"What is justice? What are rights? What are the questions we are thinking about today? What was discussed thousands of years ago? "What kind of philosophy is popular in an era and what kind of relationship is it to the atmosphere of the times?" "Does philosophy that always seems profound enlightening to our contemporary lives?" "How to popularize philosophy to the masses?"
Recently, Xu Yingjin, a professor at the School of Philosophy of Fudan University, held an online live broadcast with the theme of "Be Your Own Philosopher" to share the above issues, Xu Yingjin said, hoping to share her understanding of "the use of philosophy" through this live class.
Live broadcast.
Are philosophical questions really inspiring for ordinary people?
Xu Yingjin is engaged in phenomenology, analytic philosophy, comparative study of Continental philosophy, in colleges and universities to open ancient Greek philosophy, Western language philosophy, psychology philosophy and other courses, and in the classroom and research room, he is also very active in various social media, he has a straightforward screen name - "Xu Yingjin Wen Shi Zhe", regularly publish lectures audio and video, to popularize philosophical issues to the public.
As for whether philosophical questions really inspire the lives of ordinary people, Xu Yingjin believes that we live in a very volatile historical period, if you continue to live according to your own instincts and habits, you may soon feel derailed from life, "because the overall structure of society is changing dramatically, you have to be adaptable, your thinking has to change, so I think there is also a dinosaur effect in human thinking." ”
The dinosaur effect refers to the fact that the dinosaurs that originally ruled the earth for a long time lived in a relatively stable natural environment most of the time, and its small brain was enough, but when the environment suddenly changed, the dinosaurs quickly became extinct. Xu Yingjin used the metaphor of dinosaurs to illustrate that human individuals also need to have the ability to quickly switch their own thinking framework, and we need to quickly change our identity labels to be able to adapt to this new era of change.
Specifically, one of the functions of philosophy is to make what happens in life acceptable, "for example, if we really understand the philosophy of money in Capital, understand Marx's critique of religion and the critique of commodity fetishism, and then look at daily economic life, we may feel that people's obsession with real money and silver may be poisoned; or, for example, what Marxism talks about' The question of the rule of dead labor over living labor, thinking of the overwork and death incidents that occurred in the factories, we can think that dead labor is money, living labor is your vitality, and in a sense modern slavery is more cruel than ancient slavery, Engels said a very beautiful sentence, before it was sold according to people, now it is sold according to time. And it was a form of hidden slavery, because it was contracted, you were voluntary, and man showed willingness to be more exploitative. ”
Where are the values of philosophy embodied? Xu Yingjin believes that the philosophical discussions of philosophers thousands of years ago still exist today, such as "whether justice in the world depends on interests and rights, or whether justice has its own standards." What is the typical justice of the Chinese Internet? There seems to be no justice at all, you have power, you have fists, you are justice, and this view in the Republic, Thracy Majos has already said it, and finally Socrates refuted it to the point. The study of the history of philosophy first of all lets you know that the ancients have thought about your problems, and we need to remain modest; secondly, philosophy is a debating thing, and through repeated debates, we know that any position may go to its opposite, so that people will not become too attached, and many debates Chinese are for face, always feel that maintaining dignity is more important than maintaining truth, and learning philosophy can cure this disease. ”
Xu Yingjin also believes that because philosophy itself will think about the relationship between some big problems, such as whether all mental things can be reduced to matter, if you think about problems on this scale, your brain's ability to process macro information is stronger than that of ordinary people, and there is more sense of pattern.
Philosophical terms decoded with black words
How should philosophical terms be decoded correctly? And how should we preserve the academic essence to the greatest extent while translating it into the vernacular?
After constant exploration attempts, especially after different media and platforms to talk to the public, Xu Yingjin believes that the core of the balance lies in the process of terminology deletion. In professional discussions, it takes a lot of effort to discuss how to define a term and how different people think about the term, but in mass communication, it is necessary to take the case as the center, get the empathy of the public from an example, and appropriately add some terms, the number is best to be less than more, otherwise everyone can't remember.
For example, when talking about "Weber's Law", you can refer to a life scenario: you bathe in a relatively high water temperature, raise the water temperature by 1 ° C, you may not feel it, but if you bathe in very low temperature water before, suddenly add a lot of hot water, you feel unbearable, which means that the high and low temperature of the back depends on how much temperature you accept in front. For example, people around you tell you that my children have received the notice of Peking University Tsinghua, some people say that my niece has been at Harvard, Stanford, you will feel that the psychological gap is very large, which is a reason for casting the current social ecology - that is, our culture actually does not have a more localized evaluation standard, Chinese attention to the whole world leads to the comparison of the difference value is too large.
Xu Yingjin also does not think that black language decoding is a downward downward behavior: "I think this is just a good opportunity for me to find that I don't need those terms, and philosophical principles can be explained," he said, "To explain a truth clearly in a simple and simple way, which has a positive help effect on my professional writing." ”
But the process of simplifying the terminology does not mean that there is no judgment, Xu Yingjin believes, "We use the chain of contempt to determine our own claims, but we do not want to build a chain of contempt." For example, many people argue that Heidegger is smarter than Sartre, but what is your evidence? Sartre was able to write Existence and Nothingness, is this a scholarly philosophical work that is perfectly capable of entering the tome? How many plays and novels did Sartre write, and did Heidegger write novels? Together, these two scores may be able to tell who is better. ”
"I like to evaluate comprehensive ability from an objective point of view, and Chinese like to talk about literature, history and philosophy, and Sartre is also a great talent, and he can write philosophical works, according to the standards of Chinese, the score is of course high." Sartre's philosophy preaches absolute freedom, but his philosophy has evolved to a certain extent to realize that when you preach absolute freedom, do not forget the freedom of others, the freedom of others must be respected, you can only maintain your freedom when you maintain the freedom of others, and here he turns to Hegelian dialectical thinking, and his philosophy can somehow slowly reconstruct the values of our recognized humanitarianism. Xu Yingjin added.
"Philosophy to use"
Despite all her unpopular studies, Xu Yingjin does not believe that discussing philosophy is the exclusive right of a niche group. "Back in everyday life, everyone is a little philosopher." In his view, ordinary people also need to think philosophically, because ordinary people will also face some strategic choices that determine the fate of life, hoping to get spiritual guidance.
In the midst of it, Xu Yingjin also observed that today's philosophy major has fallen into an embarrassing situation: it has gradually changed from the ideals of the liberal arts champions to a "professional shelter for transfers." He recalled that in the eighties and nineties of the last century, often only the most intelligent and ambitious students could enter the philosophy school, "the young people at that time idolized philosophers, opened their mouths and closed their mouths to say Sartre, Heidegger and Kant, Peking University, Fudan philosophy majors were the most difficult at that time, it is difficult to imagine that there was such a golden age, young people will fight for Hegel and Schopenhauer who is more powerful." ”
Xu Yingjin attributed this shift to the loss of scarcity. In his view, books in the Internet age have gradually lost their scarcity, e-book resources are everywhere, various versions, all kinds of texts, with a search engine can download the whole book, and people's instinct is precisely that the less scarce things, the less attention.
"The Internet is testing people's learning ability," Xu Yingjin made this evaluation in the face of the information explosion era, "people who do not love learning are worse, and people who love learning can comprehensively improve learning efficiency through the Internet." "Reinventing the lost philosophy requires first breaking up the vast and profound philosophical system, and then spreading philosophical knowledge to new media audiences, especially young people, from a perspective that combines interest and practicality, and ultimately helping philosophy regain its vitality."
"Even if you listen to my story, there are a few young students in front of the screen, who have become interested in Hegel and Wittgenstein, and really go to find a copy of Existence and Time, or "Principles of the Philosophy of Law" to read, which is a very meaningful thing." 」 Xu Yingjin said.