Philosophy is not only a thought, but also a way of life that is filled with ideas and changed
Robert Nozick, a prominent philosopher and thinker of the 20th century, is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University and a leading figure in the philosophical community of contemporary English-speaking countries. He has made important contributions to political philosophy, decision theory, and epistemology. He is best known for his 1974 book Anarchy, State, and Utopia, in which he refuted John Rawls's 1971 A Theory of Justice from a libertarian point of view.
01
Producer of new ideas
Being famous for a book in his early years is really unsettling. In the eyes of others, I am a "political philosopher", but I never think so. Most of my writing and energy is focused on other issues.
Anarchy, the State and Utopia (Anarchy for short) is an unintentional book. From 1971 to 1972, I spent my entire life at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, adjacent to Stanford University, where I planned to work on free will. Although I am interested in sociology and political philosophy, that is not my main interest. For months, I made no progress on the issue of free will. In early December, I was invited to give a lecture by a student group at Stanford University, where I made a few observations on how the state emerged from (individualistic) anarchy. These observations seemed to have some merit, and in early January, when I put them into writing, I received Rawls's A Theory of Justice from Cambridge University Press. I had been waiting for this book for a long time, having read the manuscript and had extensive discussions with Rawls. The lecture at Harvard University led me to further develop the theory of the right to justice within the framework of liberal justice. The publication of A Theory of Justice inspired me to write about the theory of rights and my critique of Rawls's book, which was quite different from my most recent discussion with him. By the end of February, I had completed three papers: "On the Original State", "On Distributive Justice", and "On Utopia". "On Utopia" was a speech I gave at a meeting of the American Philosophical Association, and I was invited by Stanford University for it. These three articles are intrinsically related, and with a little integration and material supplementation, it seems that they can be made into a book. My visit to Stanford University ended in June, so I didn't want to go back to the unmanageable issue of free will and instead began to concentrate on writing the book.
Rawls and Nozick
The criticisms of Anarchy have been so voluminous that I have not paid close attention to them and have not responded to them. I don't want to waste my life writing articles like "The Sequel to Anarchy" or "A Review of the Anarchy Sequel". There are other philosophical questions waiting for me to ponder: the question of knowledge, the question of the ego, the question of why there is a being and not the question of nothing, and, of course, the question of free will. And, I believe, responding to and perusing these criticisms does not effectively distance me from the ideas in the book. It's in my nature that I always try to defend the views that are being attacked, the attacks themselves, and if I always think about these criticisms as a defender, how do I know that my views are misunderstood?
I also do not respond to the criticism of my other articles. What I want to say is that my contribution to human wisdom is not to elaborate or defend my previous ideas, but to propose new ones. What inspires me is to think about new questions and put forward new ideas, which has been and still is. I know that there are philosophers who are obsessed with a certain field or a certain topic and have profound insights, and I have benefited a lot from them, but that is not my ambition.
02
The core task of philosophy
Philosophers look for structures that illustrate how things are connected and constructed. Finding complexity in simple problems and mining simplicity from complex problems. The philosopher's understanding of things is structural, and its approach is clear thought and logical reasoning.
When Western philosophy was just beginning, it was Socrates who made critical thinking an activity that pursued clarity and method. He wants everything to be conscious, clear, critically aware of the definition of certain important concepts, the formulation of the principles of action, and the method of reason itself.
The Death of Socrates, Jacques-Louis David, 1787
Socrates, with his wisdom and clarity of thought, has been inspired by countless philosophers of later generations, and he embodies the vivid image of a philosopher as it should be. Medieval thinkers worshipped the depth of Aristotle's theories and called him a "philosopher." However, if "philosopher" is a specific noun, Socrates comes to mind. With regard to Socrates, a thoughtful and clear-thinking thinker, there are some core issues in which people in the academy have different views. What does Socrates mean when he says he doesn't know the answer to his own question? What are the prerequisites for his approach to critical discussion? He said that he wanted to sublimate those souls who conflicted with him, but what was the intention?
Sometimes, a question inspires me to analyze a concept; Sometimes, a central idea leads to a new and puzzling question; Sometimes, these interrelated questions overlap to form a longer chain of reasoning.
One of the central tasks of philosophy is to extract and justify norms, norms and principles, to help us face a whole lot of disorganized possibilities, different possibilities of action, possibilities of belief and ways of being.
03
Stand on the shoulders of the structure
The Randian Argument was a by-product of my independent thinking about socio-philosophical issues and the moral foundations of capitalism. Quinn's essay "Experience, Theory, and Language" is not the result of my independent thinking about the philosophy of language, but rather a reflection on Quine's own views. When I was done, I re-read it, and to my great surprise, in addition to a few of my own opinions and new questions (e.g., why did Pierre Dieng's ideas last so long?). I found that there is a huge difference between thinking about an issue independently and thinking around someone else's point of view. When you approach a problem along someone else's theoretical path, your vision, your findings, are limited by the pattern of that person's structural problem. You are thinking in his "problem awareness".
The Traveler on the Sea of Fog, Caspar David Friedrich, 1818
Psychologists have studied a phenomenon called "anchoring and adjustment." For example, ask a test subject to estimate a person's height by estimating the degree of deviation from the reference point. For example, if the reference point is five feet, if he thinks the person is five feet seven inches tall, say "plus seven inches." Interestingly, the estimated height quoted will vary depending on the reference point. Theoretically, datum points do not make a difference. If the reference point were changed to six feet, instead of five, then a person who was actually five feet seven inches tall would be estimated to be six feet "minus five inches." Any given height can be positioned by the same degree of deviation from these two reference points. However, judging the height of the same person, the set of estimates based on five feet is less than the set of estimates based on six feet. It appears that the datum has a gravitational attraction to the estimate, pulling the estimate towards the datum.
I think it's roughly the same when you borrow someone else's mind to approach a problem. Even if your conclusions deviate, you will be pulled "like the gravitational pull of the earth" towards someone else's point of view. But I don't mean to say that I refuse to comment extensively on historical figures in order to avoid falling into their mindset.
I just didn't have the impulse to do it, and of course, Socrates was an exception.
I don't think within the framework of a particular philosopher's mind, but my intellectual baggage (in addition to the tools of mathematical logic commonly used by contemporary philosophers) is equipped with various intellectual structures. Decision theory (and the material that links utility theory, game theory, and social choice theory) is a construct that I think about, use, revise, and develop on a regular basis. There is also evolutionary theory, microeconomic theory, and inductive logic. I find these intellectual structures fascinating and endearing, and I hope to search for well-established structures in other fields to see if I can find a place for philosophy and be inspired to come up with a similar philosophical structure.
04
Philosophy as a way of life
At Princeton, the general interest in interpretation among faculty and students creates a very inspiring atmosphere for the exchange of ideas. At Columbia College, when Wright Mills's "The Power Elite" was first published in the late 1950s, every student had to be clear about how he or she viewed the ruling elites of American society as presented in the book, regardless of the issues being studied. In the 1970s, Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions became a popular academic classic in many universities, and after that, sociology became popular for a while. Sometimes I ask students if there is a serious book in the non-fiction genre that all (or almost all) of their friends have read or want to read. For the past 50 years, I've gotten "no". I don't know why there isn't a single academic point of view, not a single academic book that arouses the interest of students to discuss—is it the film that has replaced books as the general focus of students' attention? - This is an unfortunate thing for the students (and for the teachers, who can no longer take it for granted that the students are enthusiastic about the latest ideas).
Philosophers seek intellectual understanding, but philosophy and the driving force behind it are not entirely intellectual.
The pleasure of philosophy is endless, and the world of philosophy is boundless, and it can be thought about philosophically. But the deep motivation of philosophers is to explain and understand the root of things. What are our beliefs, ethical principles, reasoning and proof bases on? What is the nature of spirit, matter, identity identity, causality, knowledge, free will, truth, and consciousness? How do you bring it all together and merge into a meaningful whole? What could be more important to think about? What could be more sublime than to think about these questions? Aristotle said that this is the noblest cause of mankind.
Raphael, School of Athens, 1509-1511
Philosophy is not only an idea, but also a way of life, a way of life that is filled with ideas and changed.
The so-called "philosophical survival" usually means that people should be calm in the face of setbacks, not happy with things and not sad for themselves, maintain a balanced mentality, and calmly face misfortunes and disasters. When I entered the field, excited by the intellectual methods and insights of philosophy, I clearly did not have the desire to develop such an attitude.
At the end of 1994, I had a major surgery for stomach cancer, followed by months of chemotherapy and radiotherapy, all along with terrible statistics (I don't think it's the most important parameter, anyway, isn't that a personal probability-bias I need to know?). I've found that even when I'm taking the strongest steps to avoid the most probable, I'm not complaining, I'm not depressed. I have lived to be 55 years old, much longer than most people in human history. (To be clear, I woke up 7 hours after anesthesia and said to the doctor, "I'm not going to have any more surgery, my stomach is gone.") "It's not a complaint. ）
For the rest of my life, I didn't have any strong desire to change my life. I didn't have the urge to travel to Tahiti, and I didn't want to be an opera singer, a racing driver, or a dean. I just want to love my wife and children as much as I always do, to have fun with them, and just to do the things I usually do: think, teach, write. What I need to do now is to make them better and faster. It is not difficult to accept my current situation with peace of mind, but for those I love dearly, this danger can lead to a war of all soldiers.
Nietzsche once demanded: You should live like this, as you wish, and this life can be repeated forever. This seems a bit demanding. Philosophy does, however, constitute a way of life, a way of life that deserves to be lived from along. Just as Socrates first demonstrated to us.