Major Academic Works

Monographs:

Collection of Western Aesthetic History, Shanghai People Publishing House, 1963

Sequel of Collection of Western Aesthetic History, Shanghai People Publishing House, 1983

Western Philosophy and Aesthetics, Shanxi People Publishing House, 1987

The Search of Aesthetics, China Social Sciences Publishing House, 1992

On Western Aesthetics and Art, Guangxi Normal University Press, 1997

An anthology of Ru Xin’s Works, Xuexi Publishing House, 2005

Co-authored works:

Criticism of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Categorical Theory, Shanghai People Publishing House, 1961

The Three Sources of Marxism, People’s Publishing House, 1985

Translations:

The Philosophical Viewpoints of Prehanov, SDX Joint Publishing Company, 1957

The Development of Indian Capitalism before 1947, SDX Joint Publishing Company, 1958

Non-antagonitic Contradictions under Socialist System, SDX Joint Publishing Company, 1959

Anthology of Philosophical Works of Prehanov, the first half of Volume 4, SDX Joint Publishing Company, 1974

Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky, Shanghai Translation Publishing House, 1991

The Tree of Truth is Green Forever

Wang Qi (Wang for short below): Mr. Ru Xin, I have gained some understanding of your academic thoughts through your published works in different periods. And I have also had some idea of your academic experience though the prefaces of Western Philosophy and Aesthetics and Optional Collection of the Members of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Your life experiences are colorful even seen from today. In the 1940s, you graduated from Saint John’s University in Shanghai; in the early 1950s, you followed the Chinese People's Volunteers to the Korean Battlefield; in the mid-1950s, you were transferred out of the army and worked as an administrative staffer in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; then you became a vice doctoral student of Mr. He Lin. After graduation you made remarkable contributions to the research into Western Philosophy and Aesthetics. What’s more, you also had experience of the administrative work in the institution and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, which were humorously described as “not engaged in proper duties” in the prefaces mentioned previously. Would you please say something about the influence of these experiences on yourself and your academic research?

Ru Xin (Ru for short below): It was by sheer chance that I was engaged in academic research and related work, since I had never thought that I would do academic research when I was young. On the eve of the liberation of China, I studied in Saint John’s University in Shanghai. At that time some of the students worked very hard, some of them just dawdled away their time to get their graduation certificate to find a good job, and some of them were “progressive young people” who were influenced by left-wing thoughts. And I belonged to the kind of students who participated in the student movements. During that period the student movements were so frequent that there was little time for us to concentrate on study. 

Wang: Your study at Saint John’s University at least laid a good foundation for foreign languages, right?

Ru: At Saint John’s University, except that the Chinese language course and Chinese history course were taught in Chinese, others were taught in English, including The Three People's Principles, whether the teachers were Chinese or not. Influenced by the progressive thoughts at that time, I had always wanted to learn Russian. However, Russian was not taught in the university. As a result, I asked a Belarusian that fled to Shanghai to teach me Russian, but I did not learn it well. After liberation, I joined the Chinese People's Liberation Army, which was originally prepared for the liberation of Taiwan. Yet the Korean War suddenly broke out, I had to follow the army to the Korean battlefield. During the first two years’ mobile warfare, hardly did I have time to study. Later when the positional war began, I was able to find a little time to study while working as an English translator at military headquarters. Before I went to North Korea, I bought a book by Nikolay Gavrilovich Chernyshevsky so as to learn Russian well. Thus I started to study Russian intermittently. In the 1950s and 1960s there were no such good conditions of studying and doing academic research, like the endless movements and too important political tasks, thus all the time to study and write were all squeezed from spare time. The first article about Chernyshevsky’s viewpoints on social politics, which was published after I was transferred to the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, was finished during the breaks of several Sundays. Under the conditions at that time, it was indeed difficult for someone to sit down and devote oneself to exploring a certain issue.   

Wang: You took Hegel as the cut-in point into the research field of western philosophy, and you once said it was a “misunderstanding of history”. I know that this choice had its inevitability in the specific historical conditions.

Ru: It is no exaggeration that the research into Hegel, I think, was a “misunderstanding of history”. When I returned to china from Korea, I was assigned to the training department of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. At that time Qian Weichang was the head of the department. I was responsible for organizing the scientific research staff, mainly the natural scientific researchers to study theories, especially philosophy. Great philosophers like Ai Siqi often lectured them. Another thing I did was to established the postgraduate education system in China referring to the vice doctoral education system in the Soviet Union. Since I personally took part in drafting the postgraduate education system, I thought of pursuing my postgraduate study to improve myself. Finally I was able to become a student of Mr. He Lin to study the philosophy of Hegel. After the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, Hegel philosophy became my research emphasis, which was because of its relationship to Marxism. In addition to Mr. He Lin and Mr. Yang Yi in the department of western philosophy, Mr. Wang Jiuxing, who used to study European contemporary philosophy of existentialism, was found to be studying Hegel. Among all the postgraduate students who came into the philosophy institute at the same time, I had the weakest foundation in philosophy. According to my condition, Mr. He Lin made two training plans: the first one was to read the chief famous western philosophy classics of the great philosophers from the ancient Greek period to Hegel one by one. But under the same historical situations, the main research issues of western philosophy history were on materialism and dialectics. The second was his suggestion that I should translate them while reading. Then he was busying translating the Ethics of Spinoza and he asked me to do the proof-reading, from which I learned a lot.

Wang: Hegel was the model of western classical philosophy and the maker of the peakedness of the speculative philosophy system, which is something that his critics from later times could not deny. In this sense, what inspirations and horizons did Hegel bring to you in your philosophical research? Furthermore, what influences have the emphasis on Hegel and German speculative philosophy brought to the research of western philosophy in China?

Ru: Hegel philosophy was all-embracing and extensive with rich and profound thoughts, which greatly broadened my horizons. It was not until I seriously studied Hegel’s works that I came to understand the theoretical origin of Marxist philosophy and its significance on the revolutionary reform of the human history of philosophy and ideology. Personally I appreciate his Aesthetics, because it enlightened greatly, that is, theoretical research must have a broad sense of history and historical horizons and it must value history, which should be based on a large amount of practical materials. Otherwise it may easily become chain talk. In China, Hegel’s significance mainly lay in the influence of dialectics on Marxism. Under the guidance of dialectics, we can avoid being dogmatic or simplified. Besides, Hegel’s generalization of ancient philosophy is also worth our careful study. 

Wang: Among all your academic achievements, you took Hegel as a cut-in point and gradually extended your study into other fields of western philosophical history. Beginning with Hegel, you discussed and summarized the dialectic ideology in western philosophical history (Heraclitus and Dialectic). Later you criticized Croce, the new Hegelian, and Stirner, the leftwing Young Hegalian, and you studied Schopenhauer and Kierkegaard who attacked Hegel’s viewpoints. So how did you extend the range of research?

Ru: Actually the philosophical studies after Hegel began as early as the 1960s. They were just the objects of attack. The previous standard viewpoint was that the Hegelianism reached the peak of the philosophy of idealism, the advanced part of which had already been absorbed and improved by Marxism. Modern philosophy, which was all reactionary, should be criticized. However, you should know something about those theories before you can criticize them. Therefore I helped sort out the materials in the western philosophical history department. Through Existentialism Philosophy and Modern American Philosophy, I came to know about Martin Heidegger, Jean Paul Sartre, John Dewey, Sidney Hook, and Ceorg Lukacs. Of course, these materials were easy, but they were the very first studies on modern western philosophy. Nevertheless the real understanding of modern philosophy did not begin until China’s reform and opening up to the outside world.

Wang: The SDX Joint Publishing Company published an interview called the 1980s in 2006, which mainly covers the artists and writers who became famous in the 1980s. Although the 1980s was not a strictly defined academic period, it was indeed a symbolic period. I went to college in 1986 and found that the western theories were quite popular with various ideologies, making us excited but meanwhile confused. In the early 1980s, you were once a visiting scholar at Harvard University, would you please review your feelings when you first touched upon western society and academia after a long period of isolation. 

Ru: In 1981, I was sent to Harvard University as a visiting scholar by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Due to my studying at a missionary university sponsored by Americans, I knew some of the western cultures and I found that the distance between cultures were not that large but the distance between social life and academic research---I felt that we were not qualified to discuss academic issues with them. The largest merit of Harvard University is it is open and free. Famous scholars from all over the world would come to give a lecture when they passed by, and anyone could go to listen to their lectures. In the philosophy department of Harvard University you can find great philosophers like Quine, Rawls, and Putnam. Putnam was responsible for contacting me. However, after all the years of isolation we knew little of the outside world. It was only after I went abroad that I found we knew nothing about their research. Thus we could hardly discuss it with them. It was not the same as today when you can exchange information with people all over the world. A young scholar can communicate with foreign scholars once they are abroad. At first the field I wanted to study was History of American philosophy, thinking that as an important country in the world, the ideology from it must be of some strength. But when I told Putnam the plan, he laughed and said, “American Philosophy does not exist as an independent philosophy.” The so-called “American Philosophy” actually refers to the religious ideology of Jefferson, the founder of the United States and some Puritan ideologists. There are some voluminous works on American Philosophy, but they are not spoken of highly in academic circles. After I realized this, I did not follow my original research plan. At that time Heinrich, President of the International Hegel Research Committee, was invited to Harvard and gave lectures on Hegel for a whole semester. Since I had contact with him and had learned something about Hegel, I was able to understand his lectures. But I did not attend other lectures because I was not clear about the issues rather than I couldn’t understand English. Later on I made use of the large quantities of books in the Harvard library and knew something about Nietzsche’s and Kierkegaard’s thoughts. I only needed to apply for a reading card to enter the stack room of the library in Harvard University, where there were seats for you to sit. Once you finished reading the books you just needed to put the books on the desks, there was someone to put them back. That was where I read Nietzsche’s and Kierkegaard’s books and started to pay attention to the clues of thought emphasizing individual existence after Hegel. And I found that Harvard drew little attention from European Continental Philosophy. I could not find anyone to discuss Nietzsche with me. Yet now I regret that I did not take full advantage of the Philosophical School of Harvard University. It is a pity that I did not talk with such important philosopher as Rawls.

Wang: Analytical philosophy is very popular in the United States. I think that our interest and the depth of research range can never be compared with that of humanist philosophy in Continental Europe. What do you think has led to this?

Ru: The reason why humanist philosophy is emphasized in China may have something to do with our traditions. Analytical philosophy must be based on special training in math and logic, which is just not our traditional strength, as we emphasize humanity and are contemptuous of anything technological.

Wang: So, when you came to understand modern western philosophy in an all-round way, has your understanding of Hegel and western classical philosophy changed?

Ru: When I came to know about modern philosophy, I at first realized that the previous research on Hegel in China was quite limited. The past research was centered on the relations between Hegel and Marxism, focusing on the ideological development from Kant to Hegel and from Feuerbach to Marx, but the research on Hegelianism itself was not deep enough. Nowadays with the liberation of thoughts and the broadening of our horizons, I feel that the research on Hegel should also notice another opposite clue of thought featured by personal characteristics after Hegel. The sentence as said by Jaspers enlightened me: “Kierkegaard and Nietzsche make us open our eyes.” In the past I was crazy about or even admired the system of Hegelianism and its vigor. However, when I had read modern philosophy, especially Kierkegaard’s criticism of Hegel, I began to gradually doubt systematic philosophy. I used to think that the Hegelianism system was the most rigorous. But now the system was just the imagination of a human since some of them were too farfetched. The myth about the system can never be the solution to philosophical issues. So it is with the aesthetic system. I came to realize that philosophy cannot become something technical, or something that only few people can understand. The value and significance of philosophy lies in the fact that it needs to be related to people’s life. In fact it was the case in ancient Greece. If philosophy became a specialized technology, a formula or a game, its social influence would be affected. Take Sartre for example. Though some doubted his philosophy, he did have great influence on western society. I have also read something about postmodernism, which I find reasonable to some extent. It is just that I have always thought that it is certainly correct to do away with superstitions in systems and authority, which is easy. But the problem is that it is difficult to set up something new and positive. Life is full of uncertainties. What shall we do when everything becomes uncertain?

Wang: Even seen from today, your research on the figures of philosophy and aesthetics history and their research issues are cutting-edge. In the 1960s you wrote an article about the aesthetic thoughts of Plotinus; in 1982 you wrote Comments on Kierkegaard’s Thoughts. I investigated and found that it was the first article that comprehensively reflected Kierkegaard’ philosophical thoughts; in 1983 you wrote The Life and Works of Max Stirner, and made the first in-depth research into this important figure. How did you get the cutting-edge sense of academic research when the opportunities and range of communicating were so limited? Is it academic inspiration that works?

Ru: The idea of research on the aesthetics thoughts of Plotinus was based on such consideration. It was said that the Middle Ages were a dark period, but I just don’t believe that the philosophical and aesthetic achievements would be a blank. It is quite difficult to do research on the Middle Ages, because on the one hand there were too many trains of thought and it was very hard to get first-hand materials. I once read something of Augustine. There were some aesthetic thoughts in The Confessions of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but it was hard to abstract them into theories. Later I read an English book of aesthetic history, which included an English translated version of the works of Plotinus and some scattered materials in another corpus. Although I did not find the complete Enneads, I had some enlightenment and wrote that article. It was rather difficult to find second-hand materials in China, not to mention complete first-hand materials

Wang: But compared with the present situation where books are everywhere, maybe there are some advantages of limited materials. It would force us to think deeply rather than get lost in so many materials. Of course, this could only be seen as a pathetic advantage.

Ru: Indeed. After China’s reform and opening up to the outside world, I was able to have the opportunity to read the books in the libraries of foreign universities, which made me realize our distance with them. Mr. Fu Anle once told me that when he had read the research works on the Middle Ages, he dared not to write. I wrote the article about Kierkegaard just because I first read some of his works and was shocked at his thoughts, since he set a new direction of philosophical research---that is to care about the issues of individuals and their life and death. If we want to know what man really is and research into human philosophy, we can never avoid such fundamental issues like love and death that everyone would inevitably meet in their lifetime. If Marxism wanted to enter the bottom of people’s hearts and become the guidance of life, it would not only solve the problems of social development, but also answer the questions that concern everyone and that they are confused about, including having their own opinions on love and death. 

Wang: Let’s shift to the field of western aesthetic research where you made great achievements. As early as 1963, you published Collection of Western Aesthetic History. Though you modestly said that it was just practice for writing, you had being doing research on Plotinus, Lessing and Schopenhauer. The study of aesthetics history is indispensible from philosophy history. So how did you combine them? What are their positions in your mind? 

Ru: The study of aesthetics history is indispensible from philosophy history. But according to my experience of many years, I found that the study of aesthetics history can never do without the history of literature and arts and practices. Social life is rich and colorful but contradictory, and aesthetic phenomenon and literature and arts are complicated. Thus the single and pure study of aesthetics from concept to concept is of little help for us to understand the arts.

Wang: The search for Aesthetics is the shift of your research in the aesthetic field. Your search for aesthetics is reviewed in the preface: from the research of the grand aesthetic system of Hegel to the exploration of possibilities of irrational aesthetics of Nietzsche and so on, and then to your devotion to nature. At last you focus on the study of works of art, where you found your spiritual home. Not only did you agree that aesthetics is not easy, but also you approve of the profound thought expressed in Goethe’s verse---“All theory is grey, and the evergreen tree of life.” Should there lie such great distance between the search for aesthetics and aesthetic theories, then is aesthetics the kind of science from the sense of Baumgarten and Hegel? How should the  development of aesthetics follow?

Ru: The translation of aesthetics into “美学” (Meixue) restricted the range of research, which equals it to the study of the theory of beauty. However, if it were translated into “Theory of Sensitive Faculty” in Kant’s works, it would be too broad. In a word, it is a great side effect to use “美学” (Meixue) to replace “aesthetics”, the most obvious of which is that it seems that everyone could say something about aesthetics. Yet it is actually not the case, because the study of aesthetics is the most difficult. I doubt whether aesthetics is a kind of science or not. A scholar friend of mine once said that when natural science develops to a certain extent, the issues of works of art can be solved in a certain formula, which I doubted a lot. I have always advocated that we should substitute social science with humanistic study, which is to say the humanities. Social science can be applied. As for the question of how to develop aesthetics, it is still a big problem that I am still working on till now. Still I want to face the works of arts created by human beings directly. And study aesthetics with personal appreciation. Art is one of the self-conscious activities that represent liberty. It can provide us with the aesthetics in its most sophisticated, concentrated and cohesive form. Meanwhile humans can reinvent themselves dynamically and practically in the free and self-conscious creative activities of arts, objectify the nature of ourselves and reflect ourselves in the world of art created by ourselves. In a sense, the history of art is the real record of free and self-conscious human activities in the long historical process, which is not only the history of human’s spiritual growth but also the creative history of aesthetics. In brief, the study of aesthetics should avoid the way from concept to concept and from theory to theory, because that way is of no help to our understanding of the arts. The world of art is the most lifelike and vivid world, in which the arts come before theories. Therefore art theories and the study of aesthetics should never have the wild wishes of guiding arts one day; on the contrary, what we can do through theoretical study is that it can help us to better understand the arts. In this way theory would play its own role.

Wang: The essence of The Search of Aesthetics gained benefits from your accumulation and achievements in western philosophy and the field of aesthetics. What is amazing is that there should be so many excellent sentences and paragraphs in these articles. What the paintings of Van Gogh can bring us is, you said, a kind of beauty that can’t help but make you cry, that can make you not stand, and that can make you not breathe. This description is just in place! You humble yourself that you are an amateur of the arts. But how do you nurture your artistic culture? Do you think that researchers of aesthetics should be equipped with a certain art experience or refinement as the basis of research?

Ru: I am far from being artistically cultured. I am just a layman of the arts. For example, we may find abstract paintings utterly without a literary style when ordinary people look at them. Once I discussed this problem with a professor from the Central Academy of Art. He said that in the eyes of the experts, those paintings that seemed lawless are actually quite systematic. The reason why we can’t realize this is that we are not professionally trained. Thus I think the study of aesthetics or art theory can only make sense when it is combined with specific art practices. 

Wang: In the long catalogue of works, I find that you have translated a lot of Russian works and you wrote some articles about ideologists from the Soviet Union, which was of course due to the historical situation at that time. In the past we learned almost everything from the Soviet Union, but now there is only one young scholar in the whole philosophy institute who is studying Russian philosophy. Then what do you think of the theoretical achievements of these ideologists from Russia and the Soviet Union? What kind of historical height should we look at the significance and value of Russian ideology?

Ru: It is never wise to follow the trend in academic research. When you are in the trend, you cannot see some issues clearly, even the time to conclude these issues hasn’t come. In addition to this, you have to finish the task within a limited time when it is still a trend. In this case it is unlikely to get good results. The scientific attitude should be that you need to stay relatively behind the trends to make your vision more comprehensive, the fruits of which can stand the test of time. In the past we swarmed to learn from the Soviet Union and followed their lead, which is obviously not right. But it doesn’t make sense if we totally repudiate it now. For instance, the names of the previously honored Belinskiy and Chernyshevsky are no longer mentioned in the literary theory class in university today. However if you read Belinskiy’s works, you may find some of his ideas are quite ingenious. So I think that after the trend, we should treat these theories practically. We should confirm and criticize when necessary, and this is the scientific way of study.

Wang: In your article the importance of “emancipating the mind” is frequently emphasized. I can fully understand the importance and significance of this phrase to scholars born in your generation. Therefore to the young scholars, does “emancipating the mind” still make sense?

Ru: “Emancipating the mind” is significant to anyone, to our generation in particular. In the past all academic activities served politics. As a result there were so many restricted areas in academic research fields, which were actually ideological imprisonment that we forced upon ourselves. I would like to tell you a story. In 1981 when I was at Harvard University, I talked about China with a famous professor of economics who worked as a consultant to President of the United States. China was still in a period of getting goods by vouchers. So I asked him now that China had an inefficient supply of food and goods, do you have any suggestions as a famous economist? After he heard this, he laughed, saying that it was not the problem of the question, because it was you that had lead to this situation. Only if you opened your prices and allowed people to produce and do business, would there be everything you need in the market. At first I didn’t believe this, but later it proved to be true. This told us that we were confined by our imagined thoughts. But the emancipation of the mind is never for good and it should be a continuous process. The old doctrines and idols were given up, new doctrines and idols would appear; sometimes it is self-conscious, sometimes it is not. The world is changing all the time. If we should stop for a short while, our minds would become stiff, then there comes the need to emancipate our minds. “Emancipating the mind” exists in every generation and we should be alert to this all the time.

Wang: You worked as the vice president of the International Scientific Council for Philosophy and Humanities and the foreign member of the academy of sciences in the former German Democratic Republic. And you often visited a lot of foreign countries and did many academic exchanges with western educational circles. What do you think are the features of western philosophy and research of aesthetics in both China and western countries and what are their differences?

Ru: In the study of specific and partial issues of western philosophy, we cannot be compared with them. What we need to do is to bring our strengths into full play. I think that we Chinese emphasize integrity and the ability to do comprehensive surveys. It is similar to the difference between traditional Chinese and western medicine. In western medicine, they treat different kinds of diseases individually; while traditional Chinese medicine cures the disease from the root. This is our strength. We ought to maximize favorable factors and minimize unfavorable ones. Of course, if we just do research from an integrated point of view but ignore the study of specific problems, the result would not be good. Thus we need to abandon the impractical and find a balance between details and integrity.

It is very hard to achieve this. Besides we can gain some inspiration from western Sinologists. There are a group of scholars among western Sinologists studying practical issues. The reason that they can draw the attention of Chinese scholars lies completely in their brand-new angle of view. Their research can help us jump out of the conventions that result from history and so forth. Thus we need to study western philosophy in this way---use our own eyes and points of view and we are likely to see something that westerners could not see.

Wang: All these years you have focused on the issue of “civilization”. And you organized a compilation of a 12-book series on the Systems of World Civilization, which is very popular among readers. Why did you shift your focus to the study of civilization? What are the ideological roots of it?

Ru: The study of the issues of “civilization” is very closely related to reality. After the Cold War, tremendous changes have taken place in the world structure and international situation. Even though the world is not peaceful now, peace and development has become the two major themes of the contemporary world. At the same time, though the trend of economic globalization is speeding up, world politics is still changing towards multi-polar, and cultural pluralism is becoming richer and varied. As a result, a lot of scholars pay more attention to the research of cultural strategies. They believe that the factors of civilization and culture are playing more and more important roles in the process of world development in the 21^st century. Since China’s reform and opening up to the outside world, the study of cultures have been very popular in Chinese academic circles. However overall, we are lacking general research on issues of civilization and cultures. We did not combine the research with the changes in the world structure and international situation. And we lack some in-depth analysis of the relative studies of civilizations abroad and their developing trends. Besides our research in world civilization seems to be too weak. However, at present we must and can work out a series of classic works that we Chinese study world civilization and its development on our own comprehensively and systematically. We need to apply the ideas of Marx to explore the discipline and the characteristics of world civilization and its development; we need to draw on the achievements of all cultures and to learn from other countries while carrying forward the fine traditions of Chinese culture; we need to formulate a set of strategies that can not only promote civilization but also effectively handle the challenges from foreign civilizations. This is an urgent mission, but from the point of long-term significance, this work has just begun.

Wang: Caring about people is one of the key points in your philosophical and aesthetic thoughts. You have often rectified the name of humanism and mentioned many times the importance of the research of individual philosophy and the fundamental issues of love and death. It took academic courage to write down these words at that time. Would you please tell me how do you regard the mission of a scholar? In this aspect, what expectations do you have for the younger scholars? 

Ru: It is often said that before being a good scholar, one should first be a good person, then be a good Chinese and the next a good scholar. If you can’t be a good person, what does it say about the significance of the mission of a scholar? A scholar should scrupulously abide by his duty.

Wang Qi, female and from the Han ethnic group, born in 1968 and is a native of Xi’an, Shanxi Province. With a doctoral degree in philosophy, she is now an assistant researcher in the Institute of Philosophy of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Her major publications include An Abyss to Despair: on Kierkegaard’s aesthetical world, The Emotional World in Western Aesthetics, On the Concept of “Ethics” in Kierkegaard’s Works and so on.

(Translated by Xu Xiujun)