标签：philosophy

New Island Dialogues, Zero: Cafés and Scholarship

History of Science & Scholarship2009.03.07
New Island Dialogues, Zero: Cafés and Scholarship
A Niu: Hello, everyone! Thank you for coming to open my event. Xiaoming: Hello, Senior Brother Niu! A Niu: Hmm… what should we talk about? … Let me start by asking about your purpose for coming—what exactly were your intentions or thoughts in coming here to look for me? Xiaoming: Ah, actually I still haven’t figured out what kind of event this is. I just heard that, in legend, Senior Brother Niu was here, so I specially came to pay my respects… A Niu: How polite. It would be better to say you came to visit. I feel a bit like an absurdly ugly wild buffalo in a zoo—nothing much…
philosophy scholarship Aristotle discussion
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2009年3月7日
On “吐嘈”

Philosophy & Thought2009.02.22
On “吐嘈”
Recently I’ve had a way of putting it that philosophy is a kind of act of “tucao.” I’m going to boldly adopt this “term” in my own philosophy; it really is strikingly apt. Anyone who often watches Japanese anime will know the word “tucao,” but “outsiders” and beginners probably won’t quite understand what it actually means, so let me explain it roughly. The explanations circulating online seem all to be copied and pasted from a passage by the POPGO subtitle group. That’s really quite lazy. You can look it up on Baidu Baike or the like. I’ll combine some easily found online materials and briefly restate it in my own…
philosophy language anime ranting
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2009年2月22日
What Is Questioning? — On the Search for Possibility, Again

Philosophy & Thought2009.02.21
What Is Questioning? — On the Search for Possibility, Again
We often say that the core of philosophy is “questions,” and that philosophy’s mission is “to ask,” and so on, but what sort of activity is philosophical questioning, exactly? A question like “What’s for dinner tonight?” does not seem to be philosophy’s concern, so what, precisely, is philosophical questioning? I have touched on related topics in earlier essays. This article may not offer much that is new; perhaps it is just a review or a summary. First, people often talk about so-called “problem consciousness.” This term is used far too loosely, but what does it actually mean? In some places it is simply used as if it were identical with…
philosophy freedom pursuit reason
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2009年2月21日
I Won’t Date in Cafés.

Life & Notes2009.02.18
I Won’t Date in Cafés.
Coffeehouses are not, properly speaking, places for dates, but places for encounters. Whether in the broad sense or the narrow sense, I won’t be arranging any dates in a coffeehouse this year. Nowadays, coffeehouses seem to have been fashioned into places with a special “atmosphere,” seemingly best suited to friends meeting up, especially couples on a date. But I want to revive the spirit of the coffeehouse and restore coffee to its original face. What I mean by not dating in a coffeehouse chiefly contains two layers of meaning. First, with regard to the broad sense of “dating,” I will not meet anyone at any agreed time in a coffeehouse….
philosophy everyday life blog humanities
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2009年2月18日
On Saturday, I Was on New Island. (A Manifesto for Launching a Truly Café Philosophy Club)

Life & Notes2009.02.15
On Saturday, I Was on New Island. (A Manifesto for Launching a Truly Café Philosophy Club)
As the main project of increasing my offline activities this year, the point is to return to cafés. About three years ago around this time, I used to frequent Plato Café; this was mainly during the second half of my sophomore year. Besides Plato, there were also Beifengtang and Azhudan (at the time Plato was not open 24 hours, while the latter two were). These were all places I frequented. Reading and grinding through papers in those places was most efficient. But I soon drifted away from them for several reasons. First, later on I rented a place outside the South Gate, namely “mutton-soup alley,” which gave me a fixed…
philosophy everyday life China Aristotle
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2009年2月15日
A Small Collection of Weiming Signature Blocks

Life & Notes2009.02.12
A Small Collection of Weiming Signature Blocks
For a long time, my signature on Wenming has been nothing more than a simple blog address link, with limited advertising effect. Lately I’ve been hanging around the department board more often, and while looking at some interesting signature lines, I’ve come to feel that a rather rich signature line can indeed have quite a strong appeal. I don’t really like writing fragmentary, aphoristic pieces, but every now and then writing a few passages like this does feel pretty good. Before I knew it, I had already added 9 signature lines (the latest 4 of which, it seems, I still haven’t had a chance to use in posts), and together…
philosophy everyday life One Piece Guo Degang
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2009年2月12日
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
Four Readings of “Scholarship”

History of Science & Scholarship2009.01.18
Four Readings of “Scholarship”
The people who claim to be walking the path of “academia” often take very different routes. Although, in the final analysis, each person’s path is unique, still, in broad and rough terms, there are probably the following four ways of understanding the word “academia.” Of course, a given person may fall somewhere between several paths, but the general direction is probably these four. The first kind of “academia” I call “the power of the academy,” though that sounds somewhat unsavory. Yet this is indeed the path taken by most so-called “scholars.” What they seek is not their own growth, but labels such as titles, ranks, and authority; the only difference…
philosophy scholarship Peking University art
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2009年1月18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
On My Research Plan for the Next Few Years—Coursework for Reading and Writing

Life & Notes2009.01.07
On My Research Plan for the Next Few Years—Coursework for Reading and Writing
In academic matters, I am not used to setting plans or goals for myself. That does not mean I am a person who drifts with the tide; on the contrary, at any given moment I have a clear understanding of the road beneath my feet, and I will decisively take the next step, but I am not attached to some distant goal that has not yet entered my field of vision. Up to now, the path of my growth, seen in detail, has seemed as though every step were natural and continuous, yet taken as a whole it appears unexpectedly—although looking back now one can hardly find any obvious break…
philosophy everyday life phenomenology Wu Guosheng
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2009年1月7日