Two Books on Liberty

Societies without liberty exist throughout the world, both real and imaginary. In old China, women did not have right to learn. In modern China, citizens do not have right to speak. The government filters knowledge. Even the leading internet search engine and portal operator, like Google and Yahoo, collaborated with the Chinese government to censor websites. For imaginary world, Thomas More's Utopia (1516) and the society in George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) are two sharp models. These examples are merely tips of the iceberg.

John Stuart Mill emphasis in the beginning of On Liberty that he’s concerned about civil or social liberty. The power of government is necessary but limits should be set. Mill points out that human being is free to do what he likes, given that it makes no harm to other individuals. If you had studied literature, philosophy or political science, you would have found this book in your list of course readings. On Liberty is simply a classic. Why read the classics? Italo Calvino has explained enough.

That's theory, that's what a scholar has said. All right. Then you may interest in Nelson Mandela's Long Walk to Freedom. The autobiography, of the first elected President of South Africa, traces Mandela's life and struggle. Take a look at freedom in another way.

Further readings:

John Stuart Mill On Liberty
http://www.bartleby.com/130/

On Liberty - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Liberty

Long Walk to Freedom - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_Walk_to_Freedom

A Day

27/2/2006 - 星期一 Monday

Went to HSBC this afternoon. Filled in the form in order to get a bank cheque, as usual. Miss T (she sounded and looked like a typical Kong girl (港女), dressed up as a normal OL.) asked politely whether I was sure for my signature. Well, I have two signatures only. Either in Chinese or English. It must be the English one. Then miss T sought help from the manager. The manager accepted my signature within one second. I repeat, within a second. I showed my student ID to confirm. Even so, I guess I should practice my signing.

Met Pierre Fung on campus and chatted with him. Tonight Christopher and I gave up playing with the food. We went out to dinner with Henry, Kevin and Jackson. I had Pad Thai with pork.

3 Days

26/2/2006 - 星期日 Sunday

Tonight we played with XO fried spaghetti, served with chicken and mixed vegetables.

25/2/2006 - 星期六 Saturday

Woke up at nine something today. Got a text. Two pieces of pizza for lunch. Shopping with Christopher in a supermarket. Set up a router. At night, we played (yes, it's the proper word) with the penne (a type of pasta) and destroyed it with our mouth and stomach. Visited Henry and Kevin's place. Read a few pages of Peter Singer's Animal Liberation with a cup of espresso before I went to bed.

Link:
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Singer
- http://www.princeton.edu/~psinger/
- http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/

24/2/2006 - 星期五 Friday

Cleaning, get some texts, download, print, hydrate, dehydrate, absorb, release, sleep, awake.

Munich

26/2/2006 - 星期日 Sunday

Watched Munich without subtitle. I didn't quite get what's going on.

"Biggest" Bookstore

25/2/2006 - 星期六 Saturday

A bookstore will be opened in Shenzhen (深圳). 500,000 square foot, 3,000,000 books. Being the so-called biggest bookstore in the world, the diversity of books will not be wide...... given that it is located in China.

楊絳《洗澡》

22/2/2006 - 星期三 Wednesday

施螫存說楊絳《洗澡》「感覺就像半部《紅樓夢》加上半部《儒林外史》。」我只嫌《洗澡》短。明清小說略嫌長；五四時期的，文筆不夠好；現代呢，嫌短。挑嘴。

李天命談「無我」

21/2/2006 - 星期二 Tuesday

餓了要吃飯、竹葉青、SCU、Clotho 等人續談李天命談「無我」。亂。

20/2/2006 - 星期一 Monday

在 newsgroup.com.hk / newsgroup.la 「新聞組.討論.哲學」討論李天命談「無我」。抄錄如下：

阿Nick：李天命《哲道行者》有言：「無我論者說：『我不存在，沒有我。』徹底自打咀巴。」﹝p.131﹞無我論者是誰，李先生沒有指名道姓。按中文字解，李先生對。李先生又說：「佛家認為『我念』是煩惱的根源，要追求『無我』的境界。問題是：誰在追求無我？還不就是你的自我在追求無我？」又說：「當無我論者聲稱『我不存在』時，他就犯了自我推翻的謬誤，」﹝p.269﹞
何謂無我？教育部國語辭典：「佛教用語。沒有私見的意思。謂所有的存在現象，都沒有一個恆常不變﹑自我主宰的實體。」據南懷瑾先生說，要無我，則先放下身見，即身體的感覺和觀念。「身見忘掉不是無我啊，只是無身見，要真正內在身心皆亡，達到無我才對，才可以得定。」這是人無我，屬小乘果位。進而再談法無我。﹝《金剛經說甚麼》p.298-299﹞According to the online Encyclopadia Britannica, Anatta (無我) is "the doctrine that there is in humans no permanent, underlying substance that can be called the soul. Instead, the individual is compounded of five factors (Pali khandha; Sanskrit skandha) that are constantly changing." (accessed 20/12/2006) Detailed English explanation can be found in: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatta.
佛教「無我」有別於「我不存在」。余初學佛，若有誤請指正。
餓了要吃飯：雖然李天命是錯的，但根據你的回答，我們還是可以站在他的立場追問：那麼，追求無我者是誰？／正在吃飯者是誰？／發問者是誰？．．．等等
你會如何答？
又例如
我之所以被不變地稱為我，你之所以被不變地稱為你，一定因為各人有某種獨立
的不變的特質，怎能說無我？
你又會如何回應~
阿Nick： I shall use psychological approach to the problem of personal identity. That is, we have some memory of ourselves which allow us to figure out who are we. I admit that this approach is not perfect. John Locke suggests that I-today is the same person as I-yesterday only if I-today have a sense of myself that includes a memory of I-yesterday. This is a bit strict. As David Hume states, "for how few of our past actions are there, of which we have any memory?" Also, it is generally believed, in psychology, that most people lost childhood memory (Childhood amnesia). Moreover, if one get 老人痴呆, he would hardly recall his memory. Apart from this, memory works quite well as a criterion of personal identity.
又，釐清「無我」有別於「我不存在」。則我在追求「無我」。追求「無我」不是說「我不存在」。
餓了要吃飯：若有personal identity
那麼，你認為「無我」其實是無了什麼？
阿Nick：I mean personal identity is sort of「各人有某種獨立的不變的特質」i.e.「我之所以被不變地稱為我，你之所以被不變地稱為你」partly because of memory.
餓了要吃飯：你認為這個personal identity可否被稱為我？
阿Nick：not same as 佛教「無我」's one
餓了要吃飯：明白~ :p

炒公仔麵

21/2/2006 - 星期二 Tuesday

炒公仔麵，馬來西亞早有，香港不獨步。

《平頭日記》

19/2/2006 - 星期日 Sunday

到又一城 AMC 看《平頭日記》﹝Jerhead﹞。六個 good。故事不錯，剪接音效都不佳。imdb.com 分類為 Drama 或 War。Drama 嗎？太俗。War 嗎？不太像戰爭片。兩面不討好。

想到去年年尾用 Windows Movie Maker 替家人製作旅行相片投影片。年長一輩看呢，忒花，白底黑字才好；年輕一輩看呢，I'm too dull！雅俗共賞、老少咸宜實難。

片中有句「Every war is different. Every war is the same.」想到 Charles Dickens 的小說《A Tale of Two Cities》開宗明義曰：「It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way–in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.」未知有沒有人批判這些話有病。