This article is selected from
Meeting China: A Dialogue between Chinese and Western Philosophy
Author: Michael Sandel
Paul J. D'Ambrosio, ed
Translator: Zhu Huiling Jia Peitao
Publication date: January 2022
One night in December 2012, on the campus of Xiamen University on China's southeast coast, a large crowd of students gathered outside the door of the school lecture hall, far exceeding the capacity of the lecture hall. I stood in the doorway and looked through the glass at the excited faces of the young students who were flocking to me. A group of security guards were urging the crowd to remain quiet; the principal also called the organizers of the night's event to warn them not to get out of control.
Kiku Adatto
The object of their fervent desire has gained "popularity in China that is usually only enjoyed by Hollywood stars and NBA players" (China Daily once commented). He was Michael Sandel, a gentle and eloquent Minnesota man. He is a professor of political philosophy at Harvard University, and his course "Justice" is widely popular with students, guiding students to understand the central figures in the history of Western thought, such as Aristotle, Kant, rawls, etc. Sandel codified these people's theories of moral decision-making into real-world moral dilemmas. Is torture justified? If your child needed some kind of medicine to save his life, would you steal it? A public television program in the United States filmed the scenes of these classes and put them online. When the courses began to spread in China, some volunteers translated subtitles. Within two years, Sandor gained amazing star-like popularity in China. China News Weekly magazine called him "the most influential foreign figure of 2010."
Qian Yingyi, dean of Tsinghua University's School of Economics and Management, told me: "Sandel's approach to solving moral problems is not only very novel for Chinese readers, but also closely related to the daily discussion of certain major social issues. "By the time I went to campus to experience Sandel's encounter with China, his subtitled courses on Western political philosophy had been viewed at least 20 million times on the Internet. Esquire used to feature him on the cover, titled Masterpieces and Masterpieces.
If you live in early 21st-century China (I lived here from 2005-2013), you will witness a philosophical and spiritual renaissance that can be compared to the Great Awakening era in 19th-century America.
The more people's basic material needs are met, the more they question the way they were distributed in the past. In search of new meaning, they seek new ways not only from religion, but also from philosophy, psychology, and literature, in order to discern their own direction in an ideologically inconsistent and constantly changing world. In a highly competitive, market-driven society, what kind of responsibilities do individuals have toward strangers? When telling the truth is very dangerous, how much responsibility does a person have to tell the truth? How should a society define equity and opportunity? The quest for answers to these questions is, in a way, like the pursuit of prosperity, awakening and inspiring people.
Accustomed to living quietly in Brooklyn, Massachusetts with his wife and two sons, Sandel began to learn to cope with the unusual repercussions he had abroad, especially in East Asia. In Seoul, he has spoken to 14,000 people at an outdoor stadium; in Tokyo, his speech tickets were sold to $500 a piece by scalpers. In China, he inspired an almost religious devotion, and he became a star-like figure here. Once, at the Shanghai airport, the passport control officer stopped him and then chattered about telling him that he was a fan of his.
Outside the lecture hall of Xiamen University, the crowd gathered more and more, and finally the organizers decided to open the door to better maintain order. So despite fire laws, they let crowds flood the aisles, with densely packed young people sitting in every corner.
Sandor stepped up to the podium, and behind him was a huge plastic banner with the name of his new book: "Money Can't Buy Anything." In the book, he asks if many of the features of modern life are becoming what he calls "tools for profit." In China, the pendulum has rapidly moved away from the planned economy, and everything in society today seems to have a price tag: military service, kindergarten qualifications, judges' rulings, and so on. Sandel's message was so closely related to this that the audience was engrossed. He told the audience: "I'm not against the market itself; I'm saying that we barely realize that in recent decades we've gone from being a market economy to a market society." ”
Sandel mentions a story read from a newspaper headline: A high school student from a poor area of Anhui Province sold his kidney for $3,500; when he returned home with his iPad and iPhone, his mother discovered the deal; and then he developed kidney failure. The doctor who operated on him and 8 others were subsequently arrested— they had already sold the kidney for 10 times the price. "There are 1.5 million people in China who need organ transplants," Sandel told the audience, "but only 10,000 organs are available every year." He then asked, "How many of us here would support the legal sale of kidney organs through the free market?" ”
A young Chinese man named Peter, dressed in a white sweatshirt and thick glasses, raised his hand to express a libertarian stance that legalizing the trade in kidney organs would eliminate the black market. Others disagreed with him. Sandel suddenly increased the weight, assuming that a Chinese father first sold a kidney, "A few years later, he was going to send his second son to school, and then a man came to ask him if he was willing to sell the other kidney (or heart) if he was willing to give up his life." Is there anything wrong with that? Peter thought for a moment and said, "As long as it is free, transparent, and open, the rich can buy life, which is not immoral." There was a commotion in the crowd, and a middle-aged man behind me shouted, "No! ”
Sandel quieted the scene and then asked, "The problem of the market is essentially a question of how we want to live together." Do we want a society where everything can be bought and sold? ”
The next day, Sandel told me, "I've been to many countries, and probably with the exception of the United States, China's vision of a free market and moral intuition are the deepest." What interested him most, though, was the relative force, the voice from the crowd that was uneasy about selling the second kidney. "If you probe further and examine these intuitions through discussion, they are morally hesitant to extend market logic to every area," he says. For example, Chinese audiences generally accept scalper tickets — high-priced resales of concert tickets, or even numbers for doctors in public hospitals. But when I asked them if scalpers should be allowed to sell train tickets when everyone was going home during the Spring Festival, most people objected. ”
In China, foreign ideas have a history of public attention and academic discussion. After World War I, China remained closed in many ways, but it attracted some influential people to visit. Wang Hui, a professor in the Department of Chinese and History at Tsinghua University, told me: "In the 1920s, very few famous Western philosophers visited China, except for John Dewey and Bertrand Russell, and the Indian poet Tagore. Prestigious intellectuals, such as Liang Qichao and Dewey's student Hu Shi, introduced them. With these extraordinary introductions, Dewey and several other scholars attracted a large following. Later, Freud and Habermas also embarked on this path.
In 2007, Sandel came to China for the first time. At that time, Chinese audiences no longer felt novel by the visit of a Western scholar, so the interaction needed to be more in-depth, not just relying on curiosity. Wang Hui said: "Before Sandel came to China, there were already many Western scholars who came. Some philosophers, like Rawls and his theory of justice, Friedrich Hayek and his theory of "spontaneous order," have had great influence among Chinese intellectuals. Therefore, the process of intellectual acceptance of Sandel is a process of debate and consultation, which seems to me to be a good thing. "The time is ripe for an in-depth dialogue. Introducing Sandel, Professor Wan Junren of Tsinghua University said that China has an "urgent heart."
Sandel has spent much of his career thinking about what he calls "the moral responsibility we owe to our fellow human beings." He lived in Hopkins, a suburb of Minneapolis, Minnesota, until he was 13 years old, and later moved with his family to Los Angeles, where classmates skipped class to go surfing. This strongly impacted the kind of cautious introvertedness from the Midwest in his heart. He told me, "Southern California's influence on character development can be seen in the unconstrained self of the real world." With an early interest in liberal politics, he entered Brandeis University, and then went to Oxford University with funding from a Rhodes Scholarship. One winter break, he would work with a classmate to complete an economics paper. "My friend has a very strange schedule, I probably sleep at midnight, and he stays up all night. So I had the morning time to read philosophy books. Sandel said. By the time school began, he had finished reading the works of Kant, Rawls, Robert Nozick, and Hannah Arendt; he finally put economics aside and turned to philosophy.
In the years that followed, he began to call for a more direct discussion of moral issues in public life. "Martin Luther King Jr. clearly cites spiritual and religious resources," he said. When Robert Kennedy ran for president in 1968, he also explicitly expressed a kind of liberalism that resonated morally and spiritually. By 1980, however, American liberals had set aside discourse about morality and virtue because it was seen as "what religious rights do." Sandel said: "I began to feel as if something was missing in this value-neutral politics. I fear that the moral emptiness in mainstream public dialogue creates a vacuum that leaves an opportunity for religious radicalism and hard-line nationalism. Liberalism in the United States is becoming increasingly bureaucratic and incapable of inspiring people. ”
In 2010, a group of volunteers from China gathered to set up Renren Film and Television to translate foreign programs. When they finished turning to sitcoms and crime dramas, they turned to the online courses that were starting to go online at American universities. Sandel had come to China once to give lectures to some philosophy students, but when he came back to China after his courses went live, he found some phenomena. "They told me that if the lecture started at 7 p.m., the kids would start taking their seats at 1:30 p.m." "They filled the classrooms and I had to be careful to get through these enthusiastic people," he said. Sandel also sees the impact of his ideas in other countries, but none as strongly as in China. We have discussed and tried to understand this phenomenon. The harvard name certainly has appeal, and the professional polishing and production of public television does make this course more interesting to watch than other courses. For Chinese students, however, his approach to class was also a surprise: He asked students to stand up and express their moral views, allowing them to participate independently in complex and unrestricted discussions of issues, which is rare in chinese classrooms. Qian Yingyi said that the students read Sandel's "Justice: What to Do?" The Chinese edition of the book, "Is partly because there are very few Western philosophies taught in China, and moreover, this book is very suitable for Chinese university students, and it uses many interesting examples to illustrate different schools of thought."
In addition to the popularity of the class style, Sandel explains more deeply Chinese keen interest in moral philosophy. "When society has a problem, for whatever reason, they can't seriously and openly discuss all kinds of major ethical issues," he said. Young people, in particular, "feel the emptiness of public discussion, and they want better." In a sense, China is a promised land of unrestrainedness; here individuals can be freed from social ties and history and make decisions based on their own interests, which was not possible before. Deng Xiaoping initiated economic reforms and proposed that prosperity and development were the first priority. In 1992, he said that "development is the last word"; China has since embarked on a road to prosperity that it did not know, but at the same time paid a heavy price. In the decades that followed, China suffered from risks posed by market societies, such as the proliferation of counterfeit drugs, tofu residue projects, and rampant corruption.
Sandel offers China's young people some useful, challenging, but not subversive discourse systems, as well as a framework in which issues such as inequality, corruption, and equity can be discussed, but it sounds unpolitical. This is a discussion that talks about morality without pointing directly to political legitimacy and political authority.
Sometimes, Sandor is questioned by Chinese commentators. For some, his argument against the market is theoretically feasible, but the fairness concept of "thin" strikes Chinese recalls rations and empty shelves. Others argue that having money is the only way to protect themselves from abuse of power, so restricting the market only increases power in the hands of the government. "Some neoliberal intellectuals were very angry at his views, but most of the audience liked it." Professor Wang Hui of Tsinghua University said, "Sandel's topics, such as justice, equality, and the role of morality in life, are closely related to our society.
After my speech in Xiamen, I watched several of Sandel's speeches in Beijing to college students at different schools. When Sandel describes the United States as having split into a society of the rich vs. others, the "skyboxification," it's clear that The Chinese audience is largely sympathetic. After 30 years of striding forward toward a society where everything can be bought and sold, many Chinese are beginning to reflect.
On his last night in Beijing, Sandel was going to give a lecture at the University of International Business and Economics. Here, he met a number of student volunteers who worked to perfectly translate Sandel's "Just" lecture series. A young girl gushed, "Your class saved my soul." Sandor was about to ask her what she meant by that when the crowd gathered around him to take pictures and sign autographs. I hesitated, but walked over, introduced myself, and then asked her. Her name is Shi Ye, she is 24 years old, and she is about to receive a master's degree in human resource management. She told me that when she came into contact with Sandel's writings, it was like getting "a key to the mind and starting to doubt everything." "After a month, I started to feel different, it was a year ago. Now, I often ask myself, what is the moral dilemma here? ”
Initially her parents were farmers, and later her father traded in seafood. "I went with my mother to worship the Buddha, and I would set up offerings on the table. I didn't think there was anything wrong with that before, but when I went with my mother again a year later, I asked her, 'Why are you doing this?' Her mother was annoyed by the question. She thought I was asking very stupid questions. I started questioning everything, and I wasn't saying it was right or wrong; I was just questioning. ”
Shiye no longer buys train tickets from scalpers. "When he sold it to me at a price he set, he limited my options," she said. If it wasn't for his pricing, I could have decided whether to buy economy or first class, but now he's taking my options away. This is unfair. "She also began lobbying her friends to do the same." I'm still young and haven't been able to change much, but I'm able to influence the way they think. ”
Ishiba is about to graduate, but her explorations in political philosophy have complicated everything. "Before I came into contact with these lectures, I was very sure that I would become an HR expert in the future, working as a manager in the HR department of a large enterprise and managing employees. But now I'm confused, and I'm starting to question my original dream. I want to do something more meaningful. "She didn't dare to tell her parents, but secretly hoped she wouldn't find a job in human resources." I might spend a gap year traveling abroad, doing a part-time job, and going out and seeing the world. I wanted to know what I could do for this society. ”
For Ishiba and other young people who are gradually gaining control of their own economy and lives, limiting what they can ask seems a bit outdated. Embracing new ideas, including those proposed by Michael Sandel, is not just out of curiosity. This represents the search for a new moral basis, and China's middle class is beginning to seek out what it should believe.
ISBN: 978-7-5217-3698-4
Price: 68 yuan
"Meet China" is an enlightening dialogue between Chinese and Western philosophies on an equal footing. It embodies the two turns of Chinese culture since the late Qing Dynasty and May Fourth: one is China's comprehensive acceptance of Western thought and culture to reflection and dialectic, and the other is China's criticism and total negation of its own traditional ideology and culture, from criticism and total negation to rediscovery and verification. The encounter with Sandel provided an opportunity for us to rediscover the values of tradition.
Michael Sandel concludes in Learning from Chinese Philosophy: "Any mutual learning scheme between Chinese philosophy and Western philosophy should begin with the acceptance of some asymmetry. My friend and former Harvard colleague Mr. Tu Weiming once said that China is a learning civilization, while the West is a teaching civilization. When he says this, he is not praising the West. I think he's saying that societies that think they're giving instructions to the rest of the world will end up in a kind of arrogance. Their doctrine degenerates into preaching. A civilization that is devoted to teaching and preaching will not only incur universal hatred, but will also lose the ability to face, listen to, and learn from the world. I am grateful to the book's interlocutors for generously contributing their thoughts and gifting critical interactions. ”
*This article is excerpted from "Meeting China: A Dialogue between Chinese and Western Philosophy"