民哲的短处与长处

当今世界专业哲学之low在这次24届世界哲学大会之后专哲们对民哲的调侃之不得要领中暴露无遗。所有的调侃都集中于大会期间一些民哲文章的可笑之处，而最“宽容”的也不过只是指出了历史上（应该是康德以前，亚里士多德之后）的所有哲学大师们都是民哲，而没有表现出半点有关今天之民哲对于处于衰亡中的主流哲学之价值的最基本的认识。

要想了解今天的民哲对于处于衰亡中的主流哲学之价值，我们需要先对今天的民哲之短处与长处有一个最基本的了解。其实，今天的民哲之基本的短处恰是其最基本的长处，那就是今天的民哲不需要按照专哲所设计好的套路来把握了解哲学历史。

它之所以是一个短处或缺点是因为过去数百年里这个世界为建立专哲们现有的体系注入了亿万资金，因此不按照专哲们所设计好的套路来了解哲学历史意味着不能享用那亿万资金投资的成果，因而很多时候在知识的积累上就会出现事倍功半的囧况。

但是，由于今天的专业哲学界与今天的专业科学界的一个根本不同，民哲们的上述短处或缺点又成为了他们的一个长处，那就是他们不需要被迫接受专哲们对于哲学历史的错误的结论，更不用认同专哲们对待哲学的错误态度。

民哲们的上述长处之难能可贵一方面在于那是今天经过了专哲系统按照他们的文化严苛地筛选[i]出来的人根本不可能具有的，另一方面在于今天的专哲们对于哲学历史的错误结论太多了。

当面临一件有着正反两方面效果的事情时，就是小学生也知道要衡量一下那件事到底是利多还是弊多。现在的弊是不利于掌握专哲们长期发展累积起来的哲学历史知识，而利是不必被迫接受那些知识中的错误。如果那些知识中的错误如沧海一粟，那么显然是弊大于利，但如果那些知识中的错误可以随手捻来，那么就是利大于弊了。

当然，这里对于利与弊的判定一定要是从对于世界哲学的发展的影响来看，而不是针对个人的光环或可笑之处来评判。而这次哲学大会之后的专哲们对于民哲们的嘲笑本身表明他们根本不具备从对哲学整体发展的影响的角度来看问题的能力，这也是专业哲学这个学科内的文化选择所造就的结果，他们所接受的教育使得他们只会认同权威而嘲笑异类，因而缺乏基本的审美与价值判断能力，那是因为他们的权威并不完全是建立在真理的基础之上而更是建立在名望和权势之上的。下面给出一个例子让大家见识一下今天的专哲可以如何凭借他们的权威来随心所欲地下论断的。

前天我在具有权威性的哲学网站（Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy）看到一篇文章“Hegel's Dialectics”（https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel-dialectics/ last time accessed 2018-8-29），其中有这样一段话（原文在后面）：

这里黑格尔拒绝了传统的归谬法，也就是说当一个论证的前提导致矛盾是，这个前提必须被抛弃，没有结果。如黑格尔在现象学中所说，这样的论点

只是怀疑主义，它只在结果中看到纯无且从只从事实中抽象出这样的结论：这里的无是从前提的无中所得来的(PhG §79)。

虽然该文作者用的是肯定的语气，但是对我来说，“拒绝归谬法”是对黑格尔的一个极为严重的指责，这与在很多其它的场合人们所说的黑格尔试图用辩证逻辑取代形式逻辑是同出一辙的，因为如果黑格尔真的因为辨证法而拒绝归谬法，那么就坐实了对他用辩证法取代形式逻辑的指控。

所以，我专门去查了他所给出的那个参考文献（PhG§79）,因为黑格尔现象学的英文译本有很多，我必须用他给出的那一版。我从那里的§79中找到他所引用的那句话，但不论是那句话本身还是上下文都根本看不出黑格尔有拒绝归谬法的意思，连那个意思的边都沾不上。因为上述的斯坦福文章的那段文字之前还提到了另一处参考文献(EL §§79, 82)，那是黑格尔的百科全书中的两段，我又专门找出他所给出的那个译本中的那两段，也连拒绝归谬法的意思的边都找不到。

这里涉及到有与无的一个基本哲学：如果我看到有人说“黑色的火焰”，那么我只要把那句话的出处指出来就可以作为有人说过“黑色的火焰”这句话的证据；但是如果我从没看过任何人说过“黑色的火焰”，那么我也根本无法“证明”从未有人说过“黑色的火焰”这句话。

在本文后面，我先给出上述的斯坦福文章的原文，然后给出那（PhG§79）和(EL §§79, 82)。因为这不是翻译的问题，而是理解的问题，即便我把它们译成中文，还是得读者自己去看是否它们能表明黑格尔拒绝了传统的归谬法，因此我就不对（PhG§79）和(EL §§79, 82)进行翻译了，只是将原文列出。

 

附录。斯坦福文选原文，及相关的黑格尔文章英译版：

1）斯坦福文章原文：

Here, Hegel rejects the traditional, reductio ad absurdum argument, which says that when the premises of an argument lead to a contradiction, then the premises must be discarded altogether, leaving nothing. As Hegel suggests in the Phenomenology, such an argument

is just the skepticism which only ever sees pure nothingness in its result and abstracts from the fact that this nothingness is specifically the nothingness of that from which it results. (PhG §79)

…………

• [EL] The Encyclopedia Logic: Part 1 of the Encyclopaedia of Philosophical Sciences [Enzyklopädie der philosophischen Wissenschaften I], translated by T.F. Geraets, W.A. Suchting, and H.S. Harris, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991.
•  [PhG], Phenomenology of Spirit [Phänomenologie des Geistes], translated by A.V. Miller, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977.

2）(PhG §79)：

79. The necessary progression and interconnection of the forms of the unreal consciousness will by itself bring to pass the completion of the series. To make this more intelligible, it may be remarked, in a preliminary and general way, that the exposition of the untrue consciousness in its untruth is not a merely negative procedure. The natural consciousness itself normally takes this one-sided view of it; and a knowledge which makes this one-sidedness its very essence is itself one of the patterns of incomplete consciousness which occurs on the road itself, and will manifest itself in due course. This is just the skepticism which only ever sees pure nothingness in its result and abstracts from the fact that this nothingness is specifically the nothingness of that from which it results. For it is only when it is taken as the result of that from which it emerges, that it is, in fact, the true result; in that case it is itself a determinate nothingness, one which has a content. The scepticism that ends up with the bare abstraction of nothingness or emptiness cannot get any further from there, but must wait to see whether something new comes along and what it is, in order to throw it too into the same empty abyss. But when, on the other hand, the result is conceived as it is in truth, namely, as a determinate negation, a new form has thereby immediately arisen, and in the negation the transition is made through which the progress through the complete series of forms comes about of itself.

 

3）(EL §§79, 82)：

§ 79

With regard to its form, the logical has three sides: (a) the side of abstraction or of the understanding, (13) the dialectical or negatively rational side, [and] ('Y) the speculative or positively rational one.

These three sides do not constitute three parts of the Logic, but are moments of everything logically real; i.e., of every concept or of everything true in general. All of them together can be put under the first moment, that of the understanding; and in this way they can be kept separate from each other, but then they are not considered in their truth.-Like the division itself, the remarks made here concerning the determinations of the logical are only descriptive anticipations at this point.

§ 82

('Y) The speculative or positively rational apprehends the unity of the determinations in their opposition, the affirmative that is contained in their dissolution and in their transition.

(1) The dialectic has a positive result, because it has a determinate content, or because its result is truly not empty, abstract nothing, but the negation of certain determinations, which are contained in the result precisely because it is not an immediate nothing, but a result.

(2) Hence this rational [result}, although it is something-thought and something-abstract, is at the same time something-concrete, because it is not simple, formal unity, but a unity of distinct determinations. For this reason philosophy does not deal with mere abstractions or formal thoughts at all, but only with concrete thoughts.

(3) The mere logic of the understanding is contained in the speculative

Logic and can easily be made out of the latter; nothing more is needed for this than the omission of the dialectical and the rational; in this way it becomes what is usually called logic, a descriptive collection of determinations of thought put together in various ways, which in their finitude count for something infinite.

Addition . In respect of its content, what is rational is so far from being just the property of philosophy that we must rather say that it is there for all people, whatever level of culture and spiritual development they possess. That is the sense in which, from time immemorial, man has been called, quite correctly, a rational essence. The empirically universal way of knowing about what is rational is that of prejudgment and presupposition; and, as we explained earlier (§ 45), the general character of what is rational consists in being something unconditioned which therefore contains its determinacy within itself. In this sense, we know about the rational above all, because we know about God, and we know him as [the one] who is utterly self-determined. But also, the knowledge of a citizen about his country and its laws is a knowledge about what is rational, inasmuch as these things count for him as something unconditioned, and at the same time as a universal, to which he must subject his individual will; and in the same sense, even the knowing and willing of a child is already rational, when it knows its parents' will, and wills that.

To continue then, the speculative is in general nothing but the rational (and indeed the positively rational), inasmuch as it is something thought. The term "speculation" tends to be used in ordinary life in a very vague, and at the same time, secondary sense--as, for instance, when people talk about a matrimonial or commercial speculation. All that it is taken to mean here is that, on the one hand, what is immediately present must be transcended, and, on the other, that whatever the content of these speculations may be, although it is initially only something subjective, it ought not to remain so, but is to be realised or translated into objectivity.

The comment made earlier about the Idea holds for this ordinary linguistic usage in respect of "speculations," too. And this connects with the further remark that very often those who rank themselves among the more cultivated also speak of "speculation" in the express sense of something merely subjective. What they say is that a certain interpretation of natural or spiritual states of affairs or situations may certainly be quite right and proper, if taken in a merely "speculative" way, but that experience does not agree with it, and nothing of the sort is admissible in actuality.

Against these views, what must be said is that, with respect to its true significance, the speculative is, neither provisionally nor in the end either, something merely subjective; instead, it expressly contains the very antitheses at which the understanding stops short (including therefore that of the subjective and objective, too), sublated within itself; and precisely for this reason it proves to be concrete and a totality. For this reason, too, a speculative content cannot be expressed in an onesided proposition. If, for example, we say that "the Absolute is the unity of the subjective and the objective," that is certainly correct; but it is still one-sided, in that it expresses only the aspect of unity and puts the emphasis on that, whereas in fact, of course, the subjective and the objective are not only identical but also distinct.

a. eine Historie

It should also be mentioned here that the meaning of the speculative is to be understood as being the same as what used in earlier times to be called "mystical", especially with regard to the religious consciousness and its content. When we speak of the "mystical" nowadays, it is taken as a rule to be synonymous with what is mysterious and incomprehensible; and, depending on the ways their culture and mentality vary in other respects, some people treat the mysterious and incomprehensible as what is authentic and genuine, whilst others regard it as belonging to the domain of superstition and deception. About this we must remark first that "the mystical" is certainly something mysterious, but only for the understanding, and then only because abstract identity is the principle of the understanding.

But when it is regarded as synonymous with the speculative, the mystical is the concrete unity of just those determinations that count as true for the understanding only in their separation and opposition. So if those who recognise the mystical as what is genuine say that it is something utterly mysterious, and just leave it at that, they are only declaring that for them, too, thinking has only the Significance of an abstract positing of identity, and that in order to attain the truth we must renounce thinking, or, as they frequently put it, that we must "take reason captive." As we have seen, however, the abstract thinking of the understanding is so far from being something firm and ultimate that it proves itself, on the contrary, to be a constant sublating of itself and an overturning into its opposite, whereas the rational as such is rational precisely because it contains both of the opposites as ideal moments within itself. Thus, everything rational can equally be called "mystical"; but this only amounts to saying that it transcends the understanding. It does not at all imply that what is so spoken of must be considered inaccessible to thinking and incomprehensible.

 

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[i] 专业哲学的主要筛选机制有：1）学校考试制度。如果不承认现有的专业理论体系中的结论，不可能通过考试。这一制度对于疲于应付考试的学生来说是一种很好的洗脑手段；2）提拔机制。圈子内的异类无法得到提升成为专业领导；3）文章发表与书籍出版。这一机制将彻底堵住体系内任何可能不认同现有理论定论的人的出路。