Chapter 71 10. Writing and spiritual life

From the 1980s to the 1990s, China's social scene has undergone major changes. The atmosphere of ideological enlightenment suddenly dissipated, and the commercial enthusiasm quickly spread across the country. Fashion replaced ideological trends as the main landscape of the times.Humanistic intellectuals were thrown from the center to the edge by this turning point, and some people lamented the loss of humanistic spirit.Facing this turning point, my mood was very calm.I had no interest in being a man of the hour, but now it just follows my nature to distance myself from the times and return to my inner life.The successive changes in my personal life also forced me to go back to my heart and contemplate various life problems that puzzled me.

In the 1990s, something unexpected happened to me, that is, I became a famous prose writer.In fact, when I write these things, I am not writing prose.Because of Niu Niu’s disaster, and because of the marriage change, I had to comfort myself and enlighten myself, but my resources were only philosophy, and my means were only words, so I wrote a lot of philosophical insights and thoughts, which are called philosophical essays.At the same time, due to the mood caused by the accident, it is difficult for me to devote myself to doing systematic academic work and writing most of the works, so the short text has become the most appropriate form.It was during the five or six years with frequent changes that I wrote the largest number of essays, and the quality was relatively high.On the face of it, it looked as if an external force had knocked me from one track to another.However, am I off the track of philosophy?I believe not.Never in all my hitherto career have I received so much help from philosophy, and for that I am grateful to philosophy.

After that, as if by inertia, I still wrote a lot of prose.For a while, because of the so-called fame, there were so many requests for manuscripts, and I was not good at rejecting them, so I inevitably wrote some stinky articles, expressing opinions on issues that I didn't really feel or think deeply about.Fortunately, I was vigilant against this situation in time, and I made up my mind to basically decline the draft.I have established a principle for myself: my writing must be my spiritual life at the same time, and the two must be integrated, otherwise its value will be questioned.A good author must be selfish in writing, he is never willing to just give, he requires that every give is also a harvest.He was seen giving the world a sentence, a book, but it was only a superficial appearance, and in fact he was adding some more reliable wealth to his mental storehouse.This has given me a standard, I will resolutely not write anything that I disdain to put in my spiritual warehouse, no matter what external benefits they can bring me.

As of 2002, I have published more than 300 essays, which have been compiled into three collections (1996), (1999), and "Quiet" (2002).Other essays that can be counted as essays include Suikanlu (1992), documentary works Niuniu, Notes from a Father (1996), and No News from Antarctica—Notes on King George Island (2002).I have also published some other collections, which are basically selections of the above-mentioned works in different ways. Among them, "Philosophy of Life" (2000) is worth mentioning. Sentences and paragraphs are arranged according to themes, which can be understood at a glance.Among all the works, I like "Fables of Life" very much. Most of them were written when Niuniu was seriously ill, but there is no trace of sorrow, and all sorrows and sorrows have been resolved by wisdom.The thought notes written in Antarctica, including the notes on reading the "Bible", are also good. It is such a luxury to meditate on the ancient wasteland for two months. It is unjustifiable not to write something good.

Looking back, my writing path and my spiritual path are quite unified, basically reflecting my journey of seeking enlightenment and detachment from confusion.I was originally a sensitive person, easily trapped by emotion, unable to escape.I am also a pessimistic person by nature. I have thought about death since I was a child, and it is easy to see through the world.Therefore, I face the double danger of being destroyed by color and falling into emptiness.My whole life has actually been battling both dangers, finding a safe middle ground between form and space.I am looking for a state that can enable me to enjoy life without indulging in it, and to see through life without being negative. My writing is the process of finding this state with the help of philosophy.People often say to me that through my works, they found that my heart is both peaceful and passionate, and I have a thorough view of life but is still full of idealism, and the opposite factors are combined very harmoniously.I dare not say that I have really reached this state, but I am confident that I am forming a relatively mature attitude towards life, which reflects the proper relationship between my personality and the world.I also believe that my life state and writing state today include all my past, my sensitivity in childhood and youth, my love of literature and my emphasis on life feelings when I was in college, and the indifferent state of mind in my mountain life after graduation. At each stage, the philosophical questioning deep in the heart, which is sometimes hidden and sometimes visible, seems to be preparing for this state and finding a home in it.

Some of my friends have a strong sense of social responsibility and want to use their works to directly affect the social process.I don't set such goals for myself.I never write to influence the world, but just to settle myself.What I think and write is basically to solve my own problems. Perhaps because of this, what I write can inspire those who face similar problems, and thus indirectly have the effect of affecting society.If a work has no spiritual value for the author himself, it cannot have such value for any reader.Self-salvation is the premise of any kind of salvation. If there is no awareness of self-salvation, the ambition to save the world can only be vanity, fame and ambition.Chinese intellectuals have always been enthusiastic about being the king's or the people's mentors, but in fact they are often just the king's officials and the people's actors. This may be part of the reason.

Speaking of the social significance of my work, I would like to mention a review written by my good friend Deng Zhenglai.Zhenglai is recognized by the academic circle as a serious scholar with outstanding achievements. He has focused on academics for many years and never writes anything other than academics.However, after reading my "No News from Antarctica", he made an exception and wrote a review titled "The "Eyes" of Society and Individuals Walking Alone". Call to recite.This book is a record of my participation in the Antarctic trip of humanities scholars, consisting of diaries and thought notes.The whole book not only records my fresh experience of living in Antarctica for two months, but also runs through the lines with my dissatisfaction and resistance to the strong news color of the event.Zhenglai can only see from the latter that this book is "a philosopher's description of his personal struggle practice under the gaze of society's 'eyes' from a unique perspective", and the way of struggle is to "participate in it But never give up the self, live in it but never give up the right to criticize it, and try to reconstruct this society in a monologue."Obviously he wasn't talking just about this trip to Antarctica, but about my general approach to social things.He caught it so accurately that I felt a sudden sense of enlightenment after reading it. Although I have always done this, I have never realized it so clearly.I believe that his interpretation can also be used to explain the way my general prose works intervene in society.

One of the most valuable things I have learned from my books is friendship.Three years ago, a beautiful woman who grew up in France came to visit me with flowers, and talked to me, saying that she never thought that there were such writers in China, whose thoughts were close to those of Europeans and were humane. Trusted her.A lovely woman recorded my work out of her liking, made it into a CD, and distributed it to many people.She brought the CD for me to listen to. The recitation was really good, with a natural voice and full of real feelings. It seemed that I was not listening to my own works. Those words seemed to come from another soul and moved me.A woman on the other side of the ocean sent me an e-mail, saying that she most admired my "seeing" and low-key attachment to those invisible things, and I sighed in my heart as a bosom friend.During an event, I ran into Jiang Zhujiu and Rui Naiwei who were nine-dan Go players. The husband introduced his wife to me and said generously, "She likes your book very much, but I am too embarrassed to tell you." The simple couple has since become good friends.It is often teased that my books are only favored by women.There was a saying in the university: "Boys must read Wang Xiaobo, and girls must read Zhou Guoping." I do have a large number of enthusiastic female readers, and I am only happy about it, and I don't feel embarrassed at all.I speculate that women like my books for two reasons.First, I am more able to appreciate women and understand their psychology. Who doesn't like to hear pertinent compliments.Second, women are farther away from the battlefield of utilitarianism than men. They have a quieter heart and value emotional life, so it is easy to resonate with my value orientation.However, I know that not only do I have a female readership, but I do have many devoted male readers as well.Not long ago, a boss of a company, with a burly figure and a rough personality, who was about 1.8 meters tall and drove a big Mitsubishi, suddenly became obsessed with my book at the age of 40, and confessed to me so innocently that he began to think about life from then on .However, I don't need to provide evidence here. If necessary, there will be men from all walks of life to testify for me.I often meet politicians and business people who enjoyed my books as students and are now in key positions.When they narrated their reading history to me, I was both moved and deeply gratified.

My works have won me a wide audience outside the professional circle, and at the same time, I have been criticized by some professionals for not doing their job properly.Fortunately, I don't care much about it. When I am doing what I really want to do, other people's praise and criticism are not important.For me, there is no distinction between a main job and a side job, and everything I do out of my inner needs is my main job.If it is necessary to say that the major is the right profession, then my major is philosophy, and most of the works I have written do not leave the scope of philosophy at all.In my prose, I think and write around the most fundamental philosophical questions, such as the meaning of life, death, time and self, love and loneliness, suffering and happiness, soul and transcendence, etc.In the modern commercialized society, these problems become more and more acute because they are forgotten, and become the common confusion in the spiritual life of modern people.I think, maybe it is for this reason that my works have gained a wider resonance.I am just talking about philosophy in a literary way. If you think that philosophy can only be expressed in academic works, you are ignorant of the history of philosophy. Just mention Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire, Nietzsche and even Plato. .In terms of readers' acceptance, so many people have experienced the charm of philosophy and approached philosophy through my works, which gives me enough reasons to believe that what I am doing is an out-and-out philosophical career.It is evident that what readers value is mainly the philosophical content of my work, rather than literary technique.I have to overcome my shame to mention the fact that I am widely regarded as one of the most influential philosophers in China today.To accuse such a philosopher of not doing philosophy properly is somewhat unreasonable.

I do not underestimate the importance of academic work, and I have a lot of respect for my colleagues who have done this kind of work in a down-to-earth manner and achieved results.As far as I am concerned, I am not willing to do so-called pure academic research, but prefer to incorporate academic work into the overall track of my spiritual exploration in my own way.Since the 1990s, I have indeed rarely published academic monographs. After "Nietzsche and Metaphysics" (1990), it was not until 1995 that I spent another half a year studying Husserl and Gadda in order to cope with a project I collaborated with. Moore's work, and wrote several papers on their theory of meaning.I groped in Husserl's philosophical maze with extreme patience, followed him step by step to explore the source of meaning, and finally figured out the path of the maze, and found that it was actually a dead end that could not lead to the source.At the end of the 1990s, I spoke at two international seminars in Sils-Maria, Switzerland and Heidelberg, Germany, discussing a problem that has been hovering in my mind for a long time, that is, Chinese people’s acceptance of Western philosophy. Scholars were amazed.I found from Nietzsche's reception history in China that once Western philosophy entered China, it often lost its metaphysical character, so it ceased to be philosophy and became a theory used to solve Chinese social problems. Profound differences in tradition.I decided to conduct a case study of the introduction of Western philosophy into China at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China as a way to conduct this research, and this monograph is still being written.Recently, I am conceiving and starting to write a book on Nietzsche's philosophy of spirit, which is a series with the life philosophy of "Turning Point" and the ontology philosophy of "Nietzsche and Metaphysics", which can be regarded as the conclusion of my Nietzsche research work.