will of truth

"Translating Today’s Chinese Masters" by Amarantidou, Sarafinas, and D'Ambrisio.

On the one hand, I suppose Chinese philosophers are more liberal with Western authors than with Chinese, and then again, more liberal with contemporary Western authors than with Classical ones. On the other hand, it relates to interesting questions of truth, as is pointed out in the article.

First, if we look at the Western authors even half a century ago, they are much more careless about references (whether to insert them at all, or how precise they are) - so that Western philosophy has become more and more scholastic. That is, the techne becomes more important, sometimes at the expense of the content. This is aggravated by the modern academia-factory, the industrialization of knowledge, that forces you to churn out papers.

Then there is the problem of the “will of truth” itself, as Nietzsche shows. Why do we value truth? Do we indeed value it? How we understand it? If we define truth in the classical metaphysical way of adaequatio rei et intellectu, the correspondence between world and mind, then a lot has already been decided, and some fundamental questions swept under the rug. Because what is the ground of encounter between “the mind” and “the thing”? Modern (progressive) understanding of cognition, for example, favors a treatment of knowledge as embodied and extended. It is not a “mind here” that reaches out to “things there”, but an act of understanding, knowledge, consciousness always already is stretched, extended to the brain, body, external things, beings, environments, and emerges from their cooperation, interaction.

Of course, we could simply say that correct references are a good practice in the intellectual interaction that makes interactions smoother and more nuanced, so that we do not get stuck immediately into dispelling some crude misinterpretations (though it still happens, and misunderstanding may sometimes be more productive than understanding). Even so, we could ask, what is this smoothness good for? Is it not sometimes the case that we flee into an apparent smoothness of interaction and understanding, hiding from the unavoidable ruggedness of existence? What do we want to achieve with our smooth cooperation? More books on the shelf? Two more terms in our scholastic vocabulary?

My intention is not to undermine good academic practices, and even not to defend those Chinese contemporary Masters who are careless with their citations (although more could be said on this than simple dismissal) – but I think it is clear that there are deep problems involved. Of truth, of industrialization, of escapism.