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By Eric Zhang

Wittgenstein (4%)

11/11/2024

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Many people put Wittgenstein Known as the greatest philosopher of the 20th century. In the second half of the twentieth century, philosophical works were almost invariably called Wittgenstein.
But Wittgenstein is not easy to read, and neither his early works nor his later works are easy to read, just for different reasons. One of the reasons his early work, Tractus Logico-Philosophize, was difficult to read was that it was written in aphorisms, and that he had special uses for many of the concepts, with his own special, "strict" definitions.
His late work, Philosophical Investigations, is also difficult to read, although it is written in the plainest language and syntax, and it is quite easy to read, but the trouble is that the reader will feel that he is talking here and there, and it is always unclear where he is really going. I have heard many people say that they do not understand Philosophical Investigations, including very intelligent people who feel something but miss the point. Philosophical Investigations is difficult to read, and must be considered in connection with Wittgenstein's basic understanding of philosophy, because Wittgenstein's philosophy is very different from our usual understanding of philosophy.
Wittgenstein, for example, argued that philosophy is not about providing theories. The whole Western philosophical tradition is theoretical. For example, philosophers of language have provided various theories of meaning, the denotational theory of meaning, the ideational theory of meaning, the verifiable theory of meaning, etc. Wittgenstein studied the philosophy of language, but he did not admit what theory he proposed. Philosophy is not a theory, and in Wittgenstein it is not just a formulation, he does it by the way he does philosophy. This alone makes us find his style and themes difficult to grasp.
Wittgenstein's Philosophy in the later period: a conceptual survey
If Wittgenstein has a definition of philosophy, then the standard definition is "philosophy is the investigation of concepts." But what is "conceptual investigation"?
Many of the words that we use, like run, jump, justice, human rights, beautiful, beautiful, reasonable, these are words that we call concepts. We speak and discuss problems using concepts and without them. We often speak of things in terms of concepts without examining them. From the age of three or four, we can say run, walk, jump, and we have said it all our lives, and we have never missed it.
But if you are now a dictionary writer, or engaged in some linguistic work, and you are asked to define walk, run, jump, I believe that you will not be able to define these words without thinking. In other words, using a concept to speak is not the same as examining and defining the concept itself. I could say it's on two levels. To put it crudly, we usually speak in the first order, that is, we use concepts to say things, philosophy is the second order, philosophy is to say something about concepts.
Now let us go back to this formulation of conceptual examination and look at historical philosophy. Philosophy is generally said to begin with Plato or Socrates, but in Plato's dialogues we don't really know which is Platonic and which is Socratic. Of course we also speak of the pre-Socratic philosophers, but philosophy as a systematic inquiry begins with Plato.
If we think back to the dialogues of Plato or Socrates, what does it look like to be considered philosophical? Plato asks in the form of: What is justice? What is beauty? What is knowledge? What is good? It can be said that each dialogue roughly answers such a question.
In other words, Plato is engaged in a conceptual investigation. We usually speak in terms of beauty, justice, knowing whether to know, reasonable or not, but we do not examine these concepts themselves. What do you mean by this word in Platonic dialogue, when someone says something first, and then Socrates manages to go around in circles and lead the question to a conceptual investigation and force the other person to answer? How should the term be defined? In this way, the Socratic dialogue leads us from our usual first-order conversation to a second-order examination of concepts.
The idea that philosophy is second-order thinking is familiar to everyone. In fact, philosophers therefore feel that they should think and write in some kind of metalanguage. For example, Tai Chi, Wu Wei, such as knowledge, emotion, meaning, when philosophers talk about "knowledge", including what we usually say about knowing, understanding, understanding, understanding, understanding, and so on a large family of brothers and sisters, they are close, adjacent or have something in common.
When we actually speak, if we are not writing philosophy, when we use "know" and when we use "understand", most of us have to distinguish clearly, otherwise the Chinese teacher will say that you do not understand Chinese, but when we do philosophy, we tend to use one word to sum up all these words, and even think that this philosophical "know" is the common abstraction of all these concepts. Wittgenstein called such a processed concept a superconcept.
For thousands of years, it seemed inevitable that people would have to construct super concepts to think philosophically, and that they would engage in philosophy with super concepts, for better or for worse. This is a means of constructing philosophical theory, and also a sign of constructing philosophical theory. Wittgenstein's refusal to engage in philosophy in the way of constructivism is highlighted by the fact that he does not use metalanguage to do philosophy and does not use super concepts to explore philosophy. He says:
Is it possible to do second-order things in a first-order way, to do philosophy in a way of talking about things?
Conceptual examination is the examination of those concepts that we already use, or as it is called in philosophical circles, the consideration of concepts used in everyday language, the examination of natural concepts. Why is that? Because the reason we need to look at these concepts is because there are disagreements and arguments about how they should be described. Sometimes there is even disagreement about how to use these concepts. We have confusion and debate here, so we are trying to clarify it. For example, if there is a debate on human rights, one side says rights are this and that, and the other side says rights are this and that, so we need to clarify the concept of rights. If you make up a concept yourself, we do not use it, so there is no confusion about it, so there is no need to clarify it.
We can say that conceptual investigation and empirical work are two levels of things. For example, we all use the phrase "why". But sometimes I say, there's no reason for it. You say, why not? Everything has a why. This is when we have to talk about why itself, for example to find out whether it is possible to ask why for everything. You may not be able to make that clear. I came to class, everyone was sitting here, and one of the students came in half an hour later, and I said, Why are you late? The question is understandable to everyone. But if I walk into the classroom and everyone is there on time, and I say hello to the people sitting there, why aren't you late? This is a question you don't understand.
You couldn't answer it, not because you weren't smart enough, but because I was a little stupid and asked a stupid question so that you didn't know what I was asking.  But now it seems there are some things you can't ask why. But what can you ask and what can't you ask why? To consider such questions is to explore the structure of the concept of "why".
Wittgenstein said that philosophy, as a conceptual investigation, asks only what we already know. The world is busy seeking new knowledge, the philosopher is not so, he stays in what we already know. Chuang Tzu said, "The whole world knows what they don't know, but not what they already know." Lao-Tzu even said, "To learn more and more is to lose." Finding reason in what is known is another feature of conceptual investigation. To the extent that one often misuses the word experience, philosophy is non-empirical, in short, it does not depend on the discovery of more empirical facts.
The function of philosophy is healing
Philosophy does not provide a theory of the world, as science does, which leads us to another fundamental formulation of Wittgenstein's philosophy. He believed that the function of philosophy, simply put, was to heal. It is also at odds with what most people imagine of philosophy, whose task is probably to construct, not to heal. Let me also introduce the concept of healing from several aspects.
First of all, we need treatment when we're sick. But why are we so prone to trouble with conceptual thinking? It has been said that in our daily life we are bound to make an examination of the concepts we use, and yet we usually speak more in terms of concepts than in terms of concepts, and we are not, so to speak, trained in the examination of concepts.
As a result, we often make mistakes when making conceptual investigations. Conceptual examination is not our forte. At the age of two, we began to ask why, everything, why the sky is blue, why Dad smokes, why dad is not mom, maybe profound, maybe blind questions. From the age of three or four, we know what things ask why and what things don't ask why. But as we said, it's never easy to say why it makes sense to ask in these things and why it doesn't. We almost never use the wrong concept in the first level, unless you are poor in elementary school Chinese. In fact, "even without a day of school, many people can speak very well." I would say that speaking is something that comes naturally to us. Conceptual investigation is not something we are born to do, it is something we need to spend special attention to do. Therefore, in second-order thinking, we are prone to error.
Some people may refute that we may have doubts and disagreements at the first level, whether a certain situation should be called experience or experience, whether a certain policy should be called justice or fairness, and we may have disagreements. I fully admit that. But words such as experience, experience, feeling, justice, and right are naturally like second-order words, which I usually call rational words, and which are inherently strongly theoretical. Philosophical work, as I'll show in a moment, is primarily concerned with these kinds of concepts.
Here, the debate about the use of concepts is really a debate about how to describe them. When I talk about misapplied concepts, I usually mean misapplied concepts of this kind. When we use these words, it is easy to cause disagreements, and these disagreements lead us to arguments about the concept itself. We often argue: What is right? What is reasonable? What is happiness? What is happiness? We may begin by discussing whether Americans or Chinese are happier, whether modern people are happier or ancient people are happier, but such discussions are almost never purely factual arguments, and almost always involve conceptual investigations.
When we think about problems, we often unconsciously construct theories, saying that someone is happy and someone is unhappy, at this time you do not construct theories, but when you answer what is happiness, you have almost entered the preparatory stage of theoretical construction, it seems that if you continue to ask questions, you have to construct an ethics. In fact, that's exactly what happened. What does Plato or Socrates use as a dialogue to talk about justice? Political science was born. We use a dialogue to ask what is matter, what is the motion of matter, and physics is born.
People want to understand the universe, and they think the most important way to understand the universe is to build a theory about the universe. To understand the state, to understand life, to understand nature, we must construct politics, ethics, physics, and through theory we will have a thorough understanding of these things.
It is in this place that Wittgenstein's philosophy diverges most from the traditional philosophy. If we traditionally believe that philosophy is a theoretical construction, then Wittgenstein believes that philosophy is a theoretical deconstruction. Wittgenstein himself doesn't seem to use the word deconstruction, we just say dissolve.
How do we construct a theory? Before the modern scientific revolution, theories were constructed by examining basic concepts. The basic concept of ethics is good, and together with good there is justice, happiness, disposition, and then luck, character, ends, means, meaning, death, and so on. If you want to construct a theory of physics, then you have to systematically question and study the most basic concepts of motion, change, rest, motion, time, and space.
These basic concepts seem to contain clues to the structure of the world. Of course, as our research deepens, we will find that the concepts we usually use are not accurate, so we adjust and transform these concepts. The air of air, we all know what it means, but philosophers have turned it into a super concept to refer to something that is everywhere. As a weapon, philosophers also give it a broader meaning. Philosophers use the concepts of reason, qi and organ to construct a grand theory about life in the universe. This is how ancient theories were constructed. It was not often that ancient theorists invented new concepts, but mostly they constructed their theories by giving some new meaning to ordinary concepts.
But the situation changed in the sixteenth and seventh centuries. The thinkers of the sixteenth and seventh centuries, Galileo, Descartes, Newton, they created a new way of thinking, the way of thinking of modern science. It is not possible here to describe the way in which the new theory is structured, but it is clear that the new physics points to Aristotle or Aristotelianism.
New thinkers find that we repeatedly ask for the deep content of concepts, "seemingly constantly put forward new insights, new statements, but in fact only in what we already understand in the swirl, and do not produce new knowledge." To promote the development of knowledge, we must break the shackles of traditional concepts and boldly adopt new ones. Let's take the most common example, which is the case of motion and rest. We all know what is motion and what is rest, but Galileo, Descartes, and Newton changed these concepts, and the new physics claimed that what we normally see at rest is actually in a straight line of uniform motion, which we all learned in junior high physics. The new physics changes the concepts we use to describe the world and changes the way we describe it.
We probably all now accept that modern physics is correct, that its description of the world is correct, scientific, and truly scientific knowledge.
Aristotle
The theory is wrong, invalid and should be abandoned. The Western theoretical impulse seems to have finally found the right way to construct theory through Galileo, Descartes, and Newton.
Since then, philosophy has been facing an existential crisis. The sense of crisis is gradually becoming clearer. Before that there was no such crisis, because philosophers were scientists, theorists, those who provided the correct picture of the world. But when this work is taken over by scientists, and apparently done far more successfully, what is left for philosophy to do becomes a headache for philosophers. We have several options, and when I say these options, I say them in an external way, and I don't think they are all parallel options.
 
Modern physics has been a great success, no problem. But let's go back to the beginning. Why did we construct a theory in the first place? To better understand the world. Do scientific theories help us understand the world better? It's a little inappropriate to ask this question in this scientific day. But in spite of it, allow me to ask.
We have an understanding of the world, but we also have a lot of confusion. For example, we all have a lot of confusion about time. We know that many aspects of the time problem have been solved in physics. For example, time has no beginning. Astrophysics says that time began with the Big Bang. We also know the relationship between time and speed, the faster the speed, the slower time passes, close to the speed of light, time becomes extremely slow. We can read about these things in any popular science book or science fiction.
 
But have the theories of physics, these extremely successful and profound theories, solved the puzzle of time? Augustine once asked: What was God doing before He created the world? He replied that time was created with the creation of the world, so there was no such thing as "before" God created the world. I don't know if you're satisfied with Agustin's answer. If you're still confused by Augustine's answer, you're probably still confused by the fact that there was no time before the Big Bang. The confusion here may not be dispelled by further advances in physics. Not to mention, the confusion about time is obviously linked to our awareness of life and death, exclamation, or something of the sort. We begin with the hope of understanding through theory, of constructing theory through thinking about concepts. It was later discovered that to construct a theory that gave a correct picture of the world, it was not possible to think about concepts alone, we needed to change our concepts, we needed to construct many new concepts. But when we construct such a theory, however much it may help us to understand things, it does not help us to solve our conceptual puzzles, "because the roots of these puzzles are buried in the natural concepts we used to think and speak, and however advanced our science is today, we cannot abandon these natural concepts." We are still using these natural concepts when dealing directly with the world."
Now we can understand Wittgenstein's philosophy better. Wittgenstein simply said that philosophy does not provide any theories at all, and that providing theories is the business of science. But philosophy does not have nothing to do, because science, while providing theories, does not eliminate our conceptual confusion. The work of philosophy is to clarify meaning through conceptual examination. Science is concerned with truth; philosophy is concerned with meaning. Philosophy makes a conceptual investigation, and this conceptual investigation is not the work of constructing theories, and we have seen that theories constructed through the investigation of concepts are pseudo-theories. The purpose of the conceptual study is to treat. At a small level, it cures our misuse of concepts; In a major sense, it cures our urge to construct theories through conceptual descriptions.
Philosophy aims to dispel our misunderstanding of certain expressions. Above I quote Wittgenstein as saying that certain misunderstandings can be eliminated by substituting forms of expression. This is not to say that the latter is impossible to misunderstand. A misunderstanding is always a specific misunderstanding, and we try to eliminate it when it occurs. Instead, we find the real expression hidden beneath the everyday expression, and once grounded in this real expression, the expression is sufficiently clarified that we cannot misunderstand it.
Wittgenstein said: We do not need any theory, we do not explain anything, we only describe. A lot of people think how is that possible? What is philosophy without theory? But that's exactly what Wittgenstein meant. It is true that Wittgenstein challenges a series of our deeply held ideas, and I can only provide a preliminary introduction today, so that everyone knows that there is such a challenge, whether he is reasonable or not, you have to rely on your own to read Wittgenstein's works.
Wittgenstein himself likened philosophy more to psychotherapy than to physical therapy. We are all, to some extent, mentally ill, and if it were not for the philosopher in each of us, we would not need a philosophy in the therapeutic sense. But we don't count ourselves as mentally ill. Who are the typical intellectual sufferers? It is those who construct theories out of concepts, those who we normally call philosophers, who are the typical sick people, the ones who most need treatment. When we're hurt, we say, "I'm hurt." A philosopher would say, my body is wounded. He felt he was more accurate because he had a theory to back up his more accurate statement. We ordinary people learn to talk like that. As we said before, there is a philosopher in all of us.
Philosophy is a specialized treatment, and there is a specialized criticism and critique to which philosophy belongs. This criticism is directed against those errors into which our primary reflection almost inevitably falls, and which we almost inevitably avoid once we begin to reflect on concepts: abstract universals, universals, the denigratory theory of meaning, the private theory of word meaning, the atomism of sense, all belong. As soon as we get to second-order thinking, it's almost always going to be that way, not because you're particularly stupid or eccentric, but these things are almost inherent in intellectual reflection. In short, what we generally call philosophy is precisely what philosophy seeks to cure and criticize.
It might even be said that the word "philosophy" has a double meaning. What these two have in common is that they are reflections on common sense, that they are second-order, whereas our primary reflections tend to rise to theory and become bad philosophy. If there is no bad philosophy, there is no need for good philosophy. In fact, Wittgenstein uses the word philosophy in a double sense, on the one hand, as something to be criticized, and on the other, as his own work. Others, such as Nietzsche and Heidegger, often speak of philosophy in these two senses.
Wittgenstein was not a historian of philosophy, but he had a deep understanding of the whole context of Western culture. He did not study the classics of philosophy, but he has many aspects of cultivation, and has a deep understanding of music, novels, philosophy, science, and technology. So we look at Wittgenstein's insight into the nature of philosophy in the context of the entire history of Western thought.
 
The philosophy of the twentieth century still does not seem to fit Wittgenstein's definition of philosophy. Take Heidegger's philosophy for example. Many of Heidegger's ideas, as far as I can personally see, echo Wittgenstein's quite well. I do not mean that they influenced each other; these two philosophers hardly knew each other at all. It may be said that it is precisely because the origins of the two of them are so far apart, so their echoes are more meaningful and more thought-provoking. But what I want to say here is that Heidegger likes to talk about Western history, Western destiny, Western conceptual history, what we call grand narratives.
Wittgenstein sees no such grand narrative. When we understand his philosophy, we know more or less why he avoided macro narrative, because philosophy is not a first-order descriptive work at all. However, it seems that we cannot therefore deny that what Heidegger did was also philosophy. From this point of view, Wittgenstein's definition of philosophy, although of great significance, is somewhat narrow.
I think the core of philosophy is critical conceptual examination, but on a broader scale, philosophy also includes conceptual criticism. The two words concept and concept, time relations, can not be detailed here. Generally speaking, ideas are general and socially oriented, and concepts are in terms of sense. That's not my definition, that's how the words concept, concept are used. We say that in recent years, the employment concept of college students has undergone a great change, not to mention the concept of employment has changed. The concept of employment is in terms of its overall social thinking mode, it can be said that the concept of employment is concerned by sociologists, and the concept of employment is studied by economists.
We have previously quoted Wittgenstein as saying that our grammatical inquiry is illuminated by philosophical questions. But to say that the grammatical examination of philosophy differs from that of grammarians in that the former draws its light from philosophical problems is a bit like a circular argument. I think we can broaden Wittgenstein's formulation a little bit here. The grammatical investigation of philosophy depends on the criticism of ideas. Conceptual criticism requires not only a keen observation of social phenomena, but also an analysis of conceptual meaning. Further, we see that philosophers who focus on macroscopic history, like Heidegger, are not historians but historians of ideas, and he criticizes popular ideas by combing through the history of ideas.
A philosopher in the narrow sense is someone who specializes in the interpretation of concepts. Conceptual investigation constitutes the core of conceptual criticism. Similarly, the study of conceptual history is the core of the study of conceptual history, and a large part of the work of Heidegger and Gadamer is the study of conceptual history.
So philosophy has a broad sense and a narrow sense, a critique of ideas and a conceptual investigation. Wittgenstein defined and engaged in philosophy entirely in the narrow sense or in the core sense. But I believe that we must also include philosophy in a broad sense, which not only makes our definition of philosophy more realistic
Philosopher. And, more importantly, it is the criticism of ideas that gives meaning to the philosophical examination of concepts and gives them "light."
Conceptual criticism involves both social observation and conceptual investigation, which can be said to be a mixture of the two. Then when the conceptual criticism is carried out more deeply in theory, the conceptual investigation work will be mentioned on the agenda. Of course, when it comes to the agenda, there is not necessarily someone to do it, we clearly know that we should do it, but no one does it, and there is no way.
When I say that the examination of concepts is the core of philosophy, it is not in a social sense, of course, but in a purely academic sense. In a social sense, conceptual work is always very marginal, the kind of work that always sits on the bench. The ideological and cultural hot spot of the society is always conceptual criticism, because it is directly related to us ordinary people. My experience is that ordinary people are more interested in conceptual criticism, and even if they sometimes take an interest in conceptual analysis, they mostly grasp it as conceptual criticism, while the cultural critic or conceptual critic is sometimes genuinely interested in the content of conceptual analysis.
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Briefly Socrates

10/26/2023

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    Socrates, one of the most influential philosophers in Western history, had a unique vision of the ideal State, which is outlined in Plato's works, especially in The Republic. Socrates believed that the ideal state would be one ruled by a philosopher king. This country is characterized by wisdom, virtue and justice, and that philosophers, not democracies, were best suited to lead the country.
   
   “Now ... we must, I think, define ... whom we mean by these lovers of wisdom who, we have dared to assert, ought to be our rulers” (The Republic 3). In the Republic, Socrates had raised the idea of the philosopher King in a discussion with Galucon on political topics. He believed that society should have these intelligent and rational people who could see the nature of the country as leaders. In a later topic, he tells the famous Allegory of the Cave on this point of view. In his Allegory of the cave, Socrates describes how people were born bound in a dark cave, and all they were forced to see was the shadow reflected by the fire. One day a person comes out of the cave and faces the real world exposed to the sunlight and realizes that what they have seen before is only a projection of the real. And those who get out of the cave are what Socrates calls the philosopher Kings. This reality in the sun and the shadow illuminated by the fire is essentially a metaphor for the Theory of form, that is, everything in the world exists in a more perfect form, and what people often see is only an imperfect representation of this perfect form. Plato writes in the Republic: “The meaning of the parable is clear: the philosophers who ascend to the higher world of Forms possess true knowledge; everyone else possesses mere opinions, deceptive beliefs, and illusions. The philosophers have a duty to guide the ignorant” (The Republic 5). Therefore, what Socrates is trying to illustrate in a parable is his political idea that society needs these more skilled people to lead it, to lead people to understand the truth behind this projection, and let the society get more progress.

      
The reason and rationality for promoting this view come from Socrates' dissatisfaction with the democratic system and his personal views. In the Republic, Socrates says: “And when the poor win, the result is a democracy. They kill some of the opposite party, banish others, and grant the rest an equal share in civil rights and government, officials being usually appointed by lot” (The Republic 7). In his view, the fairness and freedom that democracy seems to bring do not always play well, and the will of the people that democracy aims to promote often leads to the will of the majority in the end. Neither Socrates nor Plato believed that majorities do not always make wise or just decisions. In a democracy, people can be swayed by emotions and prejudices, leading to unjust outcomes. This can also be seen in the trial of Socrates, and it can be said that Socrates' end is also very dramatically corresponding to his own point of view. It is worth mentioning that in "The Apology", he also elaborated on the criticism of democracy and praise for himself as a philosopher. He suggests that his actions were a service to the state: "I go around doing nothing but persuading both young and old among you not to care for your body or your wealth in preference to or as strongly as for the best possible state of your soul, as I say to you: 'Wealth does not bring about excellence, but excellence makes wealth and everything else good for men, both individually and collectively.'" At his own trial, he continued to articulate his views, effectively questioning the people's lack of intelligence and the flaws of democracy by stressing that he understand he knew nothing and that the people were ignorant and thought they knew everything.

      
I don't think Socrates' argument is fully persuasive at the moment, after all, the idea of the philosopher king is in any way similar to a monarchy or a class system, even if the quality of the philosophical king he emphasizes basically prevents them from becoming tyrants. But even if his thoughts and methods are not perfect, he can still be regarded as a model of philosophers, thanks to the essence of his thought core, that is, his questioning and criticism of things. The Socratic method, which is to ask and answer questions to stimulate critical thinking. This seemingly annoying behavior can actually be very effective even now. It encourages active thought engagement and fosters intellectual curiosity, both in the classroom and in psychotherapy. At the same time, Socrates' views on knowledge and virtue, the glorification of beauty, goodness and love, and the humility and critical thinking that should be displayed in the face of knowledge. All these provide a solid foundation and discussion environment for the development of philosophy and thought in later generations, so that philosophical views and political forms can constantly innovate and change in line with the development of human civilization. A useful example is the contrast between his views and those of the first modern philosophies. Take Nietzsche as an example. Before deeply understanding the philosophical core of Socrates, the comparison between Socrates and Nietzsche that I could create was purely from Nietzsche's criticism of Socrates' questioning of reality, believing that the view of the real world behind such reality weakened people's integrity of reality and self. But in fact, there are many similarities between the two ideas. Although Socrates' view of the King of Philosophers is based on the hypothesis of "reality and projection" of the Theory of form and Allegory of the cave, the core behind it is the same as the core of Nietzsche's will to power, that is, critical thinking. The criticism of many things creates the philosopher king in Socrates' view and the Superman in Nietzsche's view. The difference is that the former criticizes reality and the latter criticizes inherent morality. At the same time, the ideal society of the philosopher king described by Socrates is similar to the ideal society of the few supermen described by Nietzsche, which is also led by capable men and also hindered by others. In Nietzsche it's the flies in the marketplace, in Socrates it's the man tied up in a cave who doesn't want to believe the truth.

     
​  It can be seen from this that although Socrates' views were criticized and overthrown by philosophers in later generations, the core of his thought was constantly changing with the changes of time and society. But what remains unchanged is his attitude towards knowledge and his critical thinking. These elements have become the cornerstone of philosophy, the basis for people to think and create ideas, and have imperceptibly affected the pattern of human thinking and the
extension of philosophical and political views in later generations.

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Enternal

4/21/2023

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Ori appreciate & analyze

2/19/2023

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Rousseau notes

10/13/2022

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau (June 28, 1712 -- July 2, 1778) was a French and Geneva-based philosopher, political theorist, writer and musician of the Enlightenment, born in the then independent city of Geneva.
 
I'm a romanticist, author of Discourse on Inequality and The Social Contract
 
  • Direct Democracy
 
  • What matters is what the government does, not what we define it to be
 
  • For if the opposition of private interests made necessary the establishment of societies, it is the accord of these same interests that made it possible. It is what these different interests have in common that forms the social bond, and, were there no point of agreement among all these interests, no society could exist.
 
  • Rousseau believed that people are born as independent individuals, and are born self-sufficient, neither dependent on others nor in conflict with others.
 
  • Rousseau believed that with the development of civilization, the state of individual self-sufficiency was broken, and people inevitably needed to live together. Therefore, people form societies for "historical" reasons, not "speculative" reasons.
 
  • Rousseau believed that the formation of society is something that is bound to happen. This process can be random and random, and lead to some bad societies, or it can be reasonable and lead to better societies.
There is no society or state in the initial state of human beings. People have all the natural freedom, including the freedom to do bad things, but they also face various dangers brought by other people's bad things. In this case, people naturally form a group, a society, to ensure personal safety and personal wealth.
 
A common society, then, requires a common contract, which is an abstract concept, and this common concept binds people together to observe the social freedoms under the law.
 
The existence of this contract brings human beings from the state of nature into the state of society. From the instinct state to the moral and "general will" state. Through the conclusion of social contract, human beings go out of the natural state to establish society and government. Therefore, the legitimacy of government is based on the consent of the governed (the people). The sovereign must represent the "public will" rather than a controlling leader.
 
The sovereignty of a country comes from the people
 
Rousseau believed that a perfect society is controlled by the "general will" of the people. In the beginning, every individual seeking a social contract would cede his or her rights and turn them into public power, thus forming a fundamental law (social morality or universal values) with universal binding force, under which the government was born.
 
Only the people themselves have the power to make laws, and the government becomes the enforcer of laws, not the maker of them. When the people are bound by their own laws, the regime must also be bound by them. The power of the government must be exercised within the established legal framework. It must protect the rights and interests of the people, social freedoms and private property.
 
When the government breaks through the legal framework and abuses its power to suppress the public will, it means that "the sovereign has torn up the social contract". Then the public will has the power to change it, to establish again a government that can safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the people.
 
Only agreement can be the basis of all legitimate authority on earth. Government is formed by contract, and power is vested in the people
​The better the system of the state, the more important public matters are in the minds of the citizens than private ones;
 
For the common happiness of the public involves, to a large extent, the personal happiness of each individual. So they don't have to look for special favors.
 
In a well-governed city-state, everyone would rush to the assembly. To publish, discuss and listen to future plans. But under bad government no one is willing to take part. For no one cared what happened at the meeting;
 
It is better to take care of one's own family than to attend such meetings where one has learned that the general will will not prevail. From good law comes good law, from bad law must come worse law.
 
If once people start talking about the country. "What does it matter to me?" they asked. We can tell this country is coming to an end.

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Genealogy

8/31/2022

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Parse the preceding story of Thus spoke Zarathustra

7/25/2022

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Briefly, why people tend to misunderstand Nietzsche. And another story

6/22/2022

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权力意志中,尼采对主人道德和奴隶道德做出的区隔,很容易让人联想到:
  1. 普通人只是历史进步的垫脚石,这个世界属于“超人“和”精英“们,世界由他们推动和创造
  2. 历史的进程是“超人“从普通人那里掠夺话语权的过程,它从字缝里发出”弱肉强食“这四个字。它的尽头,更像是一个贵族的或是专制的社会,以”普遍尊敬“和”平等“为标志的现代性荡然无存,似乎有着一股”纳粹“的气息。
所以往往能听到有人说纳粹主义起源于尼采的学说,没法说希特勒是否误读了尼采,如果误读了,也没法确定这种误读是有意还是无意的
 
在查拉图斯特拉如是说中,一段故事写道以为表演者走钢丝走到一半,跳出来一个小丑,他一步一步地接近表演者,只差一步是,突然像魔鬼一样地大叫,跳到表演者的前头。表演者见状瞬间失去理智,从钢丝上重重地摔了下来,跌落在查拉图斯特拉脚边。查拉图斯特拉看着脚边的表演着说道 "you have made danger your calling; there is nothing contemptible in that. Now you perish by your calling: therefore I will bury you with my own hands."
于是,他背着表演者的尸体上路了,没走多远,小丑又出现了,他说:"Leave this town, O Zarathustra, there are too many here who hate you. The good and just hate you,
and call you their enemy and despiser…But leave this town, - or tomorrow I shall jump over you, a living man over a dead one." 说完便消失了,查拉图斯特拉继续走,遇到一群掘墓人。掘墓人们嘲笑查拉图斯特拉:"Zarathustra is carrying away the dead dog: a fine thing that Zarathustra has become a grave-digger! Will Zarathustra rob the devil of his mouthful?“查拉图斯特拉并没有搭理他们接着上路,走过森林和沼泽,饿了,走到一间屋子旁讨吃的,开门的是一位隐修的老人,他给了点面包和葡萄酒。查拉图斯特拉吃完后继续开路,直到走到森林深处再也没路了,他把表演者的尸体放进一棵空心的树里,躺下睡着了。第二天中午醒来后他看到了新的真理:” I need companions - living ones, not dead companions and corpses, which I carry with me wherever I wish. But I need living companions, who will follow me because they want to follow themselves - wherever I want. A light has dawned upon me. Not to the people is Zarathustra to speak, but to companions! Zarathustra shall not become a shephard and a sheepdog to the herd!“
 
创造者寻求的是伙伴,不是死尸,创造者寻求的是把新的价值写在新的石板上的,共同创造着!
 
说完这段话,查拉图斯特拉仰望天空,看见一头大鹰身上吊着一条蛇在空中盘旋,那是他在山上独自隐居时的宠物,如今他们回来了。
 
太阳之下最高傲的动物(鹰),和太阳之下最聪明的动物(蛇),但愿我的宠物给我领路,单元我想我的蛇一样彻底聪明,可是我要求的乃是不可能之事,因此我要求我的高傲永远跟我的聪明一起同行


​In the will to power, Nietzsche makes a distinction between master morality and slave morality, which one can easily associate with:
1. Ordinary people are merely stepping stones to historical progress. The world belongs to "supermen" and "elites" who drive and create the world
2. The process of history is the process in which "superman" steals the right to speak from ordinary people. The word "law of the jungle" comes out from the crack in the Chinese characters. It ended up more like an aristocratic or authoritarian society, where modernity, marked by "universal respect" and "equality", seemed to have a "Nazi" flavour.
So you often hear people say that Nazism has its roots in Nietzsche, and there's no way to say whether Hitler misread Nietzsche, and if he misread Nietzsche, there's no way to say whether that misreading was intentional or unintentional

In thus spake Zarathustra, a story is told of a performer halfway along a tightrope when out leaps a clown, who approaches the performer step by step, only to lose one step, and suddenly screams like a devil and jumps in front of him. The performer loses his mind and falls heavily off the wire, landing at Zarathustra's feet. Zarathustra looked at the performance at his feet and said, "You have made danger your calling; there is nothing contemptible in that. Now you perish by your calling:  "Therefore I will bury you with my own hands." He carried the performer's body on his back, and before he had gone far, the clown appeared again and said: "Leave this town, O Zarathustra, there are too many here who hate you. The good and just hate you,
And call you their enemy and despiser... But leave this town, - or tomorrow I shall jump over you, a living man over a dead one." Zarathustra went on and met a crowd of grave-diggers. The gravediggers scoffed at Zarathustra: "Zarathustra is carrying away the dead dog: a fine thing that Zarathustra has become a grave-digger! Will Zarathustra Rob the devil of his dumpling? Zarathustra took no notice of them and went on his way through the woods and swamps. Hungry, he went to a room and asked for food. An old hermit opened the door and gave them some bread and wine. Zarathustra ate and went on until he reached the depths of the forest, where there was no more road. He put the performer's body into a hollow tree and lay down to sleep. At noon the next day he awoke to a new truth: "I need sworn-living ones, not dead and sworded, which I carry with me wherever I wish. But I need living companions,  who will follow me because they want to follow themselves - wherever I want. A light has dawned upon me. Not to the  people is Zarathustra to speak, but to companions!  Zarathustra shall not become a shephard and a sheepdog to the herd! "

Creators seek partners, not corpses, creators seek to write new values on new SLATE, to create together!

With these words Zarathustra looked up into the sky and saw a great eagle circling with a snake hanging from its body. It had been his pet when he had lived alone in the mountains, and now they had returned.

"The proudest animal under the sun and the wisest animal under the sun, they have come to search for me. I wish I were wiser! I wish I were wise from the very heart, like my serpent! But I am asking the impossible. So I ask my pride that it always go along with my wisdom!"
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Philosophical research -- Hegel and Nietzsche II

6/22/2022

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在阶级固化的社会中,相对被奴役的阶级做的事情大部分都是一样的,尽可能地消灭统治地位的“主人”阶级。这不代表他们要建立一个把主人踩在脚底下的世界,而是一个与主人平等的世界。对于不同的人从不同的视角下看会有不同的感触,如果你心中的理想社会更倾向于平等,那么奴隶道德就是值得被歌颂的。相反,如果更倾向于自由,则会选择主人道德。
 
尼采认为主人道德被定义为鼓励人们特立独行,追求创新的道德。其要义在于自由创造。而奴隶道德,被定义成弱者发明出来限制强者的工具,强调同情和分享,要求强者给弱者分一杯羹,要求社会去限制强者的能力,因为弱者没有什么能力可以被限制。尼采觉得奴隶道德不专注于强健自己让自己成为主人,它只关注如何去限制主人。
 
尼采向往的自由世界,是一个部分人相对更强,而大部分人相对更弱的世界,每个人都可能成为弱者,但弱者并没有什么大不了的,重要的是作为弱者应该如何做,最高要求便是如何努力成为强者,去努力,去经历精神的三个阶段,去完成人生的跃升。尼采的这些话不是说给强者听的,因为强者已经在路上了,他是说给还没能跟上步伐的弱者听的。同时尼采也给了一个最低要求那就是不要妨碍别人,如果自己不奋进还拖别人后退,那这就是尼采在“市场的苍蝇“中提到的”苍蝇“和”末等人“。
 
弱者之弱不在于弱本身,而在于把激情用错了地方,寻求承认也可以通过自我完成自我圆满来实现。对社会的不平等,主奴强弱秩序表示不满很正常,就应该不满,不满就去超越,但超越不等同于破坏秩序,超越是重构秩序
 
尼采与黑格尔的分歧,来自于他们对于人的定义,黑格尔笔下的原始人是他人导向的,寻求他人的承认来获得自尊感。尼采认为,人之所以为人在于创造性,取的成就的困难越大,一个人的自尊感就越强烈。两人的观点都必要但也都不完整,人离不开他人的承认,但过分依赖别人的承认会迷失自我,当弱者把视线从获得强者的承认转换到对于自我的关注和突破,会轻松很多。但同样的,强者的道路注定孤独,尼采本人就一生孤独,他没有结婚,朋友较少,授课的能力不够吸引人也没有太多追随他的学生。他的一生幸福吗,我们不能给出答案。
 
正是因为黑格尔和尼采的这两种观点对立,它们能在不同的情况下慰藉我们。

​In class-hardened societies, the relative enslaved classes mostly do the same thing, trying to eliminate the dominant "master" class as much as possible. This does not mean that they want to build a world where they can keep their masters under their feet, but a world where they are equal to their masters. For different people from different perspectives will have different feelings, if your ideal society is more inclined to equality, then slave morality is worthy of praise. On the other hand, if they prefer freedom, they prefer master morality.

Nietzsche thinks that master morality is defined as the morality that encourages people to be different and to pursue innovation. Its essence lies in the freedom to create. Slave morality is defined as the tool invented by the weak to limit the strong. It emphasizes sympathy and sharing, requires the strong to share a piece of the pie with the weak, and requires the society to limit the ability of the strong, because the weak have no ability to be restricted. Nietzsche feels that slave morality is not focused on strengthening oneself to become master, it's focused on limiting the master.

Nietzsche yearns for a free world in which some people are relatively stronger and most are relatively weaker. Everyone may become weak, but weak is not a big deal, the important thing is how to do as a weak, the highest requirement is how to strive to become strong, to work, to go through the three stages of spirit, to complete the leap of life. Nietzsche's words are not addressed to the strong, for the strong are already on their way, but to the weak, who have not yet been able to keep pace. At the same time Nietzsche also sets a minimum requirement which is not to interfere with others. If you do not advance and drag others back, then this is the "fly" and "the last man" that Nietzsche refers to in the "Flies of the Market".

The weakness of the weak is not in itself, but in the misdirected passion, seeking recognition can also be achieved through self-fulfillment. To express dissatisfaction with social inequality and the order of master and slave. This is normal, people should be dissatisfied, since dissatisfied to go beyond, but beyond is not equal to destroy the order, beyond is the reconstruction of order

The difference between Nietzsche and Hegel comes from their definition of man. The primitive man in Hegel's description is other-oriented and seeks recognition from others to gain a sense of self-esteem. Nietzsche believed that creativity is what makes a person human, and the greater the difficulty of achieving an achievement, the greater one's sense of self-esteem. Both views are necessary but incomplete. People cannot live without the recognition of others, but relying too much on the recognition of others will lose themselves. When the weak shift their focus from obtaining the recognition of the strong to self-attention and breakthrough, it will be much easier. But in the same way, the path of the strong is doomed to loneliness. Nietzsche himself was a lonely man. He never married, he had few friends, his teaching ability was not very attractive and he did not have many students who followed him. Was he happy in his life? We can't answer that.

It is precisely because these two views of Hegel and Nietzsche are opposed that they can comfort us in different circumstances.
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Record a discussion with a friend: Der Gott ist tot

6/19/2022

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上帝已死:
伊比鸠鲁强调享乐主义
他所强调的是用理性维护朴素
伊比鸠鲁吸引尼采的到底是什么
思考和生存是一致的,重视人的价值
哲学往往发端于一些令人困惑的个人问题,我们撒了谎,开始思考道德的重要性,我们被上层骂了,开始思考如何追寻快乐
生存激活了思考,而思考,又反过来使生存更有力量
伊比鸠鲁长年以来的研究,为的,是让人能在现实世界中更强而有力的生活,哲学思考来源于生活,服务于生活。哲学一词来源于古希腊文,由爱和智慧构成,意味如何更好的生活的智慧
古希腊神话的特点就是,人神同型同性,以人为中心,减弱了神和宗教的神秘与威严,宽松自由大于恐惧和敬畏
 
苏格拉底,什么事情愿意付出生命:法律,苏格拉底之死。如果一个城邦所宣布的法律判决没有效力,而是能够由个人取消和践踏,你能想象这个城邦仍可以存在下去并且不受到损害吗 (我唯一知道的东西就是什么也不知道)
但是尼采对此表示不屑
苏格拉底认为真理必须是永恒的,不变的,而人是短暂且非永恒的,所以真理是不可知的。
人们只能看到世界显现的样子,但永远看不到她真正的样子
随着时间的发展,不断会有新的东西被证实,被发现。但是在每一个可能的当下,我们都不可能知道世界真实的模样、表象和实在。作出区分,一个充满了现象的现实世界和一个位于现象背后的真实世界。哲学家们的眼光开始从现实世界转向另一个看不见却更为真实的世界。哲学家们逐渐不再关心生活中的种种问题,他们关心世界背后的世界。不再是如何快乐和更强而有力的拥抱生活,思考的过于高深是他们逃离了现实
苏格拉底说,洞穴里的人们看到的只是事物的影子,而不是影子背后真实的存在
柏拉图将其解释为生成世界和存在世界,物质世界会生存死亡最后消失,存在世界是纯粹的理念的世界,是静止和永恒的
柏拉图说过,如果我们动手画一个三角形,很难精确的画出一个完美的三角形,总是会有偏差。但我们真正要关注的,不是这些不完美的实体三角形,而是三角形这个不存在于真实世界的完美图像
 
尼采非常讨厌这些观点。他讨厌在构建一个世界的做法
二元化分使得真实世界失去了它原本的独立价值,因为有了另一个无比完美的永恒世界,而这个现实的世界就像我们徒手画出的是三角形一样,充满了不完美和不完善
人们纷纷逃往理想世界,诞生了虚无主义
人和生命的价值在虚无中被无限贬低
虚无主义潜行在西方的整个文化体系中,在一个名为基督教的宗教诞生时被带到了顶峰
尼采认为,基督教是虚无主义登峰造极的产物
他把理想世界描绘为天堂,人不在是生活的强者,而是虔诚的信徒
从伊比鸠鲁到苏格拉底到基督教,人的价值被逐渐贬低,而虚无的另一个世界杯不断的拿到台前
人们总说,彼岸高过此岸,灵魂高过肉体
他说,每一个不曾起舞的日子都是对生命的辜负
没有什么是美的,只有人是美的,在这一简单的真理上建立了全部美学,他是美学的第一真理。
你才歌颂快乐,歌颂强而有力的生命,歌颂人的价值,歌颂当下。他要把人们崇拜的高高挂在上空的太阳拉下来。他要颠覆西方传统的主流,所谓道德的主人基督教。废除所有社会定义的最高价值。重估一切价值。所以他说,上帝死了,,上帝死了,我重估了一切价值


​God is dead:
Epicurus emphasizes hedonism
What he emphasized was the use of reason to maintain simplicity
What is it about Epicurus that appeals to Nietzsche
Thinking and living are consistent, attach importance to human value
Philosophy often begins with puzzling personal questions. We tell lies, we start thinking about the importance of morality, we get yelled at, we start thinking about how to pursue happiness
Survival activates thinking, and thinking, in turn, makes life more powerful
Epicurus has been studying for years for the purpose of making people live a stronger and more powerful life in the real world. Philosophical thinking comes from life and serves life. The word philosophy comes from the ancient Greek and is made up of love and wisdom. It means wisdom on how to live better
The characteristics of ancient Greek mythology are that people and gods are homogenous and human-centered, which weakens the mystery and majesty of god and religion, and the freedom is greater than fear and awe

Socrates, what would have given his life: the law, the death of Socrates. Can you imagine that a city-state could still exist unharmed if its legal judgments were not valid but could be reversed and trampled by individuals (the only thing I know is nothing)
But Nietzsche is dismissive of this
Socrates believes that truth must be eternal and unchanging, and that man is transient and impermanent, so truth is unknowable.
People only see the world as it appears, but they never see her as she really is
As time goes on, new things will be confirmed and discovered. But in every possible present, we cannot know what the world really looks like, looks like, or is. Make a distinction between a real world full of phenomena and a real world that lies behind phenomena. Philosophers began to turn their eyes from the real world to an invisible but more real world. Philosophers gradually ceased to be concerned with the problems of life. They were concerned with the world behind the world. Instead of thinking about how to be happy and embrace life more powerfully, do they escape reality by thinking too deeply
Socrates says that people in caves see only the shadow of things, not the real existence behind the shadow
Plato explained it as the world of creation and the world of being. The material world will live and die and finally disappear. The world of being is the world of pure ideas, which is static and eternal
Plato said, if we start drawing a triangle, it's hard to draw a perfect triangle exactly, there's always going to be some deviation. But what we really want to focus on is not imperfect physical triangles, but triangles, perfect images that don't exist in the real world

Nietzsche hates these ideas very much. He hated the idea of building a world
Dualism makes the real world lose its original independent value, because there is another perfect eternal world, and this real world is full of imperfection and imperfection, just like the triangle we draw freehand
People fled to the ideal world and nihilism was born
The value of man and life is infinitely diminished in nothingness
Nihilism crept through the entire western cultural system, culminating in the birth of a religion called Christianity
For Nietzsche, Christianity is the culmination of nihilism
He described the ideal world as a paradise, where people are no longer strong in life, but devout believers
From Epicurus to Socrates to Christianity, the value of man is gradually devalued, and another World Cup of nothingness keeps coming to the front
They say the other side is higher than the other side, the soul is higher than the body
'Every day that goes by without dancing is a betrayal of life,' he said
Nothing is beautiful, only man is beautiful, on this simple truth established the whole of aesthetics, he is the first truth of aesthetics.
You sing of joy, of strong life, of the value of man, of the present. He wanted to bring down the sun, which was worshipped high above. He wants to overturn the mainstream of western tradition, the so-called master of morality, Christianity. Abolishing all social definitions of supreme value. Revalue everything. So he says, God is dead, God is dead, AND I've revalued everything
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    Haotian (Eric) Zhang

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