By Shen Xiaoqian

On July 6th, the SFL invited Prof. Yang Shoukan, an accomplished scholar from BNU, to deliver a lecture for sophomores of English and Japanese majors. Prof. Yang devoted himself to the study of western philosophy for decades. The lecture was entitled The Spirit of Criticism and Innovation of Western Philosophy.

Prof. Yang first of all mentioned an article entitled Yes and No to distinguish the tendency of acceptance in Chinese culture and the tendency of criticism in western culture. In regard to the criticism of Ancient Greek Philosophy, Aristotle’s maxim, “I love my teacher but love truth more”, is typical evidence that criticism had existed early at that time. During the 17th century, there was the controversy between empiricism and rationalism with the theme converted from ontology into epistemology. That generated many typical sayings that we are familiar with now, such as “Knowledge is power,” (by F. Bacon) and “I think, therefore I am,” (by R. Descartes). Criticism of contemporary western philosophy concerns the matter of philosophical turn, including the non-rational turn, linguistic turn and existentialism turn. Many philosophers think disputes over philosophy were due to the less standardized languages, so linguistic turn is an important part of that. Then Prof. Yang talked about M. Haidegger’s philosophy of existence and the essence of Dasein-- sorge (bersonge and forsorge).

During the lecture, Prof. Yang recommended students to study general logics, which he regarded as a must for undergraduates. He also regretted that a large number of Chinese researchers studied philosophy while few of them could make a breakthrough. If they didn’t cease criticizing and held their own opinions like western philosophers, theories could be developed. He also wished the students from SFL to make a contribution to the linguistic development of Chinese philosophy.

After acknowledging Prof. Yang, Dean Tao Wenhao concluded the lecture by quoting a remark mentioned by Prof. Yang in the lecture, “Everything that can be said is a statement about experience and facts; when it comes to something that cannot be said, we’d better keep silent.”