Revolution of Book Studio Li

Author: Zhu Xueqin
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-07-01
Features: "Revolution in the Study," which is actually the author's irony. When mentioning the Frankfurt School, the author said: "The older critics were often revolutionary in spirit, and Engels even directly participated in street battles. By the time of the Frankfurt School, even though the critique was intense, it was merely scattering beans to fight battles within the study, closing doors to guide the world and claim superiority for oneself." This is actually also Zhu Xueqin's reflection on intellectuals, including himself. China's "thought" since the early 1980s has shown no signs of stopping. The "Neo-Confucianism" that emerged internally and the "Neo-Marxism" introduced externally both have a tendency toward cultural determinism. In symbolic form, the two schools are vastly different—one Chinese, one Western—but in terms of thinking, they can share Hegel and find a common language in Hegel that exaggerates the role of spiritual concepts to the point of topsy-turvy.
In addition, there are two other points worth sympathizing with. First, the discourse of intellectuals is confined within a limited range. In most cases, they can only discuss issues with a safety margin within this range. This fence not only closes off the broader reality but also affects the healthy development of issues within the fence. This is a realistic situation. Second, the collective "A Q spirit" of intellectuals. Whenever they encounter setbacks in the real world, especially severe ones, they can only retreat to their studies. Soon enough, they will engage in self-deceptive depth interpretations of this confined situation, exaggerating the symbolic world they can only handle on their desks as the decisive factor of the real world. They are not the ones confined but the deciders of the confinement, where their desks determine the direction of the external world, rather than the external world limiting them to their studies. This is a spiritual ailment.
If the realistic situation warrants sympathy, then the spiritual ailment can be criticized. I call this ailment "the passive voice revolution in the study." The passive voice subverts the active voice—simply changing the voice from passive to active in the symbols is enough. Marx once said that German classical philosophy was a revolution that the Germans dared to undertake only in their studies, while the French carried out in politics. This roughly conveys the same idea.