Scholar Interview: Professor Tang Zhengdong of Nanjing University: Discovering the Joy of Research

Teacher Tang Zhengdong

Teacher Profile: Tang Zhengdong, Professor of the Department of Philosophy of Nanjing University, Doctoral Supervisor, Distinguished Professor of the "Yangtze River Scholars Award Program" of the Ministry of Education (2015-2019). In 2015, he was selected as a "Cultural Master and 'Four Batches' Talents" of the Propaganda Department. He is currently the Secretary-General of the Steering Committee for the Teaching of Philosophy in Colleges and Universities of the Ministry of Education, the Vice President of the National Economic Philosophy Research Association, and the President of the Jiangsu Philosophical Society.

Q: What books did the teacher read in 2020? Which one is the most impressive?

Because of the epidemic, the first half of 2020 was basically at home, so I read more than in previous years. The books I read are mainly in the professional field and are divided into two areas:

One aspect focuses on the development of Engels's philosophical thought in the early and middle periods. 2020 is the 200th anniversary of Engels's birth, and as a scholar of Ma Zhe, I must pay attention to and do something, so last year I spent more energy on studying Engels. In the past, I read Marx's books more and Engels's books less. In fact, not only me, but also many scholars in the Ma Zhe community are like this. When it comes to Engels always "Dialectics of Nature", Engels is equivalent to the dialectics of nature. For scholars who read a little wider, plus later related texts such as Anti-Dühring, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of German Classical Philosophy, and The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State.

It is precisely because for a long time only attention has been paid to the later works of Engels, so on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of Engels's birth, many scholars in the academic community have deliberately reorganized the relevant texts of Engels in the early and middle periods, that is, the process of ideological development before 1848. In the past, it was only said that "Ma-en" was said, and Marx and Engels were said together, but in fact, Engels's part was not too much.

On the other hand, reading the research works of foreign scholars on Capital and the entire materialist view of history, I have a point of view that to study the ideas of classical writers, we must have an open academic research attitude and constantly contact foreign scholars to study the latest developments in Manne. Therefore, another aspect of my professional research this year is the research of foreign scholars on Capital and the entire materialist view of history. Three years ago, on the 200th anniversary of Marx's birth, a large number of related books were published in Western academic circles, about thirty or forty. I only started watching it last year, but I haven't finished watching it yet.

Follow-up: Why focus on Engels?

To concentrate on the study of Engels is actually to deepen the understanding of the formation process and inner nature of Engels's philosophical thought on the basis of existing research, and in fact to deepen the understanding of the essence of Marxist philosophy.

Foreign academic circles do not attach importance to Engels. At one time, Engels was thought to be the dialectic of nature, and Engels did not study social-historical problems. Even when it comes to the early study of socio-historical issues, it is a general term for Marne's thought. In the early and medium-term studies, Engels was only portrayed as an objective investigator of Empirical material for Marx's research, such as in The Condition of the Working Class in England. In addition, Engels was a relatively modest person, saying that he was a "second violinist" and an assistant to Marx. Therefore, for a long time, the image of Engels has been the provider of empirical material.

In the eyes of these foreign scholars, Engels was a neutral positivist researcher, and Marx was a critical theorist of humanism. This distinction not only distinguishes Engels from the critical theorists of private property, but also separates Marx from the objectively and scientifically realistic researchers. Thus, marx's image as a historical materialist theoretician is lost, because the theory of historical materialism is first and foremost based on a historical interpretation of social reality. If Engels is regarded as an empirical researcher and Marx is regarded as a humanistic critical theorist, then the marx who has been studied must be the humanistic Marx. The Western academic circles discuss the humanistic Marx has its special background, from the perspective of a simple intellectual, only need to interpret Marx as a critical theorist, as to what kind of critical theory this critical theory is, it does not matter. So this is completely different for them than it is for us.

Taking advantage of the 200th anniversary of Engels's birth to re-examine Engels is actually an important opportunity for us to deepen our understanding of Marxist philosophy in a new phase, not just because the 200th anniversary needs to be commemorated. If commemoration cannot advance ideas and derive new theories, then commemoration will have only historical significance, not the significance of intellectual history.

Q: What advice do the teachers have for the selection and writing of the doctoral dissertation?

The importance of a PhD thesis is that it is a stepping stone into academia. The doctoral dissertation must be written carefully, and it must not be used as a stepping stone to the job search, unless you do not pursue academic work in the future. If you're going to be academic, you have to make your phD thesis the most important thing in this period of time, and spend all your energy on your phD thesis. You should realize that after the doctoral dissertation comes out, not only the teachers around you will have a direct impression of your academic quality, but also the scholars in the academic community will also have a deep impression on your academic ability. If your doctoral dissertation has not been mentioned in the academic community 5 years after graduation, it may be difficult for you to have a big breakthrough afterwards.

In fact, you may also find that although they all graduated from Nanzhe, some students grew and developed rapidly after graduation, and in three or four years they grew into a young scholar with significant influence in the national academic circles. However, some students have not made any voice after graduation, and have been in a vicious circle of "no in-depth research - no in-depth research - no motivation for in-depth research - even less can not issue papers", as a result, their self-confidence as a scholar has also been hit, and their mood is not good.

In the stage of writing a doctoral dissertation, it is very important that individuals can develop a keen ability to obtain academic materials independently, the ability to condense and grasp accurate academic ideas, the ability to organize clear academic views, and the ability to express academic ideas fluently. After writing a doctoral dissertation, your writing ability will be greatly improved. But if you're so-so, you won't get promoted at all. So the role of a doctoral dissertation is actually a competency boost, not just to get a degree. One of my most important lessons is that I have to talk to teachers more.

For example, in the selection of topics for doctoral dissertations, I believe that the advice provided by the teacher must be far more academically valuable than the students' own personal research interests. Of course, I am talking about the problem of probability, and I do not rule out the particularity of individual academic geniuses. We know that the liberal arts are not the same as science, and it is likely that the science department has suddenly made a new discovery in an experiment. However, the accumulation of knowledge in the liberal arts and the degree of reading of existing literature are definitely less than those of teachers. So when you find a topic worth studying, be sure to discuss its academic value with your teacher. It's important not to take the teacher's advice as a nuisance to your classmates. Otherwise, maybe the topic you chose was solved 100 years ago, or it won't make enough academic sense in the next 10 years. In this way, the value of your essay writing will be greatly reduced.

In addition, if students want to improve faster, it is best to focus on the 20 scholars at the forefront of the industry. I mean, given that everyone's energy is limited, it's best to read the writings and papers of the top 20 academics in the industry, and of course if you're infinitely energetic, that's a different story. You must clearly know who the top 20 scholars in your industry are, and keep an eye on their articles, so that you can promote the development of your academic ideas more quickly. It's not that the more you read the article, the clearer your thinking becomes. Sometimes you will read blindly because you lack good judgment. If you look for a needle in a haystack and read everything, the probability of seeing a good article will decrease.

Of course, there will be difficulties in writing and it will not be able to continue. The reason why you can't write is that you haven't figured it out, there are some places in the writing process that find problems, and you think perfectly before you start writing, but you actually write or find problems, whether it is not enough evidence of the point of view, or the refinement of the point of view is not clear enough. At this time, you should sit down and think about it carefully, and repeat the point of view like a movie in front of you. If you find something that doesn't make sense, you have to concentrate on figuring it out. Once you figure it out, there is no problem. Writing is the use of words to organize one's thoughts, which is not the same as the use of thoughts to organize thoughts. If you organize it with words, the logic will be more rigorous. At this time, some loopholes in the original process of thinking are found, and the problems you did not think of will appear, then you can only find a problem to overcome a problem, you have no choice.

There is no shortcut here to solve the problem - all people have only one way, that is, to overcome this difficulty and solve the theoretical problems they encounter. If you want to go around, then all the parts that go around the past will bring you losses in the future. This is a very important question.

Follow-up: Our students often can't find their own academic questions, what should we do?

In my experience, the reasons for these kinds of problems are all because I read too few books. But we can't read so many books at once, how to solve it? In the initial stage, follow the teacher, such as listening carefully to the teacher's lessons and constantly communicating with the teacher. I now talk to graduate students after each class, and in the middle of the process, I continue to guide them closer to real academic problems.

Some questions are not academic, but just intellectual, and in English that is a quest, not a promise. Today the sun rises at 8:00 a.m., and that's a quest. Why does the sun rise at 8:00 today? It's a promisem that you need to explain.

The humanities require the accumulation of knowledge, and only after understanding the entire relevant background can they ask fruitful academic questions. Because many of these issues have been talked about hundreds of years ago. In fact, every stage of human beings is talking about some common issues, such as human freedom and social development. First of all, you must have a good understanding of what others say, extend the ideas spoken by others to the specific context of the present, and continue to talk about the issue of personal freedom and social development -- this is to come to China specifically and tell the Chinese story well. If you ignore the course of thought over the past thousand years, then you have missed an excellent condition as a latecomer, and you can think entirely with one head, can you think of so many wise people?

So at the beginning, I had to communicate with the teacher constantly. The teacher is actually a very ordinary person, and his only strength is that he reads more books than you do, and he thinks about it a little longer than you think about it. So why is the role of the teacher particularly important in the liberal arts? It's because he's able to constantly lead you into a real problem. Of course, you can also communicate with your classmates, but you should communicate with students who like to read. Don't talk to students who like to brag, because it's not an academic problem but just imaginary ideas.

After your research is on the right track, you must strive to find real academic ideas and understand the joy of real academic discovery. Some students are very painful to do the paper, saying that it is a code word, just like a mason code brick. That must have been a lack of real academic problems and fun. The real academic problem is premised on the premise that you are familiar with the specialized field of study, and the relevant texts are all in your head and ready to be used. In this way, you can also think when you are walking on the road. The real problem is the problem that haunts your mind and makes you think desperately until you figure it out. Some students say that after reading the text, they forget, that can not produce real problems, only let you find some knowledge points. Because you can't get through it, you can't generate the joy of research, so that writing a paper makes it as painful as a codeword. Academic writing after really thinking it through is a flow of words, something that makes you sad if you don't write them out. Students are expected to discover the joy of academic research sooner.

Q: When we were in class, we all felt that your logic was particularly strong, and the questions we cared about were consistent, can you talk about your research path and method?

All humanities scholars are concerned with human development, but the perspective of human development is different. In the big picture, there are at least two perspectives: starting from the individual and starting from society. I prefer this kind of socio-historical topic, not too much to study the personal cultural level, but this is not to say that it is not good to start from a personal point of view, but the research style is different.

Thinking about it now, perhaps I was influenced by the Marxist philosophical methodology and preferred to pay more attention to what kind of scholarship could effectively promote the development of society. I believe that the free development of the individual must be based on the further development of society. My research is basically based on such an angle. At the earliest time when I studied the theory of social form, I published an article in the Southern University Newspaper in 1997 entitled "Marx's Three Emphasises on Social and Economic Form and Its Contemporary Enlightenment". Later, he studied the methodology of economic philosophy and wrote the book "From Smith to Marx: A Historical Interpretation of the Method of Economic Philosophy"; the methodology of economic philosophy itself is actually to illustrate how Marx understood the economic problem in the course of social history. Later, he studied Foreign Marxism, mainly in the study of the French School of Regulation represented by Agritta. After the French school of regulation, it directly studied the new changes in contemporary capitalism, so there was a later book, "Critical Interpretation of the New Changes in Contemporary Capitalism".

All in all, I prefer to think about human freedom and social development from the perspective of the interpretation of real social problems. All philosophies think about the question of human freedom, but different philosophical approaches are different. Some philosophies focus on thinking about the connotation of human freedom from a metaphysical point of view; others focus on thinking about the path to the realization of human freedom from the perspective of the process of social and historical development. I'm more focused on the latter. The key is not to interpret social history as an object other than the individual, whether it is the productive forces or the relations of production, or the superstructure, which is a reflection of the actual state of activity of the individual, but it sees the complexity of this state of activity. In a sense, this is also a reflection on the nature of philosophy under the conditions of complex modernity.

Q: Can you share some of your reading methods with your classmates? When many students read, they always feel that they can't read, can't read thoroughly, read and forget, how to solve this? As a teacher, what do you expect from your classmates to read?

There are many kinds of reading, some students read aimlessly, and some books are to solve the problems I want to solve. For example, the 30 books I just mentioned are basically centered on the current foreign academic research on Capital and the whole historical materialism, and to what extent they have studied it. In the past, we only advanced to about the 1970s and 1980s, and now we are basically the new generation of scholars after the 90s. What point did you get? How to comment on them properly? I have such a task, that is, this matter has been haunting us, I want to solve this problem, to solve the problem is to read.

Read more than thirty books on a topic. After reading each book, you will know whether the book is worth reading again. You need to read the 3rd and 4th times again, sometimes N times, this is a well-written book, read it carefully. If you read a book that is not well written, you know that he is not good at writing, so naturally there is no need to read it a second time. In the process of reading, it is best that you take note of his thoughts, and the man probably said something. If this person's train of thought has already existed, and it is not too meaningful, then put it aside.

Everyone has a different way of reading, and some teachers do not use the pen to work very well, so they cannot be generalized. I only talk about my understanding, my own feeling is not to read without writing, unless there are really no conditions when reading, such as on the train of course, it is not easy to take notes, you can only look.

Under normal circumstances, when reading a book, you have to put a book at hand, the so-called book has two functions, one function is to write down what you read. Because I believe that no one can repeat it all after reading a new book. So what to do? It's that we read it and write down the big framework. For example, after reading 10 pages, or after reading the first part, you remember a little: what is the core problem just now, there are 3 sub-questions, you can write it quickly in a few minutes, and then do the next thing. So after a book is read, we should have several related core ideas to state, which is the function of the notebook.

The second function, when reading a book, we will suddenly come up with some questions and ideas, these questions are the best angles for writing papers. Truly innovative ideas are actually born when you read a book, because in the middle of the reading process, your brain is running fast, and then there will be some inspiration. The so-called inspiration does not come step by step, if you do not write it down, you will forget, so you must write it down at any time, and the answers that came to mind at that time must also be written down.

Half of my book is written about the content, and the other half is written about the problems that come to mind, and I think the effect is quite good.

If you want to read through, you must master the method, especially when reading foreign documents. Foreign languages as a second language, after all, are not as proficient as mother tongues. Many people forget everything after reading a foreign book, this is because they do not take notes, if they have notes when reading, they generally look back and remember. After remembering more reading notes, you can continue to turn over when you have nothing to do, and you can have associations when you turn them, and then academic ideas will slowly form. If you sometimes can't read it, just write down what he said. It's really not possible to write down the keywords.

Q: When we read books, we often combine our own interests and the needs of professional research to select and arrange some specific books to read, how do you think about the relationship between these two different types of books?

Ideally, your reading interest is your professional need. If you have been in a state of painful research, have no interest in your own professional research, and are interested in reading martial arts novels, it will be a big trouble.

In fact, for researchers, the more you should study, the more interested you are. When I was a master's student, I also liked to read martial arts novels, and Jin Yong's novels were basically read every one. In fact, this is because at that time, there was not much fun in professional research. So when you ask this question, it actually means that you have not yet been able to find the pleasure of professional research, and feel that professional research seems to be a particularly distressing thing that the teacher forced you to do, so there will be a so-called difference between reading professional books and reading idle books.

I now feel as if I am less and less interested in reading books that I am interested in. For example, if I need to understand the history of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, I have to read the relevant history books, in fact, that is not an idle book, it is also my professional needs. I feel that as a graduate student, even if you can't do this, you have to work in this direction.

If you still have to read books for eight hours on this day, you have to set aside two hours to read martial arts books, I think this is a pity. These two hours are too important, and it's too difficult to squeeze this time from somewhere else. So in the ideal state, professional books and interest books are not two types of books, but one type of books; if it is in the case of an ideal state, it is best to read the book of interest as a concoction, read tired of reading to see other books, but it is best to go out and do some physical exercise, which may be better.

You undergraduate and master's students are fine, if you are a doctoral student, I will not advocate finding a separate type of book of interest. Because the doctoral stage is really too important. I just said that all the well-developed doctoral dissertations in academia are all hits. Academics are also a profession, just like civil servants. After you have taken the civil service exam, can you read martial arts novels during your work? That's not going to work either. Reading is actually a job, but for students, there is no fixed time to restrain you except for class, but you have to restrain yourself. Of course, what I am talking about here is also under the premise of limited personal energy. If your energy and time are very extra, then it doesn't matter.

Q: How is academic research close to reality?

In the field of view of academic research, sometimes the real problem is very close, sometimes the real problem is very far, and this problem should be looked at dialectically. All true scholars are oriented to real problems. Although the content of his research may not be direct to real problems, he is facing real problems in his own unique way.

For example, studying mega2's text doesn't seem like a real problem, right? This is where it matters how much you understand the meaning of the work you do. Mega studies are not a question of pure texts, as in Marx's unpublished German Ideology and Das Kapital Volume III, which are actually only manuscripts. These manuscripts are organized into books, and the ideas of the editors are infiltrated in the middle. Some scholars in the field of Western philology must dress Marx as a humanist. Therefore, even if the text is studied, it also involves the issue of the right to speak in Marxist interpretation. So studying MEGA seems far from reality, but it's not.

In addition, in the study of Marxist philosophy at the international academic level, Chinese scholars must intervene in this area, and if you do not intervene, there will be no voice of Chinese scholars on the academic stage of the world. If Chinese scholars only think that foreign scholarship is more advanced, then the voice of Chinese scholars will not be able to spread. Therefore, this is also a question of winning China's academic status on the world's academic stage. So this seems to have nothing to do with the actual problem, but in fact it is a part of the construction of a cultural power, an important part of the construction of an academic power.

So if you look at a problem that is far from reality, it is not related to whether he directly studies the specific problem. A lot of research is contributing to the development of the country, but the path of contribution is different. Some people like to study direct problems, and some people like to study slightly more indirect problems, but they are all concerned with reality, but the ways and methods of relating to reality are different.

Q: What are your reading plans for 2021?

In 2021, I'm just going to finish the books I just mentioned. The list of books is as follows:

1.Judith Dellheim and F.Otto Wolf, Unfinished System of Karl Marx: critically reading Capital as a challenge for our times, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018.

2.Kostas Axelos, Alienation, Praxis and Techne in the Thought of Karl Marx, University of Texas Press,1976.

3.Kostas Axelos, Introduction to a Future Way of Thought: On Marx and Heidegger, Meson Press, 2015.

4.Bernard Stiegler, The Neganthropocene, Open Humanities Press, 2018.

5. Angus Dietton: Escape from Inequality, translated by Cui Chuangang, CITIC Press, 2020.

6. A. Ban Gangji and A. Difro: The Nature of Poverty, translated by Jing Fang, CITIC Publishing House, 2018.

Source: "Department of Philosophy, Nanjing University" public number

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