in China for several years, I studied philosophy and literature, especially western philosophy and literature. However, I always feel that domestic philosophical research is always scratching the itch and can't grasp the key. To put it more clearly, it is difficult to learn authentic western philosophy in China. This has caused me a profound ideological crisis.
In the first days of Germany, the ideological crisis was not overcome, but intensified. This is due to the transformation of the language world. In China, we can also think about western philosophical issues in Chinese, so this crisis is still covered by the habitual and self-evident expression of Chinese. However, the strangeness of German and its unique western thinking have opened up a dimension that Chinese cannot cover. Not only are the words different (some words can't be found in Chinese at all), but also the grammar is fundamentally different. More importantly, some words that look the same or similar are quite different in Chinese and German. So the crisis of thought reached a limit, which forced people to change their own thoughts. For example, what we call "philosophy", "reason" and "thought" must use new meanings, that is, the historical significance formed by the West from ancient Greece to post-modernism.
of course, the most fundamental problem is not the meaning of words, but the problem of thinking itself, that is, how to think. Our traditional thinking in China is natural thinking and historical thinking. The introduction of modern western learning (including Marxist philosophy) has not completely changed this tradition. On the contrary, China people's introduction and interpretation of western learning has always been based on their own hermeneutic foresight. However, the problem lies in the division of such a prescient's own boundaries, and points out what it can see and what it can't see, which finally leads to the change of China's prescient and the expansion of his vision. So the question must return to the naturalness and historicity of China's thinking. China's thought has always set the priority of nature beyond thought. It is manifested in three aspects: 1. Existence. In the structure of heaven, earth and man, heaven and earth, that is, nature, are absolutely prescriptive to man. 2, thinking. People first think about the scale from nature, and then give it to people. 3, language. Chinese characters, as hieroglyphics, are the natural and realistic basis for Chinese text expression. In concrete text expression, people describe nature first, and then people, just like writing scenery first and then expressing feelings in poetry. Based on the naturalness of this thinking, China Thought has also developed its historical characteristics. The so-called history of thought has become the history of annotation, while annotation itself has evolved into a historical narrative.
people must ask about the naturalness and historical characteristics of thought. Hegel once pointed out that China's thought is the spirit of indulging in nature, but this spirit did not reach the thought itself. In addition, he emphasized that philosophy is not a narrative of history, and this historical narrative is not related to the development of thought itself. Why? Because China's natural and historical thinking actually forgot the thought itself, which transferred the thought to nature through it. But why does nature have its stipulation? China thought has never questioned this. People just assume the self-evident nature. However, this so-called self-evident has infinite darkness. Therefore, China thought must ask nature. This sets the premise that thought must ask itself. The questioning of thought itself has been put forward by the tradition of western philosophy, because philosophy in the western sense is the cause of reason, and the so-called reason is pure thought. Therefore, the first philosophy, that is, metaphysics, has become the expression of pure thought. If philosophy is a pure thought, then it is different from natural and historical thoughts. It becomes a concept and is realized in logic.
Therefore, for an China person who is studying philosophy in the West, the so-called ideological change is from China's natural and historical thinking to the thought itself. Of course, this change is painful, because thought should be separated from itself and become what it is not yet.
so how does the change of mind happen? This can only be achieved through the study of ideas. Of course, the only way to learn thoughts is to learn what has been thought. It is the history of philosophy that has been thought about. What the west has thought is the history of western philosophy.
during my six and a half years in Germany, I systematically studied western philosophy from ancient Greece to post-modernism. For the study of philosophy in German universities, the so-called philosophy is the history of philosophy, which is different from the practice of British and American universities and the practice of China University. There are too many introductions and principles in the philosophy course of China University, which are actually just some big and mysterious talks, which have nothing to do with real thoughts. Therefore, after reading the philosophy course, people still don't know what thought itself is and how to enter it. On the contrary, there are basically no courses such as philosophical principles or introduction in Germany. It guides students to learn philosophy, that is, it guides students to the history of philosophy.
As a specific history of philosophy, it is always a history of philosophy formed by philosophers. So learning the history of philosophy is learning the history of the philosophy of those great philosophers. Such a history is a pantheon in which philosophers stand like gods. Or this history is a magnificent mountain range made up of philosophers like Giant Peaks. Therefore, there is no question whether any philosopher is outdated or not, and there is no choice of "Kant or Hegel". This is quite different from the style of study in which Chinese philosophers like the new and hate the old and catch up with the fashion in the process of studying Western learning. In the teaching and research of German philosophy, the following philosophers are always very important: parmenides, Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece; Plotinos, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages; Kant, Fichte and Hegel in modern times; Modern Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger; Post-modern Delida, Foucault and Mero-Ponty.
Based on this view of philosophy history, the study of philosophy history is not an overview of general history, but a special study. In this philosophical discussion, the life story of the philosopher and the background of his time are irrelevant. The key is the philosophical text he wrote. It is this philosophical text that makes a philosopher express his thoughts as a philosopher and be thought again as an already thought. For example, we only discuss parmenides's fragments for a whole semester, and sometimes the basic content of a class is to discuss a sentence or a word in the fragments. In the process of interpreting philosophical texts, every key word has been carefully analyzed. To ask a word is to draw a boundary for it, that is, to ask what it says, and at the same time it doesn't say anything. Here China's incredible and unspeakable becomes meaningless, because thoughts must be incredible and unspeakable. What is more worth asking is: why is this word so said (revealed) here and so not said (covered)? On this basis, the relationship formed by the transformation from one word to another has become the fundamental theme in philosophy study, because the so-called logic is the linguistic relationship that brings things together. In the evolution of relationship, a text seems to be the road opened on Yuan Ye. Its own extension leads people to follow. It is through this meticulous analysis that we get into the thoughts of philosophers and experience how each philosopher thinks.
In Osnabrü ck University, the most famous philosophy professor is Mr. Boadle. He is a famous disciple of Heidegger in Freiburg's later period, and he is a good friend with Professor Biemel, a famous disciple in Freiburg's early period. After finishing his doctoral thesis in Freiburg, Boadle traveled to Cambridge, England and Paris, France, and then returned to the University of Brunswick to take over the chair of kroner, the editor of the famous Complete Works of Hegel, and then transferred to the University of Osnabrü ck. In the meantime, he was invited to give lectures at the New Social School in new york, USA, and universities in Japan and South Korea. People think that although Boadle is not as famous as Gadamer and Habermas, he is perhaps the most profound and obscure philosopher. Professor Riedel, President of the International Heidegger Society, once said that Boadle was one of the most important philosophers among Heidegger's late Freiburg disciples.
Because I am fascinated by Heidegger's philosophy, I hope to go to Heidegger's disciples to study for a doctorate. So I expressed my wish to Professor Boadle. He was very happy to accept me as a proté gé of China, and asked me what I wanted to do with Heidegger. I said that I was inclined to the language problem in Heidegger's later period. He said that this is very good. In fact, Heidegger entered the mature stage of thought in the later period, and of course, we should also pay attention to his early changes from the middle period to the later period.
After systematically listening to some courses taught by philosophy professors in the university, I finally decided to choose only the courses taught by ancient Greek, Latin and Boadle. His teaching is arranged in the evening, usually a reading class and a discussion class. The contents of his courses include the thoughts of all important philosophers from parmenides to post-modernism. Of course, each course only involves one person, or even only a part of his thoughts. His language is a typical academic language, so it is very difficult to fully understand it. I usually ask my German classmates for notes after class and study hard when I come back. It took me about two years to understand Professor Boadle's thoughts.
Of course, Professor Boadle's thoughts originated from Heidegger's thoughts, but he made a creative separation and was unique. In his view, philosophy should return to loving wisdom, and the development of philosophy itself is the change of the relationship between philosophy and wisdom. In the history of the west (ancient Greece, Middle Ages and modern times), the wisdom given by each era evokes the philosophy of the same era. The words of wisdom in ancient Greece were sung by Homer's Epic, which made people become heroes. Medieval wisdom is expressed in the New Testament, which requires people to become saints. Modern wisdom was written by Rousseau and others. It wants people to become citizens, that is, free people. Accordingly, philosophy itself has different provisions, namely, theoretical rationality in ancient Greece, practical rationality in the Middle Ages and poetic (creative) rationality in modern times. But from modern to post-modern, wisdom died, so it no longer calls reason, so philosophy also ends and philosophy becomes non-philosophy. On the one hand, Professor Boadle pays attention to the internal relations of the whole of each era, on the other hand, he also emphasizes the elements and their relations in the whole of every philosopher's thought. What he repeatedly talked about was the distinction in the whole. From this, we will clearly see how an ideological structure is formed. In this way, in his class, people can learn the purest western thoughts.
It can be said that it was Professor Boadle who opened the way for me to western wisdom and philosophy. On this channel, I learned the principle of general thought: criticism. Criticism has nothing to do with any negation or affirmation, it is to divide boundaries. The boundary is the starting point and the end point of a thing itself. At the boundary, one thing distinguishes itself from others and defines itself. The so-called criticism has three dimensions: first, language criticism, second, ideological criticism, and finally, realistic criticism. This critical attitude requires me to establish a special relationship with those great thinkers. On the one hand, I want to walk towards him, on the other hand, I want to bid farewell to him and walk on the road of my own thoughts.