Phenomenology and Chinese Philosophy
Transcript of the symposium between Professor Zhang Xianglong and the Faculty of the Department of Philosophy of Southwest University of Political Science and Law
(This article is from the 29th series of the Chinese Phenomenology and Philosophy Review: Phenomenology and Mental Thought)
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In August 2016, Professor Zhang Xianglong was invited by the Department of Philosophy of Southwest University of Political Science and Law, the Center for Classical and Humanistic Education of Traditional Chinese Studies, and the Research Center of Historical Phenomenology to give a lecture at Southwest University of Political Science and Law, during which he exchanged views with the teachers of the Department of Philosophy of Southwest University of Political Science and Law on the topic of "Phenomenology and Chinese Philosophy". The following are the main contents of the collation, which are limited to space and have been abridged.
Zhuo Li (Moderator):
Dear teachers, dear students, good evening! Today, we at the Department of Philosophy, the Center for Classical and Humanistic Education in Traditional Chinese Studies, and the Research Center for Historical Phenomenology of Southwest University of Political Science and Law are very honored to invite Professor Zhang Xianglong to have an exchange with us on the topic of "Phenomenology and Chinese Philosophy". Welcome Teacher Zhang! (Warm applause)
Zhang Xianglong:
Thanks to Mr. Zhuo Li's introduction, I will talk for a few minutes below, and then we will discuss. Phenomenology and Chinese philosophy, why we talk about such a topic, is because in our twentieth century Chinese philosophy, phenomenology is absent for most of the time. Moreover, in my opinion, the study of Chinese philosophy, even the practice, and the introduction of Western philosophy have had an adverse impact, because Chinese philosophy is originally a tradition of thought that combines knowledge and action and the ontology of phenomena. Since the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century, we have been in contact with Western scholarship on a large scale and introduced philosophical methods, but it is particularly far away from the mainstream methods of our traditional Chinese philosophy, in my opinion.
The history of Chinese philosophy, written by Mr. Feng Youlan and written by Mr. Hu Shi, pioneered the modern form of this discipline. Mr. Feng's study is a typical example. He used neo-realism, or the Western method of being more conceptual and logical. For example, I often quote mr. Feng's representative work, The History of Chinese Philosophy, which was the previous two-volume introduction to the method, and he says that the philosophical method is of course "scientific and logical." From this sentence, it can be seen that his method is relatively hard, imitating the natural sciences as much as possible, following the natural sciences and the logical methods.
Therefore, Mr. Feng later wrote the "Sixth Book of Zhenyuan", which said that "before there is an airplane, there is a reason for an airplane" and so on, and he thinks that he is a "new theory". But I think that his view is even harder than Song Ming's theory, and it is basically a new realism view. To govern Chinese philosophy through it is to typically use the Conceptual, Logical, and Scientific method of the West to judge which of the historical materials belong to philosophy and which are not, take those things that belong to philosophy, and then use this method to examine and study Chinese philosophy according to the system and category of these concepts. For a time, the study of the history of Chinese philosophy also pursued the history of the development of Chinese categories. At that time, many of my teachers at Peking University also advocated that the study of the history of Chinese philosophy should use the dialectics of Hegel or Marx to write the history of philosophy in the way of conceptual development. So after forty or nine years, we apply the template of dialectical materialism to write the history of the development of Chinese philosophy and its categories, which is basically such a way.
I think that these methods have their own reasons, and they have all played a very important role in the study of Chinese philosophy - cultivating talents, consolidating forces, and occupying positions have had irreplaceable effects in history. But I feel that there is something wrong here, and it is becoming more and more obvious by the late twentieth century. The biggest problem, I call it "round chisel square fir". That is to say, this method of its is to start from ancient Greece, established by Plato and Aristotle, and then through the Middle Ages, through modern times, and then to the mature form of Kant and Hegel; it is characterized by the grasp of what is to be understood as a concept, a conceptual system, while philosophy is to discuss concepts, the internal logic of ideas, and so on through the method of reflection.
So is ancient Chinese thought suitable for such a method? Personally, I think it is indeed not suitable. I have repeatedly argued this meaning in my articles by citing the examples of Confucians, Taoists, and Buddhists. None of them believe that the ultimate reality, whether it is called tao, benevolence, Buddha-nature, or whatever, can be grasped by conceptual systems. "Dao, very Dao", etc., I will not give examples of this, if everyone thinks this is not the case, we can discuss it later. From this point of view, what you grasped by this method is precisely what these wise philosophers in China think is not enough of the original, so there is a huge problem with this method. This is equivalent to saying that it is doing an effort to "carve a boat and seek a sword". It felt that through the marks engraved on the ship, that is, these concepts, it would be able to find the sword that had fallen into the water; so the superficial article could be very lively, and the conceptual system must be established, but there was no truth in it.
This was something I felt strongly when I was at Peking University. After the Cultural Revolution, I was fortunate enough to be admitted to Peking University and began to formally study Chinese philosophy. Although before I went to Peking University, I had already studied Western philosophy with Mr. He Lin privately, and of course he also taught me some Chinese philosophy, but after I went to Peking University, I took classes on the history of Chinese philosophy and listened to relevant electives and lectures. I felt very strongly at the time.
I was particularly fascinated by Taoism, especially Zhuangzi. When I read "Zhuangzi" and "Lao Tzu", I felt so vivid and integrated with my body and mind. Since I was a child, my father also asked me to learn tai chi, so when I watched "Lao Tzu" or "Zhuangzi", sometimes I would have a certain physical reaction. However, when listening to the teacher's lectures on these lessons, to be honest, I was quite disappointed, and I felt that I did not tell the Lao Tzu and Zhuangzi I was looking forward to, even if there were some things on the side, which was a perceptual reaction of my time.
Later, this kind of thinking became more and more, so I didn't go to graduate school after graduating from college, and I felt that I didn't do that kind of research. At that time, I wanted to learn Taoism and engage in nature conservation, so I wanted to go to the Forestry Bureau, and then I went to the Environmental Protection Bureau to engage in nature protection, but then that road did not go through, and then transferred to the Academy of Social Sciences, and then I went abroad to study and discovered phenomenology.
Phenomenology is precisely a correction of the method, a method different from that of the West from Plato to Hegel. The traditional mainstream method of the West, Mr. He Lin, is called the theory of idealism, which is a conceptual and conceptual method of idealism (idea). As for phenomenology, it is focused on experience. This experience is called both "the thing itself" and "the phenomenon itself", and the key is that the living experiences we are experiencing cannot be transformed into conceptual reconstructions of such experiences, such as the reconstruction of concepts such as theory of materialism, materialism (physicalism), and empiricism. It no longer grasps the essence through experience, as it did in the previous methodological practice, but says that it has found some more ingenious way to experience something essential or truthful directly in this experience. Of course, this essence is not the abstract essence that is 100% certain and no longer changes, but the living essence and living structure that reasonably changes with experience, enabling us to understand and regulate these experiences more deeply.
Husserl, for example, pioneered contemporary phenomenology. He said that we are first confronted with the experience of consciousness. To understand any kind of conscious experience, you do not first rely on some philosophical conceptual system, what Hegel said, what Plato said, or by the modern cognitive framework to which you are accustomed, but by your own observation, your own observation.
You see this cup (Teacher Zhang held up the water cup on the table), how is it perceived? Or what is perception in general? Then you say, oh, what is the theory of this, what is the empiricism of theory. But first of all, do not listen to the theoretical arguments, but directly observe your observation, in fact, observe your "look". How did you see the cup, and what did you see on the spot when you saw the cup? Is it like Locke and Berkeley said, are you seeing the idea of feeling? Hume seems to speak most thoroughly, saying that the first thing we see is impressions. In fact, all we can see each time is the cup facing our Abschattung (adumbration, mapping, side-facing), or the front, and we can't see the back of it. So I'm going to look at its front and then go around and look behind it; or I'll take it in my hand and look at its front first, then look underneath it, and inside it, and bring together these sensory impressions through association to form a three-dimensional cup.
Husserl said no, you go directly to the cup, of course, first through the reduction, so that your presuppositions or habits are all invalid, and then you go directly to the cup. Moreover, you see at the same time there is an additional consciousness. That is, you are simultaneously engaged in a kind of hot reflection on the spot, spontaneously realizing in a marginal way that you are doing this "look". What do you see at this time? Do you only see this manifestation? Don't you, as soon as you get started, in some hidden (non-object), non-ready-made way, and at the same time see behind, below, and inside? In other words, didn't you see a three-dimensional cup as soon as you got started? That is true. So Husserl argues that by entering into the on-the-spot experience of being reduced—reduced to living experience, not reduced to the factors that make up this experience—he sees not just impressions, but the cup itself. But the cup itself is not a ready-made or physically real cup, but an object of intent that I see, and it has a core of meaning in it, but it is actually an object of possibility that precedes readiness, that is, the possibility of the future and the past—the possibility of experiencing the cup again in the future and the possibility of reproducing similar experiences that you have had before—interwoven with possibilities, rather than the possibility of ready-made. The ready-made side you see, and what it draws out for you is precisely a non-ready-made, possible cup. And this possible cup is not saying that there is no logical possibility, there is no reality, but that it is reality. This possibility and reality are intertwined here.
That is to say, the object of intent that Husserl speaks of comes from our specific conscious experience, and these terms we can all put aside without considering them, but that every time we perceive directly, whether we see or hear, it is not like what the empiricists say, it is a piece that comes in in an instant, and then comes in a piece (impression) in the next instant, and then combines them into a three-dimensional thing through association; but says that what we see and hear is a present experience in which past experience and future experience are intertwined. That is, the intentional activity activates the underlying sensory material, constructing or holding out an intentional object with the focus on the possibility of living. This belongs to the static phenomenological ideas of the early stages of his maturity.
Husserl later discovered that the reason why we can see and hear the object of intent, which is primarily a possibility, pulled by readiness (such as the appearance of ours) as soon as we get started, is that our consciousness is already living in the inner time consciousness, and there is such an inner time consciousness that constantly preserves previous experiences and holds future experiences. Therefore, in every instant, it is impossible to cut away from the past experience accumulated in the past moment and the future experience of spontaneous throwing into the future. Each instant is not actually a "point", but a "halo" (Hof; halo, fringe), both are a time halo. There is no clear boundary between this time halo and other time halos and the time halos that are close to it and then getting farther and farther away, so they have to blend together to form a time stream. And this time flow is similar to the Alaya consciousness taught by the Wise Wisdom Sect. I once wrote an article arguing that this stream of time, like Alaya consciousness, can be captured and hidden, that is, it can preserve the past and become the "seed" of future experience; and future experience, through rehearsal, also enters the composition of the present experience. So Husserl also drew the pattern of time accumulation and rehearsal many times, and I didn't have time to talk about this.
This is the phenomenology pioneered by Husserl, the most dynamic of which is precisely the phenomenological theory of occurrence that I will talk about later, which opens up how the so-called inner-time stream of consciousness creates fundamental possibilities for our present experience, even sensory materials, and the potential arrangement of such sensory materials (associations, pairs, etc.), which he later calls "passive synthesis". "Passive" means "uncontrolled and spontaneous" by subjective consciousness. It is precisely because there are already "anonymous" hidden connections and concerns that our current perception will always perceive more than the ready-made, as I just said; for example, if you look at it, you can actually see what is possible from the ready-made things (mapping, side surfaces, or apparent surfaces) (deep three-dimensional objects).
The later development of phenomenology paid special attention to precisely this line of thought of the stream of consciousness of time that he talked about. Before we become aware of an object, whether our conscious activities, our survival activities, or our ethical activities, they have always made an anonymous or non-objectified priming. And those foreshadowings, that is, things that are always growing in the dark, or that are implicitly constituted or passively synthesized, are precisely the important sources of cognition.
From here, whether it is the later German Scheler, Heidegger, or the French phenomenology of those masters, they gradually put this phenomenological time flow, the idea of the intention flow, deformation and innovation, can be described as ever-changing, but the ever-changing is not far from its origin, all from the living human experience and even life experience. You see what I just said is husserl's characteristic, and he focuses on the traditional epistemological experience—I go to see a cup (but through phenomenological reduction it gives me a new perspective). Heidegger is not like this, or not exactly, he is based on the experience of human existence. For example, in ordinary life, we use tools as soon as we get started, or a table or a chair, which we use as tools. I entered a classroom, a chair blocked my way, I did not pay special attention to it at all, but in the marginal consciousness, I pushed it aside. I first deal with it like this, instead of looking at this chair as an object, such as Husserl, looking at this cup (Teacher Zhang raised a water cup) as a thing. My understanding of the cup, first of all, is like this, just when talking to you like this, I inadvertently took it and used it (Teacher Zhang raised a glass to drink water).
Scheler deals with the ethical experience of emotion, arguing that what man experiences first is not (necessarily) the experience of the object of appearance, but perhaps the experience of emotion and ethics, which are guided by values rather than objects of lust. Sartre reveals the kind of human experience that precedes the objectification of everything, the construct of meaning that arises from "nothingness" or "non-reality objects"; at the same time, dealing with a world of its own existence. In other words, to experience the alien self, you yourself must be nihilistic or "do nothing." So this is the mutually dislocation of a self-made (or to win one's own) man and a world of self, which fulfills the human experience of living in "being and nothingness." It's also very profound. And I especially like ah, one is Melo Ponty, one is Levinas, of course, Heidegger needless to say, in French phenomenology I especially feel merlot Ponty and Levinas.
Merleau-Ponty reveals the existence of the body field. Our body, the human body, in the physical experience you observe, is it just a measured body, like the human body in the eyes of Western medicine? Not really. The body, if you experience and experience it in the first place, you will realize that it is not completely separated from your mind, and that the way of perception of the body or body and mind is first of all fieldized. So Merleau-Ponty spatializes what Husserl and Heidegger have just said, the inner, latent, pre-constructed experience of time, but it is a kind of spatialization of existence. Of course, this spatialization of existence already has some in Husserl and Heidegger, but Merleau-Ponty speaks very carefully, brilliantly and thoroughly. In this phenomenological analysis, you have to uncover the forms of existence that are not readily available in specific experiences, that are possible, but which we experience directly and self-consciously, and this wonderful point comes out.
This is especially true to Levinas. I've been more attracted to him over the years. I especially like his book, which he rewrote from his doctoral dissertation, "The Whole and the Infinite", which gave me a lot of inspiration, and I will not talk about this. On the surface, this thesis seems to be talking to itself, jumping from time to time, and even seems a little absurd, but this is actually his doctoral dissertation! How could the French university he was working at the time recognize it? This kind of doctoral dissertation is absolutely impossible to pass in our more demanding universities in China or in universities in the United States. But in reality, it contains very deep and dynamic ideas, opening up a new path of phenomenology. Its influence has also become more and more important in these decades, and it is very helpful for me to understand Confucianism, to understand the origin of human moral consciousness and moral behavior.
Why, then, is it more appropriate to understand Chinese philosophy in this way than the conceptual approach? First of all, we see that no matter which school of Chinese philosophy, or the three major streams, is focused on living experience. For example, Confucianism takes kinship and filial piety as the source, "kissing and benevolent people, benevolent people and loving things", "benevolent people also, kissing relatives is greater". If you want to understand such an experience, is it more appropriate to adopt the method of logic of traditional Western philosophy or so-called science, or is it more appropriate to use this method of observation through phenomenology? It goes without saying. The answer is self-evident.
Due to the ideological effects of different methods or research paradigms, when writing Confucians about the history of philosophy in China in the twentieth century, little attention was paid to the philosophical meaning of the experience of kinship and filial piety, and it felt that this thing was just an empirical thing, and there was not much meaning of philosophy itself, and it could not be seen. The same is true of the Taoists, who are concerned about Lao Tzu's Tao, whether it is material or spiritual, and so on. This debate has also lasted for many years in our academic circles, which is a typical example of capturing philosophical ideas that cannot be conceptualized through conceptual methods, which is why such a state seems to be "catching the wind and catching shadows".
For Buddhism, Zen Buddhism, Madhyamaka, Rulaizang, Huayan Buddhism, Tendai Buddhism, and even Song Ming Theory and Mind Science, if you study it in those ways, can you study the subtleties of them? When I was young, I watched Mr. Ren Jiyue's investigation of Buddhism, and the more I looked at it, the more I felt that those Buddhist things were all crap, and could not trigger your inspiration and make your survival experience more profound and more interesting. Of course, according to these researchers, Buddhism is not all bad, and there may be some reasonableness, but when analyzed, most of them are stacked bed frame houses, conceptual things, and ideological specimen things. Of course, the criticism I have made here, I will claim again and again, is some of my personal bias. Therefore, sometimes saying something is excessive, and I hope that everyone will understand and counter-criticize.
And if you study the Wisdom Sect through phenomenology, will you say that the Alaya consciousness was invented by Buddhists, is it some mysterious thing? You don't dare say that, do you? You have not experienced the composition of that or other kind of consciousness on your own inner experience, do you dare to deny it? Is there a last consciousness behind the ordinary "consciousness"? How is the last consciousness embodied? There is another consciousness after the last consciousness, isn't it? You first have to listen to the experience and what it says, and then you even do yoga yourself, go into meditation, experience the manifestations of consciousness, and so on. So, I think phenomena learn to encourage us to go in this direction. However, it is not just about doing work and not thinking. These masters in phenomenology, the Western ones, have set some examples for us. But to be honest, I'm not satisfied.
When I look back at our ancient Chinese philosophy through a phenomenological perspective, after years of speculation, I sometimes feel that some of them are really not enough. It is indeed very enlightening, so that I can understand the experience from a different perspective than the tradition, but for example, to understand filial piety, through the phenomenologists, such as Heidegger, who I have studied a lot before, he talked about so many human experiences, Dasein, about existence and time, and later talked about the occurrence of poetic and artistic truths, and even he was particularly fond of Taoism, talking about the experience of the open way, the open way, the open way, and so on. But I think it is not enough to understand confucian filial piety.
Heidegger pays so much attention to human experience, but how can he do so much analysis in "Being and Time" without talking about family experience? What a person experiences is precisely the parent-child experience first, why doesn't he say it? The experience of life, the experience of death, he felt that when people face death, the real and true experience of facing death can only be realized in the individual dimension, that is, when you face your own death, you can see the true heart, and the nature of existence, the revelation of truth, and the meaning of life can be fully revealed. But I don't think so. For us humans, there are many, many people who have faced death, and are they facing the death of their own families, such as the death of their parents facing their children, or if he is a filial son, facing the death of his parents, will he experience less inner hardship, despair, worry, panic, and even possible opening than he does in his own death? I don't think so.
You would say it's because of the difference in culture, because you've been influenced since childhood. Is this true? I don't think so. I've been working on this all these years. There are actually some common human experiences, but this commonality cannot be abstracted. Are our Chinese experiences constructed only by our Chinese culture, and not by our Chinese as a human being? I don't think so.
Some experiences are indeed culturally different, such as making silk and writing calligraphy, they can only write fine art in the West, and our calligraphy experience is very related to Chinese culture. But this is not the case with some very fundamental questions, such as the ancient Chinese understanding of "heavenly time". This "time" is a particularly important idea in our pre-Qin thought, and in the history of Chinese philosophy in the twentieth century, almost no one paid attention to this issue, and the embodiment of this "time" is ever-changing. That is to say, when you don't understand this, you can't understand the Zhou Yi at all, and you can't understand the "benevolence" that Confucius talked about. So Mencius said that Confucius was the "Holy One", and it was not a lie. Without this, you can't understand Lao Tzu and Zhuangzi, let alone Zen Buddhism. But is this "time" limited to Chinese culture? otherwise. But with Western phenomenology, can it be understood readily? Nor is it. They are very helpful for me to understand "time", Husserl also talks about "time", I just said, talk about inner time consciousness, Heidegger talks about the temporality of existence, and the philosophers behind me also expound things that are very related to this problem in various ways, of course, they may express it in different ways. But can it replace our Chinese understanding of "time"? I don't think it's irreplaceable. No matter from which angle, from filial piety, or from "Zhou Yi". Over the years, I have also been fascinated by "Zhou Yi", the tradition of Mr. Liu Dajun of ShanDa, which I quite appreciate, is not far from the number of elephants. I think that since Wang Bi swept the elephant, the I Ching has been impoverished into a large piece, and then in modern times, the method of studying the I Ching since the New Culture Movement, using the Zhou Yi as a historical material, as a primitive and simple dialectic, I don't think it has grasped the point. "Zhou Yi" is separated from "elephant" and "number", and what "I Ching" is! It is not enough for you to talk about that doctrine and hang up a little image. Just tell me about Confucianism, what kind of Confucianism is a Confucian who does not talk about filial piety? Just like Plato said, you don't understand geometrists, how can you understand my theory of ideas? Right, the same.
The elephant number of "Zhou Yi", the "time" it talks about, is expressed through the Gua Qi diagram, and the Han Yi tradition is really vast and subtle. I don't think that's a trivial philosophy, what goes down a crooked path. Later, there were some problems, such as the recitation of wei, or the number of elephants was too cumbersome, sometimes there were some problems, but in general, their way, I think still got the true transmission of the I Ching, the right vein. Therefore, the view of heaven and time and the view of human time embodied in it, and the "time" of the heaven and earth people in "Moon Order", "Xia Xiaozheng", etc., are not the Jinliang of the heaven and earth people communicating with each other? And the "Zhou Yi" interpretation, or these later interpreters, they have to explain why these gua xiang yao xiang should be accompanied by these gua words and words, and these later yi chuan, why do they say so? For example, "Don't use the hidden dragon", why is the Qiangua Chujiu yao "the hidden dragon is not used"? Through the Gua Qi Diagram, he can really tell an extremely subtle, the kind of temporality that he calls "several micro". I also read it, and I was very inspired, especially the "Zhou Yi Collection" to solve the slack, and after reading it, I was able to open my eyes. wow! The real threshold for understanding "Zhou Yi" is not Wang Bi's sweeping the image of righteousness at all, let alone the historical research of modern people, but this, the Han Dynasty is easy to learn, it should be through the pre-Qin. After the relief of Li Daoping's "Shu Shu", it is really clear and clear, how Yu Feng solved it, how Xun Shuang solved it, and how many families explained the relationship between Yi Xiang and Xiang, which really opened my eyes.
It was only here that I thought phenomenology was so good. Help me understand this inner philosophy of the I Ching, whether it is the philosophy of temporalization, or its philosophy of correspondence between heaven and man, which is not easy to seek in change. However, it is not enough. We Chinese philosophies should have their own voice on world philosophy for the future, through phenomenology or through other philosophical paths, at least to the extent of Buddhism in those years. Buddhism spread to South Asia, to Central Asia at that time, but was it only in the end that we arrived in China that this Buddhism gave birth to a new species with real vitality? Our Chinese Buddhism eventually influenced Buddhism throughout East Asia, and it still has a worldwide impact. I think our relationship with Western philosophy should be the same.
But when Buddhism comes in, it can't do it without finding the right partner for dialogue or a way to understand. Buddhism, and various religions, including Hinduism, came in through the Silk Roads, so why did only a few Mahayana schools really stimulate the original philosophical imagination and creativity of Chinese intellectuals? Through the translation of Kumarosh and the discourse of the monk Zhao, Chinese Buddhism has its own roots, not Guanggeyi. In the Tang Dynasty, Chinese Buddhism studied its own things, and all at once they were produced, and the stars were brilliantly presented. Later, when it was able to develop to the point of Zen Buddhism, Indians, even Buddhists, must have been stunned to see Zen Buddhism. Beaten and scolded, awesome and drunk, a moment of conversation, a moment of inexplicable things, actually that is also a buddha, teaching Buddha nature.
I hope that if we find the right path, it will not be limited to the "Hinayana" in Western philosophy, or its "Brahman-I" saying, that is, they are authentic, talking about ideas, concepts, but talking about the "Mahayana" that has entered the West, the Middle Way, the Wisdom, the Rulaizang and so on in the Mahayana. If we find these things, will we be able to create our own response to the Western Huayan, Tendai, and Zen Buddhism in the future? This is something I am particularly looking forward to. And I think that our Chinese philosophy should have a place in the world in the future, so that the wisdom of ancient times that seems to be very old will be rejuvenated. It is true that you can't just cling to the cripple, but you can't lose your foundation. Okay, I'll start with that. (Applause.)
Literature Ping:
From Plato to Hegel, or to analytic philosophy today, that conceptual approach may indeed not be very suitable for Chinese philosophy. We can't use a concept to understand the true meaning of "Tao", nor can we experience that kind of intimate experience just through the word "filial piety", this is for sure. But there is another possibility, is it not to say that our traditional conceptual method is not refined enough, not that the concept method itself is wrong, but that it is not well conceptized, it is still very rough, and it has not grasped the real kind of life we have, the kind of living experience that Teacher Zhang said. Husserl's own purpose was to turn philosophy into true science. So it is not that the conceptual method itself is fundamentally wrong, but that it has not yet developed the kind of living experience in which concepts are expressed in our true and profound way, which is not meticulous enough, too crude. I don't know if that's the case, but I'll have a question when I hear it.
The example you gave is very good, Husserl is precisely to pursue the transformation of phenomenology into a strict science, he felt that the previous Western philosophy was not successful because it was not strict enough, but these ideas, by his later period, there were some changes, from static phenomenology to phenomenology, some of his statements also changed.
We can see from the mainstream of the later development of phenomenology that the phenomenologist has become a great climate, and these achievements have been great, and there is almost no play to his objectified, static side. He had greatly expected future generations to continue their research along his new lines of thought, to assign people tasks, to say Heidegger, you engage in religious phenomenology, who is who you are engaged in that phenomenology. He thinks he has already created this basic method, and it is very good that you study the problems in each field more deeply according to his method, and analyze this object in greater detail. But then as long as he did it in that way, in the end, it was so, and he could only do some second-rate, or even third-rate work. This, of course, is so. Because of his expectations, there is actually a conflict with his philosophical purpose towards the thing itself, the phenomenon itself.
Why did this sense of time that he found enlighten everyone so much, and later it could be transferred to many other views on language, art, ethics, and so on? It is precisely because it is a primordial consciousness that fundamentally accommodates and encourages what happens, it is not static, especially not fully objectified, let alone conceptualized.
So you say that there's some truth to that, which means that we don't have a conceptual approach enough to get home to have a problem? For example, we can imagine the Western method of painting oil painting, before, of course, there may not have been this stage in history, they also have to paint this object very fine, very objectified, this is called painter, this is called painting like. Draw a person or a table as accurately as possible, but because the method was not fine enough at that time, this painting was actually not so good-looking, it was very dull. Later, during the Renaissance, the method of perspective was invented, combined with anatomical knowledge, and all of a sudden, masters appeared in these so-called "shape-like" arts. In fact, they opened up a new realm of god-likeness through a more intelligent form-like kung fu. When I was in peking university, I listened to those teachers who talked about art history, saying that Western art is similar, and our Chinese painting is god-like, how it is; our literati paintings, how to freehand paintings, how to be clever. In fact, the oil painting of the people, the painting to the high place also has a god-like ah. That is to say, your idea can be seen in such a way that we use perspective or conceptualization, which helps us to paint people not only more accurately, but also more evocatively and vividly, and conceptual law can also have this level of brilliance. Wouldn't that be better?
That's right. I think this path is certainly possible. This path is still going on, so that's why I never talk about phenomenology as the only way to pay attention to us, because I now see that contemporary science is still showing us subtle things, such as cognitive science, quantum mechanics, the development of artificial intelligence, including the development of anthropology, I am also concerned. They pass through the kind of at least objectification, I dare not say that it is conceptualization, science generally does not use the conceptual method, from one concept to another, that is, the dialectic that Plato preached, and that method is dead. What kind of history of the development of the category of Chinese philosophy they want to engage in, this is my personal judgment, that there is no life. But the method of objectification plus conceptual hypothesis, this is still very alive. I study something, I want to make it repeatable, I want to make it an object, and then I explain its inner structure through scientific hypothesis, which is constructed by concepts, through experimental adjustments, and finally the invalid hypothesis is discarded, and the valid hypothesis finally becomes a reasonable scientific theory. This method has been the mainstream all over the world, of course, until now. And this research method has uncovered many new and impressive facts.
And there is indeed an important difference between this method, and it is especially the method of phenomenology, and I say that from the phenomenology of Husserl to the later method of phenomenology. Husserl hoped that the phenomenological method he had pioneered would explain the true meaning of this objectified scientific method. What is its true meaning? The truth lies in the intentionality, the object of intent, and the mechanism by which they are based.
So when he speaks of the crisis of European science, you are trapped in this objectified thing and do not know the basis for reflecting on them. Finally he finds the roots of all these objectified activities in subjectivity, in the flow of inner time, in the transcendental subjectivity, through the theory of intentionality, in the world in which we live, and so on. Only in this way can our understanding be complete, and only in this time of rapid development of high technology and science will we not lose our human beings, our morality, or even our living bodies, in short, the source of meaning.
So I feel that the foundation of the phenomenological method is non-objectified, but non-objectification is not necessarily not strict. The non-objectified elaboration can reveal some dynamic structures with the help of a certain conceptual framework, which is very inspiring. Like Husserl in the later period, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, Scheler, etc., they all spoke of a set of human consciousness structure, time structure, body structure, emotional structure and its philosophical meaning. There are many names in Buddhism, but in the end they all point to the true meaning of dependent voidness of the super-nominal phase or the non-nominal phase. Wouldn't it be better to understand our Confucianism, Taoism, and so on in this way? So there is a need for pluralism of methods, and the refinement of the conceptual approach you are talking about is also very meaningful, and if it means framing the conceptual method— that is, using it as a framework of thinking, through which to achieve non-conceptual things, it is even better.
Xu Bing:
The Buddhists believe that all beings in the six realms are sentient beings, which is the root cause of samsara, and finally to jump out of samsara, it is necessary to break through emotions. But Confucianism believes that the truth of life lies precisely in emotion, and it is affirmative. It can be said that the different understandings of emotions have caused the different understandings of life between the Confucian and Buddhist schools. Of course, we can generally say that the emotions spoken of by the two of them are not emotions in the sense, but in the end, there must be a fundamental understanding of emotions. Views like Scheler's are also against the traditional understanding of emotion. So is Buddhism right or Confucianism right? How do you understand emotions? In fact, Buddhists cannot escape emotions, and they cannot deny emotions. Where does compassion come from? Why did the bodhisattva come back to cross the sentient beings? Then there is a contradiction in the understanding of emotion within buddhism.
I also feel that sometimes, across philosophical schools, across religions, across cultures, often encounter this so-called immutability, or what Pu Yin said, is untranslatable. That is to say, the same "feeling", as if it is said to have some misplacedness. Of course, we hope that this dislocation does not affect deeper communication, and we can go down.
There was a lot of debate between Buddhism and Confucianism and Taoism, and on the surface, some people would say that in fact, you just don't understand the terms differently, but not only that, this includes the question you just asked, some may be misunderstandings, but sometimes the meaning is really related, just some differences. For example, they say, you are wrong to translate that ūnyatā as the Taoist "nothing", this is the meaning of the grid, it should be translated as "emptiness". Of course, I also think it is better to translate it as "empty", but is it completely wrong to translate it as "nothing"? Is there a deep correlation between Lao Tzu and Zhuangzi when they talk about "nothingness" and that voidness? Why is it that this faction of emptiness can especially be understood by everyone in China? So sometimes some so-called misalignment, misunderstanding is necessary, or a new opportunity to inspire our Chinese. How can we understand it without our words? Therefore, I feel that this is the case, and this "feeling" you specifically talked about is precisely a problem that I am quite concerned about.
In recent years, more and more people have talked about the confucian problem of love, like Mr. Li Zehou talking about the ontology of love. But the key is how to understand this emotion, and what kind of emotion is worthy of being the ontology, which is in line with the thinking of our ancient Chinese philosophers.
Mencius, did he talk about mercy? I think that compared to Zeng Zi and Zi Si, he seems to have been very wary of love. But the kind of love he talks about is actually more inclined to lust. And the four ends he himself talked about, is it love? Is compassion a form of sympathy? Is it a sense of obligation that Kant speaks of as a moral obligation? I don't think so. Compassion is definitely a kind of love, but that kind of love, and the kind of lust we usually talk about, such as I want to be close to his (the child who is about to fall into the well) parents, I want to get what benefits, I went to save this child, that is not the same. It is suddenly emerging, happening, that kind of compassion, but also a kind of love, pure emotion that arises on the spot.
So this that you just talked about, I think is exactly very important. The Buddhists say that there are six reincarnations of sentient beings, and this emotion should not exist, and if there is sentient beings, there is attachment, and if there is attachment, there is suffering, and you will not be able to attain the right path, and you will not be enlightened. And Confucianism talks about affection, first of all, about kissing, and of course kissing is affection, and no one can deny it. This filial love, this loving-kindness, is first and foremost love, not just a moral obligation. Now some people have considered that filial piety had nothing to do with parents at the beginning, first of all, it was related to sacrifice. But the question is, when he was sacrificing, was he just in awe of his ancestors, just trying to curry favor with his ancestors, rather than saying that he had a feeling of longing and admiration for his ancestors? If there is, how can it be said that filial piety has nothing to do with parents, not with his nearest relatives?
Therefore, I feel that this "love" spoken of by Confucianism is indeed a big article. How to understand? What Mr. He Lin said back then, I have always remembered in my heart, and it has had a great impact on me, that is, "there is a reason in the most emotional", and the reason that does not take the most emotional as the source is not the most reasonable at all. The theory deduced by deduction must be the theory that "there is an airplane before there is an airplane". Mr. He said that it was not the truth, but a dead truth, and there was no echo in the ditch and valley. He said that the truth of this world must be luminous, must be able to illuminate us, can affect our lives. Why does it emit light? Precisely because it is a kind of affection. This is indeed, in my opinion, the ultimate state of life for man. But the point is, how to understand this feeling?
There must be love in the love of men and women, but what kind of love between men and women is the love? The completely American kind, sexual love, certainly not. Today you follow this sixual, tomorrow you follow that sixt. But the most affectionate must be the kind of person who is extremely sincere and can affect your life, is the person you truly love, and you will not change your mind casually. Our Chinese does not necessarily mean that you love someone like a swan and will not change until you die, but at least in the short term, there is no major reason, you will not change this feeling.
But is it the kind of love plato talks about? The kind of love he talked about is also wonderful and excellent, and I like it too. Like what is said in the "Drinking Chapter" and "Phaedro", it is a pure love. There are two horses in the human heart, one is lust and the other is noble emotion. In fact, he is mainly talking about homosexuality, which must be admitted, of course, including heterosexuality. When you see a beautiful lover, your horse will pounce on it, but the other good horse, your noble soul, will strangle it, and then your love will be sublimated and purified, and only then will there be a love obsession, with that very vivid description. Plato himself was a poet and a particularly profound philosopher. So Plato is really great, and although I have a lot of criticism of him, I appreciate it very much. He touched on some aspects of affection, but it wasn't enough, I think it wasn't enough.
Is there any affection in filial piety? There is certainly affection in love. Just now we first talked about the love of men and women, so Confucianism does not dare to despise the love of men and women at all. Why is it said that the way of husband and wife is the end of a gentleman? This Confucian is to say that Confucius must teach students to "be interested in poetry." The first article in the "Poem" is "Guan Ju", which must speak of the love between men and women. Your gentleman has never felt the most affection, what is a gentleman? But just learn a set of knowledge, right? Therefore, the gentleman must find the source of knowledge, and this source, in Confucius's view, is active, not objectified. The "ratio" and "endowment" can be understood in some way, although it is also non-conceptual.
But this "Xing" is pure Xingfa, and there is no objectification connection between "Guan Guan Ju Dove, in the River Continent" (Xing Sentence) and the "Lady of the River" (Xing Sentence) in the back. Of course, some people also explain in that regard, saying that two birds are courting, but from this literal interpretation of "Guan Guan Ju Dove", that is, the dove bird calls on the river in spring. You can understand that, and you can understand it without courtship. But it sets off that atmosphere, and when the dove crows, it must be in the spring, there is no doubt about it. In such a situation, then the lady becomes a gentleman, and the man who pursues her becomes a gentleman. It must be in the rise of such a non-objectified atmosphere of "Guan Guan Ju Dove, in the River Continent", the latter sentence will be sublimated, so that the love between this man and woman can be sublimated into the pure love between a lady and a gentleman. Only a couple formed by this combination of pure love will be like King Wen of Zhou and Tai Ji, and finally those sages will be born, like King Wu of Zhou and The Duke of Zhou, who are not saints or sages.
So I love Confucianism, and I used to read the Analects and my hands were shaking. How could a Confucian say a set of dead things that kill people with etiquette and only stick to dogma? How lively and artistic Confucius's thinking is, just by virtue of his "pleasure in poetry, standing in ceremony, and becoming happy", you can see it, not to mention that he was able to get out of that state "when he heard "Shao" in Qi, and did not know the taste of meat in March". This person will never be limited to that dry way of thinking.
However, he also has a very rational discerning ability, and he can grasp quite subtle things, and in my words, our master is a phenomenological master, and he is many times wiser than Western phenomenologists (laughter), but we do not fully understand the essence in him. So why is Confucianism so successful, it seems to only talk about rules on the surface, but why is it more successful than Lao Zhuang? Westerners just don't understand, saying that you Chinese are stupid, you are passive! How could Lao Tzu not have as much influence as Confucius? As soon as they read Lao Tzu, they had a lot of feelings. Lao Tzu is now almost appreciated by the keen intellectuals of many countries and nationalities, if the translation is better. They think, how can you Chinese respect such a wonderful Lao Tzu, not as the most holy, but as Confucius! (Laughter) As implied in Hegel's commentary, Confucius is nothing more than a secular Mr. Dongbao, and if people really respect Confucius, don't read his books. This Hegel believes that reading Confucius's books is nothing conceptual. According to the real philosophical conceptualization in his mind, Confucius did not.
In fact, it is not true, the key is in the way of thinking. So as soon as you change your thinking, for example through phenomenology, you may see the infinite scenery when you look at Confucius. That's why I say this love is the key. Understand deeply, understand thoroughly, and understand movingly. I hope for the future, and I especially want to do research in this area.
Why am I interested in that mysticism? Many years ago, when I went to Western Europe to learn this Christian mysticism, I was moved by it. I didn't know it before, it was a complete accident, it was the Philosophy Department of Peking University who sent me at that time, so I went there to learn the mysticism of Lusbruck. This was the trend in Catholicism for a while, and it meant: Is it enough that you believe in the Light of God? I believe that Christ is the Son of God, and I believe that He came down to save us! Of course. But how can you really believe? You preach every day, you preach every month, you run to church, and finally you really believe. Is this the best Christian? And he practices with his life, he can go to jihad for this Jesus, he can resist any heresy; he can go in his life, constantly practicing, caring for his neighbors and so on; others hit me on the left side of the face, I beat him on the right side of the face. Is it enough? According to this mysticism, it is not enough.
Your faith is only the beginning, and sometimes your faith is not good, and you go to the place of the evil door, of course, they have indeed gone inside the evil door. The Christian theory of mystical experience (which is my translation of "mysticism") says true faith, and it must be through this faith that you finally understand Jesus, understand it truly deeply, and you not only say that I value the "blood" he shed, but really fall in love with him! Just as a person falls in love with his/her lover, in full swing, completely spontaneously; to that point, you will experience in your faith the same twists and turns that lovers experience. Because true love, according to what they say, I think is also very reasonable, cannot be objectified, but pure experience, pure occurrence. I love you, and eventually the two of you are united and have a happy and happy life, just like the last ending of a fairy tale. That's not true love. The process of true love must be distant and unattributed. So this non-objectification is inevitable here. If you treat your lover as an object, your love is not real and will fade. I won't talk about this much, I will talk too much about this, because when you talk about this love matter, I feel that there are a lot of articles in it, and it is not impossible to communicate with the West.
I'll just say mysticism is just one of the things I've found. They think christianity is a faith of love, and this is what Paul said. So Christianity, in this regard, is different from many other religions, it is true love. In fact, we Confucians talk about love, "benevolent people love people", Zhu Xi, how dare you turn the "love" of "lover" into "the principle of love"? I resent this. In fact, I like and respect Zhu Xi very much, but when I talk about this, I feel that it is a pity, and this is actually the key point of Confucius's teachings. The point is, what kind of love is this? This original experience cannot be taken apart, it cannot be said to be regarded only as "qi", and you find a "love principle" in the back, how pale!
So phenomenology tells us that this place cannot be avoided, cannot be conceptualized and objectified, but must be experienced positively. In this dimension, I do get a lot from phenomenology. True truth arises in this way at the source. Therefore, Confucius was particularly reluctant to do theoretical construction, and students rarely heard him expounding on sex, heavenly way, and benevolence. Confucius was never willing to make such theoretical statements, but how much benevolence confucius talked about in the Analects! But it is all sparks that are rubbed out in the context and timing, "not indignant, not angry", precisely here and at this time to say the true meaning. There is no spark, there is no such thing as a happening on the spot, and the master will not talk about it.
So I like Confucius the most, I respect Confucius the most, because he is the master who makes ideas emerge, the real master of thought, and this is really wonderful. (Warm applause)
Jin Song:
I think there are some difficulties in comparing Chinese and Western philosophies. Because reading "Metaphysics", or reading Heidegger's, his core thing is still very consistent with the Taoist "Zhuangzi", but as soon as you read Confucianism, you immediately feel that this distinction is still very clear.
Yes, so did I, so I used to explain him, especially when I explained his relationship with the Taoists, and it was a lot of joy. For me, it was very gratifying to find a new material in Devon, especially to find that his relationship with the Taoists was really intrinsic communication. Heidegger was not a man who could easily mention a cross-cultural philosophical idea in his writings.
So now I also feel that Heidegger's interpretation of Taoism is very reasonable. Heidegger understood the Tao first and foremost as the open way, expressed in a language game in German. He said that "Tao" should not be translated in the first place as Logos, cosmic reason, etc., but "Weg", which is the German "way". He also borrowed the ancient usage of the word and verbized it as "weegen" or "be-weegen", which means to open the way, that is, the original open way. Is this wrong? For Lao Tzu, of course, this opening path can be deeply understood, but it is to open up a new possibility, which is at least quite profound, not outrageous. I have examined the ancient meaning of "Tao" before, including the "Nine Rivers and the Tao", using the word "Dao", and that "guide" is connected with that "Tao". "Guidance" is to dredge the river, but also to open it, to open it so that the river can flow freely, so I think this aspect is really helpful.
But is it helpful to understand Confucianism? Of course, it is also helpful, because he deepens Husserl's epistemological phenomenology, or conscious, intentional objectification, intentional phenomenology, and is directly related to the actual life of man. In the later Husserl we ignore him, the later period has an overlap with Heidegger, as far as the early Husserl phenomenology is concerned, Heidegger has survived it. The so-called survival is to penetrate man's conscious experience into the basic state and structure of man's existence, or the way he deals with actual life, that is, his relationship with the world, the relationship between people and people, and the relationship between people and himself, and reveal them more personally. Of course, this has something to do with Confucianism.
Confucianism is first of all the philosophy of man, "benevolent people also", you have a deep understanding of people, it will certainly be helpful to understand Confucianism. So in this regard, his revelations of Dasein layer by layer, especially his final revelation that the nature of Dasein is to be concerned, and the philosophical basis of concern lies in temporality, Zeitlichkeit, but this temporality is also a kind of timing, a kind of Zeitigung. Of course, this statement has something to do with Confucianism, why does Mencius praise Confucius as "the holy time", why does the Confucian revered Confucius explain the "Zhou Yi", Hui Dong said that its key lies in "time"?!
So you say Heidegger has nothing to do with it? Of course, it has to do with Confucianism. But what, the source of Confucianism, he could not see, he missed off. He thinks that family is just a kind of Das Man, and it's good that I translate it as "big guys", "people", or they translate it as "ordinary people". It is a secular relationship that is not true. This is similar to Kang Youwei's criticism of the family in the Datong Shu. Kang said that the whole family was full of resentment and contradictions, so the family relationship was the most difficult. A saint returning to his family is also, hey, he's not scolded by his wife, isn't it? Nor does a son of a saint have to be multi-pronged, huh, and so on. Even when I studied the biography of Confucius, I found that Confucius's family seemed to have had problems.
Therefore, this filial piety and the Qi family are not ready at all, and it is a huge challenge. This Heidegger can't see it, he sees only the secular side of the family, he doesn't see the family and the egentlich (authentic), the "true" side he speaks of. Family relations can be sublimated, because there is affection in this relationship, something that is not doubted by the ghosts and gods of heaven and earth, so this is Heidegger's limitation, and it is completely understandable.
But when phenomenology later developed into Levinas, he saw some deeper or true dimension of the family. As soon as we talk about Levinas, those of whom are now engaged in modern French philosophy love to explain this "face", this "other", and he does not know that this "otherness" is first embodied in Levinas as family, husband and wife, father and son, and this meaning is very well stated in "The Whole and the Infinite". The family is the source of time—time that is differentiated rather than homogenized—and intergenerational relations and intergenerational time are precisely the most original time, and the relationship between father and son and husband and wife is the original occurrence. This is also phenomenology, it is phenomenology with Jewish overtones. So phenomenology is very dynamic, there is no need to worship it at all, there is no need to worship, you have the ability, you will criticize Husserl into the marrow. Of course, it is impossible to be useless, and if you want to approve nothing, then you just did not approve it. Like Levinas, the pair of Husserl and Heidegger were very critical, and in his book, almost everything that mattered had to be compared with them, where I was different from them. But when interviewing him, he always admitted that without Husserl, without Heidegger, how could there be me! That's it.
So, Confucianism is indeed a touchstone, and in our real Philosophy of China, I think that the achievements of Confucianism are the highest, not Taoism, nor Chinese Buddhism, although the subtlety of Taoism and Buddhism is simply to the point of subtle mystique. Why do I say that Confucianism is more subtle, and Confucius is the most exquisite in Confucianism? The point is that Confucianism can find the ultimate reason from the most emotional, while other schools of thought have deviated from it. Confucianism should be more touching than Christianity and Buddhism in those days, because it starts from the place that can move us the most. From the parent-child relationship, what is more impressive than the parent-child relationship? Starting from the parent-child relationship and the relationship between husband and wife, go straight to the source of people's hearts and achieve the "thing itself" of life! Therefore, confucianism will really do a good job in the future, and it should be when it goes to preach, when he goes to preach, this doctrine should have its own most moving music, the most moving poetry, the most moving etiquette, and then it can go away and become the thought and life that we, the Chinese nation, and even some other nationalities in the world, some of whom are willing to accept from the heart.
Dong Weiguo:
Teacher Li Jinglin has a saying, that is, "emotion precedes cognition, and value is better than knowledge". There is order in the four ends, it is not a chaotic, impulsive thing. When you talk about "the most reasonable in the most emotional", this is definitely the key to Chinese philosophy. It felt like a good fit.
I also agree with Teacher Li's words, "Emotion precedes cognition, and value is better than knowledge." This reminds me of the Marriage of the Spirit (by Lusbruck), which I translated, written by the Christian mystic, and it contains similar words. That is to say, where our knowledge stops, or where many places make reason stop, love can go any further.
Because in that place, you are completely desperate, your lover has completely disappointed you, a darkness, nothing can be caught, he/she betrayed you, he/she abandoned you, here dare not say betrayal, because man is not as tall as God. What to do at this time? But if you truly love him/her, you are not only desperate at this time, you can move forward. Here there is reason, of course, deeper reason. Here's my explanation.
This reminds me, and I recommend it to you, and what I was particularly inspired by at that time was the teachings of William James, who gave me a lot of inspiration, such as "Principles of Psychology". He first inspired Husserl. Husserl's phenomenology of inner-time consciousness could not have been established, or could not have been achieved so well, without the stream of thought doctrine in William James's Principles of Psychology. William James's The Various Experiences of Religion is an excellent and classical pioneering work in the study of mysticism.
But there is another article, Not long, The Will to Believe, "The Will of Faith", and what he talks about has something in common with us, but he speaks of will, not with emotion and value. What he meant was that the most important truth and reality in the world was to "meet you halfway," that is, to meet you halfway. What does that mean? That is to say, if you sit here, you reflect on it, you define it, you don't go on the road, it doesn't appear at all, that truth, you can never find it. Just like you love someone, you always reflect on him/her, you always think about the possibilities, what will happen, you don't dare to go out and talk to him/her, you don't dare to present yourself, you don't get him/her.
So the living truth, which he primarily speaks of, is intrinsically related to our attitude or will toward it/her/his. This is a bit like the "faith is the spirit" we talked about, but he uses a very rational way to distinguish and argue this triggering mechanism. Let me tell you this, he is a very rational person, the reason is thorough, so this is particularly inspiring to me. It is not that any will can lead to truth, but that kind of sincere innocence. Going back to the emotions we talked about, why is it that some emotion, but not all emotions, can call for truth? Emotion is overused, it is simply disastrous, but if it is indeed the most emotional, the rationality in it, its intelligence is incomparable. In love, a stupid mother is very wise and very intelligent when she raises her child, when she breastfeeds her child. Some Western scientists and medical scientists who thought they were smart once gave advice to their mothers, so good, so good, and the result was that after a hundred or two hundred years of practice, they finally found that the advice they gave was basically that this was not good, that was not good. Now try to return as much as possible. The mother is to nurse the child herself, the child has just been born, can not take away, immediately return to the mother, give the mother, let her go to hold, otherwise the mother's love for the child can not happen, and so on.
The mother cannot sleep separately from the child, especially when you are very young, you sleep separately, it is possible that the child will fall asleep in the middle of the night and die, because the human child is still too immature, his/her nervous system is still immature at all, so he/she may suddenly stop breathing. But he/she sleeps with his mother, and she/they interact between nights, so there is basically no sudden infant death. They were all observed through experiments, and the mother seemed to wake up more often, but it did not affect the mother's health and could rest. That wisdom comes from the love of a mother. Her love for the child is wholehearted, it is the undercurrent that enters her inner time consciousness; when she is asleep, the child is not objected to her heart, but is it not in her heart? Of course not, but which heart? Any normal turning over of the child, even a small noise, the mother may still be asleep, but any abnormal condition of the child, such as shortness of breath, falls under the bed, and the mother wakes up immediately. Is the mother stupid? Yes, she had no knowledge, she did not recognize words, but in this kind of matter, the wisdom of the mother was better than the wisdom of the medical experts. In the United States, mothers and babies have been implemented to sleep separately, but later there are more cases of such adverse consequences, and they finally concluded that they could not do it, and later suggested that mothers should sleep with their babies.
Wait, wait, I'm going to say there are a lot of examples of that. In the future, it should be precisely that emotional phenomenology, the phenomenology of the most emotional, which is a particularly important science, and I think it is a diamond in the crown of phenomenology! (Warm applause)
Zhuo Li:
Time is almost up, and I'll talk a little bit about it. Inner time consciousness was an early formulation of Husserl, but in some later texts the problem of history was further revealed. Just like the "time" mentioned in "Existence and Time" is actually mainly "history", so I think "time" is still a phenomenological perspective that is not thorough enough. Historical phenomenology is not an object of history, but an understanding of phenomenology from a historical point of view, and in this sense history is reversed and transformed into a living, living unfolding. Then it is more of a history that people have established and expanded, rather than a "time". This is my personal experience. History in this sense, then, cuts into Chinese thought, Confucian thought, and that kind of living, behavioral, lively Confucius thought, may really be associated with it.
I'll just make a very brief response. That's fine, but I'm willing to take the kind of history you're talking about, and it's not Historie, or History. Heidegger says that true history originates in time, and when he says time, he means the temporality of man's existence. You think it's not necessarily the source, it's just that history may be more fundamental, right? He said that the history that made him favorite was called Geschichte, and I will not talk about this, but this is related to the fate (Geschick) in German, and he is playing a language game between words again. So is the real history, you may want to talk about, is the original experience and form of human existence, related to human destiny?
This is a naturalized history and a non-naturalized history. Proceeding from the latter kind of history, the state of existence itself is the most original, and nature is unfolded precisely on its basis, which is actually an inverted relationship.
Yes, if this history is understood in such a way, I think it is indeed very original, even more primitive than heidegger's statement on the temporality of the form, because it has mostly broken through individualism and opened itself to the original relationship between people and generations. Well, I am willing to understand that this kind of history is created, maintained, and maintained through affection and reason.
So in fact, in the generalized phenomenology, there is the original thinking of the most reasonable form of human existence. It is such a way of living that is in line with the most feelings, such a political system, it is the most beautiful and lasting, without your kind of political pressure, system control, because it is completely in line with our most emotional conscience. This is the ultimate ideal of Confucianism, it is the peace of the world, it is the harmonious and voluntary dynasty of all nations. If this is the case, I do think that you have given this history, just like the meaning of "the calendar of heaven is in Erzhu" as stated in the Analects. Yao said that Shun's "calendar", that "number", and the history you told you can be opened.
Indeed, the unfolding of phenomenology gives us many new views of the original ideas. Some people claim to be engaged in phenomenology, but in fact, they are not necessarily engaged, and some people may not use phenomenology (Teacher Zhang interjected: not necessarily using phenomenology). We have to grasp from it constantly that kind of transcendent thing.
To be honest, today's discussion is actually that we have made Teacher Zhang a more thorough argument in the way of constantly pressing questions, and I am very grateful to Teacher Zhang for explaining it so lovingly. This concludes the symposium.
(Compiled by the Center for Classics and Humanistic Education of Chinese Studies, Southwest University of Political Science and Law)