Philosophy professor and tutor of "Wonderful Flower Theory" Liu Qing: How to "be a sober modern person?"
"It's not that I don't understand. The world is changing fast." When I was young, I heard Cui Jian sing like this. For more than 20 years, the rhythm of the times seems to have never slowed down.
Perhaps, this world has always been turbulent and changeable, but today's wave of globalization has swallowed all kinds of barriers, making people more truly feel the impact of all directions, sometimes surprised and sometimes panicked.
This is Professor Liu Qing's emotion. I believe you and I are very worried.
In today's China, almost all public issues will cause controversy, and arguments often make people tend to overwhelm “thinking” with “sharpness”.
But how to deal with dissident opinions and controversial opponents is a certain test of the author's knowledge and character.
In the seventh season of "Wonderful Flowers", Professor Liu Qing, who awakened the four with a sentence "Man is a purpose, not a tool", while entering the public's field of vision, he also brought the academic knowledge and ideas of the college into public discussion. .
Building a bridge between the intellectuals in the ivory tower and the public in the public sphere is one of the reasons why Liu Qing entered the "Wonderful Flower".
Faced with the debate of "Would you like to reply to the news after work", Liu Qing's sentence "Man is the purpose, not the tool" made this philosophy professor, who was rarely paid attention to, come to the public and became an "idealist." "And the spokesperson of "Human World".
Before the broadcast of "Wonderful Flowers", Liu Qing's most out of the world was to record online classes, and he talked about niche and unpopular Western modern thoughts.
After "Wonderful Flowers", he has an additional label-"a sober modern man", which is sought after by many young people, starting a "breaking circle" journey from the ivory tower to the public.
What is sober?
What is considered "sane"?
Liu Qing gave his definition: "You must be able to be conscious and take control of your own life." Although it is a definition, it does not set limits on thinking.
In "Being a Sober Modern Man", Liu Qing combines history, culture, politics, philosophy and many other elements to introduce philosophical concepts into the analysis of social events, so that the public can distinguish between problems and concepts when facing this era. To clarify our situation and self-understanding, think about "what should people believe in", "how should we live", "how to understand and deal with difficulties" and many other issues.
Liu Qing is good at presenting his profound knowledge and deep thinking to readers in a clear and lively, cordial and friendly way.
There is no condescending instruction, only a sincere intellectual invitation.
He is also known as "a model of public writing in the Chinese world."
Liu Qing, born in 1963, is a well-known scholar in the field of political philosophy in China. He is currently the Zijiang Distinguished Professor of East China Normal University and a doctoral supervisor in the Department of Political Science.
When he was in his 20s, in order to understand "what is the nature of the world", he abandoned his work and went to study in the United States. Since then, he has been focusing on academic research in the ivory tower. exist".
Since 2003, he has written an annual review of Western thought circles at the end of each year, which has attracted the attention of academic circles. Scholar Chen Jiaying commented: "There is no second person in China who can write it."
Unthinking is one of the sources of anxiety among contemporary young people
In 2020, a batch of ridiculous words such as "yes, but not necessary" and "not necessary" will become popular online.
Although it is a ridicule, it also represents the way some young people view the world.
In an era when everyone can speak up, different viewpoints rush into confrontation, and while "injuring the enemy a thousand", they will also "injure eight hundred" at the same time.
Values are constantly being shocked until they are crumbling, which is one of the reasons why many young people feel confused and lost.
Liu Qing also mentioned the situation in the preface of the book: On the new horizon, many beliefs and perceptions that are undoubtedly "as they are" will encounter the question of "why is this" or the confusion of "not necessarily so". , Even the denial of "it doesn't have to be this way".
How to refresh the way of thinking, stand firm in the turbulent river of thought, embrace the more distant and vast world, and learn to think and discriminate is particularly important.
In Liu Qing's view, the current fragmented, short and fast information dissemination method allows everyone to indulge in a large amount of rich and interesting information, and gradually lose the ability to read in depth, and lack a lot of long-term in-depth thinking. It is not easy to establish a systematic thinking framework.
Therefore, when facing a problem, what we think of as "own answer" is always wandering and swaying repeatedly.
He once said in an interview that facing a problem, "the judgment of thinking and not thinking will be different. After you read and explore, or even think philosophically, you will find that various big problems have different opinions. "
And only when you have a systematic ideological system and face different viewpoints, can you have enough reasons to deal with the doubts, criticisms, and challenges of these different viewpoints.
Whether you insist on or change your own ideas, there are enough reasons, which can be regarded as possessing sustainable autonomy.
Popularity is not destined to be superficial
Although it is very difficult to form a subjective and internally unified self in the current pluralistic society, it is still possible to approach this goal.
The confusion will never go away.
It is meaningful to have some confusion and perplexity, because it will drive the continuous development of life.
Therefore, Liu Qing’s answer is: “Being a sober modern person starts with understanding who you are, what you’re doing, and why you do it, and you’ll take a step forward, open your mind, and get in touch with more possibilities in life. , To reclaim their own territory, break the sense of distance from real life, and regain a new self-understanding."
Many of Liu Qing's views in "Being a Sober Modern Man" can inspire us to explore the world and ourselves in a rational way. For example, his view on the payment for knowledge business criticized by the intellectual elite is: " Business logic supports the popularization of knowledge, which may not only make knowledge'vulgarization', but also allow knowledge to gain strong vitality."
Regarding the issue of real estate, in the book, Liu Qing also tried to transcend economic vision and understand housing demand from a humanistic and social perspective: "The so-called rigid demand or basic living conditions is not only materialistic, but also related to the social and cultural mentality. Rigid demand permeates The elements of'mindness'...Why do we need a living space much larger than the volume of the body? In addition to human sensory experience, there are also elements of social cognition, culture and mentality such as social status, identity and peer expectations."
Regarding the starization of scholars he is experiencing, he quotes the philosopher Marcus Gabriel’s case argument in the book: “Popularity is not destined to be superficial. Serious philosophers can still attract a wide range of readers without changing. It must be sleek or superficial."
Cover Journalist Zhang Jie
Intern reporter Liu Kexin