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Is our rationality lost? Philosopher Chen Jiaying put forward an important judgment in his new book "Perception, Rational Knowledge, Self-Knowledge", that the instrumental development of human reason has led to the "end of the era of rational knowledge". He wrote: "The farther the knowledge goes, the thinner the relevance or richness of perception, and even finally the complete loss of the perceptual content becomes pure knowledge, no sense of knowledge." Chen Jiaying is worried about the era of digitalization and artificial intelligence, and proposes that when rational knowledge is separated from perception, when "intelligence" replaces "Homo sapiens", when "mathematical theory" replaces "reason", when rationality is reduced to naked instrumental rationality, the era of rational knowledge ushers in the end.
Perception, Knowledge, And Self-Awareness
Chen Jiaying
Republic of | Beijing Daily Press 2022-1
Along with the end of the Age of Knowledge, the loneliness of "Homo sapiens" (or philosophers) and the transformation of the contemporary "intellectual structure" are accompanied. In 2017, in the second season of "Thirteen Invitations", Xu Zhiyuan and Ma Dong had a confrontational discussion on "whether we are in the coarse stage of culture", which aroused public concern and continuous hot discussion: Is contemporary intellectual discourse really declining? Is the elite culture centered on intellectualism marginalized? Behind these questions is the intellectuals' "unfounded worries" and nostalgia, or is it the real situation of the current era? A few days ago, in a live dialogue initiated by the "Republic" with the theme of "Contemporary Transformation of The Cultural-Intellectual Structure", Chen Jiaying and scholar Liu Qing once again touched on these unresolved contemporary issues, and further questioned and analyzed the situation of "intellectual" in the change of the times.
The Age of Writing: "Intellectuals" and "Literati Republics"
Before talking about the transformation of the contemporary "intellectual structure", Chen Jiaying first refined the object of his discourse and proposed the concept of "intellectual man" to emphasize its difference from the meaning of traditional "philosopher" and contemporary "intellectual". "Intellectuals" are groups of wise men who have risen with the popularity of written reading since the Middle Ages, after the formation of modern national languages, including Renaissance mans such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Dante, etc., philosophe represented by thinkers such as Voltaire and Rousseau in the French Enlightenment, interdisciplinary literati such as Hume in Britain and Leibniz in Germany, and contemporary " Thinkers and intellectuals who are not directly involved in political activities" The most essential common feature of the "intellectuals" is that they are "thinkers" rather than "actors" and participate in social production with "discourse" rather than "behavior".
Chen Jiaying pointed out that before the Renaissance, the vast majority of people were excluded from intellectual discourse. After the Renaissance, the decline of the elite, the further generation of modern national languages, the monopoly of Latin was broken, more and more people were able to read words, and in general, the changes in the conditions for reading words contributed to the transformation of the intellectual structure and the formation of "intellectual people".
Image source: Visual China
In the 19th century, when literacy and cultural penetration were extremely high, written works were once the most central form of intellectual structure, and in the era of paper media in which everyone read newspapers, the writer was once a very central part of the intellectual structure. Chen Jiaying believes that "the pursuit of intellectuals reached its peak in the second half of the 19th century": in the cultural field of advocating intellectuals opened up by the society at that time, intellectuals and intellectuals could ignore the differences in race, country, class, and position, and confront each other nakedly and sincerely, conduct systematic and rational reasoning and discussion, and form a spectacular "republic of the man of letters". Liu Qing also agreed with a reference to a "republic", adding that in the former European community of intellectuals, "differences in moral and political positions did not constitute an obstacle to dialogue and exchange." In "Yesterday's World", Stephen Zweig also remembers and remembers the former glory of European culture and literati before World War II, and according to Liu Qing, China also won similar literary glory and "literati community" in the 1980s.
The Age of Images: "Numbers" expel "intellect", "discourse" degenerates into "expression"
Chen Jiaying believes that "text", based on linear logic and structural thinking, is no longer the most core form in contemporary intellectual structure, but is replaced by the proliferation of "images". "In the past, images were expensive, but today images are the cheapest thing, much cheaper than text." Chen Jiaying reminded the public that in the process of normalization of the epidemic, the amazing control of digital over people, as well as the historic participation of short videos as an important medium in the Russo-Ukrainian War, these phenomena are new manifestations of power in the "digital age".
In the 20th century, especially after World War II, the intellectual structure of Western society underwent an important transformation, "we entered the so-called postmodern, or the image era, the digital age." In Chen Jiaying's view, the digital age divides the crowd into two parts by virtue of the "technical threshold": half of them are people who master digital technology, represented by the technical elites of Silicon Valley and Zhongguancun. They understand the world through "numbers," and for them, the world is not perceptual, but digital, and therefore reproducible and measurable. The other half cannot understand and control the world through numbers, but understand the world by receiving "images", which are the forms that are the furthest away from numbers. Thus, in contemporary times, people who master numbers concoct images, and people who do not understand numbers receive images, forming a technological gap that cannot be communicated, and only "commerce" can connect the two ends of each other. In this situation, technology monopolizes the interpretation of the world to some extent, thus expelling the "intellectual discourse" from the social structure.
But what does the decline of intellectual discourse really mean in the contemporary era? When Chen Jiaying defines "discourse", he interprets it as a kind of "systematic reasoning" to distinguish it from "self-expression" with lower intellectual content. "Intellectual discourse" actually means a cultural field and dialogue space that can contaminate and educate the public and accommodate different opinions. However, after the popularization of knowledge, the public's desire to "express" seems to far exceed the desire to "be informed": everyone wants to express, and the need for this expression, in Chen Jiaying's view, is not entirely spontaneous from within people, but is largely shaped and guided by technology. Numbers make images "cheaper," and cheaper costs of expression give rise to a richer desire for expression. Thus we enter what Kundera called the age when everyone is an author but no audience.
Image source: Visual China
Chen Jiaying pointed out that in theory, after the decline of intellectual discourse, there will inevitably be other intellectual forces pouring in to fill this vacuum, but the fact is that the "expression" with lower intellectual content fills the vacuum of "systematic reasoning". Chen Jiaying further concluded that in the age of images and the age of digital, "intellectual discourse" has been reduced to "personal expression": the "intellectual discourse" used to exchange, revise, and reconcile different opinions has disappeared, replaced by personal, emotional and political "position expression".
The paradox and the way out of "democratization": let the actors and thinkers do their part
It is true that the reflection on the popularization of knowledge and the democratization of expression is not intended to return to a tradition of philosophical arbitrariness. "The intellectuals had their own time, just as the samurai and monks had their own time, but now this era has passed." Based on the irresistible trend of democratization, Liu Qing further pointed out that "democracy is more difficult than Ming Jun", and when more and more people participate in public life, we should think about how to move towards better democracy, rather than holding intellectuals' nostalgia and sentimentality for their former glory.
Liu Qing further explained the multifaceted nature of the popularization of knowledge: on the one hand, the rise of the post-medieval "literati republic" was directly related to the role of the market in educating the masses, just as the improvement of popular music appreciation was the basis of Beethoven's highly respected era; on the other hand, the gradual weakening of the voice of contemporary intellectuals seems to be the result of the natural decline in the evolution of democracy itself. In The Passing of Childhood, Neil Bozeman also explains the dual role of the popularization of knowledge from the perspective of mass media: on the one hand, it is the popularization of printing that allows people to read words freely, and the reading of words erects an intellectual boundary between "adulthood" and "childhood", leading to a cultural divide of "deep and shallow"; on the other hand, the rise of the television market bridges the boundaries of this intellectual, resulting in the continuous underagement and shallowness of the adult world. Based on this paradox of the popularization of knowledge brought about by the market, Liu Qing sincerely expressed his confusion: "What kind of market is good and elegant, what kind of demand is low-level and vulgar, can today's intellectuals still give a definite answer?" ”
Image source: Visual China
In Chen Jiaying's view, the two sides of the popularization of culture need to be solved with more dimensional intellectual structures: in short, the problem is not how to make more ordinary people become intellectuals, but to let "actors" and "thinkers" perform their respective duties. According to Chen Jiaying's definition of "intellectual person", intellectual people are "thinkers" who do not participate in the material production of society, which means that they do not need "action" and have a lot of time and energy to deal with vast information systems. Therefore, "it is obviously unfair to demand that an actor, a person who seeks a life, maintain a high intensity of thinking outside of life, and must 'reason well' in addition to expression, because 'reasoning' is not his job". Compared with other eras in history, contemporary intellectuals may not have declined in quantity and quality, as Liu Qing put it, they were only "diluted" and "drowned out". Chen Jiaying seems to be more pessimistic, in his view, "drowning" and "absent" are no different, "being submerged is just another way of not being present", at present, the multi-dimensional dialogue space that allows thinkers and actors to perform their respective duties has not yet been rebuilt.
Reconstructing the "intellectual discourse": abandoning the extreme pursuit of "political correctness"
In tracing the reasons for the current tension between the masses and the elite, Liu Qing claimed that "the marginalization of the intellect is to some extent caused by the 'civil war' of the intellectuals." He cites the postmodern theories of Derrida and Foucault as an illustration: in the postmodern turn of philosophy, Derrida's critique of "Rutgers-centrism" has greatly destroyed the authority of language and clarified to the public the dangers and deceptions of the linguistic reasoning system itself. Foucault's reflection and disclosure of the power structure contained in the "intellectual discourse" further exacerbates the public distrust of the "discourse" itself. In the internal debates of Chinese intellectuals in the 60s and 70s, there were also intellectuals who took the anti-elite mass position, believing that "Beethoven's music is no different from the whistles in the streets and alleys." Liu Qing further concluded that "the destruction of the knowledge community is sometimes caused by the intellectuals themselves."
However, in Foucault's original context, the relationship between discourse and power is actually much more complicated, Chen Jiaying pointed out, "Although the perspective of discourse and power can help us see a certain truth, this does not mean that discourse relies entirely on power, it only creates power." Chen Jiaying pointed out that these arbitrary judgments are the expression of political positions, not the exchange of political positions.
In the current public life of the United States, such either-or "position expressions" are more common, "whatever kind of expression will eventually evolve into a 'yes or no' position." Carl Smitt once claimed that "the essence of politics is to distinguish between the enemy and the enemy", but Chen Jiaying believes that "Schmidt is indeed an expert in dealing with crisis moments, but we are not always in a crisis moment where we must distinguish between the enemy and ourselves." Chen Jiaying frankly said that he does not agree with the extreme "political correctness" tendencies that prevail in current public opinion, and is also worried about the high politicization and tension of the current "expression": "It seems that we are in a life-and-death situation at every moment and every moment", however, "excessive politicization will make politics lose its original meaning." ”
At the end of the dialogue, Chen Jiaying tried to find a way out from the early plays of the ancient Greek sage Aeschylus, and proposed that we should learn from the democratic process of the Athenian city-state, try to move from an era of pursuing "primitive justice" to a period of "getting rid of primitive justice", and thus become a "city-state of discourse". Chen Jiaying believes that in addition to the either-or position, there should be some neutral space for the "discourse" of intellect to grow again in relaxation.