Text/Wu Yumin
According to Professor Liu Jianmei of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Li Zehou's son Li Ai confirmed that at about 7:00 a.m. on November 3, 2021, Mr. Li Zehou died of illness in Colorado, USA, at the age of 91. We have specially published an article by Shenzhen scholar Wu Yumin to express the memory of a generation of thinkers Li Zehou.
Mr. Li Zehou suddenly disappeared into the dust, thousands of miles away, and at the moment when he wanted to know in the East.
Last year, on his ninetieth birthday, he "said goodbye" to his readers, and I thought it was just a public announcement that he had closed his pen because of his old age, but he did not want the farewell of his life to come so suddenly, so absolutely, just like the style of saying one thing and not saying another in his lifetime, and continued to go to another world and go his own way.
The farewell of the thinker may not be expressed in the words of ordinary people's deploration. For our generation, he is the most special one in the teacher's generation, and it is almost impossible to draw a generation gap. For decades, we have become more accustomed to his existence, whether it is a stirring of ideas or academic controversy, there will be his voice, every time like a stone falling into a pool, like the wind and sand, leading to the collision of ideas. Whether he agreed with his views or not, he always stood there, seeing what no one had seen before, sending untouched, inviting people to reflect and dialogue. He was a wise man who once stood close to us at the top of the twentieth and turn of the century. But suddenly, he entered history and opened the distance between yin and yang and us.
In the summer of 1981, he came to give a lecture at my alma mater, Northwestern University. In the old auditorium of the Northwest United Congress during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, he talked about "image is greater than concept", "the essence of beauty is freedom", and "the intuition of artistic creation". It's refreshing to be seated. At that time, our classmates Chinese in the seventh and seventh grades of the department pushed me to invite Mr. Li to give a lecture in our class, and Mr. Li gladly agreed to talk about his reading experience. In the simple large bungalow classroom, everyone sat around and listened to Mr. Li talk about his experience of reading and governing. He recalls the upsurge of the progressive student movement in his teens, in which he found Marxist works in a large number of free readings, "at the time at the risk of reading them as 'banned books'", "perhaps because of this much deeper impression than passively instilled things." "In this kind of reading, I gradually cultivate and enhance my ability to judge right and wrong and think independently." "I don't like things that follow the clouds, I don't like empty and cumbersome things, I pay more attention to new ideas and new discoveries in books and articles, and pay more attention to scientific debate and discussion." His account of his poor, earnest, and widely read youth resonates deeply with those of us who have rarely entered the halls of study after a decade of cultural obscuration of the Cultural Revolution. He tells us how he "saw a new method of studying social history" in Marx's "Louis Bonaparte's Coup d'état" (later translated as Louis Bonaparte's Eighteenth Day of the Misty Moon) during the period of reading the "forbidden book"; how he insisted on reading Marx's original works instead of reading materials relayed by others; how he began to read Kant in a "secret reading" way during a period when even the reading of Marxist-Leninist original works was criticized, and began to write "Criticism of Critical Philosophy (Kant's Review)".
He told his classmates: "Your younger generation has walked an extraordinary path of your own. In the past few years, you have lost a lot of time, suffered a lot of losses, and paid a great price. However, you can turn the price you pay into a huge wealth, and turn the life you experience into a new achievement in the humanities and social sciences. Cherish your past experiences because it will help you think better. He also said: "I have a judgment on the weaknesses of the three departments of Literature, History and Philosophy. I think that the disadvantage of the philosophy department is 'emptiness', not related to specific problems, there are more abstract concepts, and the advantage is to stand higher. The weakness of the history department is 'narrow', the advantage is that it drills deeper, often going deeper into a certain point, but always thinking that it has nothing to do with itself in other aspects, and is not interested in it, and does not care much; the disadvantage of the Chinese department is 'shallow' and lacks depth, but the advantage is that reading is more extensive and has a wide range of interests. Speaking of this, he also said apologetically to those of us who were Chinese department: "Don't be surprised! It caused everyone to laugh.
He told us that when he was studying philosophy at Peking University, he "read all the books on literature, history and philosophy." Read Plato in the morning, read Belinsky in the afternoon, others think there is no connection, I don't care about it. So I never read the reference books assigned by the teacher, I have my own reading plan. Among them, reading history books is very important, I still think that learning history is the foundation of the liberal arts, and it is best to read one or two history books first to study a certain problem. History reveals the causes and consequences of a thing's existence, thus helping you to analyze its present and future. Marx loved philosophy and history the most. "Studying social phenomena, there is a historical vision that allows you to look deeper and find out what is regular. Laws are displayed in time, you have historical feelings, you see not only superficial things, but regular things, the basic point of Marxism is historical materialism. For a thing, we should grasp its most basic things and determine its historical status. ”
I had the privilege of documenting and sorting out his conversations, and sent the transcripts clearly to his residence in Hepingli in Beijing. Later, he sent a message to me that the record was very complete, and thanked me. He published this transcript in the then Shulin magazine, which was later included in a collection of essays titled "Walk My Own Way." Recalling the lectures of that year and reliving the words he said more than forty years ago, I still feel the temperature of the era of ideological emancipation.
In the years since, Mr. Li has been lecturing at home and abroad, and his thoughts have spread throughout Asia, Europe, Australia and the United States. In the late 90s, when he first came to Shenzhen, I received him with Brother Lin Gang. Invite him up to the revolving restaurant on the top floor of the International Trade Centre, which overlooks Both Shenzhen and Hong Kong. He saw the buildings lined up in Shenzhen and the prosperous cityscape, and he was very excited about the country's reform and opening up policies and situations, and sincerely praised it. We accompanied him to the Overseas Chinese Town Splendid Chinese Folk Village tour, there was a performance in the evening, actors of all nationalities and the audience danced together to celebrate, I did not expect Mr. Li to walk into the dance floor, selflessly dance with everyone, I was very surprised to find that his eyes flashed with a little tear. I thought at the time, Mr. Li is really a personality!
Later, in 2001, he and his wife came to Shenzhen again. He already had macular degeneration by then. For a book-loving person, the anxiety caused by eye diseases is conceivable. At that time, Shenzhen Eye Hospital had imported fundus photography diagnostic instruments, and I accompanied him to diagnose it several times. During this period, Mr. Li talked freely about scholarship and explained the systematic views on the tradition of witch history in a more concentrated manner. Later he published the book "The Tradition of Speaking witchcraft" as one of his later writings on knotting.
As he himself said, his thoughts always ran before his words. When writing a book, there is another book waiting for him in the back, urging him. So he walked in the position of the forefront of the times as much as possible, keenly and profoundly leaving the structure, logic, and main vein of his thoughts. Mr. Li's scholarly thought is wanton, reflecting on the contradiction of the two laws of history and ethics, opening up Marx, Kant and Confucius, starting with reason and returning to love, aesthetics to reach the highest good, and practice to start and end to freedom.
Mr. Lee was once in the same time as us in his life, and now he has entered history. Chinese talking about life, there are two concepts that are important and mysterious, one is virtue and fate, and the other is chance. Mr. Li came to us in the era of our ideological enlightenment, perhaps this is his destiny, but also our chance. Now he has traveled far and wide, leaving him with infinite sorrow among us. In addition, there are many centuries of questions and civilization questions that he left behind, and it is even more for future generations to seek enlightenment. (For more news, please pay attention to Yangcheng Pie pai.ycwb.com)
Source | Yangcheng Evening News • Yangcheng Faction Responsible Editor | Wu Xiaopan