.S.] Deborah Tannen: “Men and Women in Intimate Conversation” — ★

Culture & Public Commentary2008.05.23
[U.S.] Deborah Tannen: “Men and Women in Intimate Conversation” — ★
[U.S.]Deborah Tannen: *You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation*, translated by Wu Xingyi, Nanfang Publishing House, 2008——★ During my period of seclusion, I didn’t read very many books, and I don’t want to go through them one by one. This one book, however, I am willing to spend some time excerpting, since it also has a direct bearing on what I am going to write next. Of course, this book is by no means the only one that talks about the differences between men and women. Before it, there had already been highly publicized books such as *Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus*, and books of…
book reading notes pluralism language
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2008年5月23日
On Feyerabend Quotations 5 (Philosophy, Science, and Language Games)

History of Science & Scholarship2008.01.26
On Feyerabend Quotations 5 (Philosophy, Science, and Language Games)
http://hps.phil.pku.edu.cn/bbs/read.php?tid=338 http://hps.phil.pku.edu.cn/bbs/read.php?tid=339 NewStudioOldJiang Selected Quotes from Feyerabend 5 “Catastrophes in the natural environment, war, the collapse of an ethical system that has been perfected, and political revolution, too, will transform human patterns of response, including important patterns of argumentation. Such transformation may well be a completely natural process, and the only function of rational argument may perhaps lie in this fact: it increases psychic tension, and this tension is the precursor of action’s eruption and the cause of that eruption.” (Against Method, 2) “An analysis of the relation between thought and action also shows that, in the growth of our knowledge and the growth of science, the roles played by…
science language game Wittgenstein
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2008年1月26日
Words and Fragments, Episode 5

Philosophy & Thought2007.12.14
Words and Fragments, Episode 5
l In response to someone’s question about how to systematically grasp philosophy of technology: “The introduction to philosophy of technology is not difficult in one sense, because its field is so broad that in fact one can find a doorway into it from any side. Rather than, from the very beginning, pursuing a systematic and comprehensive grasp, it is better to try to identify a point of entry, find the clues, and then follow the vine to find the melon; in this way one can go deeper and deeper. You can begin with any issue you care about—whether it is a classic topic in the history of philosophy, or concern…
philosophy Heidegger language intentionality
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2007年12月14日
Group research may be worth considering.

Life & Notes2007.06.15
Group research may be worth considering.
This time my academic-year paper was rated excellent. That was no surprise, really; after all, among ten people I ought to be able to squeeze in somehow. As expected, Teacher lsl places considerable emphasis on undergraduate research. What he said hit the nail on the head: if problems only surface when it comes to the graduation thesis, then the teachers really have no choice but to “swallow bitter huanglian and stay silent,” because in general no one has the heart to stop a student from graduating just because of the final paper. This is true not only of undergraduates, but of master’s students as well, just as Teacher Liu put…
everyday life scholarship education language
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2007年6月15日
Outline for Discussion on “Religious Knowledge”

Philosophy & Thought2007.06.12
Outline for Discussion on “Religious Knowledge”
Xu Lao-shi is really something… It’s already the last class, and we still have to discuss things, and still have to write a discussion outline… Fortunately the paper can be turned in at the end of the month. Let me write it in a hurry then—I seem to have written a discussion outline for the first time in the form of an outline rather than a paper. But this time it seems to have gone to the other extreme, scattered all over the place… does it have a bit of Vico’s spirit?~ “Religious Knowledge” Discussion Outline According to Kant, intuition and concept are the two elements of knowledge. However, the…
philosophy knowledge language Wittgenstein
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2007年6月12日