Can you tell me the true meaning of philosophy?

After reading Existence and the Tradition of Western Philosophy

Professor Peking University and doctoral supervisor Zhao Dunhua.

In recent years, the authors of articles published around the meaning of existence in philosophical circles are not only researchers of western philosophy, but also researchers of Marxist philosophy and China's traditional philosophy. From their respective perspectives, they have expressed many wonderful opinions on the meaning of existence and its corresponding China concept. If they had discussed and discussed with each other, they could have formed a hot philosophical issue. But this is not the case. The authors who discuss this issue seldom pay attention to other people's viewpoints, let alone distinguish the similarities or differences between their own viewpoints and others' viewpoints, and will not discuss the reasons for these similarities or differences in depth. In isolation, most of their views have not been published, but on the whole, these views are basically monologues, lacking dialogue and mutual reference. A large number of articles have been published on the same topic, but there is no academic debate, which has formed an academic hot issue.

In order to arouse the academic interest in the meaning of existence, with the support of the Philosophy Department of Tsinghua University and the China Society for the History of Foreign Philosophy, Dr. Song compiled the relevant papers and translations published in recent years into a book, which was divided into two volumes and published under the title "Existence and the Tradition of Western Philosophy". This book is of great significance for breaking the deadlock of academic numbness and promoting the in-depth discussion of the meaning existing in philosophy. After reading this book, I deeply feel that the meaning of existence is not only a core issue of western philosophy, but also an important issue of contemporary China philosophy. As long as we discuss this issue in Chinese now, because of the existence of this book, we can no longer talk to ourselves without referring to other people's opinions (most of which are included in this book) as in the past.

China scholars paid attention to the meaning of existence, although it was only nearly ten years, but as early as 1940s, Mr. Chen Kang in the west pointed out the importance of correctly understanding the meaning of existence. He said: "The fundamental difficulty is that on and its verb einai and their equivalents in Latin, English, French and German cannot be translated in Chinese, because no word in Chinese has such a wide extension. For example,' you' is the widest word in Chinese, but' you' is not enough to translate on or einai. " His reason is that "you" is equivalent to the Greek echein (English having), which is an attribute range in Aristotle's category (now translated as "all" or "state"), and only a relatively minor category explains the meaning of on. He suggested transliteration of such words, for example, transliteration of ontology as "Ontologyi" and transliteration of Sein as "saint" (see: On Greek philosophy, Wang Zisong, editor-in-chief, Commercial Press, 1990 edition, note ① on page 436). Mr. Wang Zisong, Mr. Chen's grandfather, and Mr. Wang advocated translating the western verb tobe into "yes" and the noun Being into "yes". "Shi" is not a philosophical concept in Chinese, and there is not even the word "Shi" in Chinese. The reason why the two gentlemen advocate the use of these two terms is that they realize that in China's philosophy, there is no concept corresponding to this extremely important concept in western philosophy, so they can only adopt literal translation; Although the terms used in literal translation are not common, they faithfully express the original meaning of existence. Otherwise, translation with existing concepts, though "expressiveness" or "elegance", does not meet the basic requirements of "faithfulness". It is not a wonderful thing if people think that western traditional metaphysical scholars are expressing the truth similar or opposite to what our China philosophers or Marxist philosophers say when reading fluent translations. On the contrary, if we think more about and understand some sentences that don't seem smooth on the surface, it's not without advantages to use obscure words.

Mr. Wang Taiqing had many discussions with the author before he officially published his ideas. Although I agree to introduce Chinese neologisms to translate and express the meaning of western existence, I don't agree to completely replace "being" and "being" with "being", but think that the three can coexist and each has its own meaning. On the meaning of existence, this can be said to be the fourth proposition. Although I have different views from Mr. Wang, I think the discussion with him has benefited a lot from the formation of my views, so I can't express my views alone. Mr. Wang feels the same way. 1992 The two of us published two papers in the fourth series of The Economist, explaining our own views and reasons respectively. At the end of the article, everyone thanked each other. But unfortunately, when I included this collection of essays, I only kept Mr. Wang's thanks to me, and deleted the thanks to Mr. Wang. Especially since Mr. Wang has passed away, it is my duty to show his important contribution to this issue, including his important help to me.

After 1992, many articles about the meaning of existence appeared in China, which surprised us. What is even more surprising is that it is not only the researchers of western philosophy who pay attention to this issue, but also the scholars who study China's philosophy and Marxism. But if you think about it carefully, this is expected, because China's contemporary philosophy cannot be separated from the important frame of reference of western philosophy, and the understanding of the existence of the core concepts of western philosophy will inevitably affect the understanding of the nature and object of China's contemporary philosophy.

Judging from the various viewpoints collected in this collection, China scholars have at least the following five views on the meaning of existence.

The general meaning of 1 Being is "being". As Han's article "What Is Existence" shows. Recently, Sun Zhouxing said more clearly: "In recent years, many scholars advocate translating the nouns on, sein and being into' yes' and ontology (which we translate as' ontology') into' yes'. It can be said that it is well-intentioned, but it goes without saying that this practice has not changed the non-grammatical characteristics of Chinese itself at all. For example, it can't make Chinese have the function of part-of-speech form conversion, so it has little effect on enhancing the understanding of meaning. " (Sun Zhouxing's Metaphysical Problems, Jiangsu Social Sciences, No.5, 2003, note [5])

The general meaning of existence is "existence". As Ye Xiushan and Deng Xiaomang's articles show.

The general meaning of 3. Being is "yes". As shown in the article by Wang Lu et al. (See Wang Lu's Truth and Truth, People's Publishing House, 2003); Yu, Ontological Research, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 1999).

4. The general meaning of existence in Greek philosophy is "existence", and whether existence has general meaning in the whole history of philosophy is left aside. As Wang Zisong and Wang Taiqing's article show.

5. Existence has no general meaning in the history of western philosophy or Greek philosophy, but the three translations of "existence", "existence" and "Bei" have their own rationality, so we should choose a reasonable translation according to the specific situation.

Although these views are different, researchers agree that language is the direct reality of thought. The philosopher's thought consciously or unconsciously takes the language usage he uses as the object of thinking. Being has become the highest and most common object of western philosophy, which is closely related to the extensive use of "yes" verbs in western languages and the basic logical function undertaken by copula. Contemporary China people, whether engaged in the study of western philosophy, China's traditional philosophy or Marxist philosophy, must pay attention to the significance of existence.

For example, understanding the meaning of existence involves understanding the essence of China's traditional philosophy. A popular explanation given by western scholars is that the use of conjunctions in ancient Chinese is underdeveloped, which reflects the underdeveloped logical thinking of China people. There is no real metaphysics in China's ancient philosophy, that is, the ideological system with existence as the object and logical argument as the method. In this regard, British sinologist A.C.Graham pointed out: "The syntax of ancient Chinese is close to symbolic logic, and there is an existential quantifier' you', which avoids misreading' existence' as a predicate and is different from copula (including special copula expressing equality and relationship)." Although "there is no copula between the subject and predicate of an adjective in ancient Chinese, and there is no * * * symbol of a copula", various words and phrases can be used to replace the connection of copula. (A.C. Graham, The Argument of Tao, La Salle Open Court, 1989, p4 12). Graham's explanation can draw two conclusions: First, whether to use "yes" as a copula is not necessarily related to whether there is logical thinking; Secondly, the object of China's philosophy has nothing to do with the copula "yes", which does not mean that there is no metaphysical component in China's philosophy, nor can it be concluded that the metaphysical nature of China and the West is different and the research objects are different, so the two are not comparable. What Chinese terms we choose to understand and express existence now is actually a positive or negative response to these two conclusions. If we understand existence as a common concept of existence in China's ancient philosophy or in China's modern philosophy, it just shows the similarity and comparability between Chinese and western metaphysics. If we only understand existence as "existence", we may deny the similarity and comparability of Chinese and western metaphysics because "existence" is not the concept of China's philosophy.