Ten Misconceptions in The Study of Western Philosophy in China
- From the meaning of Being
Author: Zhao Dunhua, Head of the Department of Philosophy and Head of the Department of Religious Studies, Peking University
Originally published in: Philosophical Dynamics (京), No. 10, 2004, pp. 3-8
The core and foundation of the tradition of Western philosophy is metaphysics. The metaphysical object of study Being (the Greek verb einai and its verb on, the Latin esse, the English verb infinitive to be and the verb being, the German Sein, the French être) are the central categories of Western philosophy. Western philosophy from ancient times to the present is full of discernment and change in the meaning of Being. In the history of Western philosophy, Being has a variety of different meanings, any fixed meaning has been overturned, and the subverted meaning has been corrected and modified. Every change in the meaning of Being is accompanied by a alternation of old and new in the metaphysical system. Due to the complexity of the meaning of Being, this issue has been discussed many times in Western philosophical circles, including the question of how to translate the terms associated with einai in Greek philosophy in modern Spanish, but there is no consensus to date.
Compared with the study of the history of philosophy in the West, Chinese have more barriers and special difficulties in understanding the meaning of Being. Chinese Western philosophy unfolds from point to point, and for a long time, it lacks a grasp of Western philosophy as a whole, especially dividing the history of Western philosophy and modern Western philosophy into two sections. This situation hinders Chinese's overall understanding of the meaning of Being. People often use the arguments of a certain philosopher or philosophical school that they are familiar with as a basis for fixing the single meaning of Being with a Chinese translation concept, without understanding the provisions of other philosophers and philosophical schools on the meaning of Being, nor understanding the discussion of modern Western philosophy about the diversity of being meanings and the complexity of their connections.
Chinese earlier Western philosophies were the philosophies of Kant and Hegel, and they found that Kant and Hegel's expositions on Sein were very consistent with what traditional Chinese philosophy called "ontology" and "being", so they understood Being as "being". After Marxism became the dominant ideology, Chinese adopted Engels's interpretation of the meaning of Sein.
恩格斯说:"When we speak of being, and only of being,then the
Unity consists only in the fact that all the objects that are involved
handelt—sind,existieren. (Note: Marx Engels Werke, 20, Dietz Verlag, Berlin, s.40, for the Chinese translation see Engels: Anti-Dühring, People's Press, 1970, p. 40: "When we speak of existence, and only of existence, unity can only be in the fact that all the objects we speak of exist and are real.) This sentence explicitly reduces the meaning of See to "existieren."
Later Heidegger and existentialism became the epitome, and their understanding of Being further supported the translation of "being." Recently, some scholars have pointed out from the texts of Greek philosophy that the philosophical meaning of Being is derived from the meaning of the verb "to be", so the translation of "existence" should be replaced by "is".
The above three understandings have their own reasons. However, their doctrine is only the doctrine of a philosopher or philosophical school, and if this doctrine is generalized to the whole of Western philosophy, it is inevitable that it will be partial and complete. It is precisely this one-sidedness of partial generalization that has caused Chinese to misunderstand some basic views of Western philosophy. The widespread prevalence of these misconceptions has reduced the quality of Western philosophical research in China and has not been able to integrate with the international study of Western philosophy. The following ten examples illustrate the widespread nature of the misunderstanding that arises from Being's one-sided understanding.
I. "Thinking and Being are One and The Same"
This quote comes from Parmenides Fragment III: to gar auto noein estin te kai einai(For the same thing is there both to be thought of and to be). (Note: For english translations, G.S. Kirk et al.: The Presocratic Philosophers, 2nd.ed., Cambridge, 1983.) This phrase used to be translated as "thought and existence are one and the same" and is regarded as the earliest idealistic proposition of "the identity of thought and existence". The keyword group estin te (it is) here is translated as "existence". But in fact, its direct meaning is "what is", which means: "What is thought and what is are the same thing." Among them, "what is" refers to the word "is" all judgments that can be connected, and "what is thought" refers to the content of thought. Here Parmenides merely declares that "the content of thought and judgment are the same." This, he argues, is a self-evident truth understood by those who know the universality of the use of the word. It is precisely by relying on such a "common point of departure, which I will emphasize again and again" (Fragment V) that his later arguments about the "yes" have a certain logical necessity. In the past, "yes" was understood as "existence", and Parmenides's thought was understood as "the identity of thinking and existence" and was labeled "idealistic". It seems that he argues that what comes to mind exists, as if there is no justification for this assertion. His ideas became arbitrary and absurd idealism. This is a comic-like interpretation of the Western metaphysical tradition.
II. "Man is the measure by which things exist or do not exist"
This quote comes from Protagoras. Plato's 152a paraphrases of Theated and Protagoras' English translation: "Man is the measure of all things:of those which are,that they are,and of those which are not,that they are not,that they are not." Since both the verb to be and the verb plural (those which are) are translated as "being," the phrase is translated as: "Man is the measure of all things, the measure of the existence of the being, and the measure of the non-existence of the non-existent." This translation creates a misunderstanding that Protagoras is here preaching a naked idealistic proposition: man determines the existence or non-existence of all things. In his commentary to his translation, McDowell says that in the latter part " the incomplete form of the verb 'is' appears four times.
The meaning is: "I know x is (or not) f", "x is (or is not) f, all measured by me." Plato: Theaetetus, transl.with notes by John McDowell, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1978, p. 16, 118~9.)
The correct translation should be: "Man is the measure of all things, the scale of what is what is, whether something is a scale of what is not." Protagoras's view is that man is the subject of knowledge, and only man can know why things are one way or not how they are.
Judging from Socrates' later rebuttals, Socrates did not object to the theory that "man is the measure", but only denied protagoras' feelingism, because the "scale" mentioned by the latter was only feeling. Everyone has different feelings, different people have different scales, and the relativist standard of knowledge will inevitably abolish human knowledge. Socrates' subtext is that only reason can be the measure by which man measures everything.
"The theory of ideas is barbaric, appalling, absurd idealism"
Plato believed that there are not-sense ideas beyond the sensible things, and that ideas are more real than the sensible things. This is denounced as "barbaric, appalling, absurd", "naïve primitive idealism". We say, slowly, not to understand Plato as a gibberish lunatic. Let us first understand what arguments he has made for his views, and see whether they are logical and rational.
What Plato called "ideas" is the object of judgment and belongs to the category of Being. The Republic argues that "knowledge corresponds in nature to the one who is"; "ignorance necessarily belongs to the non-being"; "the object of opinion is neither the yes nor the non"; "it is both and not, and this kind of thing is somewhere between being purely, absolutely, and not being a thing at all." (Note: Plato: The Republic, 477a-479e.) Plato's distinction between knowledge and opinion reconciles the contradiction between Parmenides and Heraclitus. Plato agreed with Parmenides that any object that can be known must be "yes" and that "not" cannot be known. He also agreed with Heraclitus that the movement of sensible things is not completely incomprehensible. But he added that this kind of understanding is not knowledge, truth, but equal and secondary opinion. Opinions are uncertain, and "being or not" is precisely the characteristic of vague and specious opinions. The opinion seems to be such a riddle: a man who is not a man, seeing and not seeing, hits a bird that is not a bird standing on a stick that is not a stick (puzzle bottom: a one-eyed eunuch hits a bat standing on a reed with a pumice stone but does not hit a bat standing on a reed). Plato said, "These things have a vague duality, making it impossible to know exactly what any of them is or is not, or what they are or are not." (Note: Plato: The Republic, 479b.)
Plato's argument for the theory of ideas shows that he did not understand Being as "being," but rather as the object of judgment, the "yes." Ideas can be judged because they enjoy full Being, and have the certainty of knowledge. In the same way, sensible things are not non-existent, but because they are between "yes" and "not," they cannot be recognized with certainty, but can only become the object of opinion. The distinction between "yes," "no," and "both is and is not" is how to accurately determine the epistemological distinction of the object of knowledge, rather than the distinction between materialism, idealism, or agnosticism about the origin of the world. The distinction between the object of Plato's knowledge (ideas) and the object of opinion (the sensible thing) is understandable, as we often say: "What is felt is not necessarily understood, but only what is understood by the friend can be perceived more deeply." (Note: Plato: The Republic, 479b.)
"Aristotle proposed two contradictory doctrines of the first entity"
This means that Aristotle affirmed in the Categories that the first entity is concrete, such as "a man, a horse, and so on", while in Metaphysics Volume Z says that the first entity is form and essence. If the first doctrine is considered to be materialistic and the second doctrine is idealistic, then of course the two are contradictory. If we think that concrete things must be individual, and that form and essence must be general, then of course the two are contradictory. But if one understands the centrality of "is" in Aristotle logic and metaphysics, it is not difficult to understand that the two doctrines of the first entity do not contradict each other.
"ousia" is a feminine noun for the verb "is" (einai) and "to on" is a neutral noun. The meaning of "entity" is still inseparable from "is". Aristotle was connected to the logical function of the "yes" verb to prescribe the meaning of the entity. There are three logical functions of the verb "yes", and corresponding to this, there are three meanings of "entity". (1) The meaning of the word "is" in the judgment is "to belong", and the meaning of "S is P" is "P belongs to S". The function of the lexicon means that attributes are attached to entities, and only entities are independent, precedent "yeses", the central meaning of "yes", while attributes are derived, secondary "yeses". (2) "S is" indicates that S is itself, such as saying "There is S". In this usage, "yes" refers to the existence of an S. This means that the proper name of an individual thing that can only be the main word refers to the first entity, while the common name denoting the species refers to the second entity. (3) The form of the definition is "S is Df". The position of the defined word and the defined word can be interchanged without changing the meaning, such as "man is a rational animal" and "rational animal is man" The meaning is equivalent. This is because , "yes" here represents an equivalence. The equal consent between the two tastes that the essence of the definition expression is the entity itself. (Note: Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1030b5: "Form and essence are the first entities.") ”)
Comparing the conclusions of (2) and (3), the two have different logical bases, corresponding to the two logical forms of "S is itself" and "S is Df". These two forms of logic are not contradictory, but parallel, and we cannot say that the two doctrines of the first entity which arise from them must be logically contradictory. In fact, aristotle's term for "thing itself" is "tode ti", and the term used to express essence is "ti estin". He explicitly uses these two terms interchangeably at the beginning of Metaphysics Volume Z. But he doesn't say why the two are equivalent. This leaves room for different interpretations in later generations. Later nominalism explained things themselves as individual, while realism interpreted form and essence as universal, thus giving rise to the controversy between nominalism and realism. This controversy has to do with the vagueness of Aristotle's writings, but it cannot be said that Aristotle proposed two contradictory doctrines from the difference in the literal meaning of "things" and "essences."
V. God is "Self-Possessed and Eternal"
According to the Bible, Moses asked God for the name of Jehovah, and God said, "I am who am," (Exodus 3:14). Chinese Bible and the Combined Bible translate this sentence as "I am eternally self-possessed," and the Catholic version translates it as "I am self-possessed," and in the commentary it says: "It can also be translated as 'I am the eternal being,' or 'I am the one who makes all things alive.'" These translations are based on the translation of "being" or "being", replacing the meaning of the original text with later philosophical ideas. The Old Testament was written in the everyday language of the Hebrew of the time. The hebrew pronunciation of Jehovah is
Yahweb, or "Yahweh," means YHWH, meaning "I am." Jehovah says "I am who am," but his name is Jehovah, and has no philosophical significance. It was not until later that the early Christian fathers, according to the category of Being of Greek philosophy, understood God as the highest Being, whose meaning was the highest ontology. Existing Chinese Bible translations understand God as "being" or "existing," obscuring the meaning of "ontology." There are two Greek concepts of ontology: hypostasis and ousia. The early church fathers used these two different concepts to represent the nature of God, giving rise to protracted debates. Finally, a "three persons and one substance" consensus was reached, that is, hypostasis was used to represent the person of God, and ousia was used to represent the essence of the emperor. Without knowing the connection between God's "what is" and Greek ontology, one cannot see the origin and basis of the Christian doctrine of the "Trinity."
"Ontological proof confuses real existence with imaginary existence"
Being is also the premise of Anselm's ontological proof of God's existence. The premise of proof is a being than which nothing greater can be conceived. This sentence can be translated as an inconceivable "owner" who is more complete than it can be conceived, or an incapable and complete "owner" that can be imagined. The being here cannot be translated as "existence", otherwise God's being means that God already exists, and without further proof, the proof of God's existence is meaningless. The proof concludes that I must conceive the God being. The being here must be translated as existence, otherwise it proves that the purpose has not been achieved. Being is the same word in Latin: esse. But Anselm gave the word a different meaning in his premises and conclusions. His argument is a logical reasoning that since God is an owner who cannot conceive of a more completeness than himself, he must have existence; otherwise what he has is not complete, and cannot be conceived as an incomparablely complete owner. Therefore, we must assume that God exists.
Anselm's proof is a transformation of the meaning of being, transitioning from "all things" to "beings." He did not go from imagining the existence of God to the actual existence of God, as is usually understood. This is how Gauniero, a contemporary of Anselm, refuted this. He said that we can imagine a most perfect island, but must this island exist? Anselm argues that the owner who cannot be more complete than it is not any one concrete thing, and we can imagine an island that concentrates the most beautiful qualities of all islands, but we cannot assume that it has the completeness of all things. Anselm's defense was valid because the being in the proof was the "owner," not the specific "thing" or "something."
Kant's critique of "ontological proof" hits the nail on the head. "Being," he says, is not an attribute. We can imagine that God has the most complete attributes, but we cannot assume that God must exist. Just as I imagined having 50 gold coins in my pocket, it is not the same as imagining that 50 gold coins actually exist in my pocket. Kant clarified Sein's ambiguity, noting that it could associate attributes with principals in judgments, but could not separately indicate the existence of principals. Without understanding the paradox of the ontological argument of the transition of the meaning of being from "being" (attribute) to "being", the validity of Kant's critique is incomprehensible.
VII. "I think, therefore I am"
Descartes' first principle was Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore, I am). The meaning of "sum/am" in this sentence refers to the essence of the entity, which is "Cogito". That is to say, the essence of the "self" lies in the attributes of thought. Now people are accustomed to saying that Descartes' first principle is "I think, therefore I am", which is easy to misunderstand, thinking that Descartes affirms my existence through "I think". In fact, Descartes' question is not what kind of existence I have, but what kind of essence I have. "I think" is not the existence of man, but the essence of man. According to Cartesianism, man's existence is the union of the soul and the body, and the human body, like everything else, is based on the "extension" as its essence, and only "I think" is the essence that distinguishes man from everything else.
"I think" also distinguishes man from God. The reason why "I think I am" is so powerful is because this proposition is fundamentally opposed to the basic tenet of medieval metaphysics, "I am what I am." Comparing these two propositions, it can be seen that they have similar sentence forms, but their meanings are completely different. "I am what I am" means that "I" (God) does not need any basis; but it also means that God cannot be known from God Himself; and the idea of "I think therefore I am" is that "I" is based on "I think", and "I think" not only makes a person aware of his own nature, but also provides a basis for God's existence. It is precisely because of the obvious contrast between these two propositions that Descartes' "I think, therefore I am" has a rhetorical effect and becomes the first principle of a new philosophy that draws a clear line from scholasticism.
VIII. "Existence equals perception"
Barclays said, "esse ist percipi" (to be is to be perceived). The correct translation should be: "What is is perceived". His reasoning is that everything is a collection of sensible properties, and that we can only know what things are through our senses. His reasoning depends on the necessary connection between the judgment of "what" things "is" and the "properties of things" ("collections of sensible properties"), without reducing the existence of external objects to the meaning of sensations. However, people are now accustomed to describing this proposition as "existence is perception" and as a typical example of subjective idealism. Not only Chinese misunderstood Barclays, but even in the West, Barclays was interpreted as believing only in his own feelings as a real "crazy piano", and his doctrine was described as a fallacy that could be easily knocked down by simply kicking a stone with a foot or raising a hand. In fact, Barclays did not deny the true existence of things other than sensations. He made it clear that he acknowledged, as everyone else, that outside the mind of the individual there are mountains, rivers, seas, animals and plants, as well as the existence of others, except that they are not material beings independent of any mind, but the creations of the spiritual entity God; and our perception of their nature is also the imprint of God inscribed on our hearts. (Note: See Barclays: Principles of Human Knowledge, The Commercial Press, 1991.) His sensibility and spiritual realism are logically consistent.
"Hegel's Logic Begins with Existentialism"
The beginning and the end of Hegel's logic are both the meaning of the category of Sein, with two different translations and understandings of "being" and "being". In the preface to the 1981 new edition of Little Logic, Mr. He Lin said: "In the past, I have always translated See as 'being' and Existenz as 'existence', which is obviously not appropriate. (Note: He Lin translation: Little Logic, The Commercial Press, 1981, p. XX; section 86; section 125; section 125.) In the new edition, He Lin changed his ways, translating Sein as "existence" and Existenz as "existence." Obviously, behind the changes in translation is a different understanding of Hegel's logic. In Hegel's system, the category Sein is placed in the category of "Qualitat," which refers to a qualitative prescriptivity. After Kant had clearly distinguished between "attribute" and "being", Hegel seemed to have no reason to define the meaning of See as existence. In fact, Sein means "to be," not "to exist." Hegel says, "Sein is an absolute predicate" (Note: He Lin translation: Little Logic, The Commercial Press, 1981, p. XX; section 86; section 125; section 125). His meaning seems to be the opposite of Kant's statement that "Sein is not a real predicate", but in fact he is merely expressing the same meaning as Kant in dialectical language. For sein in the absolute sense, i.e., the solitary "pure being," is only "purely prescriptive thought" and is therefore equal to "nothing." It was only when Dasein (now translated as "limited being", preferably translated as "real being") that "being" became qualitative prescriptive thought, that is, the ideological content of what Kant called the predicate concept. Hegel regards "Existenz" as a small category within the large category of "wesen", and considers essence to be the basis of existence. He clearly believes that existence requires not only qualitative prescriptiveness; but also quantitative prescriptiveness, and that "existence" is always the existence of things, not the existence of nature, which is only the reality of thought. According to this explanation, it is not difficult to understand why Hegel proposed "existence" as an essentialist category only after the "degrees" of "quality", "quantity" and unity, and then established the category of "things" (Ding) as a "reflection" of "existence". "Reflection" in "essentialism" represents the indivisible relationship between categories that are opposite and mutually prescribed, which is consistent with our view that "being" is associated with "matter" and "being" is related to "quality".
Hegel also made a clear distinction between "being" and "having." "The relationship of 'having' (Sein) further becomes the relationship of 'having' (Haben)," he said. (Note: He Lin translation: "Small Logic", The Commercial Press, 1981, p. XX; section 86; section 125; section 125.) The difference between "being" and "having" is that "being" as a prescriptive is just a "thing" (Einiges), not a specific "thing" (Ding). Hegel thus speaks of what is really "self-existing" and "self-existent" because they are independent qualities and not attached to things. The property attached to the thing is called Eigenschaft, which cannot be "confused" with the qualitat of its own, and Hegel says that the relation of "being" means that "things" and "are directly identical": "a thing is a thing because it has its own quality"; but "things" and "qualities" are separable: "The loss of a certain quality does not result in the loss of the existence of this thing." (Note: He Lin translation: Little Logic, The Commercial Press, 1981, p. XX; section 86; section 125; section 125.) Of course, Hegel, in distinguishing between "being" and "having", also illustrates the connection between the two, and the transition from "being" to "having" is consistent with the dialectical movement process from "reality" to "existence", from "things" to "things", from "quality" to "quality".
In short, Hegel's logic is a prescriptive transition, reflection, and development of various categories, a dialectical movement from the prescriptiveness of "being" to the prescriptive movement of "being." In this sense, the beginning and the end of logic are "beings", and he includes the categories of "beings", "things", and "entities" in the history of philosophy related to the meaning of "beings" as links in the movement of "beings". Hegel's metaphysics is an uncompromising existentialism.
"The whole meaning of Being is 'yes'"
This is a recent assertion that the meaning of Being in Greek philosophy is not only "yes", but also "yes" in all Western philosophies, and even in Marxist philosophy. According to this understanding of "from ancient times to the present, one 'is' to the bottom", "ontology" should be translated as "is theory", and the basic philosophical problem that Engels said should be "the relationship between thinking and being". Even Heidegger's statement of Sein is "yes" and The Ontologische Differenz is the "distinction between is", which is about the distinction between "is" and "Seiendes".
Leaving aside the meaning of Being in Marxist philosophy, Heidegger always analyzes Thein's meaning from the perspective of "existence" (Existenz), and he repeatedly shows that the primary and fundamental meaning of See is the truth of existence. Moreover, Heidegger explicitly opposed reducing the meaning of Sein to the lexical word "is." He argues that people have a prior understanding of the meaning of existence before using logical judgments. "The interpretation of 'ist,' whether it means itself in the language or the meaning of the word's final indication, leads us to understand the context of the problem that belongs to existential analysis," he says. He also said: "With regard to the 'yes' distorted by the superficial theory of propositions and judgments as a system of words, we shall prescribe its Existential (Ontologische) meaning. (Note: Being and Time, London, 1962, p.202. In addition, in his book Metaphysical Basis of Logic, a book devoted to the theory of judgment, Heidegger made a critical analysis of the meaning of the word "yes" in connection with the logical theories of Aristotle and Leibniz, and reduced its connection and representational role in judgment to the meaning of existence. According to his interpretation, the "yes" in "A is B" plays not only the role of linking thing A and its prescriptive B, but more importantly, the relationship between the "here-and-now" that indicates the judgment and A and B. (Note: The Metaphysical Foundations of Logic, Indiana, 1984, pp.100~101.) Translating Sein as "is" not only does not highlight Thein's connection to "being," but also violates Heidegger's critique of the traditional practice of deriving Sein's metaphysics from the word "is."
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