Some people say that scholars tend to fall into two categories. One influences the future by focusing on history and caring for the present; the other by basing oneself on reality. Among them, the former is represented by Qian Mu, the author of the outline of national history, "the last master of traditional Chinese studies"; the latter is Kevin Kelly, who is recognized as the "godfather of the Internet" for "accurately predicting future trends".
However, there are very few mathematicians who can take both into account in his academic career, not only going back to the past, exploring the "real way of thinking about reality" in the course of thousands of years of human history, and being able to base themselves on the real dilemma and explore some new possibilities for the "obscure" future.
Such "alternative" scholars may be counted as Diamond and Harari in foreign countries, and among domestic scholars, they may be counted as Jin Guantao.
Think about the future of humanity
We must squarely face the ideological dilemma brought about by the reversal of history
Source | The prophet bookstore manager recommends books
When it comes to Jin Guantao, everyone is easily attracted by his legendary life of "going to Beijing at the age of 20, going to Hong Kong at the age of 40, and coming to Taiwan at the age of 60", however, his academic journey is far more legendary than his life experience.
In the 1970s, in the midst of turmoil, he began to rebel against the current, began to rebel against "orthodox thought", and in subsequent studies, he introduced the scientific method that was still "cutting-edge" into the field of social sciences, proposing a systematic evolutionary theory that coupled the interaction between Chinese political, economic, and conceptual subsystems.
In the early 1990s, when the Enlightenment was frustrated, he realized that systems theory could not fully explain this complex phenomenon, and spent 10 years to complete the "Study of the History of Ideas", through the method of "conceptual history", trying to clarify why the reconstruction of modern Western thought gave birth to the Chinese people to utopianism.
In the 21st century, human civilization is facing collective wandering. He is also convinced that the real problems facing mankind are both universal and more specific. To this end, it finally integrates the research framework of system theory and the interpretation method of conceptual history, returns to the axial era, stands at the height of the "occurrence mechanism" of civilization, and proposes a great historical view that can not only explain the evolution of different civilizations, but also understand the current big historical view.
Jin Guantao and Liu Qingfeng
Many people who are familiar with Jin Guantao lament that his historical research has "come to an end", but Jin Guantao has not stopped. In 2020, fueled by the epidemic, he expanded his vision to a broader philosophical level and began to explore the fundamental ideological dilemmas of modern society.
In his latest book, Vanishing Truth: The Intellectual Dilemma of Modern Society, Jin Guantao offers insight into the "crisis of authenticity" that is currently encountered in various fields of politics, science, and philosophy.
In the social field, the "value base" of the global political and economic community is losing its reality, nationalism and anti-globalization are unstoppable, and when the two become the mainstream again, the consequence will be a great regression of the human soul, the recurrence of the tragedy of nationalism, and the regression of human civilization will be unstoppable.
In the field of science, on the one hand, emerging technologies have begun to spread and apply rapidly in various fields, on the other hand, we lack macro understanding of science, but we have begun to blindly confident that we can play the role of "creator" - such as genetic technology, the understanding and manipulation of biological details knowledge, but the authenticity of life itself has a crisis.
In the field of philosophy, the dominant analytic philosophy of the 20th century not only failed to bridge the huge gap between science and humanity, but also raised human understanding of modernity, science and the meaning of life to a new height. On the contrary, philosophy and a number of philosophy-based humanities are trapped in a cage, and once social problems exceed the professional field, theory must be helpless, exacerbating the disintegration of the real mind that human beings use to perceive and understand society.
As Teacher Jin Guantao said: Today, we have a prosperous material civilization, but in contrast, the human soul has never been so fragile, afraid of death, cowardly and cowardly to resist as it is today.
To this end, we sincerely recommend Jin Guantao's "The Vanishing Reality: The Ideological Dilemma of Modern Society". This book not only starts from the ideological dilemma behind the various crises of modern times, but also explores the possibilities of rebuilding the "new axis era" in the future, from the perspective of research vision, problem awareness, etc., which can be called the culmination of Jin Guantao's forty years of research career.
Systems Theory + Conceptual History + Grand Historical View: A Three-in-One Research Perspective
The French writer Gide once said that what matters is not what you see, but what you see. If a person's vision can only make him see the problem, then the vision allows him to see the problem clearly.
In his new work "The Vanishing Reality", Jin Guantao not only recalls the decades of academic career and the ideological changes from the 1980s to the present through the 1980s. It also uses the culmination of its 40 years of research methods to be compatible with the perspective of "the depth of conceptual history, the height of civilization history, and the thickness of system theory", and expands its vision to the philosophical level. As some scholars have said: the ultimate in the study of history is futurology. Therefore, this book can not only be called a work of philosophy of science and history, but also an absolutely cutting-edge "futurology" work.
Exploring the "meta-problem" of the modern dilemma, a book that is "out of place" with the ideas of the times
In "The Disappearing Reality", Jin Guantao bluntly said that he was incompatible with the ideas of the times, and such research and exploration was even more "outlier" in the academic community. Because "this kind of thing is not only something that no scholar has ever done since the 19th century, but also a taboo against academic specialization."
Under the general paradigm, most of the discussions on the dilemmas of the modern people focus on the professional fields of philosophy, political science, and sociology. But in the boundaries of discipline, the meaning of life, the thickness of history, and the "authenticity" that support us are also dissolved.
In Jin Guantao's view, the dilemmas encountered by human beings in various fields such as science, politics and philosophy seem to be unrelated, but there is a common "meta-problem" - the crack between faith and science. This dilemma is very similar to the "Kant era". At that time, Kant stitched the crack between faith and science in the 18th century through the "three major critiques" of philosophy, and opened a philosophical "Copernican revolution".
And what is most needed today is the same attempt. But "the only lesson that mankind has learned from history is that he never learns any lesson." As Professor Jin Guantao said: "In the 20th century, people once believed that history was regular, which resulted in the denial of people's free will, leading to the rise of totalitarianism. In the 21st century, people have denied the laws of history, but strangely find that history is repeating..."
In the book, Jin Guantao once said to himself:
"Life is both short and long. It is said to be short because it seems that half a century ago happened yesterday, and the long refers to the endless flow. Especially my generation, in an era of great challenges to modernity, the soul has been continuously impacted, the former impact has not yet passed, and the latter has come with a huge wave of heaven... What I want to ask is: Will the questions we ask and some of the answers we get with our lifetime stop with the disappearance of our own generation? ”
Since the Axial Age, the search for truth has begun in the face of darkness, and today's thinking about the future must dare to face up to the ideological dilemma brought about by the great reversal of history, and "The Disappearing Truth" is the first step jin Guantao took to explore.