Zhou's Philosophy of Life: Between Man and Book
After studying Nietzsche for a while, people often ask me, "Does Nietzsche have a great influence on you?" Once I couldn't help but reply, "Mutual influence, I have a greater influence on Nietzsche." In fact, any effective reading is not only absorption and acceptance, but also input and creation. There is indeed the problem of interaction between people and the books they read. The image of Nietzsche in my eyes is mixed with my own experience, which was produced before I came into contact with Nietzsche's works.
In recent years, my philosophical efforts seem to have a clear direction, which is to break through the academic and conceptual forms.
State, let philosophy care about the root of life, and communicate philosophy with poetry. Nietzsche's research only provides a convenient academic expression for my pursuit. Of course, I don't deny that reading Nietzsche's works has made some of my ideas clearer, but there are also factors such as my temperament, personality and experience, including my past reading experience.
Some books have changed world history, while others have changed personal destiny. In retrospect, books didn't play such a dramatic role in my life, but their role accumulated over time. I can't say what books have the greatest influence on me, and I don't quite believe in all kinds of "the best in the world". I can only say that there are some books that have aroused my strong sense of * * * in different aspects and left traces in my mental journey.
When I graduated from high school, I applied for the philosophy department of Peking University. At that time, it was a surprise to be in the Shanghai Middle School where I was studying, because the school had a tradition of attaching importance to reason over literature, and I was the only one in the class who applied for liberal arts. I have always been the representative of math class in my class, and my science foundation is not bad. Almost all my classmates and teachers looked at me with pity and regretted that I had gone astray. I don't think so. I think I can't live in a professional corner that has nothing to do with life all my life anyway. With ridiculous greed that contains all human knowledge, I choose philosophy as "science above all sciences", which is not a professional major.
However, the philosophy department is not as interesting as I thought, and the rigid and boring philosophy class soon bored me. I became one of the least diligent students, "doing nothing" and indulging in reading extracurricular books. In class, there are textbooks compiled by Ai Siqi on the desk, but Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev, Ibsen, etc. Under the table, they are fascinated. When the teacher asked me questions in class, I stood up and asked him what he wanted to do, which caused the students to burst into laughter. I am ashamed to say that I have studied philosophy for several years. I don't read many philosophical books, but I read a lot of novels and poems. I am also addicted to writing poems, keeping diaries and accumulating feelings. Now it seems that my reading and writing in literature were not in vain. They have made a great change in my spiritual direction. I don't take knowledge as the highest goal, but value life itself and cherish the understanding of life. This understanding is very important for my later philosophical pursuit.
I was in adolescence when I went to Peking University. What a person reads in adolescence is not a trivial matter. Books, friendship and natural environment constitute a special atmosphere of spiritual development, and its influence is indelible for life. Fortunately, I have encountered all three aspects. Excellent foreign literary masterpieces, brilliant friends and beautiful scenery of Yanyuan accompany me, which inspires my heart of seeking truth and beauty, and makes me more and more disgusted with empty and ugly philosophical dogma. If I have studied philosophy for so many years and have not been corroded by philosophy, I should thank literature.
My interest in philosophy is probably influenced by literature. Literature and life are inextricably linked. I value people's fate, personality and subjective mentality, so I look for something similar in philosophy. The earliest books that let me understand the true meaning of philosophy are the works of ancient Greek philosophers, Heraclitus's I have searched for myself, protagoras's Man is the measure of all things, and Socrates's Life without the first test is not worth living. These three books are like three lighthouses standing in the fog of abstract concepts, illuminating the ancient philosophical road that has been covered for a long time. I also prefer skeptical philosophers, such as Descartes and Hume, because they taught me to be wary of all seemingly objective absolute truth systems. Unfortunately, philosophers are often full of doubts when criticizing their own philosophical systems, but once they establish their own systems, they will easily fall into dogmatism. In contrast, literary and artistic works can remain vague, uncertain and open, and do not tirelessly give an ultimate answer to the mysteries of the universe and life.
Long-term cultural imprisonment has prevented my philosophy student from reading Nietzsche or other modern westerners' works. When I was at school, I only occasionally looked at Zarathustra translated by Xiao Gan. Because it was translated in classical Chinese, it was difficult to translate and did not leave a deep impression. It was not until long after I graduated from college that I had the opportunity to read Nietzsche's works systematically. I really felt the joy of discovery, because my thoughts on life, my love for poetry and my doubts about academic philosophy all found resonance in it. On a whim, I started the translation and research of Nietzsche's works, and it has been more than three years now. Now, I'm about to say goodbye to Nietzsche.
Reading is like making friends, and friends who hit it off again will get bored if they stay together for too long. Books are good friends of life, but that's all. You have to go your own way. In this journey, there will be encounters, separations, reunions, farewells, attachments, oppositions and misunderstandings between people and books. Their relationship is as subtle as that between people, which adds such interest to life. Maybe some people fall in love with a book or a writer at first sight, love each other deeply and even grow old together. I don't have such a loyal and single-minded love for reading. If the dying moment comes, I believe that not only my relatives and friends, but also a group of good books from close friends will make me feel bitter. But even so, I still don't want to stay with any book or any writer I like for too long, so I was deeply influenced and lost my influence on books and people.
Zhou's philosophy of life: a life of seeking wisdom
Among modern philosophers, Russell is a man with amazing sound and balanced spirit. He is the originator of logical empiricism, but unlike other analytical philosophers, he tends to be in a corner of learning and leads a dull life. He likes to meditate on the problems of life, but he doesn't fall into the abyss of despair and live a miserable life like an existentialist philosopher. His life is enviable. He has everything: first-class knowledge, outstanding social activities and reputation, rich love experience, and finally a long life. Surprisingly, fate chose this modern logic master as the chief defender of the western "sexual revolution" and made him suffer a dramatic torture in the conservative court of the British Empire. Scientific reason and erotic impulse go hand in hand with him, so that a friend of mine who specializes in Russell joked that Russell's wonderful philosophical thought must have been conceived in the arms of his five lovers.
Since the second half of the last century, most western philosophers have been filled with a sense of nervous crisis, which was originally a reflection of the crisis of the times. Russell doesn't like this kind of philosophers. For example, he is critical of Nietzsche and Freud. I can't help but doubt the sincerity of a philosopher who can maintain psychological balance in morbid times. However, Russell may be an exception.
Russell is not numb to the patients of the times. He knows that the greatest pain of modern westerners comes from the collapse of _ _ belief, which makes the life of ordinary people lose its foundation. On the godless wasteland, modern theologians mourn and call for the death of God, existentialist philosophers curse and eulogize the absurdity of life. But Russell firmly declared that he didn't believe in God, but he didn't fall into morbid pessimism or excitement. He believes that all the good things in life will not lose their value because they are short. Regarding death, he "thought calmly from the Stoic point of view, and did not intend to belittle its importance. On the contrary, he was proud of being able to surpass it". Russell cherishes the value of love in life. What he said about love is not Platonic abstract love, but love "based on the vitality and instinct of animals", especially sex. However, he advocates that love should be regulated by acceptance. His belief can be summed up in this sentence: "A noble life is a life inspired by love and guided by knowledge." Love and knowledge, instinct and reason are indispensable. Sometimes he said, get along with the people you love by instinct, and get along with the people you hate by reason. Perhaps it can be extended to a sentence: treating happiness depends on instinct, and treating misfortune depends on reason. On the issue of sex, Russell was one of the earliest thinkers who advocated sexual freedom in modern western countries, but shallow people misunderstood his views. Although he advocates that marriage, love and sex can be relatively separated, his evaluation of the three is different. In his view, first, love is higher than pure sex, and sex without love is worthless; Secondly, "the life of a partner with many deep feelings after many years of test" is higher than the temporary infatuation and love, because it contains rich contents that the latter does not have. In theory, we can assume that every normal opposite sex is a possible object of sexual behavior, but in fact we must have a choice. In theory, we can assume that every favorite opposite sex is a possible love object, but in fact there must be abandonment. There are countless precious memories between passionate couples, which makes them unwilling to easily damage these memories for new love adventures.
Almost all modern philosophers are critics of modern civilization, and Russell is no exception in this respect. He worships science, but he is not superstitious about it. Love and science, love comes first. Without the goal of love, science will only make people blindly pursue the proliferation of material wealth. Russell said that in the modern world, the most dangerous enemy of love is the belief that work is a virtue and the greed for the success of work and property. This over-inflated "enterprising spirit" has exhausted people's activity strength and made the entertainment style of modern urban residents tend to be negative and group. Like all Tessa, he emphasizes the importance of leisure for life, so he advocates "launching a movement to guide young people to do nothing" and encourages people to appreciate the subtlety of non-practical knowledge such as art, history, heroic stories and philosophy. He believes that wisdom can be born from the combination of "useless" knowledge and selfless love. Indeed, under the impact of the torrent of modern life, there are fewer and fewer hearts that can calm down and meditate. If Nietzsche's sensitive philosopher once issued a painful call for this, then Russell, as a philosopher of mental health in this era, heard wise advice from him. I hope these voices can inspire young people who are still alive today to seek a wise life.
Zhou's Philosophy of Life: Transcending Righteousness and Benefit
"Gentleman's righteousness, villain's benefit." China's philosophy of life always revolves around the words "righteousness" and "benefit". But what if I am neither a gentleman nor a villain?
There was a time when every gentleman kept his word. At that time, there may have been a true gentleman who valued righteousness over profit, but more common were hypocrites who borrowed righteousness for profit and pedantic gentlemen who pretended to be sincere. That era has passed. Once upon a time, the world changed dramatically, the name of benevolence and righteousness plummeted, the true gentleman disappeared, the truth of the hypocrite came to light, and pedantic people suddenly realized that they were seeking benefits one after another.
It is said that the concept is updated and the debate between righteousness and benefit has a new solution. It turns out that profit is not the patent of a villain, but the natural principle of being a man.
"Time is money!" This is a fashionable slogan today. It is understandable that enterprises use it to stimulate production. But the world regards it as the motto guiding life, and replaces life wisdom with business spirit. As a result, a person's life has become an enterprise and interpersonal relationship has become a market.
I used to laugh at cheap human feelings, but now even human feelings have become expensive and rare. How can you buy a smile, a greeting and a little sympathy without spending money?
However, there is no need to stay. It is useless to try to correct the current abuses and save people's hearts by preaching with all kinds of righteous words. Besides righteousness and benefit, there is also a different attitude towards life. There is another personality besides a gentleman and a villain. To paraphrase Confucius' sentence pattern, we might as well say, "Move people with emotion."
Righteousness and benefit, seemingly opposite, are actually the same. "Righteousness" requires people to devote themselves to abstract social entities, while "profit" drives people to devote themselves to secular material interests. Both ignore people's spiritual life and cover up the real "self". "Righteousness" teaches dedication, while "profit" induces possession. The former turns life into fulfilling obligations, while the latter turns life into fighting for rights. I don't know the true value of life is beyond obligations and rights. Righteousness and benefit are inseparable, so the relationship between people is always tense, whether it is a righteous teacher attacking rebellious officials or desire dominating all beings.
If "righteousness" represents an ethical attitude towards life and "profit" represents a utilitarian attitude towards life, then what I call "emotion" represents an aesthetic attitude towards life. It advocates spontaneous action, timely stop, and everyone keeps their true colors. You are not what you believe, nor what you have. What you are is your true "self". The meaning of life is not dedication, not possession, but creation, the active development of people's true temperament, and the emotional satisfaction that people get when they realize their essential strength. Creation is different from dedication. Dedication is only to fulfill external responsibilities, and creation is to realize the real "self". As for creation and possession, the difference is even more obvious. Writing, for example, pays attention to the fame and fortune brought by the work, while creation only pays attention to the happiness of creation itself. People with true temperament only seek emotional communication when they get along with others and have special taste in things. What is more commendable is that he treats people with a leisurely mood in an era when the world is anxious and driven by interests. I'm not referring to China's scholar-bureaucrat leisure, nor is it small-scale peasant contentment and conservatism, but to a kind of indifferent life feelings that are not driven by interests and enslaved by things. Taking writing as an example, I can't figure out why a person should wait for a book. If you want to be immortal, an immortal poem is enough. If you don't have the luxury, you just need to live comfortably. Writing is just a way to live comfortably.
Bernard Shaw said, "There are two tragedies in life. One is not getting your love, and the other is getting your love. " I used to be very serious and admired him for expressing the sadness of life so easily and wittily. But after careful consideration, it is found that the foothold of this statement is possession, so there will be two tragedies: the pain of unsatisfied possession and the boredom of satisfaction. If we shift our foothold to creation and look at life from an aesthetic perspective, can't we say that there are two great pleasures in life: one is that you can't get what you love, so you can seek and create; The other is to get something you love so that you can taste and experience it? Of course, life always has its inevitable pain, and those who value feelings over interests never dream of more bitterness and sorrow of those who seek profits. However, getting rid of possessiveness can at least free people from many trivial troubles and trivial pains and live a tolerant life. I have no intention of using aesthetic feeling as a good way to save the world, but I just express a belief that there is a more worthwhile life besides righteousness and benefit. This belief will support me in the years to come.
Zhou's philosophy of life: the taste of waiting.
A lot of time in life is spent waiting. There are thousands of kinds of waiting and tastes. The taste of waiting is the most complicated.
I like nothing. Whether what we are waiting for is good or bad, uncertain, bad or bad, we are always helpless. My heart is hanging while waiting, which is very uncomfortable.
Even if you wait for happiness, you can't say happiness by yourself. The more attractive the imaginary happiness is, the harder it is to wait. For example, it's a beautiful thing that "a bright future is coming, and people meet after dusk", but impatient lovers are almost like the couple in the West Chamber. "From that day on, I missed the moonlight as if it were a summer." I only hate the dusk of the willow tip and the slow shadow of the moon. On the first tryst, Zhang Sheng and Ying Ying suddenly leaned against the door and lay in bed sighing, guessing that the beautiful woman would not come, complaining for a while and forgiving for a while. That absent-minded look is really terrible. I believe Yingying will not be so miserable. Those who wait before tryst are more miserable than those who go, just as those who stay after farewell are more miserable than those who leave. Those who go are more or less active, while those who stay here are completely passive. Those who haven't arrived yet are faced with still time. If you leave, those who stay will face emptiness. The terrible thing about waiting is that the waiting person has no control over what he is waiting for and has no idea about other things, so he is forced to be idle. Expectation makes people excited, doing nothing makes people bored, and so on is a state of mind intertwined with excitement and boredom. With the extension of waiting time, excitement turns to fatigue, and boredom will prevail. If beautiful women don't come all the time, as long as talented people are not so worried about hanging on that willow tree, I'm afraid they will only stretch and yawn under the moon.
It's too late to wait for good things, and it's too impatient to wait for bad things. No one wants to wait for bad things, bad things and so on, because there is no escape from fate, out of necessity. But since we can't escape fate, the average person's psychology is that they would rather end it early than delay it unnecessarily. If one of our relatives dies, of course we are afraid of the end. However, no amount of fear can eliminate the boredom of waiting. In War and Peace, Natasha knits socks while guarding Andre before she dies. She loves Andre more than anything in the world, but she still can't do nothing but wait for her sweetheart to die. Can a person be bored while waiting for his own death? Let's see if there is enough energy first. A more appropriate example is the condemned man. I don't think they can concentrate on dealing with deadly bullets as long as there is still some time before sentencing. Fear, like all strong emotions, is hard to last. After a long time, it will be paralyzed and intermittent. Once you try to do something to fill this gap, the painful fear will rise again and destroy any positive thoughts. It is absurd to wait for a doomed disaster without taking any action. In contrast, the disaster itself seems more tolerable.
Whether waiting for good or bad, the result is clear. If the result is important to us, but the quality is uncertain, it is that we have a taste in our hearts. At this time, we are as anxious as waiting for a verdict. Anxiety is actually the entanglement of opposing emotions, with both hope for good results and fear of bad results. A heart is not only suspended in mid-air, but also in fear and suffering from bumps. Sadly, from childhood to adulthood, we have to go through many hurdles in our life, from exams in our student days to employment, rating, promotion and going abroad after graduation. The taste of waiting for a verdict is really endless. Of course, if a person has enough knowledge, sooner or later, he will look down on the floating world fame and stop putting himself in this position waiting for trial. However, if we don't cultivate to a state similar to nirvana, I'm afraid there will always be some things that we can't be indifferent to. At present, an organization is studying whether to give me a raise, so I'll forget it. At present, a hospital is giving my wife a caesarean section. Can I still be so open-minded Walking outside the obstetric operating room and looking at the cold faces of the husbands waiting there, I knew how anxious it was to wait for the fate judgment. On the road of life, we will inevitably walk to some strange doors and wait to open them. That kind of mood is very close to that of husbands waiting in front of obstetric operating rooms.
However, the place we often wait in life is not in front of the door, but in front of the window. Those are narrow small windows, tangible or intangible, distributed in shops, banks, stations, hospitals and other places related to people's livelihood, as well as government agencies that handle various cumbersome procedures. In order to survive, we have to be patient, queue up, approach them slowly, and then turn our heads in humiliation, so that we can put our eyes, hands and bills or applications into that narrow hole and grope for the bills and documents we need. Such small windows are often closed for no reason, but fortunately, our endurance is very developed and we are used to waiting in obscurity.
Waiting at the door of fate, waiting for life and death, its mood is anxiety, but there is no lack of tragic feelings. Waiting in front of the window of livelihood, waiting for daily necessities, his mood is agitated and mixed with humiliation. The former etc. Because the ending is very important and it is not easy to get bored. However, if our understanding is enough to calm anxiety, we will appreciate a great boredom of seeing through life transcendentally. The latter, because the object is trivial and trivial, is easy to be bored, but what is used to it is often a bit boring.
Speaking of the boredom of waiting, I'm afraid there is nothing worse than the forced detention in the reverse journey. The so-called traveler's worry, in addition to parting worry and homesickness, is more composed of bored leisure worry. For example, due to traffic interruption, I was unexpectedly delayed in a deserted shop during my trip, and it was open to traffic indefinitely, so I was unaccompanied. The boredom in this situation is really indescribable. However, if we compare life to a reverse journey, we will find that the delay on the way is really an ordinary experience of life. We are moving towards an ideal life, and sooner or later we will stop at some point on the way because of various inevitable restrictions and accidental changes. We believe this is temporary, always waiting to get back on the road, hoping to live the life we really want one day, but never stop there. Some people gradually become practical and arrange their lives at this point with peace of mind. Some people are still waiting and waiting, and the years are ruthless. Finally, they lamented that they had been delayed for a lifetime.
So, what if life doesn't wait? Having said so many bad things about waiting, I suddenly remembered the benefits of waiting and couldn't help feeling ashamed of my ingratitude.
I once lived on a farm for a year and a half. It was an island in the lake, surrounded by the vast lake, and no one could be seen. We grow rice on the island and live a very monotonous life. What I finally put up with this monotonous life is waiting-waiting for the letter. How eagerly I wait for the messenger to arrive every day? It seems that I live for this moment.
Management often fails, but it itself provides color and meaning for a day's life.
I used to live in the basement for several years. Day after day, I am the only one. When I am reading and writing at my desk, I can't help waiting-waiting for a knock at the door. I expect my peers to visit me and make me feel that I still live on the earth, and the sunshine on the ground is mine. I'm not afraid of being interrupted in reading and writing, because I don't need visitors. Extreme loneliness has interrupted them again and again.
No matter how patiently you need to wait, there are still many things worth waiting for in life: waiting for the footsteps of your lover from far and near in the winter night, waiting for the train carrying long-lost friends to slowly pull into the station, waiting for the birth of the first child, waiting for the child to babble out his father occasionally before calling out the second or third voice, waiting for the first work to be published, waiting for the reader's response and * * after the work is published.
There can be no love, but if there is no desire for love, where can there be youth? There can be no understanding, but if there is no expectation of understanding, where can there be creation? You can wait for everything, but if you don't wait, where will you live? To live is to wait, even for Godot. Someone asked Beckett what Godot really stood for, and he replied, "If I knew, I would say it in the play." In fact, we have been waiting for what we don't know all our lives, and life is unfolding in this kind of waiting and getting a reason. The taste of waiting is boring, but waiting for an idle life is more boring. No, it is impossible to wait for nothing. Even when there is nothing to wait for, we are still waiting, waiting for the moment. When a person reaches the point where there is no such waiting, he must commit suicide. Therefore, Mr. Godot, who has never appeared, is the real protagonist on the stage of life. Without him, this life can't go on.
The only thing in life that will never fail is waiting for the inevitable death. However, everyone seems to forget this and wait for something else, even to death. I am very sad and satisfied with this situation.