Let's first take a look at the correct method. In Mr. Feng Youlan's own words, he said that in my opinion, philosophy is a purely intellectual viewpoint that provides rational analysis, summary, and explanation of experience. He also used famous quotes to say that the wise rely on human thinking and discernment in philosophy. We have always said that philosophy is a love of wisdom. What is love wisdom? What kind of work does wisdom do for people?
According to the ancient Greeks and later philosophers, there is a common understanding that philosophy requires abstract analysis of the real world and the derivation of certain viewpoints. Mr. Feng Youlai asked in specific terms, what is the real world?
It is some experience that we use reason to summarize, explain, analyze, and so on. The most important thing is the viewpoint, which should express this idea. He said to use famous sayings to speak of the wise, and he said that the most important part of the entire philosophical process is to form a speculative philosophical concept.
Everyone has studied Western philosophy, and philosophy is not just a speculative philosophy. Speculative philosophy is just a discipline of philosophy, and we will first focus on it. The fundamental recognition of speculative philosophy is not only a fundamental reason why Western philosophy can be established, but also an important reason why philosophy differs from other disciplines.
Mr. Feng Youlan also agrees with this concept, stating that philosophy begins with analyzing and interpreting experience, as well as analyzing the actual things in experience.
We have introduced his analysis of reality and truth, and his philosophical formulation of his own philosophy. In fact, it is not difficult for us to understand why he emphasized the analysis and interpretation of practical things. At that time, he particularly emphasized the viewpoint of practical things, and here he emphasized the truth rather than reality, and only regarded it as a formal affirmation.
What kind of method is the real method proposed by Mr. Feng Youlan?
It is a metaphysics constructed through analysis, but Mr. Feng Youlan achieved this analysis through logical analysis. He said that as far as I can see, the eternal and permanent contribution of Western philosophy to Chinese philosophy is the method of logical analysis.
This logical analysis method, when we talked about the four propositions and categories last time, has already given us an effect. Through the analysis of a proposition, we can come up with a concept and then propose a basic comprehensive thinking on multiple levels such as society, life, politics, and art. In the process of constructing the new theoretical system, it actually fully implements his viewpoint on logical analysis methods. It can be said that the new theoretical system is a perfect embodiment of Mr. Feng Youlan's political methods.
He said that the introduction of this method of proof was really very important because it gave the Chinese a new way of thinking and changed the whole idea.
Indeed, when such a method with logical analysis characteristics and strong speculative nature is applied to Chinese philosophy, as we have said to everyone before, it makes Chinese philosophy not sufficiently criticized and lacks systematicity. The controversy of philosophical nature is eliminated. He expresses the concepts of Chinese philosophy in a systematic and rational way, which is not only reflected in the new Neo Confucianism system, but also often seen in Mr. Feng Youlan's Three Histories. Many of the understandings of Chinese philosophers used are permeated with this method.
So when people are doing ideological research, they often unconsciously use this method. Whether this method is used well or not, we will talk about it later. Let's first take a look at what the negative method is. The negative method was actually proposed by Mr. Feng in the two volume history of Chinese philosophy. However, at that time, his expression was not very clear. He said that the methods used by modern people to study philosophy were different from those used to study science, and his initial analysis was more based on the differences between philosophy and science.
Let's first ask everyone, nowadays everyone should have received good scientific training and a certain foundation in philosophy. If we analyze, what do you think are the differences between philosophy and science in research methods?
Regarding methods such as data experimentation and observation, it is more of an empirical approach. Is this philosophy a pursuit of empiricism? We certainly say that there are some philosophical concepts that can be examined through empirical evidence, but are all fashion suitable for philosophy?
No, because many philosophical concepts are beyond your control. They are just judgments of value, not factual judgments, and you cannot make empirical judgments about value itself. This empirical evidence may not be entirely applicable here.
Another important aspect of science is deduction, which is a process of deducing based on certain assumptions. Deduction is actually a very important method. Is there deduction in philosophy?
There is a very clear deduction process in logic, such as syllogism, from one deduction to another. This method should be said to have some commonalities between science and philosophy.
But in fact, you will gradually learn in the future, such as courses like Philosophy of Science, where he systematically discusses the relationship between science and philosophy. It should be said that philosophy and science originally belonged to the same discipline. When studying science was not yet classified into different disciplines, philosophy was the servant of science and philosophy.
Later, with the emergence of inconsistencies between scientific methods and philosophy, science gradually separated from the discipline of learning and formed a discipline characterized by empirical evidence. As a result, philosophy gradually moved further away from the analysis of science.
The reason why we are discussing this issue is that we have a common question here, should we treat philosophy as a science? Can we pursue a philosophy with scientific rigor? Can we pursue it this way?
I want to construct a scientific philosophy that, as Mr. Feng previously proposed, is not limited by any time or space, does not involve any actual affirmation or negation, and therefore does not affect my conclusions. Actually, we can see that there is a scientific demand behind this approach, but it is not expressed clearly.
Mr. Feng's own summary of the scientific and philosophical methods is that the entire scientific method is a logical and rational one, while the philosophical method is intuitive and counter rational.
A method of intuition, which everyone can understand, because sometimes philosophical thinking does not require a systematic approach, such as through systematic observation, experimental data, and deduction of data to arrive at a conclusion. Many philosophers have an intuitive experience purely from the process of philosophical reflection.
However, the philosophy proposed by Mr. Feng was anti rational, and at that time, it was not known for what reasons. He said that intuitive animal mystical experiences had high value, but there was no need to mix them into philosophical methods. That is to say, at this time, the intuition and anti rationality in his philosophical methods were slightly different from what we imagine, such as including intuitive animal mystical experiences.
He said that the highest realm of Buddhism, although "unspeakable, unspeakable," is yet to be realized, its "unspeakable, unspeakable" is not philosophy.
He regards the state of emptiness proposed by Buddhism as unspeakable, but achievable and yet to be realized. However, he does not consider it a philosophy. So at this time, in the early two volume history of Chinese philosophy, he proposed more from the perspective of the division between philosophy and science, the difference between philosophical methods and scientific methods. Although he proposed intuition and counterrationality here, there is still a significant difference between it and the negative methods he later emphasized.
In 1934, there was a scholar named Xiong Wei. He published an article called 'Speak, Speak, Do Not Speak', and the title of this article clearly expresses the function of language and the limitations of language. You can say what you can say, but for what you cannot express in language, don't use language to limit it.
In this article, Xiong Wei systematically expressed his own many understandings about speaking. He believes that the "unspeakable" is not scary and not mysterious as long as we are not lazy and simply embrace it. If one is lazy, they will avoid it for fear of being caught off guard, and instead create some mysterious ghosts to trap themselves.
It can be seen that Xiong Wei's statement in this article is about what cannot be said. He specifically pointed out that when something cannot be said, he said we should go up and greet it. In fact, he is not afraid. Later, Xiong Wei sent this article to Feng Youlan, hoping that Feng Youlan could respond to it. However, Feng Youlan has not responded to him. In fact, the reason why we express this period of history is because we can see that Mr. Feng's discussion about "whether to say it or not" is not his own discussion. It should not be said that many scholars were already paying attention to this issue at that time. Mr. Feng himself, in 1943,... The entire negative method he proposed himself was systematically summarized and later published in "New Knowledge Words" This book has been included and published.
What kind of negative method is he proposing at this point?
Xin Zhiyan is one of the six books of the Zhenyuan era. At this time, it was closely related to her own philosophical thinking at that time. He advocated the most philosophical philosophy at that time and said that there are two methods of true metaphysics: one is a formalistic method and the other is an intuitionistic method.
