Deng Xiaomang: Let Philosophy Speak Chinese

—Starting from the Translation of Kant’s Three Critiques

When I read the lines neatly written in squares When I arrange the sentences and appreciate the "stream of consciousness" expressed in them and the ideological texture formed, I feel as if Kant himself is preaching his difficult and obscure philosophy to us in Chinese. What came to my mind at this time was a motto by Hegel: “Unless a nation uses its own language to learn the best things, then these things will not truly become its wealth, and it will remain barbaric. ", for this reason he proposed to "teach philosophy to speak German", believing that "if philosophy once learns to speak German, it will never be possible for those mediocre ideas to appear profound in language." If you replace "German" in this sentence with "Chinese", this is still a wise saying. Indeed, our intention is to make philosophy (in this case, Kant's philosophy) "speak Chinese."

But there are two things that may be confusing about Hegel’s passage. The first is, why must a nation learn philosophy in its “own language”? Can the same goal be achieved, for example, by popularizing foreign language education (at that time, Latin and Greek, or according to the situation in China today, English education or other foreign language education)? The second is that since it is said that a nation should "learn" philosophy in its own language, the subsequent conclusion should be "teaching philosophy to German" rather than "teaching philosophy to speak German". Here Hegel is Isn't there a clerical error?

Let’s talk about the first question first. Philosophy is clearly among the "best things." In the West, philosophy was first created by the Greeks, who created philosophy in their "own language". Then there were the Romans and Christian philosophers in medieval Western Europe, who used Latin. In modern times, classical Latin has become a dead language as major European nation-states formed and created their own language systems. In Hegel's time, if a nation's culture was limited to a small group of scholastic theologians talking to themselves in Latin, a language that was divorced from the masses, the nation as a whole would be regarded as still belonging to a "barbarian nation." (This is deeply influenced by the humanistic trend of thought and the Enlightenment since the Renaissance). This is because, on the one hand, Latin has lost its roots in life itself and its lively and active "natural language", and its expression of philosophy has become a dead expression, so it is no longer suitable for expressing new philosophy. Thoughts only imprison philosophical thoughts; on the other hand, the daily natural language of this nation cannot rise to the level of elegant philosophy, but can only remain crude and messy. Therefore, in Hegel's view, Luther's translation of the Bible into German and Voss (Johann Heinrich, 1751-1826)'s translation of Homer into German were both great contributions to the German nation and its culture, because This kind of translation goes deep into the daily language of the nation to educate the nation on high-level human spiritual life, forming the nation's own standardized academic language and artistic language that facilitates the exchange of thoughts and emotions. At the same time, it also draws on the culture of the nation and absorb rich nutrients from daily life, while maintaining the inexhaustible vitality of this language's self-growth. Although the work Hegel did was not a translation, as Gadamer pointed out: "As Hegel tried to overcome the alienated academic language without falling into any linguistic purity, he transformed the concept of ordinary thinking into Implemented in the stilted and artificial verbal expressions of philosophy, he restored the speculative spirit of his mother tongue and formed the kind of philosophical speculative movement that had been a natural accompaniment of early Greek philosophy." (Note: Gadamer: "Hegel and Ancient Dialectics", in "Hegel's Dialectics - Six Hermeneutic Research Papers", Tübingen, 1980 edition, page 28.) Obviously, in Germany Before classical philosophy, although there were Nicholas of Cusa who wrote in Latin and Leibniz who wrote mainly in Latin and French, only a group of German classical philosophers who wrote in German since Kant were truly Germany has become a world-class "philosophical nation". They enabled philosophy to grow on German cultural soil for the first time.

Secondly, the so-called "teaching philosophy to speak German" may sound contrary to common sense, but it actually expresses a dual perspective of Hegel. That is to say, on the one hand, he is not trying to improve the cultural literacy and knowledge of the general public from the perspective of secular national education, as what people usually call "popularizing" philosophy or "popularizing philosophy" (or what we call today " Science popularization"), but based on the development of philosophy itself. "Philosophy" is the subject here. Philosophy "speaking German" is first of all the development of philosophy, and secondly the development of German. On the other hand, because of this, philosophy itself needs to be "taught", that is, it needs to develop. In Hegel's time, philosophy was "taught" to be able to "speak German" which was the greatest development of philosophy, because in Hegel's time In my opinion, German is the most suitable language for "speaking" philosophy.

Hegel’s views are worthy of reference by Chinese scholars, especially those who study foreign philosophy. There is no objection that those who study foreign philosophy must first be good at foreign languages. However, I have always emphasized that in order to truly study foreign philosophy thoroughly, it is more important to be proficient in the mother tongue, that is, to have a good command of Chinese.

Because the so-called "thorough research" means for Chinese people to be able to thoroughly understand and even express the philosophical thoughts of foreigners in Chinese, rather than just being able to recite the texts of foreign philosophers in foreign languages. To do this, you must be able to think and express general philosophical thoughts smoothly in Chinese, first of all, philosophical thoughts that you have personally experienced. In this regard, philosophy is a very unique discipline. For example, scholars and experts who study foreign history or economics, politics, social systems, laws, morals, etc. generally do not necessarily need to have comprehensive and rich knowledge of these conditions in their own country (perhaps only literature is an exception in this regard, and they lack It is difficult for people with aesthetic experience and poetic spirit in the Chinese context to engage in foreign literature research), and they can also conduct relatively objective introductions and research analyses; but scholars who study foreign philosophy must be interested in and think about philosophy itself. , and of course this kind of philosophical thinking that belongs to oneself can only be done in the mother tongue, not in a foreign language. Gadamer believes that the so-called "language ability" is not a technical imitation ability. "Generally speaking, language ability can only be achieved in one's mother tongue. This shows that we learn to see the world through the eyes of our mother tongue." , conversely, it can be said that the first expansion of our language ability began to be expressed when we looked at the world around us." (Note: Gadamer: "Truth and Method" Volume 2, translated by Hong Handing, Shanghai Translation. Press, 1999 edition, page 633.) From this we can think that language ability itself is a philosophical ability in origin and foundation. On the contrary, a person's philosophical thinking can only be carried out in his mother tongue. The mother tongue, that is, the native language based on a person's daily natural language and all life experiences, is the source of philosophical thinking and philosophical academic research (such as foreign philosophical research) based on philosophical thinking. (Note: Habermas attaches great importance to everyday natural language. He even believes that "natural language represents the 'final' metalanguage for all theories expressed in formal language." See his "Universal Requirements of Hermeneutics" "The Chinese translation is published in "Selected Classics of Hermeneutics (Part 2)" by Hong Handing et al., Taiwan Laurel Book Company, 2002 edition, page 7)

We are correct in the translation of Kant's three major criticisms. It is an attempt to implement the above-mentioned ideas expressed by Hegel and make philosophy speak Chinese by translating the thoughts of this world-class philosopher. However, in the past, for example, during the period before and even after the May 4th New Culture Movement, due to the major differences in cultural and linguistic structures, the Chinese wanted to make a foreign philosophy, especially a highly speculative one like Kant, concentrated. It is indeed extremely difficult for philosophical thoughts that represent the characteristics of Western thinking to be expressed more accurately in Chinese. This is because the written Chinese language itself has not yet completed its modern transformation back to being consistent with daily spoken language (and this is an important advantage of modern Western languages, and it is also the basic condition for them to be suitable for more sophisticated philosophical expressions and philosophical discussions. ), let alone establishing a clear and standardized academic language based on this transformation for the needs of modern academics (drawing on Western grammar). When people translate Western philosophical documents from ancient Chinese, they will find that due to the lack of corresponding grammatical means, some grammatical relationships have to be handled in a generalized way. One of the most typical attempts to translate Kant's works into classical Chinese was Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" translated by Lan Gongwu from 1933 to 1935 (publicly published in 1957). In this translation, the translator has tried his best to transform Kant's originally clumsy German text into the English translation of Camp Smith into fluent and elegant Chinese classical Chinese. , watertight. From a Chinese perspective, this translation can be regarded as a rare masterpiece. However, judging from the coherence and rigor of Kant's philosophical thoughts, it is obvious that information is often distorted and lost due to accommodating the limitations of language, and many subtleties cannot be expressed. The problem encountered here is not actually the conflict between the foreign language and the national language, but the conflict between the foreign language and the national language that has passed (if it is regarded as a "foreign language" in the time dimension, it is " "Two foreign languages"), this conflict cannot be resolved because they are out of touch with the daily natural language of modern Chinese people.

I think one of the greatest cultural achievements and contributions of the May Fourth Movement lies in the transformation of classical Chinese and the formation of modern Chinese. (Note: At present, domestic scholars have many negative criticisms on this point. They believe that the abolition of classical Chinese is not the result of the May 4th Movement, but the biggest sin of the May 4th Movement. However, I think this kind of evaluation carries too much emotional color and did not carefully consider the actual situation and future development of the Chinese nation) This process is arduous and long. Since the end of the Qing Dynasty, some talented people with profound knowledge of classical literature have studied in the West. In addition to bringing new modern Western ideas (such as Yan Fu), they also brought Western grammar (such as Ma Jianzhong's "Ma Shi Wentong"). Prepared for the emergence of modern Chinese. After the May Fourth Movement, a large number of outstanding translators abandoned the practice of translating foreign novels (such as Lin Shu) from classical Chinese and began to forge modern Chinese in the linguistic practice of translating Western literary works in everyday spoken language, from which they gradually formed a language that is closely related to daily life. A "translation style" that is closer to spoken language but does not lose academic grace and cultural accomplishment.

The characteristic of this translation style is that it is basically in line with modern Western grammar (including the use of punctuation marks, copulas and prepositions, inverted sentence patterns, main-clause relationships, etc.), and greatly expands the number of modifiers (attributes, adverbials, complements, etc.) in sentences. capacity, emphasizing the logical connection between each part of the sentence and each sentence, resulting in a large number of long sentences unheard of in ancient Chinese; but at the same time it maintains many advantages of ancient Chinese, such as various rhetorical techniques (Fu The use of parallelism, arrangement and parallelism, idioms and allusions, etc.), as well as the concise style of writing and the expressive way of expression that hit the point and leave the meaning behind. This translation style, which was formed from the translation of classic Western literary works, had a decisive impact on the cultural and spiritual life of the Chinese people in the second half of the 20th century. Wang Xiaobo said that his literary literacy was mainly obtained by reading translated works. Those great translators "are the ones who discovered the rhythm of modern Chinese. Without this rhythm, there would be no literature. The most important thing is: in China , there is already a pure and perfect modern literary language." "I have always wanted to admit that my literary inheritance is such a little-known clue... When we were young, we all knew that if we want to read good articles, we must read translations. Because the best authors are engaged in translation." (Note: Wang Xiaobo: "My Inheritance", in "My Spiritual Home", Culture and Art Press, 1997 edition, pp. 142-143.) This actually includes I have the same experience as some of my peers (people born in the late 1940s and early 1950s). Of course, in addition to literature, other translated works such as aesthetics and philosophical theories also participated in the shaping of modern Chinese. Until the second half of the 20th century, Marxist classics were translated on a large scale, which played a role in the academic language of modern Chinese. important shaping effect. I once said that the language and style of philosophical research and other theoretical research in mainland China over the past 50 years have been mainly determined by the translation of Marxist works, and what these works convey is undoubtedly the model of Western academic discourse. Therefore, the standardized modern Chinese we use now is actually no longer a purely Chinese cultural thing, but a hybrid of the collision of Chinese and Western cultures.

Of course, it is normal and necessary to have arguments and biases during this collision. In the 1930s, the debates between Lu Xun, Liang Shiqiu and others about "torted translation", "hard translation", "dead translation" and "chaotic translation" were of great reference significance for grasping the appropriateness of translation. Of course, Lu Xun advocated that translation should be "harder". I understand that this was not just a matter of translation skills, but was considered from the perspective of the "transformation of national character" that he always advocated. He is unwilling to blindly accommodate the understanding and appreciation taste of the Chinese people. He knows that the underdevelopment of this ability and the intolerance of taste are caused by China's ideological constraints for thousands of years. The translator's task is to first translate this into This kind of shackles is loosened, which requires translation to be a certain degree of advance and try to make readers "jump and reach". Interestingly, Lu Xun also mentioned Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason". In his article "In Defense of Translation", he pointed out that some people complained about the "hardness" or "chaos" of translation at that time, saying that many translation works were so bad that "I often read three or four pages and still don't understand what is said", and pointed out that the root cause of the problem is On the one hand, the Chinese people like to "be first" and to follow the trend of the impetuous trend (this is so similar to the current situation of the translation industry in China after 80 years!); on the other hand, there is the absence of criticism (this point has not improved so far); but in the end To "defend" the translation, he said that certain translations should be treated differently, "If it is a book like Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," even if a German reads the original text, if he is not an expert, he will still not be able to understand it for a while. Naturally, translators who "turn to the first line and translate" are too irresponsible, but readers who are indiscriminate and want to understand whatever translation is made by just turning to the first line are also too irresponsible. "(Note: "The Complete Works of Lu Xun", Volume 5, People's Literature Publishing House, 1981 edition, page 259.) In the article "Hard Translation and the Class Nature of Literature", Lu Xun also refuted Liang Shiqiu for his "hard translation" The accusation said: "My translations are not 'refreshing' to the readers, but they often make them uncomfortable, and even make people depressed, disgusted and resentful"; he also cited the example of the Japanese to defend himself: "Japanese and European and American It's very 'different', but they gradually added new syntax. Compared with ancient Chinese, it is more suitable for translation without losing the original concise tone. At first, it is natural to 'find the clues of syntax', which is very confusing to some people. "Pleasant", but after searching and getting used to it, it has now been assimilated and become one's own. Chinese grammar is even more incomplete than Japan's ancient Chinese... Now comes "foreign language", and many sentences must also be used. According to my experience, the original concise tone can be better preserved when translated into a few sentences. However, because it needs to be newly created, the original Chinese version is. There are flaws." (Note: "The Complete Works of Lu Xun", Volume 4, pp. 197, 199-200.) Indeed, what most untrained Chinese readers fear most is reading long sentences in translated works, so some The kind-hearted translator cut one sentence into several sentences in order to pity the readers' minds.

In fact, for the translation of literary works, this approach may just "lose the essence" (that is, lose the "middle energy"). (Note: A common problem in ancient Chinese articles is insufficient "middle energy", or "shortness of breath". , unable to write large works, can only write "essays". Large works such as "Historical Records" are actually nothing more than a accumulation of small articles. Of course, readers who grew up reading such articles will find it difficult to adapt to something like "Critique of Pure Reason". A cohesive and majestic system.) But it is often disastrous for the translation of certain philosophical works.

Among Western philosophical works, Kant's works are recognized as the most difficult to read. An important reason is that the sentences are too long. A German scholar once complained that ten fingers were not enough to read Kant's book, because he used each finger to press a clause of Kant, and all ten fingers were used up, but Kant's sentence was not finished. This complaint sounds ridiculous: why do you need to use your fingers to hold down sentences when reading? But this just illustrates the admirable attitude of German readers in trying to grasp ideas as a whole (that is, "conceptual grasp", the German word for "concept" is Begreff, which means "grasping" or "holding" with hands) Mental strength. Kant's book is written for precisely this qualified audience. Chinese readers (and maybe British readers) will not put so much effort into reading Kant. For them, things become very simple. They can just read along clause by clause. If they don’t understand, just talk about Kant. "Full of contradictions" and even "chaos" (even the experts say so, anyway). Therefore, when Chinese translators everywhere dismantle Kant's complicated sentence patterns to adapt to the poor understanding of Chinese readers, a large part of Kant's spirit has been lost. However, what if it is not dismantled? Without dismantling, the translator would have to figure out the structure of those sentences himself and grasp Kant's thoughts as a whole rather than in fragments. This is not easy! Therefore, translating Kant's works is actually studying Kant's works. Only experts in Kant research can produce truly good translations. (Note: In fact, the works of other philosophers should also be like this, but great philosophers like Kant are more prominent.) This close combination of language and thought is exactly why people in the translation field today are keen to seize territory. The only reason why Kant's works are so little appreciated. In view of this, Mr. Yang and I have a tacit principle when translating Kant's works, that is, the commas in Kant's original text can be changed (added, deleted, or moved), but the periods (and most semicolons) must not be moved, so as to maximize the Keep the components of a sentence intact. I now teach graduate students every semester a course on reading Kant's original works. The first basic lesson in the class is to ask the graduate students to read a passage from Kant according to our translation. They should try to read each sentence in one breath, even if they need to take a breath. Pick it up immediately without interrupting your tone.

However, when I was doing such an extremely clumsy and thankless job, I had another pleasure, which was to discover that modern Chinese has a special ability to translate Kant’s works. Its strengths are its flexibility and versatility. This is mainly in comparison with the English translation of Kant's works (some also with the Russian translation). English and German, both belonging to the Teutonic language family, certainly have an incomparable affinity with Chinese in terms of grammar, vocabulary and sense of language, but they actually have considerable differences, sometimes even insurmountable differences. For example, the grammar of English is open and analytical, and can be understood while speaking. It has a loose and boundless linear structure, which is especially suitable for social interactions and business activities. The grammar of German is closed and comprehensive. The exact meaning of the entire sentence is known only after it is finished. It has a collective structure and is suitable for meditation behind closed doors. This is often due to the unique "box structure" of German. Many verbs in German have separable prefixes. In a sentence, these prefixes can be separated from the stem and thrown to the end of the sentence, and enclosed with the verb stem to form a frame structure; then they are composed of modal verbs ("can", "must" , "willing", "allow", etc.) and the frame structure formed by the tense auxiliary verb and the main verb placed at the end; in addition, all the verbs of the clause are also placed at the end of the clause to form a frame structure with the introductory word. These are things that English cannot express, so English is particularly prone to confusion when arranging those clauses and clauses of clauses. Surprisingly, modern Chinese has a way to express most box structures. For example, for box structures formed by verb prefixes, modal verbs and tense auxiliary verbs, Chinese can transform the main verb into "to..." when necessary. ..." or "add ... to ...", so that the main verb falls to the end to achieve a box structure; for the box structure of the clause, the Chinese attributive suffix "..." is used to express the German Attributive clauses use the Chinese "if..." to express German conditional clauses, use the Chinese "when..." and "in the case of..." to express German time or status clauses, and use the Chinese "when..." and "under the circumstances" to express German time or status clauses. "Like...", "Compared to..." are used to express German comparative clauses, and so on.

In addition to the flexibility of syntax, the advantage of modern Chinese in translation is also reflected in the flexibility of word combinations. Take English as an example as well. There are two very important technical terms in Kant's philosophy: Wille (Chinese translation as "will") and Willkür (Chinese translation as "arbitrary", also translated as "will" and "intention"), which can never be distinguished in English.

English can only use one word, will, to express these two words that are very different and sometimes even opposite.

The shortcomings of the Chinese language become examples of its strengths in modern Chinese, even when one word has to be translated more than once. As with the translation of Sein or Being above, many people are currently debating which Chinese word should be used to accurately grasp its meaning. But in fact, when Westerners use this word, although they know that the word has various meanings, they do not necessarily have to keep all the meanings in view to understand it. They often only take the one based on the context at that time. One meaning, so the trouble they often encounter is that ambiguity often occurs in a sentence, and even fundamental problems arise. For example, when Kant criticized the "ontological proof" of God that has been circulating in the West for hundreds of years, he pointed out that this rational illusion is all based on the misunderstanding of Sein, that is, using the ambiguity of the word as a grammatical system. The "is" of the word is understood as a "real predicate", that is, "existence". (Note: See "Critique of Pure Reason" A598 = B626.) But this in turn also shows that when Sein is generally used as a "real predicate" in German, it cannot be understood as a copula. yes". Even Kant himself used this point in this way. For example, in his list of categories, the pair of categories "being-non-being" (Dasein-Nichtsein) (which can also be translated as "being-non-being") can never be understood. It is "this is-is-not" in the sense of a logical copula, but it just refers to the "real predicate" (that is, the category of "reality"). The multiple translations of one word in Chinese can avoid the polysemy that arises from Western languages.

Modern Chinese has some other conveniences when translating German philosophical texts. For example, there is no specific "subjunctive form" in Chinese, but the subjunctive form can be expressed through mood, such as "maybe", "Will", "will", "will", "could have", "could", etc. However, English translators often omit the subjunctive when translating German texts, and even if it exists, it is not obvious. (Difficult to distinguish from past tense). In addition, there are some ancient vocabulary in Chinese that have been abandoned, but they just serve as a backup vocabulary and will come in unexpectedly useful in some situations. Just as Westerners often replace a word with the same meaning by introducing a word from Latin to express the more abstract meaning of the word. As Hegel said: "Philosophical terminology often uses Latin nouns for reflective determinations, either because there are no such nouns in the native language, or even if there are, it is because the nouns in the native language remind people more of immediate things. , and foreign languages ??remind people more of reflective things.”

Of course, making philosophy speak Chinese is not only a matter of translation, but also a matter of philosophical thinking itself, because translation (such as (mentioned above) on the one hand is based on the translator’s philosophical thinking, on the other hand it is ultimately intended to promote the philosophical thinking of the Chinese people. From today's perspective, ancient Chinese is not only unsuitable for philosophical translation (including the translation of Western classical literature), but also very unsuitable for philosophical thinking. Modern Chinese not only has advantages in translation, but also (or perhaps because of this) has advantages in philosophical thinking. Now, through Europeanized modern Chinese, it is in principle possible for us to thoroughly understand the deepest thoughts of the West. In contrast, Western Sinologists are still unable to penetrate the deepest levels of Chinese thoughts. In this regard, we should actually say that we are in a high position towards Western culture today, just as the economically backward German culture was at a high position ideologically towards other European cultures. If the German classical philosophers "taught philosophy to speak German" meant the development of philosophy itself, then today we "teach philosophy to speak Chinese" will also mean the new development of philosophy itself in the contemporary era. Not only does Chinese have the "speculative spirit" that Hegel highly praised for German, that is, a word often has completely opposite meanings (such as "easy means not easy", "chaos means managing"; and "deficit"). The word "originally refers to suffering a loss, but "thank you" and "fortunately" refer to getting help), and it has the "deconstructive" and "substitute" properties that Derrida and others admire today. The most obvious example is that in Chinese, the active and passive forms of verbs are fuzzy and fluctuate, depending on the context; and, contrary to the fact that nouns in Western languages ??generally change from verbs, In Chinese, verbs generally change from nouns; (Note: Engels studied about 20 Western languages ??and found that almost all nouns in these languages ??are derived from verbs. In Chinese, on the contrary, most verbs have nouns. The origin can be understood by looking at "Shuowen Jiezi". The so-called "from certain, certain sound" is the general mode of explanation, and the previous "some" is usually a noun. This is probably a pinyin text and a hieroglyphic character. Important difference. ) Therefore, any verb in Western languages ??can be easily nominalized (in German, just capitalize the first letter of a verb to become a noun), but it is more difficult to nominalize verbs in Chinese. Especially those primitive single verbs, such as "kind" for planting land and "斫" for chopping trees. Although they are derived from nouns, it feels awkward to use the meaning of the verb as a noun. In modern Chinese, they are often pronounced as Only bivocal words (verb-object structure) can be treated as process nouns (for example, "Farmers' pruning trees cause soil erosion").

This shows that Chinese is not used to fixating (substantializing) a dynamic activity, but tends to put a fixed noun into the action to display (such as "junjun, minister, father, father, son, etc.") . Therefore, while Chinese loses certainty, it brings flexibility. (Note: Of course, sometimes being too flexible also causes the pollution of the Chinese language. For example, many articles on the Internet ("Internet articles") nowadays have this problem. An important feature of the so-called "Wu Li Tou" is that any noun Digested into other parts of speech such as verbs, adverbs, and adjectives (such as: "This girl is very Haruki Murakami!")

However, we should also be clearly aware of this flexibility of Chinese. It is of little use when we have not absorbed the certainties of Western philosophy as a norm for our philosophical thinking. It will only add to the confusion of thought in vain. It can be said that the lack of academic standardization and basic training in rational thinking in our philosophical circles and the entire academic community today shows that we still lack solid efforts in truly learning the spirit of Western science. In other words, our way of thinking is still at the "pre-modern" level. Although it has some superficial similarities with "post-modern", it is still far away from God after all. Therefore, our philosophical thinking's "high position advantage" for Western philosophy is currently only a possibility, not a reality. Only by first learning pure philosophical thinking and "thinking about thinking" from Westerners can we find appropriate means to bring out the advantages of our language and culture. Some people now naively believe that since Westerners appreciate the ambiguity and chaos of Chinese culture, the 21st century will definitely be the "century of Chinese culture." This statement brings a deceptive narcissism to people. It seems that we Chinese can comfortably become the leader of world civilization based on our innate nature or genetic qualities without any effort. In fact, if we want to retain the strengths of traditional Chinese culture and tap new vitality from it, this is a very hard job. We must retell the ancient wisdom in a language that modern people are accustomed to and can understand, and use modern Chinese to "qualify" the "meaning" of classical Chinese, that is, a kind of re-creation, rather than simply copying ancient vocabulary. This kind of copying is just a fashion. If this word is not recognized by modern Chinese and is just used to show off in a mysterious way, then as time goes by, it will be replaced by newer fashion and abandoned. So the key is, when you retell an ancient word, do you really understand what it means? Is the meaning you understand irreplaceable in modern Chinese? If it can be replaced, although your work cannot be said to be in vain, it does not mean much; if it cannot be replaced, then you must make people realize that it is irreplaceable, that is, through modern Chinese interpretation, let those who study philosophy be able to discover This is indeed unavoidable and unavoidable, and must be used. In this way, this word is given a new life, and people must use this word when talking about the issues you are talking about. In this way, your work has the meaning of promoting philosophical thinking. Furthermore, ancient words that can be interpreted or translated in Europeanized modern Chinese can, in principle, be interpreted or translated in foreign languages. In this way, ancient Chinese thought has become a wealth of all categories, and philosophy can not only Speak modern Chinese and be able to speak ancient Chinese through modern Chinese. But the premise of all this is: we must respect the dominant position of modern Chinese, use modern Chinese to connect foreign languages ????and ancient Chinese, and combine them with our modern people’s life experience and daily life through modern Chinese, so as to improve modern Chinese It is a contemporary philosophical language that is so sharp that, in the words of the late philosopher Mr. Chen Kang, Western philosophers would hate it if they did not understand Chinese! (Note: See Chen Kang: Preface to "Parmenides", The Commercial Press, 1982 edition, page 10.)

This is of course an ideal goal, but it is not unfeasible. Yes, the only question is whether or how many people are willing to do this. This is exactly what we expected.