For a long time, the ideological crisis has not been overcome, but has intensified. This is due to the change of the language world. In China, we can also think about western philosophical problems in Chinese, so this crisis is covered up by the habitual and self-evident expressions of China people. The strangeness of German and its unique western thinking have opened a dimension that Chinese can't cover. Not only are the words different (some words are not found in Chinese at all), but the grammar is also different at all. More importantly, some words that look the same or similar are quite different in Chinese and German. So the crisis of thought reached its limit, forcing people to change their minds. For example, what we call "philosophy", "reason" and "thought" should all have new meanings, that is, the historical significance of the formation of the West from ancient Greece to post-modernism.
Of course, the most fundamental problem is not the meaning of words, but the problem of thinking itself, that is, how to think. Our traditional thinking in China is natural thinking and historical thinking. The introduction of modern western learning (including Marxist philosophy) has not completely changed this tradition. On the contrary, China people's introduction and explanation of western learning has always been based on their own hermeneutic vision. But the problem is that such a prescient person divides his own boundaries, pointing out what he can see and what he can't see, which eventually led to China's prescient change and the expansion of his vision. So the question must return to the naturalness and historicity of China's thinking. China's thought has always given priority to nature. It is manifested in three aspects: 1, existence. In the structure of heaven, earth and man, heaven and earth, that is, nature, are absolutely prescriptive to man. 2. thinking. People first think of scale from nature, and then give it to people. 3. Language. Chinese characters, as hieroglyphics, are the natural and realistic basis for the expression of Chinese characters. In concrete words, people describe nature first and then people, just like writing scenery first and then expressing feelings in poetry. Based on the naturalness of this thinking, China Thought has also formed its own historical characteristics. The so-called history of thought has become a history of annotation, while annotation itself has evolved into a historical narrative.
People must ask about the naturalness and historical characteristics of ideas. Hegel once pointed out that China's thought was the spirit of indulging in nature, but this spirit did not reach the thought itself. In addition, he emphasized that philosophy is not a narrative of history, which has nothing to do with the development of thought itself. Why? Because China's natural and historical thinking actually forgot the thought itself, and it was through it that he transferred his thoughts to nature. But why does nature have its stipulation? China thought never questioned this. People just assume the self-evident nature. However, this so-called self-evident has infinite darkness. Therefore, China thought must ask nature. This sets the premise that thought must ask itself. The question of thought itself has always been put forward by the tradition of western philosophy, because philosophy in the western sense is the reason of rationality, and the so-called rationality is pure thought. So the first philosophy, that is, metaphysics, becomes the expression of pure thoughts. If philosophy is a pure thought, it is different from the thought of nature and history. It becomes a concept and is realized in logic.
Therefore, for a China person who is studying philosophy in the west, the so-called ideological transformation is from China's natural and historical thinking to the thought itself. Of course, this change is painful, because thought should be separated from itself and become what it is not now.
So how did the change of thought happen? This can only be achieved through the study of ideas. Of course, the only way to learn ideas is to learn what you have already thought. What is being considered is the history of philosophy. What the west is thinking about is the history of western philosophy.
During my six and a half years in Germany, I systematically studied western philosophy from ancient Greece to post-modernism. For the study of philosophy in German universities, the so-called philosophy is the history of philosophy, which is different from the practice of British and American universities and China University. There are too many introductions and principles in the philosophy course of China University, but they are just big and mysterious rhetoric, which has nothing to do with real thoughts. So after reading the philosophy class, people still don't know what the thought itself is and how it got in. On the contrary, there are basically no courses such as philosophical principles or introduction in Germany. It guides students to learn philosophy, that is, to guide students to learn the history of philosophy.
As a concrete history of philosophy, it is always a history of philosophy formed by philosophers. So learning the history of philosophy is learning the history of philosophy of those great philosophers. Such history is a pantheon in which philosophers stand like gods. Or this period of history is a magnificent mountain range composed of philosophers like giant peaks. Therefore, there is no question of whether any philosopher is out of date, and there is no choice of "Kant or Hegel". This is quite different from the style of study of China philosophers who like the new and hate the old and follow the fashion in the process of learning Western learning. In the teaching and research of German philosophy, the following philosophers are always very important: parmenides, Plato and Aristotle in ancient Greece; Plotinos, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages; Kant, Fichte and Hegel in modern times; Modern Marx, Nietzsche and Heidegger; Delida, Foucault and Mero-Ponty in postmodernism.
Based on this view of philosophy history, the study of philosophy history is not an overview of general history, but a special study. In this philosophical discussion, the life story of the philosopher and the background of his time are irrelevant. The key is the philosophical text he wrote. It is this philosophical text that makes a philosopher express his thoughts as a philosopher and be reconsidered as an existing thought. For example, we only discuss parmenides's fragment for a whole semester, and sometimes the basic content of a class is to discuss a sentence or a word in the fragment. In the process of interpreting philosophical texts, every keyword has been carefully analyzed. To ask a word is to draw a boundary for it, that is, to ask what it says, and at the same time it says nothing. Here China's inconceivable and unspeakable becomes meaningless, because the thought must be inconceivable and unspeakable. What is more worth asking is: Why is this word said (revealed) here and said (concealed) here? On this basis, the relationship formed by the transformation from one word to another has become the fundamental theme in philosophical research, because the so-called logic is the linguistic relationship that links things together. In the evolution of the relationship, a passage seems to open the way for vilen. Its own extension leads people to follow. It is through this careful analysis that we get into the thoughts of philosophers and experience how every philosopher thinks.
At the University of Osnabrü ck, the most famous professor of philosophy is Mr. Boardel. He was a famous disciple of Heidegger in the late Freiburg period and was a good friend with Professor Biemel, a famous disciple in the early Freiburg period. After finishing his doctoral thesis in Frejborg, Boardel went to Cambridge, England and Paris, then returned to the University of Brunswick to take over as the chair of the famous editor-in-chief of The Complete Works of Hegel, kroner, and then transferred to the University of Osnabrü ck. In the meantime, he was invited to give lectures at the New Society School in new york, USA and Japanese and Korean universities. People think that although Boarder is not as famous as Gadamer and Habermas, he is perhaps the most profound and obscure philosopher. Professor Riedel, President of the International Heidegger Society, once said that Boadel was one of the most important philosophers among Heidegger's late Frejborg disciples.
Because I am fascinated by Heidegger's philosophy, I hope to go to Heidegger's disciples to study for a doctorate. So I expressed my wish to Professor Boadle. He was happy to accept me as a proté gé of China and ask me what I wanted to do with Heidegger. I said that I was inclined to Heidegger's later language problems. He said it was good. In fact, Heidegger entered the mature stage of thought in the later period, and of course we should also pay attention to his early changes from the middle period to the later period.
After systematically listening to some courses taught by philosophy professors in the university, I finally decided to take only ancient Greek, Latin and Boarder courses. His teaching is arranged in the evening, usually reading class and discussion class. His courses include the thoughts of all important philosophers from parmenides to post-modernism. Of course, each course only involves one person, or even only a part of his thoughts. His language is a typical academic language, and it is very difficult to fully understand it. I usually ask my German classmates for notes after class and study hard when I come back. It took me about two years to understand Professor Boadle's ideas.
Professor Boarder's thought naturally originated from Heidegger's thought, but he made a creative separation and was unique. In his view, philosophy should return to love wisdom, and the development of philosophy itself is the change of the relationship between philosophy and wisdom. In western history (ancient Greece, Middle Ages and modern times), the wisdom endowed by each era evokes the philosophy of the same era. The wisdom of ancient Greece was sung by Homer's epic, which made people become heroes. Medieval wisdom is embodied in the New Testament, which requires people to become saints. Modern Wisdom was written by Rousseau and others. It wants people to become citizens, that is, free people. Accordingly, philosophy itself has different provisions, namely, theoretical rationality in ancient Greece, practical rationality in the middle ages and poetic (creative) rationality in modern times. But from modern to post-modern, wisdom is dead, so it is no longer called rationality, so philosophy also ends and philosophy becomes non-philosophy. On the one hand, Professor Boardel pays attention to the internal relations of the whole of each era, on the other hand, he also emphasizes the elements and their relations in the whole of each philosopher's thought. What he talked about repeatedly was the overall difference. From this, we will clearly see how an ideological structure is formed. In this way, in his class, people can learn the purest western thoughts.
It can be said that it was Professor Boardel who opened my way to western wisdom and philosophy. On this channel, I learned the principle of general thinking: criticism. Criticism has nothing to do with any negation or affirmation, it is to draw boundaries. The boundary is the starting point and the end point of the thing itself. On the border, one thing distinguishes itself from others and defines itself. The so-called criticism has three dimensions: one is language criticism, the other is ideological criticism, and the third is realistic criticism. This critical attitude requires me to establish a special relationship with those great thinkers. On the one hand, I want to go to him, on the other hand, I want to say goodbye to him and walk on my own ideological path.
In the development of modern science, there are some new features. Physics, which has always been a model of precision science, has had a far-reaching impact on the whole natural science. Quantitative and digital research methods have been widely used in natural science and even social science. Entropy change theory and statistical thinking method have been widely used, and ideas transplanted in interdisciplinary and marginal disciplines can be seen everywhere. Complex and systematic research gives full play to the overall and comprehensive thinking. The study of elementary particles leads people's understanding of material structure from one level to a deeper new level.
The material world is changeable, and people's understanding of the material world always follows the cognitive process from simple to complex, from macro to micro, from surface to essence. Classical physics has made brilliant achievements. In a sense, it can be regarded as the great achievement of the two most developed thinking methods in western civilization-the method of breaking the whole into parts and the method of isolation. By dividing the whole system into parts, a complex system can be divided into many small systems or units, thus greatly simplifying the problem. The isolation law can ignore the external interference of the system, so that the problem can be treated approximately under imaginary ideal conditions. In fact, the above method is suitable for many situations, but it ignores the complexity of things. This is not due to the carelessness of the sages, but to the regularity of scientific development and cognitive process, the level of scientific and technological development and other factors. On the one hand, the above-mentioned thinking method is just in line with the cognitive regularity from simple to complex, and only by following the above-mentioned thinking method first can human beings' understanding of the material world gradually rise from one height to another, and only when they have a deep enough understanding of simple phenomena can they understand the regularity of complex phenomena. On the other hand, even if someone discovers or realizes the significance of studying complex systems and phenomena, it is difficult to carry out concrete and in-depth research without certain scientific and technological means. It is precisely because of the extensive use of computers in the late 20th century that human cognitive ability has been greatly improved, that is, it is possible to use computers to deal with complex systems and phenomena (such as complex mathematical equations, nonlinear equations, iterative equations, etc.). Therefore, some scientists abandon the traditional fragmented and isolated way of thinking and do the opposite, looking at the problem from the perspective of connection, integrity and synthesis, thus opening up a broader new field of complex problems. In this new field, the whole concept and comprehensive thought are the essence of his thinking method.
On the basis of analysis and scientific generalization, the overall comprehensive thought refers to a scientific way of thinking that combines various components or elements of the research object into an organic whole, and grasps and reveals the essential characteristics of things and the fundamental laws of development and change from a holistic perspective.
Scientific synthesis is not kneading or mechanical stacking, but organically combining all the components of the research object into a unified whole according to their internal relations, comprehensively and profoundly analyzing the problems from the overall perspective, and finding out the key and essential factors (principal contradictions), so as to achieve the purpose of comprehensively and profoundly understanding the essence and motion law of the research object as a whole.
The structure of material system in nature also has certain levels. The food chain in the ecosystem has obvious hierarchical structure. The highest level is the most powerful carnivore in the system, such as the tiger and leopard, the king of all animals in the mountains, while the lowest level is of course a plant that makes nutrients by photosynthesis. The human body structure also has layers. From big to small, it can be divided into different levels. First, it can be divided into different systems, such as exercise system, blood circulation system, digestive system, nervous system and endocrine system. Then it can be subdivided into organs and further subdivided into a level until each cell can be subdivided. From the universe to the atom, its structure has a certain level. Therefore, when exploring natural phenomena and laws, it is also necessary to distinguish levels. For example, when studying the law of mechanical motion of a macroscopic object, it is not necessary to consider its microstructure, that is, it is not necessary to go deep into the microscopic level to analyze and understand the problem. In fact, even if you really insist on studying from the perspective of microstructure, you can only ask for trouble, or complicate simple problems, and the result is futile. In fact, this hierarchical structure requires that problems should be analyzed according to levels, and different levels of problems should not be confused.
Nowadays, with the development of science and technology, there are more and more interdisciplinary subjects, and the penetration between disciplines is getting stronger and stronger. Only when we have more knowledge and profound understanding of the knowledge and research trends of many disciplines can we really apply the idea of transplantation and transplant the advanced technologies and advanced theoretical achievements of other disciplines into this discipline for the use of this discipline, so as to obtain more research results. Stones from other mountains can attack jade, which embodies the true meaning of transplantation thought.