原著

之前，Graham Harman話：

That’s what I’ll be reviewing this morning, since I’m sitting in on a Freshman Seminar tonight on these excerpts. The seminars run from 8-10 PM on Monday and Thursday nights.

Otherwise, the classes taken by all students are 4 years of mathematics (Euclid all the way up through Einstein), 4 years of language (roughly 2 of Greek and 2 of French for everyone), and the fourth and final class is laboratory though it’s replaced by music in Sophomore year.

I’m not sure how the lab program works these days, but we did the history of atomic theory when I was a Freshman, and it was a fantastic experience.

I loved the whole program, and would probably choose it 100 times if I had 100 rebirths at my disposal. Perhaps the most valuable skill you pick up from the St. John’s curriculum is that you end up not the least bit intimidated by any subject matter, since you’re always having to come to grips with materials that are initially over your head. It’s hard to get jived by someone blowing smoke in an article if you already had to figure out Einstein, Lobachevski, and Hegel on your own. To this day I refuse to read secondary sources on any author until the very last minute, after struggling abundantly with the primary sources first.

最後那段很有趣。今日大學教育越見功利，在一些還有學術理論的傳統科目裡，已經沒有多少還會讀原著吧。梁文道說當年讀海德格的＜存在與虛無＞是一頁一頁的讀，今天還會否重讀原著？在法律系的日子極少讀理論，但在Legal Theory 一科還是努力的讀了點Hart 和Dworkin。而在讀 Habermas 時都只是讀教授從Theory of Communicative Action 挑選出來的章節，但算是一個學期讀一部作品。讀社會學時課程要求也只是讀點期刊，書也少讀。而我自己為了寫論文就讀多了點analytical marxism 的書。

而我說過一個法律系學生若連一部法學作品也沒讀過，確實有點脫離學術。但今天一想最近讀書也是讀點二手資料多。一來還真是因為懶、能力不足，其實也有其他考慮，例如讀意識形態，是因為要按題目來讀，所以選擇一些摘要式的書來看。有時候也覺得解讀如何多，不讀原著也未必是壞事。正如在＜其實說了些什麼＞也想過相類似的問題。

不過無論讀原著與否，Harman 說的為以後打好個底，能夠讀自己熟識範圍外的第一手資料這想法是十分吸引的。因此，近期也是在讀些經濟學的東西。連別人說什麼也弄不清，怎樣去評論批判。

但都係個句，書唔係唔想睇，但未係最想做既野。那麼睇原著好困難。算是看過點學術書，最後總覺得變成人地點睇 XX 主義 -ism 等。

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碰巧的是今天算是讀了馬國明的一本書，最後講到現代性及Habermas，是講公共空間。讀過點原著感覺比較好。