We lack imagination even in our insults today

(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. Starting from the 47th section, Nietzsche begins a new chapter "The Philologist," detailing the "original sin" of philologists—pedantry, rigidity, self-abdication, obedience, laziness, sophistry, and nitpicking. Analyzing these issues allows us to see Nietzsche's profound critique of the modern world in linguistic phenomena.

47. It is not true to say that we can attain culture through antiquity alone. We may learn something from it, certainly; but not culture as the word is now understood. Our present culture is based on an emasculated and mendacious study of antiquity. In order to understand how ineffectual this study is, just look at our philologists · they, trained upon antiquity, should be the most cultured men. Are they?

48. Origin of the philologist. When a great work of art is exhibited there is always some one who not only feels its influence but wishes to perpetuate it. The same remark applies to a great state--to everything, in short, that man produces. Philologists wish to perpetuate the influence of antiquity and they can set about it only as imitative artists. Why not as men who form their lives after antiquity?

49. The decline of the poet-scholars is due in great part to their own corruption: their type is continually arising again; Goethe and Leopardi, for example, belong to it. Behind them plod the philologist-savants. This type has its origin in the sophisticism of the second century.

50. Ah, it is a sad story, the story of philology! The disgusting erudition, the lazy, inactive passivity, the timid submission.--Who was ever free?

51. When we examine the history of philology it is borne in upon us how few really talented men have taken part in it. Among the most celebrated philologists are a few who ruined their intellect by acquiring a smattering of many subjects, and among the most enlightened of them were several who could use their intellect only for childish tasks. It is a sad story · no science, I think, has ever been so poor in talented followers. Those whom we might call the intellectually crippled found a suitable hobby in all this hair-splitting.

52. The teacher of reading and writing, and the reviser, were the first types of the philologist.

"We Philologists", Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by J. M. Kennedy 

Chapter 2 "The Philologist," opens by targeting the uselessness of philologists. The theme of this chapter, as its name implies, is to analyze and critique this species of philologist.

Nietzsche listed the following charges against modern philologists: lacking refinement or culture (47); knowing only how to copy the ancient (48); the self-degradation of the philological class (49); erudition, laziness, and docile obedience (50), and also a fondness for obstinate sophistry ("Who was ever free?") (51); being pedantic in details (51), especially on linguistic errors such as grammatical mistakes (52).

Each of these charges deserves to be elaborated on.

Let's start with the last point. It's exactly one month since I wrote an article titled "The Level of language teachers is the greatest obstacle to potential genius philologists," and surprisingly, no one in the comment section discussed the main point of the article. Everyone was just talking about the grammatical error in the title. First, of course, I wouldn't dare to say I'm on par with Nietzsche or that my command of the Chinese language is particularly high, but in fact, when I was drafting the title, I had already thought about this grammatical issue. May I ask, if we want to remove this grammatical error, would changing it to "The low level of language teachers" suffice? But if we make such a change, it seems like the problem in contemporary Chinese studies is just that Chinese teachers lack professional competence, and it seems that as long as we reform this industry and let the capable rise to the top, everything would be fine. But this inverts Nietzsche's meaning (changing it to "high level" is actually closer but still inaccurate). Because, the issue here isn't about the level being high or low, but about what standard is used to measure the level—whether it's the standards set by Chinese scholars (such as those set by the Ministry of Education), or what standard? Nietzsche wanted to express that the standard currently established is itself oppressive to geniuses, so discussing levels of competence under this standard is essentially aiding and abetting the oppressive. If one does not reflect on the criteria for measurement and simply talks crudely about the "level" of language teachers, this idea itself is harmful. Of course, people never intended to gain new knowledge or update their understanding from the articles anyway; they are just there to boost their presence and sense of superiority, so let them. (Two words from Nietzsche to these people: intellectually crippled.)

Surely it's no coincidence that this article inadvertently echoed Nietzsche's satire on linguists' obsession with details. This can only show that Nietzsche's problematique still has strong practical significance today. People really think the task of a language teacher is to pick up grammatical errors, to teach students to read and write at the most basic and technical level, grammar and grammatical errors.

Some may ask, don't Chinese language teachers need to teach these things? Of course, they do. The question is, why teach these things—this goal determines where a Chinese language teacher's focus will be and what teaching methods they will use. If he doesn't think about this at all, that is, blindly accepting the logic of social reality, then the ability to read and write is a basic survival skill in this modern society surrounded by a clerical system. In other words, reading and writing is a means to make a living, more accurately, a means to make a living for clerical jobs (including but not limited to all white-collar jobs). Then he shouldn't talk about the meaning of life, far from the meaning of life, it's just about making a living, and he shouldn't complain about learning only for standardized tests, it is what it is, it's always been a thousand horses crossing a single log bridge. This is what Nietzsche called "timid submission." And they still talk back, if you say they are not free, they will say, "Who was ever free?" Nietzsche didn't bother to argue because you can always talk back to others, just don't deceive yourself. Some submissions are forced; more are chosen by oneself.

On the contrary, if a Chinese language teacher believes that reading and writing should serve higher goals, then please have him seriously consider what these higher goals are and reconstruct his entire teaching based on them.

So the question becomes: If learning to read and write is not for administrative work, then what is it for? It's certainly not for communication. Before the invention of writing, humans had been communicating orally for tens of thousands of years. (Language was invented about 35,000 years ago, while writing only appeared 5,000 years ago.) Today, in some backward regions, there are still illiterates who can't read or write, but they are not without language skills. In fact, some of them are full of stories in their heads, and in a sense, they are much more cultured than we "modern" people, who are empty and only know how to manipulate high concepts. Mo Yan once said in a speech that most of the stories he heard as a child were not read from books. I once tested this and found that the storytelling ability of the younger generation—not writing stories, but telling stories in front of others—is getting worse and worse. Parents might as well try it and see if their children can tell a story from beginning to end without looking at a book or using any text, without getting stuck or omitting key information. I believe the vast majority cannot do it. Because we almost never ask our children to do this.

This is truly strange. On the one hand, we often emphasize the ability to express oneself, and also often emphasize the power of storytelling, yet on the other hand, we so neglect oral expression in school education. It's only when children enter the workforce, needing to present PPTs and make morning and evening reports to superiors, that they realize the importance of storytelling. (I also despise those speech and debate training institutions; that is definitely not the living oral communication in Nietzsche's eyes, it's still just a set of standardized modern games.)

So what Nietzsche spoke of in sections 47~48 about education, culture, and reprisal is based on living, co-present interpersonal interactions. Letters already create a layer of separation, the internet creates another layer, and artificial intelligence creates yet another layer—how high the castle in the air modern humans have built for themselves! Chinese language teachers often lament the dominance of technology, just as the philologists of the 19th century Nietzsche observed often praised the charm of ancient culture, but Nietzsche said that these antiquarians were merely ugly imitating, knowing only to replicate, not to reprisal. But in what sense is reprisal different from replication?

For example, you can transform clothing, etiquette, and even the entire living space into an ancient style, but there is one thing you will find extremely difficult to replicate: language. You can hardly replicate the linguistic habits of the past in the present context: who to speak to? What to speak? Why speak? Imagine a couple passionate about ancient culture holding a Song Dynasty cosplay at home, transforming their dialogue into the style of the Song Dynasty—no Mandarin, but rather the tongue according to the Guangyun of the Song era, speaking Middle Chinese. How long can they maintain this? More importantly, can they get into character? Don't they realize they are just acting?

I think those who can achieve this are rare. It at least gives them a real sense of body, much better than those who just take photos in traditional dress. But it still lacks something. Because we don't really live in ancient times, all the recreations cannot bring the entire ancient world back to today. We can only imagine experiencing ancient times, understanding the various skills and wisdom developed by our ancestors to survive in ancient environments, and being inspired by these experiences to spark some modern inspiration, then bring that inspiration back to today. But this is exactly what the vast majority of people who claim to admire ancient times will not do. They either recreate ancient times materially, or culturally (for example, practicing the dietary methods of the "Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon," or trying to revive the Five Elements and I Ching divination), but never recreate ancient times in terms of the meaning of survival.

The meaning of words is not communication, but communication across time and space. But this function comes at a great sacrifice. To cross space means you cannot be present at the moment; to cross time means even the cultural context has significant gaps. You either revert to verbal communication, or on the basis of textual communication, make the most of your imagination to bridge the gap of cross-time communication, rather than being unaware of this gap. Worse, modern people have begun to understand verbal communication through the lens of textual communication, bringing the various disadvantages of textual communication into verbal communication. As a result, language is becoming increasingly impoverished and losing its vitality. Chen Danqing says that today we are even less skillful at insulting others than people in the past, lacking imagination even in insults.