二十世紀哲学的一般倾向是作为一个方法論的时代,一个意义分析、語言和符号的时代,一个反形而上学的时代。然而对方法和意义問题的关注在哲学史上并不是新东西。它只代表英国哲学从一开头就具有的,而且从笛卡尔以后在西方哲学里普遍活跃着的那些特殊倾向的充分发展和高峰。二十世紀哲学的特殊倾向以及使它日益成为一个新事物的是另外一种东西;它更加精深,更加不易捉摸,更加激烈,它的輪廓我們还只矇矓地看到,然而和它比較起来,那些实用主义、实在主义、实証主义和普通語言哲学等运动都只能看作是片断而已。作为一个显著的职业来说,哲学只有一种尝試性的、从个人出发的生活行动的箴言。一个哲学批判者只能作为立志寻求使自己得救的智慧的个人或者私人来说話。一句話,哲学的目的重又变成了苏格拉底说的,寻求自我知識、自我訓练和自我实现了。我相信这一直就是整个二十世紀的哲学“地下活动”所趋。一个人作为哲学家,必須重新学会说話,不是替一切公民、一切科学家、或者一切艺术家,一切“理性动物”,甚至一切“人”说話,而是在深思熟虑之后純粹为他自己说話。 The general tendencies of philosophy in the twentieth century were as a methodological era, an era of meaning analysis, language and symbols, an anti-metaphysical era. However, attention to the question of methods and meanings is not new in the history of philosophy. It represents only the full development and the peak of the special tendencies that British philosophy has had from the beginning, and which have generally been active in Western philosophy since Descartes. The special tendencies of the twentieth-century philosophy and the things that make it increasingly a new one are something more sophisticated, more elusive and more intense, whose outline we see only in contrast to it The movements of pragmatism, realism, positivism and ordinary language philosophy can only be regarded as fragments. As a remarkable profession, philosophy has only one proverbial, personal, action-based approach to life. A philosophical critic can only speak as an individual or as a private individual who seeks to seek the wisdom of his own salvation. In a word, the purpose of philosophy has again become what Socrates said, seeking self-knowledge, self-training and self-fulfillment. I believe this has always been the philosophical “underground activity” throughout the twentieth century. As a philosopher, one must learn to speak again. Rather than speak for all citizens, all scientists, or all artists, all “rational animals,” and even all “people,” one speaks purely to oneself after deliberation.