The Doomsday Matsutake – A Life Possible in the Ruins of Capitalism

        Author: [US] Anqing Luo

[Recommendation] Luo Anqing uses the mushroom as a clue to string together the people living in the abandoned industrial forest in Oregon, Satoyama in Japan, and the rainforest in Yunnan, and the series of global events behind them about the Vietnam War, about the economic take-off of Japan and its economic colonization in Southeast Asia, and the change of forest rights in China. Through a mushroom that grows on disturbance and entanglement in a seemingly hopeless habitat, we see a group of people wandering in a high degree of uncertainty, a world dominated by capitalist capture and plunder, and the possibility of a rational and humane response to the ecological crisis.

Luo Anqing’s writing is fresh and beautiful, full of details of setting and character that make you feel like you are there. Even when theorizing, we can get pleasure from reading this writing (“We can still explore the branching edges of this broken well – these margins of capitalist codes, of scaled and abandoned plantations. We can still catch the underlying scent of the commons and the looming fragrance of autumn.”) Reading this book is also a journey of healing. The author spends a great deal of time telling how Vietnam veterans, uprooted from their homes and carrying the scars of war, search for pine mushrooms in the wasteland created by the logging industry. So do the pine trees and mushrooms that can grow miraculously in the scorched earth created by industrialization. Their story seems to be a metaphor for this capitalist wasteland we live in. As long as we abandon the pursuit of universal models, we still have the possibility to solve problems in diverse, localized and individualized ways.

The Foundations of Moral Metaphysics
                Author: [German] Kant

The epitaph of Kant is inscribed with his famous words from the Critique of Practical Reason: “There are two things which, the more often and persistently one contemplates them intensely, the more they fill the heart with ever-new and increasing wonder and awe: the starry sky above me and the moral law in my heart.” The Foundations is a meditation on morality. In this “mere forty pages of fireworks”, says Parfit, Kant contributes “more new and richer ideas than all the philosophers of the centuries”. As he did in epistemology, Kant also made a profound Copernican revolution in moral and normative philosophy. To this day, Kant’s revolutionary contributions remain exciting but far from fully explored. Reading Kant is not easy. His books are so fascinating, yet so uninteresting and obscure, that some of his claims are even “irritating,” leaving the enthusiastic reader deeply “frustrated” or even put aside. But this seems to be the case with all great ideas. To look at the moon on a summer night with a lover in the breeze is intoxicating without effort. The more expansive vault of stars is awe-inspiring and even dizzying, requiring solitary courage, an unquenchable passion for truth, and the perseverance to match the sublime. Perhaps one of the most romantic things I did in college was to set aside a summer for Kant. Whatever the outcome, many years from now you can say to yourself that I looked up at the stars one summer night in the past. And the soul that has been baptized by the stars will be pulled by the stars for the rest of its life.

The Theory of Man

           Author: [German] Ernst Kassir

[Recommendation] Although the length of these two books is not large, as long as I have free time, I will look through them a little. It is not only to pass the time, but also to play with the psychology, just like a text player playing with a walnut or a gourd. Let’s start with On People. Its author Cassirer is a German Jew. He was born in 1874. He studied at Cohen in his early years and later taught at Hamburg University. After Hitler came to power, Cassirer went into exile and taught in universities in Britain, Sweden and the United States. He died of illness in the United States in 1945 at the age of 71. Cassirer’s academic vision is extremely broad. In the field of western ideological history, Cassirer has written a lot of works. It can be said that the ideological history is a focus of Cassirer’s writings. We can regard Cassirer as a historian of thought or philosophy, but Cassirer is more an original philosopher. The philosophy created by Cassirer can be called cultural philosophy. On Man is the essence of Cassirer’s cultural philosophy and represents the core purport of Cassirer’s cultural philosophy. “On Man” is the last book published by Cassirer before his death. To a certain extent, it seems that it is also possible to call it Cassirer’s “final conclusion in his later years”.

As the name implies, the theme of On Man is man. However, in the field of humanities and even social sciences, which book does not discuss the “human problem”? Which of the issues discussed is not a “people related issue”? Which book can completely put aside the relationship with people? In this case, what is new and special about the discussion of human beings in The Theory of Man? It turns out that Cassirer’s On Man, based on various discourses on human beings in the history of western thought, provides a personalized interpretation of human beings: human beings are symbolic animals. All kinds of myths, religions, languages, arts, history and science are products created by people with their own symbolic activities, This is just like the last sentence of the second chapter of The Theory of Man said: “All these cultural forms are symbolic forms. Therefore, we should define man as an animal symbol instead of defining man as a rational animal. Only in this way can we point out the uniqueness of man and understand the new road open to man – the road to culture.” The culture here is the culture created by people using symbols.

Man’s creation is man’s labor. The Theory of Man tells us: “The outstanding characteristics and distinctive signs of man are not his metaphysical nature or his physical nature, but his work. It is this kind of work, this system of human activities, that defines and delimits the circle of ‘human nature’. Language, mythology, religion, art, science and history are all parts and sectors of this circle.” (Page 87) Every time I see this sentence, I will stare at it for a long time. It turns out that human characteristics or traits, human nature or essence, all depend on human labor. Whether a group or an individual, everyone is shaped by his own work. You are what you work for. Cassirer’s work is to study the existence of human beings in an all-round way. The resulting “On Man” has both horizontal width and vertical depth, leaving an unforgettable impression on me.

#4《Jurist in Context: A Memoir》

Author: William Twining

[Recommendation] William Twinning is an emeritus professor at University College London, UK, and has made outstanding contributions to the study of general jurisprudence, legal philosophy, globalization and law, evidence law and legal realism. This book is a memoir of the author’s learning and thinking process. It discusses the development of jurisprudence in terms of methods and topics since Hart, and the changes of law education in the British and American context – the characters are vivid and interesting, and the content of gossip is no less than the academic content. Law students can learn how a “kid” who was born in the British colony and could not even speak English “” beat the devil and upgraded “to become a world-class scholar of jurisprudence, and law scholars can see how a young man suffered for his life to become an expert in college politics; Professional readers can taste how jurisprudence has become today along the way, and ordinary readers can reflect on whether academia is a tool of Daoliangmu or a proper meaning in the subject of life through inspection… This book can be read through, read carefully, skip, read aloud, and read silently, but it is absolutely necessary to read in the heat: although it is not a necessary recipe for home, it can be a good companion on the pillow side toilet!

# 5 The Republic

Author: Plato

[Recommendation] I have a student who said that the attraction of a course to students mainly comes from two points: it is useful or interesting, and one of them is attractive. If you have both, you will rush to it, and if you have neither, you will be ignored. In fact, reading is the same. I scanned the bookshelf once, and few books can meet these two standards at the same time. Among these limited choices, Plato’s Republic seems to be the first choice for summer reading. From a useful point of view, The Republic is classic enough. It is widely used in learning and research, but can be traced back to all categories of western humanities and social sciences; Its themes are broad enough: politics, ethics, life, education, philosophy, art; Her question is also powerful enough to knock your soul: “Which is more worth pursuing, a just life or a happy life?” “Is goodness measured by itself or by its consequences?” “What kind of public life is good?” “What virtue is worth pursuing?” “How to treat aging?” And those proverbial sentences, even if you read one sentence, will have a long aftertaste: “When you are in pain, you will regard peace as happiness.” “Good is not the cause of all things, but only the cause of good things.” “The purpose of education is the development of the mind.” “Too much passion will turn into cruelty and rudeness.” “Evil cannot understand virtue and evil itself, but virtue can.” “Opinion is the thing between knowledge and ignorance.” “The human soul, like the human eyes, has the ability to recognize reason.” Obviously, the usefulness of this book is not only in academic, but also in understanding life and life itself, which can be said to be of great use.

From an interesting point of view, the Republic uses dialogue extensively. Socrates is always a top chatting master, and he will never kill chatting. Whether talking with the rich businessman and elder Kefaros in Volume I, or talking with Crook and his brother in Volume I, the dialogue can be deepened and opinions can be fully displayed, but it can also be guided to an appropriate theme and angle, which is really the world-class ceiling of chatting skills. There are also a lot of interesting stories and metaphors in the Republic that often appear in various western texts: Gugos’ rings and invisible shepherds, “gold, silver, copper and iron” and the “noble lies” of identity, “cave metaphors” of the phenomenal world and the essential world, and “the legends of Eros” of the rewards of justice. These philosophical fables have been repeatedly interpreted since ancient times, but each reader can also become a new reader. As for the magnificent picture of ancient Greek philosophy and history in the Republic, is it not sweet to let the glory of an “axis era” still penetrate the history into your heart and stand beside the giants of thought and listen to their dialogue? I was born with a limit, but there is no limit to learning. Take up these books now!

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