New Media Center of the Propaganda Department of the Party Committee
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About the Author
Chen Xianda
Famous philosopher, honorary first-class professor of Chinese min University.
Mr. Chen Xianda is a famous contemporary Chinese philosopher who has been practicing the field of philosophy for nearly 70 years. Since the mid-1990s, Mr. Chen has written a series of philosophical essays, such as "Jingyuan Night Language", "Philosophical Heart Language", "Jingyuan Night Talk", "Strolling Reverie" and so on. Recently, Mr. Chen has gathered years of ideological inspiration and launched a new work, which has answered philosophical cognition, life wisdom, human status and value and other propositions in a simple and simple way, full of life atmosphere and fascinating.
What is philosophy
Russell did not give a definition of what philosophy was, but had a descriptive statement: philosophy, as far as I understand the word, is something between theology and science. It, like theology, contains human contemplation of things which are hitherto uncertain by exact knowledge, but like science appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether traditional or inspired.
Philosophy does not have a single answer, but it cannot be said that there is no answer. Different philosophies can have different answers to the same question. Not only do different philosophies have different views on questions such as what is happiness, what is fairness, what is justice, what is the value of life, and so on, but also philosophies have different answers to their own questions. Is the world objective or subjective? Which is true: "Existence is perceived" or "Existence is an objective existence that does not depend on the will of man"? Where does the acquaintance come from? Is there a concept of talent? Wait a minute. Opinions are diverse.
If so, what is the point of philosophy? Is a philosophy that is completely uncertain and has no correct answers valuable to human knowledge and practice? Why do humans need this philosophy without answers? There are two points worth noting here: First, philosophy cannot be philosopher's nonsense. Philosophy can be scientific. That is, in philosophy a distinction can be made between correct and incorrect answers. From this point of view, philosophy is a doctrine of truth, it is not theology. For example, man's knowledge can only come from practice, not from the mind, and the concept of talent is wrong. The material world is an objectively existing world, which existed before the emergence of mankind; after the emergence of man, it is changing the world, but the world does not therefore become dependent on human existence. Even if humans don't exist, the world continues to exist. "Ercao's body and name are destroyed, and the rivers and rivers are not wasted." Therefore, the objectivity of the world is the correct answer to the question of the nature of the world. We can give many such examples. It can be said that some philosophical questions can have correct answers, and some do not, and are being explored; it cannot be generally said that philosophy has no answers, otherwise philosophy is really like a torn cape, which anyone can put on. Marx, the founder of a new philosophy, emphasized that philosophy should be a doctrine of truth, and he asked rhetorically: "Should philosophy adopt special principles for every country, as the saying goes, 'every place has its own customs'?" Should philosophy believe in 3×1=1 in one country, women without souls in a second, and beer in heaven in a third? Is there a general nature of plants and stars and not of man? Philosophy is asking: What is true? Instead of asking: What is effective? It cares about the truth of all men, not the truth of individuals. ”
Marx saw philosophy as a doctrine of truth, not a speculative doctrine that had no answer at all. This is inseparable from Marx and Engels's changes in philosophy. Marx wanted to create a philosophy that could not only explain the world but also transform it. If philosophy cannot provide the truth at all, but only talks to itself endlessly, how can it be possible to create a philosophical doctrine for the emancipation of the proletariat and mankind that scientifically explains and transforms the world? Marxist philosophy is both scientific and practical. It is precisely because it is scientific that it can play a guiding role in understanding and transforming the world.
Marxist philosophy provides scientific answers to some important questions of philosophy. But Marxist philosophy cannot provide answers to all philosophical questions. The field of philosophy is infinitely broad, and we will face many philosophical problems, so philosophy is a big family, and philosophers of all ages and countries will provide a variety of wisdom to philosophy. Marxist philosophy is not a narrow sectarian philosophy, it can absorb a wide range of philosophical wisdom. When Marxism was founded, Marx and Engels studied ancient Greco-Roman philosophy, eighteenth-century Enlightenment philosophy, nineteenth-century German classical philosophy, especially Hegel and Feuerbach philosophy. Contemporary Marxist philosophy should also be the same, we must adhere to Marxist philosophy, but at the same time we should pay attention to traditional Chinese philosophy, pay attention to Western philosophy, especially the new problems and achievements in the study of modern Western philosophy. Why should we care about the achievements and dynamics of other philosophies? In the field of philosophical research, it is impossible to have a broad vision of the world if you are lonely and obscure, and you only bury your own profession. The world is so big, science is moving so fast, and there are so many new problems that every philosopher thinks from his own perspective. It certainly includes new questions, new perspectives and new ways of thinking. The stone of his mountain can attack jade, and the excellent results of other philosophies are certainly beneficial to the enrichment and development of Marxist philosophy.
The philosopher is the one who pursues the truth, who reveals the secret from the things that people know but do not really know, and he makes people learn to think. But since the advent of mankind, there have not been many true philosophers, as Schopenhauer acknowledges. He said that it is quite remarkable that a philosopher can make a name for himself in the history of philosophy. Indeed, if you read the history of Chinese and foreign philosophy, you count the heads, not many, even in the most developed era of philosophy, it is limited. Why? For in the process of our understanding and exploration of the world, concrete objects are relatively easy to grasp, and once we enter the level of wholeness and universality, it is quite difficult, because it is something that cannot be observed by any experimental tool, and there is no tool available except by the abstract ability of thinking.
Should a true scholar be confronted with the text or should he conduct research based on facts? In the face of the text, we can at most be a historian of philosophy, and in the face of facts, in the face of the world, we can become a philosopher, a thinker. In the face of the text, we can become a scholar or an expert, but it is difficult to provide new ideas, and at most it produces a sense of reading after saying, and the real new ideas do not come from the text, but from the concern for reality. Schopenhauer made an interesting metaphor: Discussing and comparing what others have said does not particularly help us gain insight into things, nor does it enrich our knowledge, because doing so is always like injecting water from one vessel into another. Only through our own thinking about things can we truly enrich our insightful knowledge of things, because only things can always be close at hand, providing us with a living source of knowledge at any time. If one only seeks a living from books and does not pay attention to reality, in Schopenhauer's view, such a person is like repeatedly turning an old bottle upside down, for fear of missing the last drop of water, but indifferent to the living water flowing under his feet. He also criticized the strange and bad definition of philosophy as a science of pure concepts.
The growth of true philosophy cannot rely on weaving purely abstract concepts, but can only be based on our observations and experiences of the outer and inner worlds. True achievement in the field of philosophy cannot be achieved by combining concepts. Philosophy, like art and literature, is based on our perception and grasp of the world. Moreover, no matter how indulgent a person is in looking up at the stars and ignoring all the furnishings on the ground, he cannot remain cold-blooded in the development of the world, never put into action and feel the shock of the development of the world.
In philosophical studies, we should distinguish between opinion and truth. Opinions are personal, and truth belongs to everyone. Truth is like a magnet, it always points in the right direction, and opinions, especially absurd opinions, are wrong signs, which point people in the wrong direction. Truth is universal and eternal, it will be enriched, but it will not be overthrown. Even if it is obscured for a period of time due to misunderstandings or social reasons, the floating clouds are difficult to cover, and the truth will be recognized in the final analysis. And a false philosophy, no matter how popular it is, how it meets a certain need of people in a certain period of time and becomes an apparent science, it will eventually disappear and become a passing smoke cloud. Just as a fashion can be popular for a while, but it won't always be popular.
Philosophy, of course, cannot be divorced from concrete scientific knowledge, because it must confront scientific knowledge, including knowledge in the natural sciences and social sciences. Meditation without a basis in knowledge can only be empty speculation. Marxist philosophy, as far as its origins are concerned, includes both the inheritance of the accumulation of human knowledge and the summarization of the achievements of the natural and social sciences, which is the basis for the scientific nature of Marxist philosophy. But as far as the object and function of philosophy is concerned, it does not study specific science, because specific science only studies a particular field of the world, while philosophy studies the world as a whole by universal laws and not by special laws.
It is difficult to understand the part without understanding the whole, just as it is difficult to understand the function of any one of man's organs without understanding the whole of man's structure. In this sense, philosophy is like an orchestra conductor, even though it does not play any instrument. A band less than one instrument remains an orchestra, while no conductor has no band. An orchestra needs both instrumentalists and conductors. The same is true of mankind's understanding of the world, which requires both specific disciplines in order to have a deep understanding of the parts and a holistic mind that can link the parts. Philosophy is the doctrine of grasping the world from the world as a whole, so we call philosophy the worldview.
Schopenhauer once likened the relationship between the object and mental activity to the relationship between the piano and the pluck, although people have the same brain but can produce different images of the same object. Why is that? People often misunderstand materialism, believing that the first nature of matter and the second nature of consciousness mean that the objects are the same, and the consciousness of the subject must be the same. This is a mechanistic reflectionist view, not a dialectical materialist dynamic reflection view. The first nature of matter, the second nature of consciousness, lies in the emphasis on the fact that human thought is not subjective and self-generated, but has its material roots. So why do different thoughts arise in the face of the same object? This brings us to the second aspect of the fundamental problem of philosophy, in which human consciousness has an active role, and when people accept things from the outside, they undergo a process of reconstruction in their minds, thus forming different reactions to the same object. People not only reflect the object through the brain, but also people's original pre-knowledge also participates in the formation of cognition, which has the role of evaluation, and different evaluations will affect the reflection of the object. If we say so, is the materialist view of "matter first, consciousness second", that "existence determines consciousness", useless? No. It works. For when we delve deeper into why objects are the same and thoughts and consciousnesses are different, or when images are formed by the same objects, we also have to return to the primacy of matter, to the consciousness that existence determines. For different ideologies, which did not fall from heaven, must have their actual cause, which exists not in the subject itself but outside the subject. Playing the piano with the piano pluck, different people will play different sounds, because the strength of the pluck or the technique of the player is different. If there is no pluck, the piano will never make a sound, otherwise it is what Lenin said about the crazy piano, playing itself.
Without objects and reflections on objects, there is no thought and consciousness, which is materialism; the same objects produce different thoughts, which is dialectics. Su Shi had a poetry cloud: "If there is a sound on the piano, why not sound it in the box?" If the voice is on the finger, why not listen to the king's finger? "If you don't use the piano, can only your fingers make the sound?" If only the piano had no fingers, would it sound? Not really. Subject and object interact.
The subject-object relationship is very complex, and those who participate in the reflection not only have thoughts but also have moods, and different emotions reflect things differently. The difference between pleasant and bad emotions leads to two different emotions of love and hatred for the same thing. This is why anger often leads to one-sidedness of cognition. Emotions affect not only health, but also cognition. Chinese philosophy emphasizes quietness, quietness and then peace, peace and then stability, and then stability and then attainment. One can think correctly only when one is calm. In addition, the subject-object relationship is not only an epistemological problem, but also a problem of historical materialism. Because both the subject and the object change on the basis of practice, rather than solidifying and unchanging. History is the process of interaction between historical subjects and historical objects. Subjects and objects are not abstract or static, and unchanging subjects and objects do not exist.
Philosophy should be curious, and without curiosity it does not drive philosophical thinking. But philosophical curiosity is different from "bag inquiry", different from being interested in other people's other things, philosophical curiosity is intended to explore the nature of things, to explore things that are universal, not to discuss social news, Zhang parents Li Jia short idle things. Therefore, the curiosity of the philosopher can be called the heart of surprise, and the simple inquiry into the idle affairs of other people's homes is only curiosity. The difference between curiosity and wonder is that surprise points to curiosity, while curiosity is only interested in inquiring about gossip.
Source: China Social Science Daily - China Social Science Network
Photography: Wellcome
Design: Jump
Proofreader: Gu Xiaobai