Chapter 36 Distant professor

one Max Weber studied and taught at the University of Heidelberg, but at that time he focused on law and economics, and sociology came later. There are many works by him, but the first one I read was an excerpt edited by a British scholar, and the Chinese translation was published by Joint Publishing.The edition is small and thin, but has a heavy academic weight.A large number of such pamphlets were published in China in the early 1980s. Everyone rushed to read and discuss them.Looking back on those years, I am still very excited and full of emotion.I can't recall the title of Weber's book or the name of the person who excerpted it, but many of the ideas remain.

For example, related to our systematic investigation of Europe this time, Weber's discussion of the characteristics of Western civilization had a considerable influence on China in the 1980s. I remember that after Weber carefully compared ancient Egypt, Babylon, India and China, he believed that Western civilization was a series of spirits and methods that came from Greece and Rome and matured in the market economy, such as rational concepts, civic concepts, professional concepts, and social structure consciousness. , free labor awareness, and maritime trade awareness, such as systematic methods, experimental methods, and mathematical methods, are Western civilization when they are combined together. We cannot grasp one point and generalize.He is very knowledgeable, citing extensively, and convincingly proves again and again that many historical phenomena have also occurred in the East, but because of different spiritual trends, basic concepts, and methods of operation, they are completely different from Western civilization, which is also different from Western civilization. It is in this series of differences and differences that one's own nature is established.

I once wondered how much a scholar in Heidelberg can know about Eastern society?Especially for China, which has so many families and is unfathomable, will there be too much arbitrariness?But later this suspicion was gradually dispelled, because I read some chapters of his monograph on ancient Chinese society, the details of the materials, the selection of the materials, and the clever use of them are really surprising.It should be noted that in his time, Chinese historical archives and social data were not yet available for Western scholars to choose from in large quantities. Everyone will remember his analysis of the many reasons why Chinese society failed to enter capitalism, such as: wealth without official security cannot become the basis of social honor, enterprises without legal status can hardly become the protagonists of the city, and national obligations without economic costs cancel freedom. In the labor market, how would a trade guild without a charter dare to enter into free competition, and so on.He also carefully discovered that in ancient China, although the imperial power was heavy, the actual power of the family exceeded the administrative power of the country; although the craftsmanship was exquisite, people were more interested in interpersonal relationships than in product manufacturing.And all of these eventually become the most inert national ethos, even if there is partial improvement, it is difficult to make an overall breakthrough.

These analyzes may seem commonplace today, but I was really shocked when I first read them. I felt that we seldom examine Chinese society and Chinese civilization from a world perspective, and we also lack academic tolerance and research methods. Too narrow, trivial, rigid, repetitive.In a sense, it was Max Weber who told me what modern sociology is. Today I have been in his school for a long time, and I still can't believe it when I look at those old school buildings.Professor who has long gone, you live in the hinterland of Europe and have never been to China. How can you say that the Chinese City God is a pragmatic god who is only responsible for the local area? Did it also originate from the hidden secrets of national culture, such as river management and water distribution?I remember laughing once when I read his eloquent account of things in my hometown Zhejiang. He actually obtained information to judge that the Goldsmiths Guild in Wenzhou was composed of Ningbo people for a long time!This visit to Europe confirmed many of his analysis of Europe.For example, in his world-renowned "Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism", he clearly pointed out that the various characteristics of European capitalism actually existed long ago, and what directly led to the emergence of modern capitalism was the emergence of a powerful spiritual force , that is Protestantism (Christianity) and its ethics and code of conduct.He said that the previous Catholicism relied on mystical theories of salvation, redemption, and repentance. Through prayers, people believed that they could be saved in heaven. Therefore, it had long opposed the commercial economy; while the reformed Protestantism believed that the salvation of the soul did not depend mainly on the church. and ceremony, but on purity of heart and diligence in work.This positive attitude of joining the WTO strongly supported the decent behavior of businessmen to obtain profits through capital circulation and accounting, and promoted the development of industrial and commercial enterprises.This proves that the Protestant ethic is also a capitalist spirit.These expositions by Weber are the highest evaluation of the European religious reformation, and they are also accurate revelations of Western civilization.When we travel in Europe, our eyes cannot be separated from the ubiquitous church spires, and our ears cannot escape the church bells that ring from time to time. His exposition is an excellent guide for us.

After writing these works, Weber also had a period of experience in politics, especially in the Weimar Republic after the First World War, which almost became the main idea of ​​political theory.He spent his later years at the University of Munich, which is not too late. He was only fifty-six years old when he died. My regret is that after him, until today, Europe's analysis of its own civilization and understanding of other civilizations has not surpassed him as a whole, but he has been forgotten. In my opinion, this is a kind of spiritual self-amnesia. two Two years after Weber's death, a 22-year-old young student received a doctorate in philosophy at Heidelberg University. He was Erich Fromm, who later became the general and elder of the Frankfurt School.Heidelberg University did not mention him when introducing the talents it has cultivated, but when you mention it, they are still proud of him.

Why, even you Chinese know about him?They were not without surprise. I said that in China, even among certain youth groups who have no interest in philosophy, many people have read his "The Art of Love". When I said this, I remembered that when I traveled to southern China more than ten years ago, I saw this book at every book stall in the night market in Guangzhou. Buy it back with a blushing face. I know they misunderstood Fromm, but I'm glad they were able to gnaw a few words from Fromm during the break. Fromm's academic starting point is psychoanalysis, but what finally made him famous in the world is the philosophy of life centered on love.The love he talks about is different from the expectations of the young female workers in Guangzhou, but a diffuse and circular love.According to him, when you love someone, you love everyone through him, including yourself.His vision is that all people love each other, love the world, love life, and make love fill the world.

I like his innocence and kindness, but from an academic point of view, this is an idealized description that lacks logical depth and appears rather vague.The part where he is more proficient in theory is the analysis of human predicament, which has a premise significance in his ideological structure, because he believes that love is the only way for human beings to escape from predicament. He said that the plight of human beings arises from the contradiction between people's natural orientation and rational orientation.All healthy people will always have an impulse from nature in their hearts, and there will always be a call to return to nature in their ears, but once they convert to reason, they will not be able to truly return to nature. Returning is just a yearning or a design.In this way, reason is difficult to please, and it is always a painful force that suppresses nature.In short, human beings suffer from both nature and rationality, and they are isolated and helpless during the trance, which even causes a series of pathological personalities and bids farewell to health.There is only one word that can resolve this dilemma: love.

Fromm believes that the question of what love is can be put aside for a while, and what people need to be vigilant about is what would happen without love.This method of counter-evidence is the cleverness of his argument, and because everyone has experienced the loneliness without love and seen the pathology after leaving love, this method of counter-evidence has personal persuasion to the readers.I think The Art of Loving sold well partly because of the title and partly because of this counter-evidence. A book by a high-ranking philosopher becomes a bestseller, which is not very accustomed to in Chinese academia.In fact, it is very easy to explain a simple and clear problem in a profound and difficult way, but conversely, it is not easy to explain a difficult and difficult problem in a simple and clear way, which requires high time and academic costs.Over the past few hundred years, European culture has made various experiments and efforts to release from the scholastics to the folk. On the contrary, a part of the Chinese culture, which originally focused on human reason, has gone in the opposite direction, shrinking from smoothness to awkwardness, and shrinking from understanding. From loud to jerky, from loud to murmur, from open to narrow, I think this is just like Fromm said, falling into a morbid personality.

What culture most needs to seek is health, and the ultimate cause of health is fraternity.