Read whatever books you want to read

(translated from my Chinese blog)

This is my new project, “Nietzschean Philology”. In each installment, I’ll read a passage from Nietzsche’s original writings. By practicing text analysis, we can enhance our ability to understand the world.

The reading of "We Philologists" continues. After finishing the second part (27~46), take a short break, and casually talk about some thoughts I have about writing during this period.

This series has been written for over a month now, and I wonder how everyone feels about it. My own feelings are quite complicated. First, I'm more convinced that such writing has no media value at least in this environment, because the people who are recommended this article by the platform mostly don't even have language skills, they can directly swipe to the bottom to curse without even reading the article. It's easy to imagine that when they look at other recommended articles, they probably do the same thing, praise when they see tags they like, curse when they see tags they dislike, and get some ancient pleasure from this praise and criticism. In fact, when they meet strangers or make new friends in life, they are likely to do the same thing, judging people by appearance, judging people by tags, and not intending to understand others more deeply. I'm already used to such readers, sometimes pity them, sometimes have fun with them. But do they have some chance of change? ——Should I try to change them? This idea arose in my mind and made me shiver, because I am also so "Chinese" and so accustomed to viewing things from a moral perspective. Ultimately, everyone can only be responsible for themselves, but Chinese people always seem to want to be responsible for others, taking on others' lives. The better ones act like saints, while the worse ones act like tyrants. I began to remind myself to try my best not to moralize about people and things.

How else to explain things? To explain structurally. This idea also has its dangers. For example, if we attribute all of a person's actions to their external environment, it seems that this person is exempt from all human responsibilities: bad health is blamed on genes, bad personality is blamed on the original family, poor background is also blamed on the original family, class solidification is blamed on society, dark society is blamed on the economy, and the economy is bad is blamed on the Americans... It turns out that we Chinese are also very good at structural explanations, especially at using such explanations to shirk responsibility. What's more troublesome is to see them as either stupid or malicious when talking about others, but shirk responsibility when talking about themselves, being lenient with themselves and strict with others. Because of the deep-rooted pragmatic spirit of the Chinese, they can freely manipulate concepts to "suit their own needs," and taken to the extreme, it seems that the Chinese have no principles at all. Of course, the Chinese with integrity in history were all principled, and they were very clear about establishing principles openly in their surroundings, because they knew the national character of the Chinese, and they knew that if this nation did not adhere to some principles, it would become the most cunning nation in the world. If they still take cunning as a source of pride, then we're doomed.

I have derived some joy from various observations in life. So when I read this passage by Arendt, I felt a sense of resonance:

What is important for me is to understand. For me, writing is a matter of seeking this understanding, part of the process of understanding.… Certain things get formulated. If I had a good enough memory to really retain everything that I think, I doubt very much that I would have written anything—I know my own laziness. What is important to me is the thought process itself. As long as I have succeeded in thinking something through, I am personally quite satisfied. If I then succeed in expressing my thought process adequately in writing, that satisfies me also.

"What Remains? Language Remains": Hannah Arendt and Günter Gaus's Interview

I agree with every word. I know not everyone has such vital sense, that understanding the problem itself is fun, even if it doesn't lead to any action and doesn't cause any change. Actually, this is a very selfish attitude towards life, and it is also the attitude that Hannah Arendt repeatedly criticizes in her political philosophy, which is to replace political life with contemplative life. Arendt is very honest because one cannot deceive oneself on their vital sense. We feel that we have many moral obligations and political responsibilities to a community, but each of us has our own private joys in life, and the two are always at odds. Only those who derive their joy in life from political action should be politicians, but unfortunately, most politicians in reality are not like this, but rather derive their joy in life from power or interests. This is the distinction that Weber makes in his speech "Politics as a Vocation," the former being "to live for politics," and the latter being "to live from politics." The former is willing to dedicate oneself to a political cause, while the latter demands that a political cause serve one's private needs. The "private person" personality in China makes it that almost all politicians in this nation are of the latter type. We do not know what "to live for politics" means (replacing "politics" with other words is the same).

But this private feeling is something that each of us can always grasp, something we can truly rely on. Arendt said that when she was working, she wasn't interested in how her work might affect people. She would still write even if it had no impact. So she did not rely on readers, did not rely on an audience, did not rely on the market, only on herself. Here, too, there is the risk of misalignment: the publicization of "dedication" and the privatization of "pleasure." Ultimately, every language, every concept, carries the risk of being misunderstood. But ultimately, the language is the only thing we have, and we can only speak at the risk of being misunderstood. So, I leave these seemingly contradictory words here, letting the readers misunderstand them, because once language enters the space of speech, it no longer belongs to me.

Read whatever books you want to read, express whatever opinions you want to express. This is a free world, in the end, everyone is responsible for themselves; in the end, everyone sees the world as their reflection.

So I read Nietzsche, for no other reason than that I was drawn to this person, I feel he has some particularly deep feelings, he has a sensitive soul, his words are worth pondering. In fact, you can also read Whitehead, Berlin, Habermas, Popper, Foucault, Žižek; or, if you read Chinese thinkers only, Liang Qichao, Mou Zongsan, Zhang Junmai, Qian Mu, Yu Yingshi (listing these names does not mean I endorse their ideas)... Everyone has their own feelings, it just depends on whether you can get what you want from their feelings—in the premise that you really have what you want and know what you want.

I don't list ancient writers because, objectively speaking, we can't actually read ancient writers directly. We always read ancient texts through the lens of modern authors. Pick up a modern published version of the *Analects* and try reading it without looking at the notes or explanations, let alone the punctuation, and you'll likely find it impossible to get through. All these notes, explanations, and punctuation are provided by later generations. So, are you reading the *Analects* itself, or the interpretations of later generations? Is it possible to read the *Analects* without relying on any later annotations? This question is similar to asking whether it's possible to invent a car without modern physics, chemistry, and industrial skills (re-inventing everything from scratch). Theoretically, it's possible, but practically, it would likely take a million years to accomplish. The multiple layers of history we carry are far greater than we can imagine. It'd be honest, not embarrassing, to admit and accept this.

This is precisely Nietzsche's critique of those philologists: you have absolutely no awareness that what you call reverence for antiquity is entirely modern prejudice, a modern story you have fabricated based on your own needs. Your reverence for antiquity is fundamentally a sham. Unless you strip away the shell of your modern story, trace it along the threads of history, and analyze how this story evolved from a bare state, through successive cultural embellishments, layer by layer donning the emperor's new clothes. And then you point at the emperor like a child and declare he is actually naked, but it would be very offensive. Philologists enjoy the adoration of society too much, bestsellers relish the spotlight and high sales too much; they would never do such an offensive thing.

Don't read if you've nothing to seek. Reading is about trying to grasp the author's thought process, imitating the author's way of thinking—I read for this reason and this only. Many people read for other reasons; they are more interested in praising and booing, with a preconceived set of judgment criteria that is not to be swayed by new authors, books, or perspectives. Of course, they have no intention of learning from the authors they boo, but even more absurdly, they have no intention of learning from the authors they praise. Because, if they were truly determined to learn, they would eventually realize that the authors they boo and the authors they praise are not entirely incompatible. Learning from one implies learning from the other; otherwise, nothing is to be understood. So sometimes I wonder if they are in a similar situation to literary scholars—they may subconsciously sense the danger of this path, feeling that once they start on it, once they begin true learning, their old habit of praising and booing will collapse, and the pleasure they derive from it will disappear, which is just too painful.

Don't write if you've nothing to seek. Writing is the process of clarifying one's own thought process. Arendt's words resonate very true with me; if it weren't for the limited capacity of human consciousness streams, I would be too lazy to write anything. Writing is also about capturing many fleeting thought fragments, to maintain the momentum of thinking, and to prevent the brain from rusting. Many people do not cherish their minds as much as they claim—or maybe they do cherish it, but only the part that produces moral pleasure, not the part responsible for understanding. So they are also "training" their brains: to react faster to specific stimuli, such as patriotism, nationalism, narratives of good and evil, sensational scandals, conspiracy theories. The difference lies (in terms of neural function) that the former is active, the latter is passive; the former is skilled through practice, the latter accumulates fatigue; the former grows, the latter accelerates aging.

“Functionally speaking” — as if this world indeed has some objective, unchangeable hard boundaries that defy human will, such as the "Monster Group" in mathematical group theory, or the Nash equilibrium in political games, or the various constraints of the nervous system and the flow of consciousness. It is precisely because we live in a world full of restrictions that we need each other; this is the "human condition," the "conditions" of human existence. This is the game of the human world; whether to play or not is the human freedom.