Because it has been almost 80 years since Mr. Feng finished writing the "Six Books of Zhenyuan". If our philosophy has not developed in 80 years, how long will it take for Chinese philosophy to go global and truly overcome this dilemma in 100 to 200 years? Therefore, it will be quite difficult.
When we talk about philosophical methodology and the realm of life, we must read Mr. Feng's "Preface to San Song Tang". Why do you say that?
Because it is convenient for everyone to understand Mr. Feng's personal life experience, his views on some issues, and more importantly, we need to pay attention to a very important characteristic among Chinese philosophers, which is the unity of knowledge and action. He hopes to implement his life philosophy into his social life. He talked about the methods of Chinese philosophy and his understanding of the realm of life in the preface of San Song Tang.
Firstly, what you want to establish is a universal philosophy. In terms of universal philosophy, Mr. Feng proposed the method of excluding this experience, which ultimately leads to the exclusion of his entire experiential world, but becomes a logical hollow.
So this approach has also been criticized by many people, but are there any other methods besides excluding experience to truly achieve this goal?
Indeed, this issue is very important. In fact, Mr. Feng later proposed the combination of reason and intuition. This combination of reason and experiential intuition is different from the opposition between experience and transcendence that he established in his early days. This is the traditional philosophical approach from phenomenon to essence. In the later period, it should be said that this approach belongs to the category of his rational philosophy. Intuition was later added by him. He realized that relying solely on this rationality sometimes cannot establish a truly universal philosophy. However, at least after its later reflection, he introduced intuition as a necessary part of establishing universal philosophy.
So we need to talk about positive and negative methods. Of course, whether this positive method and negative method can ultimately establish this universal philosophy is not certain. However, when answering your question, there is actually a premise. Do we really need to establish such a philosophy? Do we really need to establish the most philosophical philosophy as proposed by Mr. Feng Youlan? Who said that the most profound philosophy is also philosophy? Isn't philosophy the most profound philosophy?
Why do we need to emphasize his most philosophical definition of emptiness? He has set himself a set, that is, I want to build something like this and break the set itself. Can I use some methods more easily to explain my philosophy?
If we cannot establish a philosophy of universal values that is not limited by any time and space, can I establish a philosophy of this type that is applicable to contemporary philosophy. For example, Freudian psychoanalysis, of course, may also have various problems or issues, but you cannot deny that it is also a philosophy.
So what I actually need to question here is whether the most philosophical philosophy proposed by Mr. Feng is the direction for the future development of Chinese philosophy. So Mr. Feng set a big trap for himself, jumped in, and dug a big hole. Of course, this kind of effort is very necessary. Feng Sheng himself attempted to establish something like this, at least in the context of Western philosophy at that time. It was easily recognized by Westerners, logical, philosophical, systematic, and applied some traditional concepts of Chinese philosophy that could be expressed creatively. At least in contemporary times, there are not many people who can achieve such a situation.
However, it is not clear whether it would be better to further develop or repair this system after its establishment, because Mr. Feng did not do more systematic construction later on, and there is also a most important issue. In fact, the system itself has been broken in the reflection of philosophy now. We do not need to create a system for the philosophical community anymore. This is also a very important development in the transition from traditional Western philosophy to modern philosophy.
In this class, we will introduce Mr. Feng Youlan's philosophical ideas from another perspective. That is to say, Feng Youlan's thoughts on philosophical methods, as well as his formulation of philosophy itself, are also about her life realm. Why is this lecture more important?
Because behind philosophical thinking, there is actually a common phenomenon that many philosophers ultimately attribute their philosophical thinking to the contemplation of philosophical methods. In the process of inheriting and innovating philosophy, they need to explore a fundamental method that is suitable for themselves and for the development of philosophy.
Our lesson will mainly focus on these two points to introduce Mr. Feng Youlan's views and propositions in this regard. Finally, we will summarize the entire three lectures and integrate Mr. Feng Youlan's entire ideological system to make an introduction.
Let's first take a look at Mr. Feng Youlan's understanding of philosophy itself, especially his understanding of Chinese philosophy. Previously, I recommended a preface to the "San Song Tang Collection" to everyone. This article is very important because Mr. Feng Youlan has incorporated his thoughts on some philosophical methods into his preface, and he summarized it himself.
He said that the issues he discussed throughout his life were generally centered around the history of philosophy. We introduced the concept of cultural issues to everyone in the first lecture, and at that time, we only emphasized the focus on the history of philosophy.
But in fact, in this class, we hope to emphasize the key points and place them in the context of cultural issues between the East and the West, because the development of Chinese philosophy, although our class is called Modern and Contemporary Chinese Philosophy, is always inseparable from this wave of world philosophy, especially in today's society.
In this context, it is necessary for Chinese philosophy to respond to some challenges from Western philosophy, while also establishing its own discourse system.
Mr. Feng Youlan said that he constructs a future of Chinese philosophy centered on the history of philosophy. In his article "Chinese Philosophy and Future World Philosophy," he himself stated that Chinese and Western philosophy can complement each other, and in this complementarity, Chinese thought can contribute to the future world philosophy. He is very confident that Chinese philosophy and Western philosophy can be interconnected. Secondly, Chinese philosophy is beneficial to world philosophy, rather than being excluded from it. He said I would only talk about two points, which he believes are the two most important aspects of Chinese thought for world philosophy: the methods used in philosophy and the ideal life achieved by philosophy.
These two points are the methods of Chinese philosophy that we will introduce in this class, as well as the statement that the ideal life achieved by philosophy is his realm of life. These two points are Mr. Feng Youlan's reflections on the future of Chinese philosophy, and more importantly, they are the two most important reflections on the contribution that Chinese philosophy can provide based on world philosophy.
If we broaden our perspective a bit, Mr. Feng Youlan stands from the standpoint of world philosophy and believes that in order to develop the entire discipline of philosophy and its ideas, it is necessary to innovate from two aspects: the methods of philosophy and the realm of life.
Firstly, let's introduce the methods of studying abroad in China. In fact, we have already covered this question in our previous introductions. What kind of methods does Mr. Feng Youlan use to study Chinese philosophy?
We just introduced a method that centers around the history of philosophy. When we introduced it to you before, it was about Chinese philosophy. In fact, our course on Chinese philosophy covers from the pre Qin period to the Qing Dynasty. With the history of philosophy as the clue, we chose to introduce Chinese philosophy to you through the history of philosophy. What did you learn through that course?
The main conceptual categories and schools of thought in Chinese philosophy are a historical thread of their development. However, it is not limited to this. You have gained more understanding of China itself, but these experiences have not been given a very formal expression. Instead, they have been introduced to you through historical methods.
It is obvious that Mr. Feng Youlan has a fundamental approach to philosophy, but he believes that it is not necessarily the case. He believes that constructing a structure and system similar to Neo Confucianism represents his ideas. Similarly, writing history for everyone is also an expression of philosophical concepts. Here, we need to take a different perspective, which is to introduce the positive and negative methods from today's new angle.
We can see that the positive and negative methods are opposite. He believes that the positive method is obviously where many people have this value system, and also believes that the positive method is correct, while the negative method is supplementary, with the positive method as the main and the negative method as the auxiliary. We naturally have such a preset, but Mr. Feng Youlan does not think so. We will introduce it later.
What is a positive method and what is a negative method?
Simply put, the positive method is a formal logical analysis method, while the negative method is an intuitive method.
