What I Have learned This Year?

The greatest thing I have gained from this course is the reading experience. It is just amazing that ancient philosophers have already discussed all the important questions of human life and our universe. And the most important thing I gained through the one year visiting program is my experience communicating with Christians. Let me talk about the two things seperately. First, I love the reading assignments so much. The wisdom of ancient philosophers inspired me a lot. I read Paedo, Nicomachean Ethics, Symposium, and other presocratics. They discuss the topic of love, virtue, death, wisdom and happiness, which sometime really get me touched. Especially Paedo, the scene in which Socrates at first failed to give a good argument about the soul of human. With several seconds of silence accompanied by the sorrow of people around him, Socrates just smiled and said that there is no need to be sad about me, because what I was doing is just for the sake of truth and to convice myself, by no means to win others. Also, the idea of doing philosophy as the practice of love and death is appealling to me, for we as limited creatures in the universe are all afraid of deathe and have the quest for being loved and loving others. These important matters of life are the basis and motives of philosophical studies, at least for myself. I hope to lead a decent and meaningful life which is not filled up with materials and products, but spiritual enjoyment. For the sake of such happiness, I believe most of us would say that puzzlements and difficulties brought about by the contemplative works are worth paying.

Second, my experience of communicating with Christains gives me two important knowledges. One is that Christian emphasis on the sinfulness of human beings is illuminating, which is one of the weakness of Chinese philosophy. My Christian Chinese friends here are always emphasizing this important aspect of Christianity in our bible study. The other thing is that Jesus is love, and God is love. Also I believe the Christian notion of love is unique and profund. Compared with Confucious notion of love, Jesus’s love is the one that is based on very intimate relationship amoing god and human, human and human. I think I will go on investigating this problem and do some further studies in Christianity.

Where Does Objectivity Come from?

I have talked about Hume’s interpretation of moral actions, which are caused by human passions and emotions. The reason why we go to save the kid falling into the well is that we cannot bare seeing the scence and feels tortured at the picture. In other word, we don't do virtuous actions because of reasoning and refecting, but something rooted in our human nature that is called emtions. Then it is a problem for him regarding how to argue against those whose emotions are different from normal people. And I think Kant’s interpretation of rationality can be helpful for us to do that job.

Kant starts with the notion of “good will”, and good will is intimated related with rationality. One essential point for us to understand the objectivity of morality in Kantian can be made clear by differentiating between humanity and rationality. For Kant, the objectivity of the goodness of human will does not consist in humanity, because human weill is only subjectively imperfect. (Grounding of morality, 414) In addition, Kant claims that the reality of moral principle cannot be derived from the special characteristics of human nature:

For duty has to be a practical, unconditioned necessity of action; hence it must hold for all rational beings and for this reaon only can it also be a law for all human wills. On the other hand, whatever is derived from the special natural condition of humanity, from certain feelings and propensities, or even, if such were possible, from some special tendency peculiar to human reason and no holding necessarily for the will of every rational beings— all of this can indeed yield a maxim valid for us, but not a law. This is to say that such can yield a subjective principle according to which we might act if we happen to have the propensity and inclination, but cannot yield an objective principle according to which we would be directed to act eventhough our every propensity, inclination, and natural tendency were opposed to it. (G, 425)

While the Hume’s interpretation of morality regards human dispositions and natural conditions as the most fundamental elements in our thinking and action, Kant thinks very differently. First, humanity has its grounding in rationality because rationality holds fro all rational beings including human beings as one of the species. While humanity has in its root both subjective inclinations and rational capacities, Kant’s conception of rationality is a transcendent and a priori capacity, without any subjective consitution. Kant does not deny that dispositions and feelings can lead us to make right choice, but he is strongly objecting to grounding moral judgment only on humanity, since it is is subjectively imperfect because of its special inclinations and dispositions.

In addition, Kant regards the rationality used as tools and means to get to another purpose as only contingetn and arbitary. Such rationality is what Williams uses to satisfy the actualization of agent’s projects and desires. But for Kant, “rational nature exists as an end in itself”, (G, 437)and only this kind of rationality is the grounding of categorical imperative. Kant claims that the practical imperative will be that “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means.” (G, 429) Other imperatives and rational capacities manipulated for other purposes rather than themselves are only hypothetical, which means they are always under the test of universal law and have to practical necessity. Thus we can see that what draws the line between the Kantian and the Humean moral philosophy is that Kant provides an objectvie grounding of human nature in terms of univeral rationality, while Hume does not appeal to anything beyond the disposition and feelings withn human nature.

Expression of Emotions?

I am thinking of the criticism of Hume that moral behaviors turn out to be just expressions of one’s feelings and passions. And I don't think that is the right understanding of Hume. The emotivist standpoint of Hume needs an appropriate understanding—not in terms of expression of feelings—but in terms of a logical point of view about the justification of moral judgments.

I think the passions as justificatory grounding of moral conclusions should be distinguished from the mere psychological states accompanying the process of making moral judgments. For when we consider moral conclusions as mere expression of our dispositions and passions, it is like thnking of the reason for me to sing songs to my husband in his birthday as the mere expression of my emotions, or thinking of the moral decision to salvage the kid falling into the well as an expression of one’s feeling distress. But both sounds strange. In the case of the kid, the sense of sympahty is deeply rooted in our human nature, and our decision to save the kid is not expressions of our own feeling bad about this situation. What Hume is really arguing is that the fact that “I am feeling bad about the situation” itself is not sufficient for me to conclude that I ought to save the kid unless it is supplied with a major moral principle, which is “I ought to always help those in danger”.

Here we can see the difference in Hume’s sketch bewteen two kinds of emotions: E(1) is the psychological states accompanying our thought and behaviors. E(2) is the moral justificatory reason which constitutes the sources of the major moral principle. For illustration, now the moral argument(A) of my singing songs at my husband’s birthday is like this：A(1) Major premise: I ought to do something making him happy. A(2)Minor premise: Singing songs will make him happy. A(3)I ought to sing songs. What Hume means about E(2) is that the reason why one starts with the Major premise is that one will find out the approbation of this idea rather than rational reflections. But E(1) is the one that appears in the A(2) and A(3).

To sum up, E(2) as the justificatory reason for the agent to engage into the major premise is the fundamental one for Hume. Therefore what we should ask Hume is the question of the objectivity of human emotions. In other word, what if the agent feels happy about killing and hurting people? On what grounding we can blame the agent for feeling wrongly and defectively?

About the virtue of Friendship

I am reading a book written by a neo-Aristotelian philosopher recently and just encounter his discussion about friendship. He claims the irreplaceability of friends, for although a good friend is good because of his or her embodiment of the ideal of goodness, the character of the person and the common life experience created together are hardly easily replaceable by someone else. However my story is a little different, irrelevant actually. It always comes to my mind when it comes to the word of friendship that several years ago my precious friendship with a girl during high school just broke up because of my forthright letter to her. We become intimate friends with each other after the first letter she wrote to me saying that she knew me in one way or another and hope to be my friend. Then we kept writing letters to each other for nearly four years until I became a sophomore. But it ended, for we grew up into two kinds of people, holding radically different evaluative outlooks toward how to live a good life. Anyway it is a story about my understanding of the ideal way of friendship when I was younger, which is quite Aristotelian. The friendship died by my letter and her ironic reply, which still kinds hurts.
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Aristotle repudiates the kind of friendship based on the mode of either desire-satisfaction or utility, and thus advocates the real friendship based upon moral excellence. Aristotle argues that “people do not become friends for both utility and pleasure, for things that are incidental are not often combined…it is bad people who will tend to be friends for pleasure or utility, since this is the respect in which they are alike.” (1157a-b)The reason why the preference of pleasure and utility constitute the badness of the agent consists in the fact that one does not build up the friendship for the sake of the friend, but instead the interest of agent himself. Friendship becomes something as instrumental to satisfy one’s need rather than the flourishing of the friend himself. When the importance of the friend is dependent on the external reason rather than the value of himself, he can be easily discarded or replaced by someone so as to meet the new need or end. It is a distain of human dignity. More importantly, pleasure and utility can be vicious without the scrutiny of rationality, and if so, the agents will be disqualified from talking about friendship, for their friendship only contributes to evil and evil friendship can be no longer called friendship. (1172a) Therefore, friendship should not be limited to those that friends qua friends could have towards one another, but should include all relations that friends qua human beings can have to one another. It is clear that we cannot really grasp the conception of friendship unless we first grasp what it is meant to be a human qua human. This is what Aristotle wants to make us remember: we should make ourselves worthy of friendship, not merely good at making use of friendship.
There is no doubt that the term “human qua human” can be equated with the conception of the characteristic activity of human beings. In the case of friendship, the ideal way of friendship lies in an objective goodness of friendship the grasp of which needs a full and proper engagement in it, and the way we arrive at the understanding of its intrinsic and objective goodness is to throw ourselves into it and seek what counts as a full and proper engagement. To put it another way, the value and meaning of friendship consists in an ongoing engagement in which we keep thinking and reflecting upon the value and meaning of it in terms of the nature and central constituent of a good friendship. Only through practicing and cultivating such kind of friendship can we enjoy the most satisfying sort of happiness: the kind of happiness only possible with the practicing and appreciation of objective goodness.

a little about symposium

One question raised on class yesterday is quite interesting, that is, how to relate our ordinary life with those erotic practices in ancient Greece? Normally we don’t die for the loved as what is described in the Greek mythologies. Nor we really believe that women and men were originally combined together and then separated by Zeus. Even it is hard for me to believe in ordinary sense that we engage into love relationship is to be immortal. If people fall in love and become obsessed with each other so that they are willing to die for the other any time anywhere, they are normally viewed as crazy, insane.

Most of time I doubt the possibility of being both standing at the top of the mountain and understanding the ideas of ordinary people. Philosophers, like those who are in deepest love relationships, are beyond understanding. Only those who are in the same position with them can understand each other. But that may be too pessimistic. Actually philosophy does help we ordinary people understand some transcendental domain in the world. The truth and value of such domain is not as real as what we can normally experience in daily life, but conversely, much more real than our daily life. The analogy of watching movie or telling story might be helpful for us to understand that. We all know movies are “not true”, for they are stories and scenes created by people who desires to gain our sympathy, or money. However we watch movie in a way sometimes more seriously than we treat our daily life. I believe it is because we can see something more fundamental in pictures and colors and fictional dialogues in the movie. Maybe that is the meaning of art, which sometimes is remote from our life and seems illusory but always makes feel something ineffable. Therefore it seems to me that we should figure out some way to see the limitation of our ordinary life. We would have to appeal to story, movie, fiction, sacrificial relationship etc, to better understand the meaning of life. We might never have the chance to die for people we love, nor to successfully contemplate the form of that beauty itself, but at least we know there are people and philosophical activities promoting human knowledge of that.

Truth and truths

In the last post I wrote about my understanding of the originality of morality, endorsing Humean distinction between fact and value. I said that I disagree with the philosophers who makes the objectivity of morality tethered to the repudiation of distinction between fact and value. These philosophers, claiming that objectivity of morality comes from the possiblity for a mere fatucal statement to entail value judgment insintrically, might not be doing jobs on the right track, for I think in the job of depicting the fact there can be already mixture of something beyond fact.

Last week I read something by John Searle. (The Construction of Social Reality, 1990: 14) With an example of heart, he argues that even in biolgoy there is no factual statement as just factual. To claim “a heart’s normal function is to pump blood” is based on such evaluative judgment derived from the following syllogism: (1) anything impinges positively on survival is the function of the subject; (2) it is a fact that the heart pumping blood effectively is benefical to survival; (3)therefore the heart functions to pump blood. If we change “survival” into another standard as “making sound”, then the function of heart is “to beat” which is obviously anther bare fact about the heart. Thus Searle rightly advocates that “Functions, in short, are never intrinsic but are always observer relative. We are blinded to this fact by the practice, especially in biology, of talking about functions as if they were intrinsic to nature.” (14)

But normally we are afraid of such conclusion, for we are afraid of being relative. In biology there might be less disputes about the dominant value of survival and reproduction of certain species, but in human affairs there might be too many disputes about how I should live, about what should I believe and not to believe, or about why I should be generous instead of not to strangers outside our community. While one can stand along the same line with Rorty who advocates the existance of truth, rather than Truth with a capital T, it is not easy to believe so in each and every aspect of life. When the need of toleration is going hand in hand with the acknowledgment of diversity, the question of justification of each different kinds of so called truth remains equally urgent, and people might become worried about the limitation of tolerance, and even the justification of tolerance.

It is a common sense that human beings not only share some basic and universal features but also have their specialities. Deciding when and how to justify either of them needs wisdom. But what is wisdom if its legitimation and truth cannot be justified? It is an empirical domain and I don't think it is where philosophors should be. Philosophers are not used to tell you how to decide between the conflicting values, but they can only testify and examine your way in which you reach your conclusion.

Back to Searle, we do “discover” functions in nature, he says, “only within a set of prior assignments of value” (including purposes, teleology, and other functions). (1990: 14) Philosophy is unable to help people to have faith in the goodness or in God. If philosophy should has its aim to set goals for life, to decide meaning for life, it is not because it is philosophy and it has that capacity, but because we value philosophy as such. I think philosophy is only a tool, but invaluable tool. As a tool, philosophy has its limits. Everything has its limits. Helping people to realize it, however, is philosophy’s invaluable job which might be peculiar only to philosophy.

And back to the problem of Truth and truths, philosophers are unable to tell you what is truth, but only show you by their efforts that truth is worth seeking. One might think that such conclusion says nothing, but only palys a game of word, which I agree partly, but once one is looking at Socrates, one has to admit of something worth entertaining in it. The person who believes in god’s calling to sacrifice himself in the pursuit of truth, never successfully achieve any conclusion.

Some Thoughts About Morality

Recently I have been caught by the question of Fact/Value Distinction. It seems to me that human beings are moral animals is just a truism, but the real problem here is the matter of justification. How do you know that? How do you know that human beings are different from animals, even thought animals which have high intelligence such as dolphins? MacIntyre claims in his book, Dependent Rational Animals, that even though dolphins are to a great extent similar to human beings in terms of their abilities to communicate with their fellow dolphins, to learn from their human trainers, and to have the feeling of happiness when they are rewarded by successfully fininishing the tasks, human beings are different from animals in an essential way that they can establish and develop such virtues as giving and receiving.

However, what makes me feel unsatisfied is that I don't see any difference between dolphins and human beings, if the sense of giving and receiving, the ability to learn and communicate with others, and the phenomenon of feeling happy or sorrow of human beings are only in a quantitative way superior to those of dolphin. Either dolphins are moral beings as human beings, or human beings are non-moral beings as intelligent dolphins. If not so, at least one reason is needed to show that where the sense of morality comes from to transit animals that are mere animals without sense of morality into the human animals knowing eating their fellow animals are vicious. It might be helpful here to remind people of the question raised by Hume that what makes the facts, that a young tree eats his mother tree for the sake of living and the other fact that a young man eats his mother, morally different, for the same reason for living? What makes cannibalism a moral issue?

My point of view is based on the Humean credo of the distinction between fact and value. Moral judgment is the result of human projection. But there are many moral philosophers objecting to such understanding, for they argue that morality has a realistic foundation, independent of human projections, on which we are able to have a solid and basic moral judgment concerning the vice of killing, lying, cannibalism etc. These philosophers strongly repudiate such interpretation of morality as emotivism which they belive is going to destroy the objectivity of the domain of morality. On the part of the objectivity of morality I agree with these philosophers, but I doubt their belief in the relationship between the moral objectivity and the denial of distinction between fact and value.

It is factually true that human beings have such and such features, emotions, and rational capacities, but it is a mystery that the same fact of cannibalism means differently between humans and trees. If one answers that because human beings are moral animals while trees are not, one can be further asked for a justification: why human beins are moral animals or how do you know that? I imagine one response for him:

He might claim that because cannibalism is intrinsically vicious and human beings know that, But I　can further challenge him by asking how do you know human beings know rightly about the badness of cannibalism? Of course most sane people know that canniblism should be forbidded as vicious, but what matters here is the problem of why. Unless one ends up being a Moore who raises both of his hands as two proofs for the external world, I can keep asking the question: what if all human beings’ knowing some facts as intrinsically morally wrong turns out out to be wrong?

Repudiating my question as insanely skeptical is unfair, because I am not aiming at destroying whatever conclusion offered by anyone, but only curious about the reason and hope that he can give me a more explicit and convincing explanation which is not just an assertion as "self-obvious".

Also, trying to prevent me from investigating by appealing to God, which seems better than by ending up claiming intrinsic goodness as self-explanatory, is not as convincing as he believes to be. However, I can see no better way. Of course there are other ways such as claiming the objectivity of rationality, or the objectivity of human passions such as the sense of sympathy, but they are all liable to be challenged by the question of “HOW do you know that is not ILLUSORY?” It drives me crazy.

Personally speaking, I believe that value becomes value because it is valued as value. Even in the fact that human beings are moral animals we can find something not merely facutal. More precisely, morality becomes morality because it is moralized. But the same question can always emerge: how do you know that?

I just know it．I just believe it. No better way.

How big our heart is?

Tiny, when it is in the grip of jealousy.

Huge, when you believe in it you can find the heaven.

It is interesting that Peter Kingsley claims that the whole universe resides in our hearts. Mencius said that “The entire universe, and everything in the world, resides within one self; and returning to yourself is the highest good”. (My poor translation might be pardoned ,for according to a famous Japanese schloar(よしかわこうじろう), “Poem is what has been lost in the transtaltion.”) Other major Confucianists in Song and Ming Dynasty also claimed that “the universe is my mind, and my mind is the universe”. (such as Lu Xiang-shan, and Wang Yang-ming.)

The ancient Chinese believed the first principle of the entire universe is the interaction of the five basic elements: Metal, Wood, Water, Fire, and Earth. The five elements are not only in charge of the physical world, but also our bodies. Our body is a micro universe, while the external world is the macro universe. Up till now the theory of Chinese medicine still believe so. The heart is fire, the kidney is water, the liver is wood, the lung is metal, and the spleen is earth. The five elements are functioning according to the Ying(female,tender,negative,soft,etc.) and Yang(male,strong,positive,many,etc) principle. Take the kidney for example, it is harmful for our health if the kidney is either too “wet” or too “dry”. The “humidity” of our kidney is influenced by our diet and temper.Aslo, there is an saying that great ingidnation hurts one’s kidney. Therefore, according to the traditional Chinese philosphy, not only the ethical truth is within in our hearts, but the phisical world is also in our heart, because they are both consitituted by the five elements.

However, after the western framework of science was brought into China, the understanding of the universe changed. In the modern history of China, radical critiques of Chinese medicine, together with its cosmological grounding, emerged on a large scale. We started to go the hospital to accept surgery and transplantation of organs, which was totally unimaginable under the context of traditional Chinese medicine. Besides, in the process of modernization, especially in the May Fourth Movement, many schloars standed up to take a critical view toward the traditional Chinese culture, some of which even suggested Chinese students not read traditional Chinese books, but only read foreign books. In them there are many influential schloars and writers such as Lu Xun, who was compared to Nietzsche, in the sense that they are both “trapped in the construction of a modernity which is fundamentally problematic.” [1]

But broadly speaking the faith in the proposition that the entire universe is in everyone’s heart is still very popular among ordinary Chinese people, so is the theory the balance of Ying and Yang

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[1]. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu_Xun#cite_note-Davies-7

Some thoughts on morality and god

In his book, Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy, Bernard Williams wrote that “the development of the ethical consciousness means the collapse of relgion”, (p33) which seems disquieting to some of my classmates in the course of the contemporary ethics. Some of them said there is a namelist which could serve as a good counterexample of his contention. In the list there are philosophers such as Aquina and Kierkegard who are not only highly reflective but religious as well. Virtues in terms of divine command can still have their essential place within ethical theories and moral considerations. I think it is a quite interesting question.

A stringent version of Christian standpoint may like this: God creates everything including both the world and the values of the world, therefore the truth of moral life comes from God which is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. However, then comes the meta-ethical question that could be raised by Williams: what is the grounding of morality? To make the question clearer, is it that God decides moral truth, or that moral truth decides God’s decision? I think it is this question, in its form of “dialectical reasoning” which asks for the grounding of ehtics, that might undermines the foundation of religion.

(1) If moral truth is decided by God, why is “no killing” morally good rather then “killing”? If God chooses “no killing” as morally good because “It is good not to kill”, then the truth value of “it is good not to kill” is independent of God’s will. Thus God does not decide the moral truth, but only conforms to certain pre - existing truth. Thus God is not omnipotent.

(2) Or one might come up with the other answer that God considers “no killing” to be good not because “no killing is good anyway”, but just because God creates the truth value of “no killing is good”. Since moral truth is created by God’s will, you cannot ask why it is P to be morally good rather than Q without making reference to God’s will. However there remains the problem that God’s decision is random, because, if deciding “killing is good”, God is still omnibenevolent.

(3) One might move on to argue that one cannot – and should not—conjecture God’s will from his own perspective, since human intelligence is inferior to God and you never fully understand God’s plan. If this is the case, then it will turn out to be unreasonable for us to ask such a question: Can God disobey logical rules to create a round square? The fact that, according to human intelligence, there is no round square in the world, is by no means a promising way to show that God’s power is limited. But I don't think such response a good strategy.

Therefore I believe in the question of where does moral truth come from, theological answers are not that convincing. Of course it is a difficult task to seek the grounding of morality. Just as what Socrates asked in Euthyphro regarding the relationship between piety and gods, “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious? Or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?”

A belated Self-Intro

I forgot to post an introduction of myself... who was born in a tiger year in Shanghai, China. (And this year is also tiger year according to Chinese culture, and now you may know I am 24 now because there are 12 animals altogether.)

I came here as a visiting student in philosophy department, first time studying abroad and half a world away from home. I hope to teach philosophy in the future, for I consider the life of reading and thinking to be most enjoyable.

Inevitably I encounter with some problems here such as reading and writing in English, although I had successfully passed the written and oral tests put by the foundation before I could come here. While most American people think my English is okay as a non-English speaker, using English in philosophy might be a different story. Sounds sad...but I am trying to be better anyway.

Studying philosophy is a frustrating process if you are confident in your intelligence. When faced with many different theories and great philosophers, I for many times almost lost myself. I found them all right, all illuminating, all insightful, while sometimes they are opposite. I think I am far away from finding myself in this pursuit. Sometimes I am willing to become a Christian, but sometimes I prefer the doctrines of Buddhism.

However, most time I would rather to be a happy pagan who respect different kinds of religions. I have my own faith and god, which I am not meant to be a very different or speculative substance, but only one that turns out to be a platitude....Well, that is to love people and to pursue truth. Well it becomes complicated to explain what is love and what is truth and there comes the topic regarding philosophy and life. But not daring to be naive and wrong to say, that is what I hope to do in life.

I made a lot of mistakes in my previous life, and I don't know how many I will continue to make...hope less when I become elder and more mature...

I read a lot about the Neo-Confucianism in the Ming and Qing Dynasty of China, and don't know how to translate them into English...The same situation with Buddhism.

I hope to learn more.

Some Thoughts after Reading the Letter

It was an exciting letter and it still is. In the letter King talks about dream for freedom, justice, and love for brothers all over the world, which are all fundamentally essential and desired by human beings. His wording is eloquent, and his thoughts are plain but powerful. I have to admit that in reading this letter I was moved by his fervent love for those miserably opressed men, while at the same time shocked by the bestial behaviors put on them. King mentioned his disappointment and the question of right time, and further explicated the meaning of “timing” in a new way different from the way people misconceive as “waiting”.

“it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective apraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to creat the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood.”

Lots of King’s words lead to my growing sensitiveness regarding my own disappointment. Togeter with the citation above, the other part talking about the two different kinds of laws, just and unjust, and such quotation as “the strange irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills”, are combing together remind me of the condition of my own country, where such websites as youtube, facebook and twitter are forbidden. It is not a country cultivating the spirit of Socrates. Injustice in anywhere is everywhere. Therefore it must be true that injustice is everywhere.

Anyway back to the letter which I really enjoy reading. I admire King's courage and resolute faith. He mentioned Jesus as an extremist for love and justice, but not the kind of extremism as the end, but rather means. It is not violence we are seeking, but the negotiation, peace, equality and truth. But why we have to bring into "the fact of history" the violence?

"We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was 'well timed' in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation."

Now I found my place in what King criticized as "a few middle-class Negroes who, because of a degree of academic and economic security and because in some way they profit by segregation, have become insensitive to the problems of the masses." I have faith in truth and love, but I lack something important. I know that, since I don't lack them when I was a teenager. But I feel like there is nothing that can be done as what King has done in my country. We are just waiting and waiting.

about fate

What occupies my mind after finishing the reading assignment are mainly two words, one is Fate and the other is Story, and let me start with fate, on which a good story is possible.

The question of “is there destiny in the world which dominates one’s whole life” has haunted me since I was very little. The answer I have gained via education in the following year, which might not be a good one, or might seem fairly convincing to me just because of its being congenial to me, turned out to be that destiny is determined by one’s character. The force of the question, however, has never waned for me. This character-oriented answer, though in most cases can serve as a good answer in explaining many phenomenon of our lives, seems not philosophical enough, at least before it is put under the philosophical scrunity.

As what the textbook mentioned, Hesiod refers to Muses to explain things for which he is unable to give an explicit account. Homer did so as well in his heroic stories when it comes to where each and every power of human beings come from, no matter courage, swiftness or integrity. If human destinies are in the control of their own hands, their characters and powers, then their hands are in the control of those heavenly gods. But any book regarding the history of philosophy then emphasizes that it is distinction between the reference to mythical power and the pursuit of rationality that marks the lifeblood of philosophy. Therefore what is fate consists at least not in mythical powers. Then where? Logos? Rationality? Characters? Or, contingencies? And why?

Philosophy helps people think, criticize, reform our lives, though sometimes in a trwisting and circuitous way by perplexing us, to faciliate an ideal mode of life in which we contemplate the nature of both the external and internal world, and further to empower us with insightful perspectives enabling us to engage in the world practically wiser. But what is destiny? What does it mean by “destined to be”? But in what extent the ability to think is related to one’s fate? Many platitudes spring to my mind such as “Change your daily attitude toward life and you can change your life”, or in a better formulation that “Cultivate the ability to think philosophically and you can reform both yourself and the world”. Maybe that has been so much to tell about the destiny?

Then comes my answer less inspiring that the power of philosophy is limited and life is destined to be filled with contingencies and fragments. It is all about the matter of how to treat these contingencies. While philosophy is one way in which the uniformity of the universe and ourselves is its basic presupposition, telling story is one of other ways of equal importance in which contingency remains its feature and presupposed uniformity of our lives might be explained in some other way. Fate is not only a combination of a series of consequence of our behaviors variously elicited by our different characters, personalities and ways of thinking, but also a series of outcomes of contingent accidents out of control. Therefore, although I completely concur with Roochnik’s view that mythical stories leave the nature of the beginning of the world unexplained, I am willing to amplify my claim that mythical stories explore and reveal the truth of human lives in their own ways in which the force of emotion usually towers above the systematic formulations offered by rationality. What I am trying to say differetiate here is the gap between internal world of ourselves and the external physical world, the ignorance of both of which leads to fear in our hearts. While capable of shepherding human beings to the truth of how the universe came into being, philosophy is less potent than literature, or some other kinds of art in comforting the fear in the face of the unknown.

Maybe we are able to reconstruct the factors and elements of the physical world in a scientific way by a systematic schema, just as what both modern scientists are and presocratic philosophers were doing, in which we are provided by the power to predict future events such as the eclipse, but are we capable of predicting each and every future in our lives? It is true that the picture of random order given by Hesiod in terms of the beginning of the world in which the chaos comes first and then Earth gives birth to Sky and Hill is diametrically dwarfed by the scientific schemas given by the philosophers emerging afterwards. While historians provide us with rational inferences based on empirical evidences and fragmential materials, why do we keep believing, though maybe in a different sense of believing, that it is a war about an apple, instead of a historical event based on economic and political causes? If I am allowd to make an even unpardonable generalization, I am intended to hold that the effort to figure out the nature of universe has very limited power to help us completely make sense of fate of human lives. And that is exactly why ancient mythical stories still worth reading and why readers today are still touched by those heroic stories.