A friend who studied philosophy said that he was embarrassed to say that he was embarrassed to speak of his profession, and that he would be slightly "ashamed". If someone asks me what book I've been reading lately, I'm not very good at answering "Kant", which is either contrived or out of place, reading philosophy, thinking and talking in a philosophical way, is it really so out of place in this day and age?
However, there are also some other voices, such as a migrant worker who translated Heidegger's introduction that was hotly discussed some time ago, and some of the content that Liu Qing and Xu Zhiyuan talked about in the recent thirteen invitations, as if the pace of philosophy is very close, giving people the illusion that philosophy is about to become popular again.
Leaving aside the shining stars of the philosophy of the Enlightenment era, in the 1980s, the Chinese recovered from great pain and social turmoil ushered in a cultural explosion in the most urgent need for ideas, and the first to rush in this Enlightenment trend was philosophy and literature. Sartre, Nietzsche, Freud, these names have been imprinted in the hearts of a generation, and with their theories have comforted the Chinese who continue to appease and wait for the spiritual confines.
But when people find that philosophy is not enough, this craze quickly fades, and people need roads, not lamps; what they need is tangible modernization, not modernity in thought. In this way, philosophy became the mascot of the ivory tower, the unrealistic shelter, the synonym for the false void.
These prejudices gradually intensified, so much so that when a young man who loved philosophy appeared, especially when the young man was in the predicament of life and still insisted on showing his love of philosophy with action, he would be so surprised. Why don't migrant workers with very little income work overtime to make money, why don't they work hard to improve their lives, and why do they indulge in the void of philosophy?
This seems to be a very reasonable question, but if you follow this line of thought, when you make human living conditions and even survival itself the first priority of life, you will ask why people do not live recklessly, but for a certain idea, a future that cannot be experienced by themselves, and dedicate their own energy and even life itself?
Behind this questioning, there is a dualistic premise, that is, the dual division of matter and spirit, and at the same time, it also affirms the priority of matter in the face of spirit. The root cause of all problems falls on the happiness of living beings and the existence of life itself, and this utilitarian concept of reality can indeed promote the welfare of society for a period of time, but when people are tired of the overwhelming benefits of the so-called development of civilization, they will fall into the abyss of no attachment.
Sartre once said that man is useless passion. Using the unique imagination of human beings to think in the vast universe and the long river of history, it is difficult not to draw Sartre's conclusions. Man is like a pile of burning firewood, except for the brief illumination and the limited warmth of the surroundings, which will eventually be blown by the wind and not even ashes left.
In this way, the world's richest man who wants to conquer the universe and the migrant worker who hides in a rental house to read Heidegger are unified in the grand and small dimension of "human beings", and the huge differences between them will become small in a larger perspective. If the essence of human beings is destined to be nothing, then the inevitable end of all people will be to burn out of passion and return to silence, whether it was once glory or suffering.
Even if we can use the parenthesis of birth and death to frame the wonderful and helpless in the course of life, the expansion of imagination still makes it difficult for us to face the emptiness of meaning left before birth and after death. This emptiness becomes more evident especially when man's desires in the life brackets are unsatisfied or overly satisfied.
Back in the philosophical fever of the eighties, it is obvious that the former, that is, the suddenly open world, let people discover the diversity of desires, and for a time, the speed of material development can not meet people's desire to expand the needs, so in order to make up for the void, philosophy appeared in a timely manner.
Today, it seems that the situation has reached the other end. The rapid expansion of matter, the value that people possess, is devalued by the desires that follow, and the rate of this derogation is getting faster and faster, so that the preservation period has not yet been tasted, people are getting tired of the overwhelming new desires, and the eyes are gradually turning from this world to eternity, trying to find the expectations of the world in something that can be passed through to the last and afterlife.
At this moment, philosophy seems to return to the prescription of "detoxification", but it may not exist as a way of thinking that seeks the value of human existence and the truth of the universe, but only as an antidote to the meaning crisis and spiritual emptiness of modern people, and it is no different from some strange superstitions, outdated but stubborn beliefs, popular psychological principles and chicken soup of life philosophy, etc., and has become a fashionable option for people to treat modern diseases.
Originally not a philosophical content of fast food, it was made into a brief history and a chapter of anecdotes, as if you can get a three-Michelin three-star meal by stuffing Angus beef into McDonald's. A task that requires long-term concentration and mental commitment is dissolved into great wisdom that can only be obtained in some listening software.
However, philosophy cannot solve the empty problem, neither the religious other shore nor the eternal heaven of truth can accurately project into the present world, beyond the expectations of life, nor can it save the suffering and helplessness that life experiences. As an instrument of liberation or a holy scripture of hope, philosophy plays no higher role than religion or psychology, or even to the point of success.
Liu Qing said in the thirteen invitations that no matter how much reason he knows, he may not be able to live this life well. Although philosophy can still serve as a place for the useless passions of human beings, or as a spiritual refuge for depression, philosophy is "useless" on this level. It is no wonder that when talking about migrant workers translating Heidegger, people always have an implicit premise, that is, the basic requirements of life have not been met, and why are so many useless.
Is there any use of philosophy for life?
Back to what Roman Rowland once said: There is only one kind of heroism in the world, that is, to love life after seeing the truth. Philosophy does not allow people to act in a heroic way, but it can make people "see life" to a certain extent, which is also a response to Socrates's "unreflected life is not worth living".
Liu Qing mentioned a kind of irony in modern society, on the one hand, promising modern men and women a wealth of life possibilities, there is nothing that cannot be done, and there is nothing that cannot be obtained; on the other hand, it uses various tools to frame people within a range of data, formatting, and patterns, the world seems to be a complete puzzle, and everyone must play their own small piece of the role, and there is no room for error.
Philosophy, as a tool of discovery, cannot free man from this situation of richness and barrenness, pluralism and one-way, but at least it can make people first recognize this situation, recognize the boundaries of the brackets of existence, recognize the possibilities and limitations that reality offers to themselves, and before making a choice, first ensure that the choice is clear, and then confirm to the greatest extent that they are free to choose.
But the function of philosophy is not only this, Liu Qing and Xu Zhiyuan mentioned an understanding, a mutual understanding based on human rational thinking, whether empathetic or reasoning, and this understanding believes that human beings are the key to philosophy.
Philosophy is nothing more than a system of discourse, as if numbers and formulas were to mathematics, of course, the key is the meaning contained in them, but more importantly, people can communicate effectively based on it. If philosophy, as a tool of discovery, has the function of understanding the world, then philosophy, as a tool of communication, is to enable people to understand each other.
Philosophy and the thinking behind it allow people to achieve an understanding of the situation of others far beyond emotion, using philosophical inferences about causality and beyond causality, and human behavior is understandable and predictable to a certain extent, or within the scope of human groups. Based on philosophical thinking, more peaceful and effective communication between people will also become possible.
The friend who translated Heidegger expressed such a reality through the media —
"In between more than a decade of working life, Sartre, Kierkegaard, Husserl, Deleuze, and Lévi Strauss of anthropology, I will read all of this. It wasn't until 2017 that I experienced the deepest and most powerless despair philosophically. At that time, I wanted to write several philosophical papers for publication, and the titles were all prepared, but I couldn't write them.
Writing a thesis requires a lot of references and second-hand literature, and I feel that I do not have this ability. First, I don't have so many books, and second, these things are not easy to find. And at that time, my level of philosophy was relatively low, I was still working, and I didn't have so much time to do this.
The most I wrote was a few hundred words, and looking at the empty computer screen, I couldn't write it at all. After so many years of self-study, I found that I might not be able to do philosophy, and I was too frustrated. I was working in a hardware factory in Shantou, and on April 1, 2017, I wrote in my diary: I am completely out of work. I can't do anything else, and if I have the opportunity in the future, I will translate some foreign documents. Philosophy itself I can't do it, I have to give up! “
This is not his problem, even people like Liu Qing, who are recognized as "philosophers", confess in the thirteen invitations that they do not have any original theories, but more as a "historian of philosophy" to convey the theories and applications of different philosophers to society.
If philosophy is not regarded as a tool for discovery and communication, then it can only be a history of philosophy, whether it is translating Heidegger or writing lecture notes on modern Western thought, it is a footnote to the history of philosophy, to the theories of certain philosophers.
Philosophy can be the history of philosophy, but it should not be just the history of philosophy. After completing those profound reflections and forming certain ideas that can be regarded as common property by mankind, philosophy still has to return to the human world with all its glory, as a tool for discovering the truth of life and communicating with each other, in the finite and seemingly nihilistic short life of mankind, to discover transcendent meaning, and that meaning may be in the unique but universal reaction that everyone makes to life with philosophy.