Today we will talk about the most basic level of Western philosophy.

What does this mean?

The purpose is to let everyone understand how Western philosophy derives its ideas, what is its thinking basis, how its thinking channels are expanded, and what are its thinking effects?

Or I can simply summarize it in one sentence, that is, you need to find a sense of philosophy, so that you have a basic feeling for Western philosophy, and you have a basic understanding of the thinking model of Western philosophy. That's the purpose of this article.

With this foundation, at least when you open a philosophy book in the future, you will be able to understand the philosopher's discussion of issues, his starting point, his way of thinking, and the way of thinking that he draws conclusions. So I would like to emphasize again today that this is just a review of the basics of Western philosophy, but even so, it requires everyone to concentrate and ponder deeply before they can understand it.

As we can see, Chinese culture has long since declined, so what value does it have?

It is an important reference system for mankind to recreate the next civilization and culture in the future. For example, when we talk about Lao Tzu, we talk about Lao Tzu's Taoism, Lao Tzu's moral theory, and Lao Tzu's conservatism. This is a foundation or an aspect for mankind to construct new ideas in the future. Then we say that Western culture does not represent the future, because it has caused harm to mankind today, so mankind is facing a major cultural transformation in the next period. But the next cultural transformation of mankind must take place on the basis of today's mainstream culture, that is, philosophical thinking-philosophical and scientific thinking, this industrial and commercial civilization. Therefore, although Western culture does not represent the future, it is the port for the direct continuation of the next period of civilization and the next period of culture. Therefore, a deep grasp of the formation process of Western culture and its current status is the basis for you to extend the subsequent sequence of thoughts. This is the key to our article.

So let me talk about philosophy first: Everyone is familiar with the word philosophy. What we usually call philosophy, I call it "broad philosophy". The so-called "broad philosophy", to use the original Chinese language, there is a passage in the Book of Changes that says, "What is metaphysical is called Tao, and what is metaphysical is called tool." That is, as long as metaphysical thinking is achieved, it is called "broad philosophy." The so-called "metaphysical" refers to things you can see intuitively, and the so-called "metaphysical" refers to thinking beyond intuition. But everyone, please note that when I talk about philosophy in this way, it is by no means a Western philosophy, because once any of us unfolds our senses, you, the consciousness behind the senses, will immediately elevate your sensory materials to an unconscious summary level. This level It must be "metaphysical".

Let me give you an example. Have you ever seen a horse in the world? You'll never see it. What you see must be a yellow horse, a black horse, a stallion, a mare, a big horse, and a pony. A horse is an abstraction. You will never see a horse in the world. All you see are concrete horses, not the sum of horses. But once you use your vision, you immediately get the concept of a horse, which is the most elementary metaphysical abstraction. What I want to tell you is that if you regard metaphysics as philosophy, then it is just an unconscious sublimation of human surface consciousness and does not constitute a philosophical pursuit in the true sense.

Therefore, I would like to emphasize that the philosophy we are talking about today is called philosophy in the narrow sense, and the word philosophy that we all talk about in our daily lives is usually used in the broad sense. So for philosophical concepts used in a broad sense, I can put it this way: a person does not need to do any study or deep thinking. You just need to speak, and as long as the issues discussed are beyond the intuitive level, they can be included in the scope of broad philosophy. It is therefore far from true philosophy in the narrow sense.

The so-called philosophy in the narrow sense is only found in ancient Greece. What does this sentence mean? To know about the ancient times of mankind, according to the summary of the famous British historian Toynbee, there were at least 600 or more civilizations in the primitive era of the world. Among these 600 or even thousands of civilizations, only ancient Greece has produced philosophers in the narrow sense. In all other regions and in all cultural types, no philosophical system in the narrow sense has emerged. Therefore, the philosophy we are talking about today is by no means the impression you have of philosophical concepts in your daily life.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, we Chinese studied Ma Zhe as Western philosophy, and philosophy became political content. Everyone knows that politics is a practical operation, a realistic operation, and it is far from a pragmatic philosophy. Philosophy is pure retreat, so our understanding of philosophy is equal to 0.

There is a famous scholar in China named Qian Zhongshu. He once said in a joking tone in his novel "Fortress Besieged" that China only has philosophers and scholars, but never philosophers. What is a "philosopher"? They are scholars who study a certain philosopher, such as experts on Nietzsche, experts on Heidegger, experts on Kant, etc. These are called "philosophers."

A real philosopher studies philosophy in a narrow sense. The knowledge discussed at a deep point that is beyond the reach of ordinary people’s thinking is called philosophy. This must be clearly understood by everyone, and I mentioned it earlier. As mentioned before, Chinese culture traditionally does not produce philosophy in the narrow sense, nor does it have basic philosophical thinking. Pay attention to the meaning of the word "philosophical thinking". It means that philosophy is the mother of science, that is, scientific thinking is completely philosophical thinking. The product of extension. Well, I made it clear in my previous lecture that the basic thinking of Chinese culture is called "craft culture" - technology and art culture. So philosophical thinking is a unique line of thinking.

So when we talk about philosophy, we only talk about the history of Western philosophy. We talk about traditional Chinese culture as the history of Eastern thought, and this is the reason why we don’t use the name history of philosophy. So why is our understanding of philosophy and its lack of understanding? It is because we have introduced Western culture in modern times. After the Opium War in 1840, the earliest movement in China to learn Western culture was called the Westernization Movement. The so-called "Westernization Movement" means "learning from the skills of the foreigners in order to control the foreigners." It means learning the long-standing technology or scientific aspects of the West, and then hoping to subdue the West. It is from this starting point that we begin to learn Western culture.

However, science is only the surface layer of the subsequent extension and application of Western philosophical thinking. This leads us to study the West from the beginning and only stay at the superficial level of the application of Western science and technology. This makes our understanding of Western philosophy In-depth discussions always lack a systematic training process. By the New Culture Movement in 1916 at the beginning of the last century, Hu Shi introduced Western philosophy to China. Hu Shi received a doctorate in philosophy in the United States, but the Western philosophy he introduced was pragmatist philosophy. Everyone knows that this line of thought is very close to the ancient Chinese idea of ??"applying knowledge by application", but it is still far from the true depth of Western philosophy. Therefore, it has seriously misled the Chinese people's understanding of Western philosophy to a large extent. get to the bottom. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, we continued to study Marxist philosophy as Western philosophy.

It is necessary for me to first explain the relationship between Marxism and Western philosophy. First of all, everyone should note that the core of Marx's academic research is not philosophy, although his academic components have three parts, one of which is Western philosophy. The center of Marx's entire research is called "political economics", which means it is not pure economics, but a discipline that studies social and political structures from an economic perspective. In his words, it's called political arithmetic. Marx once specialized in studying the teachings of William Petty, the first originator of political economics. He said that Petty created political arithmetic, which is the core part of Marxism. I admit that Marx reached great heights in this aspect, and the first volume of Marx's "Das Kapital", especially the part that discusses money and value, is amazing in its way of thinking, the extent of its writing style, and the ingenious use of philosophy. . But Marx was not a philosopher after all. We must know that Marx spent his whole life. Except for his doctoral thesis on the study of the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus, we have almost no special philosophical papers from Marx. There is no philosophical monograph. Marx is only an applicator of philosophy, not a philosopher. I want to make a point here, true philosophers, and even true scientists (please note the separation of scientists and engineers). People who really do basic science only care about understanding the world, and never care about changing the world.

A friend once asked me, what is "science"?

He told me that he once heard a lecture given by an academician of the Academy of Sciences. He asked the academician a question after the lecture and asked him what "science" meant. He said that this was what he heard. To the best definition of "science". The academician told him, I don't know what science is.

Due to the foundation of science, its thinking does not flow at the level of scientific application. This means that if you do not have a deep study of the thinking of Western philosophy, you will not know what science is at all, and you may even can lead to significant misunderstandings of science. This is why since the founding of the People's Republic of China, we have all studied according to scientific ideas in primary school, middle school, and university. The middle school students we send out to participate in World Olympics physics and chemistry competitions often come in the top three. However, we have made very little contribution to scientific innovation and invention. The reason is that we lack understanding of the thinking at the grassroots level of science. Therefore, our article today is to a large extent a supplementary lesson on the basic ideas of industrial and commercial civilization. Please pay attention to what I mean. We say that the basic culture and way of thinking corresponding to industrial and commercial civilization is called philosophical thinking. This is why we are scientific today. Because today we are entering industrial and commercial civilization, which is a way of thinking that corresponds to industrial and commercial civilization. However, if you lack understanding of its inner deep structure, then you will not be able to truly understand the basic ideas of industrial and commercial civilization and the effects and problems of this idea. and even development prospects. It is actually very difficult to explain the subject of Western philosophy clearly. Because if you stand at the bottom of a subject and look up at it, it's like standing at the bottom of a mountain and looking at a mountain. You can never see the mountain clearly.

If you want to understand and master a subject, you must look down at it from a higher point than it, and then you can see the whole thing clearly. This is why many professional teachers fail to teach Western philosophy well. It is because if you look up at something, it actually expresses your embarrassment that you cannot understand it. Therefore, today we stand at a higher point than traditional Western philosophy and overlook Western philosophy, so that this topic can be truly in-depth. Even if I am only talking about a basic overview of this topic, you must have this kind of overlooking perspective.

Compiled from "Wang Dongyue's Enlightenment Course on Chinese and Western Philosophy"