First posted August 4, 2018
In 1996, Professor Pierre Ryckmans (Simon Leys) presented the ABC Boyer Lectures. Subsequently published under the title The View from the Bridge the lectures were serialised in four parts in China Heritage Quarterly with the permission of the author.
The first lecture was called Learning (some introductory paragraphs are given below; but the link will lead you to the entire text). The second lecture was titled Reading; and the third was titled Writing. The final lecture Going Abroad and Staying Home opens thus: ‘Dictators and toddlers share a curious characteristic: an inability to use the first person pronoun. They refer to them-selves by their own names, in the third person…’
Introduction
The other day I paid a visit to an old friend, who is a philosopher. I found him in his garden, pruning his roses. I could not resist making the observation that this seemed a most befitting occupation for a philosopher, but my remark made him laugh. He was quick to remind me that a number of famous philosophers had in fact shown a strong allergy to such earthy hobbies. In our own time, for instance, think of Jean-Paul Sartre: the protagonist of his most representative novel Nausea, has a sudden intuition of the fundamental absurdity of existence while crossing a public garden; the very sight of an old tree-root grotesquely twisted over the ground triggers this dreadful awareness in his mind, and the experience is of such intensity, that it makes him literally vomit—hence the title of the book. (By the same token, one might even wonder if modern existentialist philosophers would not need to take sea-sickness pills before undertaking any gardening.)
Still, I do believe that my naive observation did, in a way, hit upon a deeper truth. It was not meant to be a facile reference to Voltaire’s well-known precept (as you will remember, at the end of his philosophical tale Candide after countless horrific tribulations, Candide and his companions, having experienced all the trials, disasters, miseries and anguish that generally characterize man’s predicament, at last find shelter and rest, and discover the ultimate secret of wisdom – which is to cultivate one’s own garden). No, what I had in mind, was something even more basic. It was simply the instinctive and universal awareness that the quest of the philosopher is as ancient and as essential to the human endeavour as the primeval occupation of the peasant. The magnificent statement on spiritual development, which John Henry Newman came to use almost as a proverb – ‘Growth is the only evidence of life’ – might as well have been issued by an old farmer.
Since the dawn of civilization – actually, since neolithic times when prehistoric man first began to settle down, to sow, to plant and to harvest – culture has sustained and defined us, and it is not by chance that we use the same word when we speak both of cultivating our gardens, and of cultivating our minds.
Indeed, culture is the true and unique signature of man. A prehistoric cave that presents material evidence of ancient occupation, may have been inhabited by pithecanthropes or other ape-like creatures, infinitely remote from us. Yet one single picture engraved or painted on its wall, however sketchy, rough, faint and faded, at once tells us a different story: a long time ago, Man was here-our ancestor, our brother. His individual presence is as immediate, unmistakable and overwhelming as that of Michelangelo in the Sistine Chapel. Culture is the very means through which we realise the fullness of our humanity. Inasmuch as we are human, we are all producers and consumers of culture; we all experience culture in diverse forms.
In these pages, I wish simply to draw from my own personal experience: I was a teacher, I am a writer – and I shall therefore offer some reflections on a series of topics, which I would call respectively, Learning • Reading • Writing • Going Abroad and Staying Home… read more:
http://www.chinaheritagequarterly.org/tien-hsia.php?searchterm=027_bridge.inc&issue=027
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jiǎ Yǐ Bǐng Dīng (2015) – Tribute to Professor Simon Leys (Pierre Ryckmans)
An Educated Man is not a Pot, an interview with Pierre Ryckmans
After the truth-shower 