Guangzhou, the birthplace of political philosophy

The last time I went back to Guangzhou was in July three years ago, back from Xinjiang, before going to Hangzhou.

This time, I lived in Shamian, which was also the place where I often rested when walking more than ten years ago. On the afternoon of the 5th, I took an online car-hailing ride to the new residence of Black Tea. I saw the Yue Customs Museum and Xidi Wharf, which are familiar along Jiangxi Road, from the car window, and I immediately felt warm. In 2011, when my carpenter brother came to Guangzhou for a meeting, I took him along this road, pointing to the same buildings and talking at length; on Christmas Eve of the same year, I took a bus from Zhongda University and walked between Binjiang and Yanjiang. Looking out the window, under the arcade, there were men and women with happy faces, and finally got off the car near Enning Road.

Since I returned to Shenzhen in 2012, I seldom return to Guangzhou every year except to report to the school. The impression is that in 2015, I met with Black Tea, Da Hei, and Shi Tai, and conceived the article "The Twilight of Liberal Conservatism in China" at Guangzhou South Railway Station. Then I graduated with a Ph.D. in 2017. I went back to pre-defense once and defended once. During the pre-defense, Gan Yang did not come, nor did Zhang Xi. I learned later that all teachers in this major have a veto right in the pre-defense. If they don’t come, it means they don’t intend to exercise this right against me. That is one of the few occasions where they can exert influence on me. For this matter, my friends have different interpretations, some say that they are afraid of being slapped by me, some say that they are generous, but later they think that the most likely thing is to give my mentor a face.

This is why I know in my heart that although Teacher Zhai superficially manages my stocking, he always protects me from behind. Without him, my doctorate would have been frozen for just the two articles "The Force of Shi Pai" and "The Fat Tiger of Political Philosophers", not to mention that in exposing the plagiarism of a certain boss, I was always in the dark. front. However, Lao Zhai himself has not been involved in this kind of academic mountain game for a long time, and he doesn't care too much about what I do. When I saw him this time, I told him with a smile, you are in a college and your heart is beyond the clouds. Now he has his own VR lab and projects, and never applies for the National Social Science Fund. He was the same as me in his early years. He was outspoken and did not know how to be tactful (perhaps still now). When he was a member of the doctoral defense for a student of a big boss, he adhered to the principle and always believed that the level was not enough to pass. After that, when the boss was reviewing the projects of the National Social Science Fund, he saw the kind of problem that Lao Zhai would raise, and he was shot. "Actually, I've never applied, but I just hurt some scholars who have the same interests as me."

I didn't plan to go to college later. On the one hand, it was related to the articles I wrote, and on the other hand, it was also related to the mountain-top disputes and academic corruption that frequently appeared in front of me in those years. However, when I entered CUHK, the environment was far from bad to this point. It can even be said that I learned a passion for learning and a respect for truth there. The first few students of Liu Xiaofeng I met were all "invisible" and "enlightened" when they opened their mouths and closed their mouths. I don't necessarily like it when I think about it now, but I still haven't forgotten the punches on their faces. What surprised me the most was Mr. Zhai's students, Senior Brother Zhou Zhiyi and Senior Sister Wu Min, who were already fifth-graders at the time, took us to a reading club, and they have always implemented "the reasoning to the end". Once, Senior Sister Wu Min wrote a philosophical film review for "Painted Skin", and we discussed it at the book club. The argument was quite interesting: she thought that love was a private matter, but in the movie, it was played by Zhao Wei. The wife has been "politicized", and the wife introduced the "human and demon discrimination" as a pretext for her to compete for love. On the surface, it was for the safety of her husband and the people in the city, but in essence, it was only to eliminate rivals in love. I was amazed at the time, I didn't expect that such a topic could be philosophically debated. Brother Zhou is good at analytic philosophy and phenomenology. It stands to reason that he does not like Strauss' theories and methods, but during the discussion he blurted out that "city-state" is a bit anachronistic in the context of this film. , but no one in the audience felt inappropriate. Therefore, it is not an exaggeration to say in another article that Liu Xiaofeng made the disciples in the Chinese intellectual circles at that time "must call them Greece".

My philosophical enlightenment, one was in the discussion in the teacher's door, and the other was in the class of Mr. Deng Weisheng, who gave the graduate and doctoral students "Guide to the Classics of Western Ethics" (specifically, it may not be this name) In the first semester, he taught us Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Kant's "Metaphysical Foundations of Morality" and Mill's "Utilitarianism", mainly in English. I have listened to countless scholars to give lectures, and I still think that among scholars who teach philosophy courses in Chinese, Mr. Deng is unmatched, even though his accent is much heavier than others. He taught little about the gossip of philosophers, but faithfully reconstructed his arguments, and we followed him, trying to understand the subtleties of those arguments and being encouraged to respond to them. In this kind of philosophy explained by Mr. Deng, I feel that the dark clouds in my mind have been driven away, everything is very clear, and I feel that we and these philosophers are equal in personality, as long as we can enter his debate at any time logic, we can talk to it. This is in stark contrast to the mysterious and unpredictable atmosphere created by Shi Pai, in which we can only memorize Strauss (and Liu Xiaofeng)'s interpretation of a certain philosopher, and we cannot question it. We are more like These "philosophers" and followers of Strauss. I am still disgusted by some of the expressions Shi Pai used at that time, for example, how serious the consequences are that we have forgotten the "teachings" of so-and-so philosophers. These aren't even Strauss's original words, but a parody of Chinese Shipai. In the past two years, I have still seen similar expressions in the writings of some young scholars. Haven't they heard a sentence: those who imitate me live, and those who resemble me die?

In Mr. Deng's class and the meta-ethics reading club, I met Black Tea and Budweiser, and Black Tea became my roommate later. Our favorite takeaway is the Qinren cuisine outside the South Gate of Zhongda University. Everyone orders a rice pudding and a roujiamo. Our favorite dine-in is a Japanese restaurant in China Plaza. The taste is decent, but the main thing is not good Expensive, because we are all lonely. His home is in Guangzhou, and he would go home every few days. When we were at school, we would go for a walk along the Pearl River almost every night to comment on theories and academic circles.

One of the purposes of my visit to Guangzhou this time is to see the cohabitation life of black tea. His girlfriend used to be my editor. Although we only met because of black tea, we have known each other for ten years. The two of them went to Shanghai to work together last year, but with the keen political sense of black tea, they left without any danger before the city was closed. When I arrived at his house, his girlfriend was on the switch, because the black tea had just been dragged across the ground, so I put on the shoe covers they prepared very wisely.

We didn't chat much and quickly got into the academic conversation. I have always believed that Black Tea's low profile contrasts with his own academic insight. Unlike me, he does not easily put his thoughts into words. In this respect, he is more like Nietzsche and Strauss. He believes that the truth is dangerous. When speaking the truth, both the speaker and the listener may be offended. unnecessary trouble, especially in today's environment. Therefore, he will only share some of his observations in private situations, and in groups of more than ten people, he will hide his views.

He is an apprentice of Mr. Huang Min, but over the years, he seems to have reflected a lot on analytic philosophy. This has a lot to do with me. The words that Mr. Zhu Gang said at the dinner table had a great influence on me. He said that all philosophy should be based on intuition. He said this of course because of his phenomenological background, and later analytic philosophy also questioned the role of "intuition" or "intuition" in philosophical arguments (such as the experiment that was so popular when I was first in my Ph.D. Philosophy), but from this sentence, I began to think about whether the method of doing philosophy is only "reasoning" or "exchanging arguments". In places like Europe and the United States, where there are already a large number of ready-made theories, and the theories are closely related to their reality, conceptual analysis, propositional formulation, and argument exchange are of great significance, but in China, I have noticed at the time that there is no such thing as Normative theory can fit our living experience enough, the method of analytic philosophy, especially its argumentation part, is easy to become "off the ground", or talk about an ideal state (which is not worthless, of course), Either you are playing a pure mind game.

I later saw some teachers and friends try to start from some daily reality, trying to demonstrate step by step that the political philosophy theories of analytic philosophy are equally applicable to Chinese society. This is of course quite a useful exploration, but at the same time, I also think that this approach is "decontextualized" to a certain extent, that is, a lot of what is hidden in our context is stripped away , or ignored, and those things are related to the special historical memory and real experience of this land. Of course, I am not a "specialist". Friends who know me know that I have always been a universalist. I believe that human beings have some common characteristics and experiences, and some common pursuits and values, but they are by no means limited to the so-called so-called "universalist". the right to survival and development. It should be said that, because of these special memories and experiences, the acceptance of some common values that belong to all mankind is more difficult and tortuous for the Chinese than for people in other places.

As some scholars have said, this may be related to the "Qin system". In addition, there are other aspects of the power structure and conceptual structure of this society, which will be excluded in Rawls's "veil of ignorance", It is precisely relevant for the political philosophy of doing China (this does not necessarily constitute a criticism of Rawls, as it is entirely possible to talk about it at different levels). This is how I started to think about the so-called "sinicization", and it was already 2015. A lot of things happened this year, but most of my friends at that time were from academia, and I only heard a little bit about what happened in the general environment. My criticism of Liu Xiaofeng and Gan Yang is enough to make Shi Pai of the same age feel extremely angry, but at the same time, I also have a considerable degree of reflection on the "mainstream of liberal schools" (in the words of Teacher Zhang Ning). It is based on these reflections, I became not only a left-wing liberal, but a "political phenomenologist." In terms of value standpoint and methodology, I have distanced myself from the previous Chinese liberals.

After studying Rawls's "Theory of Justice" and Mr. Zhou Baosong's "Equal Politics for Free People", I have become a left-wing liberal. From 2012 to 2013, I read Mr. Zhou's "South Wind Window" and Weibo Debating with his so-called "right-wing liberals" made me even more determined that I am by no means the same as these right-wing liberals (ironically, these right-wing liberals who have debated with Teacher Zhou are the most representative, Those in the Pencil Club have in recent years passed through the "revolving door of liberalism" and become statists). On the evening of the 7th, Mr. Zhang Ning also talked about how he changed from a "mainstream liberal" to a left-wing liberal when he was drinking. He said that he once went to Taiwan to attend a meeting. After the meeting, Mr. Qian Yongxiang humbly "asked" him about the political blueprint of China's liberalism, and he explained the standard set of arguments. After listening to this, Mr. Qian asked hesitantly, does this blueprint not include "social justice"? This was quite a blow to him.

Teacher Zhang Ning's so-called "mainstream of liberalism in China" is the trend of thought represented by Zhu Xueqin's 1998 "Speech of Liberalism", mainly influenced by the thoughts of Hayek and Popper. Equality”, not only supports the “free market”, but also expresses deep dissatisfaction with some of the government’s practices to protect labor rights and interests. Responsible for the Cultural Revolution. Coincidentally, when I wrote "The Twilight of Liberal Conservatism in China" in 2015, it was precisely this tendency that was the focus of my criticism. I also hinted at two points in that article, which are expanded upon in subsequent articles. One is that there is a certain ideological continuity between this liberal conservatism and cultural conservatism, that is, China's cultural conservatism basically inherits the liberal conservatism's criticism of "equality" and "radicalism", and uses it later. The rejection of "liberalism" as a form of advocacy for "equality" and "radicalism" is probably something these liberal conservatives never thought of. The other is that since the 1990s, Chinese intellectuals, even academic intellectuals, are not only immersed in academic research, but have real political plans for China's future. Of course, such political plans are not equivalent to Chinese language "Politics" under the circumstance, but it continues the tradition of intellectuals participating in politics through academic reform and debate since modern times, and it can even be traced back to the self-expectation of Confucian intellectuals to "create peace for all generations" during the imperial regime.

I will absorb and affirm most of the objects of criticism. What inspired me to think during this period did not come from liberalism in any sense, but from Shipai, just not domestic Shipai, but North American Shipai. There is a distinction between the so-called "political philosophy of philosophers" and "political philosophy of statesmen", and the master of the latter is Strauss's student, the representative of the West Bank Shi School, Harry Jaffa, who analyzed Lincoln. Two masterpieces with the Civil War, The Divided House Crisis and The Birth of Liberty. In it, I saw how Lincoln as a statesman insisted on the natural rights of man on the one hand, and struggled with the forces opposed to these natural rights on the other hand. The domestic faction, early on the jurisprudence of the Civil War, was based on the principle of "defending the unity of the country", which distorted Lincoln's fundamental position to a certain extent and forced it to be his own realpolitik. Ambition endorsement. Following this line of thought, I became interested in politicians from the Marxist tradition such as Lenin and Trotsky, and re-read their writings based on the multiple reductions of history in later generations. I wanted to know not only how they developed Marx's doctrine, but also how they grasped that "momentum" in a specific political context, which is rarely covered in philosophical debates within the academy.

In 2016 and 2017, on the one hand, I was exploring how to think about political philosophy more "politically", and on the other hand, I was constantly trying to expand the boundaries of my knowledge. During this period, while continuing my academic criticism of Shi and liberal conservatives, I slowly turned my attention to the more internal "mind force" and the more external environment. The concern for "mind power" is related to Mr. Zhang Jun's inadvertent remarks. In one group, he sharply asked the liberals in the group: "Can you be like Christians, devoting yourself to your beliefs? Life?" A related question is, why can Christians do it, but most liberals can't? If they can't, what should the liberals do? The reason for the question of "what to do" is that at that time, anyone who paid attention to reality and had a clear head no longer believed that there was any possibility of gradual political reform. To borrow the words of a friend, liberals can no longer "lie on their feet" and wait for change to come. From the above question, I can understand why some liberals later convert to Christians. Whatever the perception of this belief in the non-Christian community, being a Christian simultaneously solves the problems of their mental strength, organization, and theoretical underpinnings.

In a meeting on the afternoon of the 6th with a friend who is still teaching in college, we touched on this topic again. What I have always been worried about is that the Christian groups in China who do not obey the system do not have enough tolerance for other groups who do not obey the system, which makes other groups full of rejection and fear of them. He is pessimistic on the whole, but he is rarely optimistic on this issue: "You don't need to worry about this. When that day comes, it will not be up to them to be tolerant or not." What he has doubts is whether Christianity is true There is so much energy that can promote the development of the current situation?

I said that the authorities are of course worried about this, otherwise the suppression of Christianity would not have been so severe. He said that it is not just Christianity. Since 2018, even local religions have been vigorously suppressed. Before that, the state basically supported local religions and gave resources to policies. However, in 2018, the "Xuecheng Incident" occurred. Some senior leaders felt that these local religions could not support the wall, so they simply attacked them together. I said that although this incentive was unexpected to me, on the whole, it was in line with the logic of the regime's development: it would not tolerate groups that were organized beyond a certain level to exist outside their own control. After 2018, I also learned from the personnel of the relevant departments that the clan associations with the same surname that are popular among Chinese people are also one of the unstable factors in their view, and they cannot be allowed to develop wildly.

According to this friend, among these groups who originally thought they were allies of the system, the funniest was the so-called "Mainland New Confucianism". Because of the constant advocacy of "returning to Kang Youwei" in conferences and papers, and claiming to be a "Kang Party" (of course, some people call themselves "Qian Party", Qian Mu's supporter), Mainland New Confucianism has finally attracted the attention of high-level officials, and was hailed by It was determined to have a political purpose, so one of their bases, "Tianfu Xin Lun", was removed from the C journal. Several representatives in Shanghai were unable to attend classes or take students for several years. This coincides with an article I was writing recently. In the past decade, not only has liberalism been completely stigmatized, but even nationalist scholarship has been silenced. If the regime has little trust in overly-organized groups, it has always distrusted intellectuals, no matter if you are on the side of criticizing him or on the side of cheering for him. This can not be more obvious in Dong Zhongshu's sentence "Quit the people and extend the emperor, and Qujun and extend the sky". Standing on the side of the "Jun" is nothing more than wanting the "Jun" to act according to his own "Tao". How can "Jun" not see it? What's more, intellectuals want to use this to control the interpretation of ideology, which is unacceptable in the eyes of the regime.

Among the groups that have been oppressed in recent years, the ones I feel most sympathetic to are the "actionists" youth. I began to pay attention to the "Youth Feminist Action Group" because of the arrest of the "Five Feminist Sisters" in 2015, but it was not until early 2018, when the Guanggong Reading Club incident aroused widespread solidarity in the intellectual circles, that I noticed "left-wing youth" or "Mao Zuo" youth" and study their differences from the "Old Left" and "New Left". That year, I wrote "The "Spiritual Civil War" that has already started, and made a distinction between the Maoists and caused a lot of controversy. In my opinion, there are "Mao Left" and "Mao Right" in the Maoists. There is no doubt that the "Mao Right" are statists because they identify with Mao on the basis of his "anti-imperialist" and nationalistic side. The "Mao Right" also includes the "Mao Confucian" who are more marginalized in Confucian circles . There is also a difference between "nationalist Mao left" and "non-nationalist Mao left" in "Mao Left". The Mao Zuo of the older generation are basically "nationalist Mao Zuo". On the one hand, they do sympathize with the bottom, but on the other hand, they believe that the interests of the country and the bottom are exactly the same. However, many of the new generation of Mao Zuo are "non-nationalist Mao Zuo". Left”, they have a relatively deep reflection on whether the interests of the country and the bottom are consistent, and some of them are more radical, and even become “anti-nationalist Mao left”. This distinction has aroused huge controversy among liberals and pan-leftists. Those who think "Mao Zuo" are all anti-statists like Zhang Ning are a minority, and more people think that no matter what kind of Mao Zuo's surface is. Attitude, they are all nationalists at their roots. In my contact with the "Eight Youths", they really made me feel that they are sincere, whether it is their identification with the people at the bottom or their reflection on nationalism. That's why, despite our huge differences in our judgments about some historical events and historical figures, I have always had deep respect for them and regretted what happened to some of them.

2018 and 2019 were the years when I tried to combine what I learned with practice. In 2018, Mr. Zhou Lian told me in the dialogue of Xiuhe College that your self-identity is already an actor, not a scholar. This doesn't quite fit my line of thought: in order to break out of the rut of academic liberalism, I want to connect more with actors, and I want to learn from them how to think from a practical perspective, which is not so much my self-identity Rather than being an actor, I want to be the kind of scholar I want to be. However, in the process, some of the activists gradually regarded me as a "comrade", not just a "friend", and some people who accepted their help also regarded me as one of their members and asked me for help. Due to my identification with their virtues (and sometimes of course some ideas), I was reluctant to disentangle the relationship, which finally pushed me to a critical point where a choice had to be made between actors and scholars.

In meetings with some friends who are still in public engagements, they have expressed concern about my situation over the past three years. I answered very frankly, I have never focused on public affairs, but always wanted to balance my responsibilities to my family and my commitment to myself. My empathy for vulnerable groups is not strong enough to sacrifice for them At this point, even if you have to pay a greater price in the future, it is the price you pay for your own ideals. After those experiences of connecting with practice, I did not become a practice supremacist, nor did I think that practice and action can solve all problems, but instead, I re-believed in the power of intellectuals and ideas. As I said before, in China, there will naturally be some intellectuals to think about what kind of future this land will have. But now I not only pay attention to the ideas of intellectuals, but also to the ideas of various groups other than intellectuals, because we have entered an era where the influence of intellectuals on the structure of social ideas is constantly weakening, which requires us to be aware of the surrounding environment and people. There is enough perception and sensitivity, instead of sticking to some theories and saying some clichés, in this regard, two years of experience still benefit me for a lifetime.