Production (Second Issue)

Author: Wang Min'an
Publisher:
Publication Date: 2005-04-01
Features: The Greeks once regarded friendship as a major ethical and philosophical issue. For them, friendship was a way of life. But for a long time, friendship has been detached from the perspective of philosophy and has become a secular practice game. It wasn't until the appearance of Derrida's The Politics of Friendship that the return of friendship to philosophy reached its climax. What is friendship? What are the types of friendship? How does friendship shape personality and temperament? Where is the boundary between the privacy and sociality of friendship? What is the relationship between friendship and war? What are the differences between private friendship and friendship between collectives and between nations? These are the questions explored in this special issue "The Return of Friendship." The focus on "production" originates from the Marxist tradition, and it is in the process of production that Marx discovered the secret of capital accumulation. After Marx, "production" gained richer connotations: the cultural sphere is the production of knowledge, the spiritual sphere is the production of desire, and the political sphere is the production of power. Society becomes a huge production machine—and what is called the "consumer society" is merely an ironic note on it. "Production" has become the key term for diagnosing contemporary society. On the other hand, the word "production" holds a special meaning for modern Chinese people: we once found ourselves trapped in the cage of "production," and now, we hope that this word, lost in the depths of history, will regain vitality. Of course, words have their own fate, and all we can do is extend an invitation. The intrinsic semantics of "production" is generation, transformation, and vitality, which aligns with the temperament of contemporary intellectuals—constantly thinking and critiquing. This book is mainly divided into five parts: special topics, figures, art, reviews, and documents, exploring numerous issues.