Metaphysical Explanations in Ordinary Life (Departmental Seminar)

Abstract:

What I shall do in this talk is to try to make sense of the most astonishing phenomenon of today’s young people’s enthusiastic embrace of Xuanxue 玄学 in the sense of “esotericism 神秘学”. Recently I have met so many young people in mainland China (almost all of them are college-educated), who have been passionately engaging in the practice and theory of 祈福 (visiting temples of any kinds and pray for happiness, success in exam, job, health, wealth, love, marriage – almost all aspects of life), 星象学 (Western astrology), 命理学 (Chinese numerology), 算命 (all forms of fortune-telling, from 八字, to 易经, or Tarot 塔罗), and many other types of popular new age philosophies and religions. They have successfully changed the meaning of the modern Chinese term, Xuanxue 玄学, which used to mean a branch of philosophy, also known as 形而上学 or metaphysics (in its narrow sense). In this lecture, we will use the term Xuanxue 玄学 in this new sense of esotericism, and we use “metaphysics” in its broad sense so that it includes Xuanxue (one can find such a use of the term in Barnes & Noble bookstores). I will use “Yuanxue 元学” to mean a type of metaphysics that is different from Xuanxue 玄学. This is our reality today: although science has won in the academia (wo do not teach esotericism in our schools), Xuanxue has triumphed outside the academia. We now live in the golden age of Xuanxue. If one agrees with certain stereotype of Hong Kong, one may even want to say that this is the Hong Kong-lization of mainland China.

In this talk, making creative use of concepts and ideas from thinkers such as Jin Yuelin 金岳霖, Montaigne, Wittgenstein, and examples from history of sciences, “scientific explanation” studies, anthropology, popular culture, and ordinary life, I shall try to answer the following two sets of questions:

1. Why people will always be practicing metaphysics in their everyday life even when they also believe in science? Why a certain type of metaphysical “explanations” (which we shall call “Yuanxue 元学”) is actually a manifestation of ordinary Chinese people’s “ethical wisdom”? Under what conditions might Xuanxue 玄学 become Yuanxue 元学?
2. Why considerations in metaphysics and philosophy of science will not be enough for a critique of Xuanxue? Why the ultimate ground of such a critique will have to be both “ethical” and “metaphysical”?

Delivered in English.
All are welcome.