标签：reason

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
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
Following the Grain and Finding Order: “Li means to work jade.”

Philosophy & Thought2008.07.22
Following the Grain and Finding Order: “Li means to work jade.”
“Wen” and “li” have undergone thousands of years of evolution in China, and then, further reshaped by modern Western languages and influenced by modern science, they long ago became unrecognizable. Hence the talk of choosing between the humanities and the sciences, of emphasizing li over wen, of the integration of wen and li, and so on. But what exactly is wen, and what exactly is li? These notions have long since become ambiguous and obscure, seeming to be something and yet not quite. In people’s minds, “li” probably means mathematics and physics, or more generally those activities that resemble “calculation”; while “wen” seems to mean handling brush and ink, or…
philosophy China Heidegger tradition
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2008年7月22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
“Love” as the Ultimate Meaning

Philosophy & Thought2008.02.18
“Love” as the Ultimate Meaning
What is the meaning of asking about the meaning of a thing? Broadly speaking, it is asking why one does this thing. But the purpose of a thing is often very hard to determine: the meaning of eating is to eliminate hunger, or to increase nutrition, or to satisfy taste, or perhaps to serve several purposes at once. At the same time, meaning can be further questioned. For example, if I say eating is for the sake of increasing nutrition, then one can ask again: what is the meaning of increasing nutrition? Continuing to ask about the meaning of increasing nutrition, one might answer that it is for the sake…
philosophy faith reason emotion
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2008年2月18日
Text Is Principle

Philosophy & Thought2008.02.17
Text Is Principle
Earlier I mentioned the sciences, so here let me say a bit more about “wen” and “li.” The division between wen and li is a real situation. I do not want to erase the actual differences between theory and literature, but I do want to point out one thing: what is called “wen” — literature, writing, culture, the wen of the humanities — and what is called “li” — mathematics and the sciences, theory, ideals, principle — are in fact related at certain root levels, and were even originally one and the same. The present division of disciplines is: humanities versus science and engineering, as if the sciences and engineering…
philosophy China reason Chinese characters
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2008年2月17日
Nonsense about “Feeling”

Philosophy & Thought2008.01.23
Nonsense about “Feeling”
Rewriting “to be is to be perceived” — “Dasein is sensation.” Human beings from beginning to end are a convergence of sensations. Sensation (the senses, perception) does not, in essence, have a distinction between “inside” and “outside”; on the contrary, the distinction between “inside” and “outside,” just like “hot and cold,” “light and dark,” “high and low,” “strong and weak,” and so on, is a differentiation that arises from sensation. What is special, however, is that the distinction between “inside” and “outside” comes from “sensation of sensation,” that is, “self-consciousness.” This capacity is generally considered uniquely human, or at least something at which human beings are especially adept. The concrete…
philosophy self reason space
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2008年1月23日
How to “Persuade” Extreme Irrationalists?

Culture & Public Commentary2008.01.20
How to “Persuade” Extreme Irrationalists?
Does this kind of “extreme irrationalist” simply not exist at all, merely a target I’ve erected for myself? Not necessarily. Although no great philosopher has been so absurd, such tendencies are not uncommon among general theorists. Many people do indeed take irrationalism as a “refuge” in order to evade their intellectual laziness. Every utterly and extremely radical position is an impregnable fortress: those outside cannot break in, but those inside cannot fight their way out either. For a completely irrationalist, how can one be persuaded? A completely irrationalist cannot be “persuaded,” because “persuasion” means “arguing reasonably,” “convincing by reason”; but if the other party is completely irrational, then no amount…
philosophy culture reason violence
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2008年1月20日
A Tentative Discussion of Schopenhauer’s Spirit of Rationalism

History of Science & Scholarship2008.01.10
A Tentative Discussion of Schopenhauer’s Spirit of Rationalism
The epigraph to the first part of *The World as Will and Representation* quotes Rousseau: “Step out of childhood, my friend, awaken!” What did Schopenhauer want to express by this line? We might as well compare it with a fable he wrote late in life: “A mother, with the hope of educating and cultivating her children’s minds, lets them read Aesop’s fables; but they soon send the book back, and the eldest, precocious child says: this is not the sort of book we read; it is too childish, too silly; you cannot make us believe that foxes and wolves can talk, and we shall read nothing of the kind again!…
phenomenology Kant knowledge paper
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2008年1月10日
Words and Fragments, Episode 4

Philosophy & Thought2007.11.13
Words and Fragments, Episode 4
l What is called the conflict between theory and practice, or the contradiction between ideal and practice, and the like, has since antiquity been a hard-to-resolve opposition. But one cannot simply equate these oppositions with the irreconcilable opposition between philosophy and life; these are not the same thing. In the first place, the problems of conflict, contradiction, or opposition themselves—these views themselves—are already philosophical problems. Philosophy permeates life; a life with not the slightest bit of “philosophy” in it would not be human life. l The preceding paragraph seems to refer to a case I once saw in *Freakonomics*; I have occasionally thought of it lately, and it is still…
philosophy reason intellectuals logic
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2007年11月13日