The first translation and publication of Being and Time in the 1980s was a landmark cultural event. Heidegger thus set off a boom in China, and continued to exert influence. Chen Jiaying believes that the 1980s is a particularly special period in Chinese history, and he does not want to deify it.
To a certain extent, the rise of existentialism in China in the 1980s was similar to the rise of existentialism in the West: Before World War II, the West had an orthodox, standard ideal, but World War II created a negative impact on the former ideal. Destructive destruction, at this time people have a strong need for a new concept to place themselves. It was the same in China in the 1980s. People were desperate for something to put themselves in. Existentialism was quickly accepted and widely spread in China under this background.
Heidegger’s thought shocked many people. When Chen Jiaying was a graduate student in the late 1970s, because of the influence of his mentor Xiong Wei, he naturally studied Heidegger. With the deepening of reading, Chen Jiaying felt the subversive attraction.
This subversion, when Heidegger’s theory was just born in the 1920s, also caused a shock of the same nature and degree to Gadamer’s generation of Western philosophers. “From here and now, a new era of world history has begun, and you can say that you are at its beginning.” This is the evaluation obtained after the publication of “Being and Time” in 1927.
According to Heidegger, each of us is “thrown” into the world, “thrown” into others. Self, others, and the world are always intertwined. Therefore, self-knowledge and knowledge of the world must also be interrelated and inseparable. In other words, how we understand others has an important bearing on who we are, and we must talk about the world in connection with our own being. This is the starting point of Chen Jiaying’s speech.
What we know about self-understanding today is not exactly the same as it was in the past
“Know the world and know yourself” is a huge topic. Regarding “Know Yourself”, many people know that there is a saying in the ancient Greek temple of Delphi, called “Know yourself”, or “Know yourself”. This sentence was taken over by the ancient Greek philosopher Socrates. We can say that “Knowing yourself” is a theme of philosophy, or even to exaggerate it, “the theme of philosophy”. Philosophy is the activity of knowing yourself.
But if we read Socrates, Socrates didn’t talk about himself either. In fact, we know very little about Socrates, not much about Plato, and a little bit more about Aristotle, but limited. This is very different from modern philosophers. Socrates is still talking about man, society, soul, and the universe.
So, in the Socratic sense, “knowing yourself” doesn’t mean the same thing as “knowing yourself” as we say today, but it’s about the same as “knowing the world” we now mean. Knowing man itself is almost the same as knowing man’s place in the universe, or knowing man’s place in the world.
You must have come here when you stop and ask “where am I”, the questions are connected. Where you are is linked with “where did you come from” and “where did you go”.
For example, there will always be times when you especially want to understand a friend. Like he’s upset, or doing something that you think is weird. Since it’s a friend, you want to figure out why he’s like that. But your understanding of this friend must be based on your own understanding of life. He is not a stone. You can study it. You have to slowly understand all aspects of him in a heart-to-heart manner.
In this sense, in order to understand yourself, you need to understand the world; conversely, if you want to understand the world, you need to understand yourself. This is not an empty phrase, not just a dialectic, it is actually happening in understanding.
When we see the ancient Greeks or the ancient Chinese talking about “self-evidence” and self-understanding, we cannot easily project our present self and self-understanding into it, as if what they said was the same as what we said. Of course there is a connection, but not necessarily exactly the same thing. When we talk about self and self-understanding today, we have come a long, long distance from the ancient Greeks and Lao Tzu, and we have experienced many changes in concepts and social life in between.
“From then on, the ego became a problem”
In the Western tradition, an important transition was the transition to Christianity. Christianity makes a big difference between our understanding of the self and the ancient Greeks’ understanding of the self. There is a very important figure in the whole philosophy of Christianity, Augustine. His self-understanding in the “Confessions” is different from that of Socrates.
Socrates never talks about himself, but Augustine always talks about himself, about his childhood and youth, how he came along, what he thought at that time, and how he corrected his thoughts later… He is from the ancient “self” A very important turning point between the concept and the concept of “self” today. Many books will quote Augustine’s Confessions, which is particularly simple: “From then on, the self becomes a problem.”
Although Socrates also had self-knowledge, he did not feel that “self” was a separate issue. This Augustine self and self-understanding is a big step towards modern transformation, but it is not yet a modern “self” problem. The fundamental difference is that this “self” of Augustine is finally resolved through belief in God. Although the ego becomes a problem, the fundamental problem is not the ego, but belief.
He wants to reflect on the self, whether the self forms an obstacle or a passage on the way to God. We all have “ego-clinging”, and because of “ego-clinging”, we cannot see the highest existence, or the meaning of real existence. We break through this barrier through reflection, and finally connect ourselves to God, and even dissolve ourselves into faith. The ego becomes a problem, and ultimately in this sense the ego is abolished, and the ego dissolves in faith.
Relatively speaking, Rousseau’s self-concept is closer to ours. Augustine’s “Confessions” is about how to overcome the ego and enter the larger self. And Rousseau’s “Confessions” means that he made many mistakes and had many specific problems, but he was able to treat the so-called true “self” frankly and sincerely.
In the preface, there is this passage: “No matter when the trumpet of doomsday is sounded, I dare to take this book and go to the judge and say loudly that this is what I have done and what I have thought. Yes, I was such a person at the time, I wrote frankly whether it was good or bad. Please call countless sentient beings to me, let them listen to my repentance, and then let each of them in your The front of the throne is equally sincere to reveal his heart, and see who dares to say to you ‘I am better than this person’.” In this regard, there are three points that need to be briefly mentioned.
First, although Rousseau’s Confessions is a worldly man’s confession, it is still conceived as a confession before God. This is the consistent idea of Christianity – before God, we are all sinners, and we, as human beings, were punished into this world because of Adam’s sin. It can be seen from this point that the modern self in Rousseau actually has its origins in Christianity.
Second, Augustine would never say to God: “I stand before you now, and see who is better than me”. All are sinners, and as a sinner Augustine would not think he was better than any sinner. In Christianity, “we are all sinners” is what it means, no one is better than the other. However, Rousseau stood before God and he wanted to say that he was the best. This is a twist.
There is another point that everyone needs to think about: from the “Confessions”, Rousseau is not very good. Deception, planting, causing others to be tortured, expelled, and so on, did a lot of bad things. But why did Rousseau dare to say this before God? He said “you let them come and see who is more sincere than me”, which was a huge shift from past to present.
Comparing who is more sincere, this is a huge change from ancient to modern
When the ancients said that a person is good, it means that he does well, that he is braver and more religious than others. But when it comes to Rousseau, it has changed, we are not comparing who is doing better, but who is more sincere. This is a very important idea of our generation. Heidegger does not fall into this category, but his “Being and Time” talks about the real existence of “Dasein”, which we translate as “authenticity”, which means that I am honest with myself, or I am honest with God. Honest.
Although Heidegger would not agree with Rousseau’s general theory, on a very fundamental point, Heidegger did not seem to be far from Rousseau. That is, a person does not depend on whether he does well or not according to secular standards, but on whether he dares to face God in the end. In Being and Time, it is whether he can face his own conscience.
It doesn’t make much sense to talk about existentialism in general. Over time, we may find that the people who were originally called existentialists, such as Sartre and Camus, are actually very different people. But we have to talk about the sense of existence that existentialism talks about in a rather simplified way. Although this sense of existence also includes existential anxiety, distress, etc., it is very different from the existence that the ancients talked about. This difference can be talked about for a lifetime. Today, I will only talk about one point.
From one perspective, the presence of the ancients is a first-order presence—whether you did a good job, or whether you did a good thing or a bad thing. And Rousseau’s good and bad are actually second-order, that is, things have been done, I am reflecting or facing, admitting or not admitting.
From another angle, the reality that the ancients talked about is actually a layer away from the real existence. The existential sense of existence asks not about your achievements and career, you have done good deeds to others, but about the feeling that you cannot escape your heart. This is the sense of existence. What you have done, and even everything in the world, are actually separated from you; the only thing that is not separated from you is your own feelings.
The same is true of Husserl’s phenomenology. Why is it called phenomenology? The “phenomenon” that Husserl refers to is one’s own consciousness, consciousness itself. The concepts of phenomenon and ontology, what Husserl and Heidegger said and what classical philosophy said are actually reversed in many respects.
I heard a student talk about his doctoral dissertation before, titled “Secondary Dimensional Existentialism”, and he has a set of teaching methods. Existentialism does distinguish what is authentic and essential. From one perspective, this is authenticity, and from another perspective, that is authenticity. From the perspective of “two-dimensional existentialism”, there is no authenticity. The second dimension talks about “virtual reality”, and there is a tension in this “virtual reality”.
Originally, the real was the real, and the virtual was the virtual. Now we talk about the virtual reality, or the virtual reality, whether we talk about the virtual or the real, it is already in the two-dimensional level, not the real and virtual in the one-dimensional sense. This development will slowly lead to our understanding of who we are today. I, self-knowledge or self-understanding, are looking more and more inwardly, looking into self-consciousness. At this time, the self-knowledge that the ancient Greeks or Lao Tzu talked about was already a 180-degree turning point in a sense.
How to live this life well was not a problem in ancient times as it is in modern times
Generally speaking, in traditional society, what kind of person a person is, or what kind of person will become, has been determined by society to a large extent. For example, suppose you were born in the Northern Song Dynasty, you want to be an excellent person, you work hard, study, take exams, and finally get a title on the gold list, honor your ancestors, set up a memorial arch in your family, you can be worthy of your parents and ancestors, and you can shelter your descendants, you are a good person . But now, what is “living my life well” has really become a problem.
Of course, we can say that making more money, although making more money is not particularly vulgar, but if everyone just wants to make more money, it must be vulgar – if everyone wants to be an official, it will be even worse. In a sense, this society is unlikely to allow us to feel comfortable being that kind of person. Is it good to make money? it is good. So should I make money? What kind of person should we become is a real question for our contemporary people. But for a Song Dynasty person, it really wasn’t as much of a problem as it is in modern times.
There is another important social change. In traditional society, only a few people have the conditions to consider what kind of person he wants to become, in short, the elite. Our traditional society is a little more open, allowing class mobility, such as the top scholar in reading just mentioned (if it is in the feudal society of the West, it may not even be possible to imagine such an opportunity).
But it does not mean that most people can train their children to read well as they do now. Most children are good enough to farm well, and they can’t read at all. In other words, only for the elite, or people with the potential to become elites, how to live is a real problem. And now, that’s a problem for everyone. It also becomes a problem for women. In ancient times, the question of “knowing yourself” and “being yourself” was for men, but now there is no such line at all – it is as important to men as it is to women.
Another huge change is about understanding the world. In the beginning we said that knowing the world and knowing yourself are interrelated things. But since the occurrence of the modern scientific revolution, “knowing the world” has gradually separated from “knowing oneself”, and has gradually become an understanding of the objective world, a pure world that has nothing to do with people’s understanding.
When our knowledge shifts on a large scale and as a whole to scientific knowledge, to objective knowledge, they have nothing to do with our self-knowledge and self-understanding. For example, I am a particularly good chemist, but it is difficult to say that I am a person who understands, and that I am a person who understands myself better or understands more thoroughly. This is irrelevant.
Conversely, my understanding of myself has become something that has nothing to do with objectively understanding the world. In Heidegger’s words, modern subjectivity and modern objectivity are two sides of the same thing. On the one hand, modern people are increasingly pursuing objective understanding, and on the other hand, modern people have become more and more subjective in their self-knowledge. Subjective and objective are words that are often misunderstood, so I use them reluctantly here.
“How do you know yourself” is a part of yourself
Does knowledge refer to objective knowledge? Not quite. If you talk about self-knowledge in extreme situations, for example, you realize that you are a great person, or you realize that you are insignificant. Have they attained an objective knowledge, as Rousseau, who knew himself, at least in sincerity, was incomparable, or as Augustine, who realized that he was insignificant no matter who he was compared with? In what sense can it be said that both of them have achieved true knowledge?
Considered from one angle, people’s self-knowledge does not mean that I now have an objective self. If I can recognize it objectively, I will have achieved real knowledge. There is no way for me to find an objective me to achieve true knowledge. Further, “how do you know yourself” is a part of who you are.
You know yourself as a good person, it doesn’t mean you are a good person, but “you know yourself this way” is part of “you are such a person”. You think you’re humble before God, there’s no objective proof that you’re humble, but knowing yourself so well is part of who you are.
Self-understanding and scientific correct understanding are two kinds of understanding. Talking about two kinds of understandings is a very rigid way of speaking, but let’s talk about it first. Since ancient times and now, people have talked about two kinds of knowledge and two kinds of understanding. For example, our Song and Ming Neo-Confucianism taught that there is knowledge of seeing and hearing, and knowledge of virtue. Cheng Hao criticized Wang Anshi for looking at the phase wheel outside the tower, and the Neo-Confucian brothers Cheng’s brothers It is the “Phase-seeking Wheel into the Tower”.
It should be reminded that there is not only one concept of “understanding” and “knowledge”, especially today’s so-called scientific understanding and scientific knowledge. We are now talking about “knowledge”, “understanding” and “knowledge” using scientific knowledge as a paradigm. If you talk about it then you will not be able to talk about self-understanding and self-penetration at all, because there is no ready-made self for you to be true. to grasp. Although we don’t know what transparency is, we don’t know what true self-understanding is, but we at least know that it is not a kind of cognition like knowing ore or nuclear fusion.
As you might imagine, there is no real self-knowledge as the end. Like you say “OK, today, I figured myself out” – there’s no such thing. Why? Because this is related to another feature of self-knowledge, that is, since self-knowledge constitutes a part of the self, every kind of knowledge you have, including your real knowledge, is changing yourself.
I originally had a false perception of myself, and I am the person with this false perception; by the time I assume that I have real self-knowledge tomorrow, I have already changed into a person with real self-knowledge. And this kind of true self-knowledge cannot have a final node like knowing ore, nuclear fusion or anything else.
Up until the 19th century, when science was very prosperous, even if you were a good chemist, you had a lot of chemistry knowledge, you were incredibly smart, but when it came to understanding, it was another matter. The word understanding is largely reserved for a person who knows where he is, a person who understands. The strong understanding is gradually transformed into the two kinds of understanding just mentioned, or the knowledge outside the tower and the knowledge of seeing and hearing as mentioned by Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi among the two kinds of knowledge.
We can only find the unknown in the known
Now back to Heidegger. There are many difficulties in reading Being and Time, but Heidegger first said that if you want to understand the problem of existence, you must understand “Dasein”, and “Dasein” has two basic stipulations. The first stipulation is that Dasein’s being, or Dasein’s being, is always my being. The second stipulation is that Dasein’s apprehension of being is a part of Dasein.
This passage is often inadvertently or broadly understood to mean that in addition to the ability to act, people also have the ability to know – thus missing the core of what Heidegger is trying to say. He is not talking about human beings having cognitive abilities in addition to actions, which is too unHeidegger. The comprehension of being he speaks of is the comprehension of ‘being’ and ‘being’, which is constant self-comprehension, and this kind of comprehension and the comprehended being are never a ready-made thing, but a kind of self becoming, and this self-generation is precisely connected with the comprehension of becoming, which is itself a becoming.
What does that mean? Sometimes, especially in modern times, we always feel that what we don’t understand is the world, so we are constantly pursuing new knowledge. But Zhuangzi already said more than 2,000 years ago that the whole world knows what he doesn’t know, “You don’t know what you know.” How do you say this? That is, everyone wants to know what he doesn’t know, and no one wants to know what he already knows. Zhuangzi, like Heidegger, seems a little illogical in his speech – since we already know it, of course I don’t ask for it, we always want to ask for something we don’t know. But I want everyone to understand that this is not illogical.
Who you are, what you really want, what you love, and what you believe in, you know in one sense, but you don’t necessarily know in another sense. Have you ever asked yourself if I really love him? Does this question make sense? Have you ever asked if this is really what I want? Does this question make sense? If the question makes sense, where do you go to find the answer?
Of course, in a sense, you can only ask yourself for the answer, which means you can only find out what you don’t know in what you know. Only you know exactly what you want, but you are confused right now, you are asking yourself what exactly do I want, and no one else knows when you ask. This is what Zhuangzi called “the one who knows what he knows”.
In a very basic sense, philosophy does just that. Wittgenstein also said almost exactly what Zhuangzi said: Science is constantly learning about the unknown world, while philosophy is always collecting memories.
Philosophy, in a basic sense, is trying to figure out who I am, what kind of person I am, what I want, what I love, and what I believe. If you want to find out what you believe, what you love, and what you want, you should not look at things you don’t know, but dig into things you know. And what you know is not only in your heart, this excavation is also related to the world. What do you love, hate, and want, you will ask what love is.
If you think about politics, you ask what justice is. You have to look again, look at yourself, and look at the world, but not at anything new, but at what you have known and experienced for thousands of years and decades, and seek answers in it. In this sense, philosophy, in the final analysis, hopes that through such thinking and self-understanding, one can become a person who understands and can live a clear life.
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