Chapter 36 Chapter Thirty-eight

The truly high-grade and respected morality is not morality based on intentions, so it is truly moral.Inferior and forceful morality is afraid of losing the beauty of morality, so there is no real morality. A truly high morality does not do anything, and has no reason to demand it.Reluctant morality can't do much, but always thinking about doing this or that. High-grade benevolence can be achieved, but it is not deliberately to be benevolent, not to be benevolent for the sake of benevolence. Shangpin's loyalty and justice are intentional loyalty and justice. Top-grade etiquette (politeness, etiquette, etiquette) You have worked hard for a long time but no one responds.If no one responded, they rolled up their arms and sleeves.

Therefore, only when the Dao is lost can we emphasize morality-value concepts.Morality—values ​​are no longer useful, and love—benevolence is emphasized.Instead of emphasizing love-benevolence, we emphasize justice-loyalty.I don’t even talk about words such as loyalty and trustworthiness to deal with interpersonal relationships, and only etiquette is left. This etiquette is a sign that loyalty and trust are gradually lost, people's hearts are weakened, and chaos has emerged. The predecessors have already known (or refer to those things mentioned above), that virtue, benevolence, righteousness and propriety, especially propriety, are both the gorgeous appearance of the Dao and the beginning of stupidity.Therefore, a man would rather choose to be simple and thick, to choose a thick accumulation and foundation, rather than to choose shallowness and thinness.Choose fruit, not vanity.People have to make a serious choice between thick and thick.

Lao Tzu dislikes deliberate, unnatural, and unintentional emphasizing and following certain values.He believes that through artificial emphasis, through his own intentional admiration, through a certain force other than nature—such as groups and princes—defining and naming, it leaves the simple nature and the natural pan. The image of being uncontrollable, leaving the concept of inaction and self-cultivation and doing everything, that is, leaving the Dao, is to be controlled by the command of the left and the right, and it is the opposite of Tao and nature.This point of view can be cross-referenced with the theory of alienation in later generations that has caused controversy in our country.

Therefore, he pointed out that deliberate virtues are not true virtues—if they are not good, they will be dogma, stubbornness, self-expression, show off, verbal empty words, and echoing what others say; what is worse, they are just masks, hypocrisy, and deceit, which are means of deceiving others. , that is to say, to engage in value hegemony, value power, and value control in the name of virtue and morality.Deliberately operating benevolence is not true benevolence. If it is not done well, it is just following the crowd, competing for fame, benefits, and putting on airs. He believes that justice, loyalty, and so on are even more inferior, which is intentional in itself, and doing the best is also intentional.Loyalty is about interpersonal relationships, it is determined by the self-protection requirements of the weak, it is something to be rewarded, it is a means of survival and struggle, and it deviates from the Dao. (Wang’s Note: In fact, righteousness also has a natural side: human beings who live in groups need loyalty, and people will enjoy happiness and happiness in friendship. I don’t know why Lao Tzu’s evaluation of righteousness is so low? It may be because righteousness is often The first choice of the lower class is the value on the rivers and lakes.)

As for justice, of course it is a good thing. The trouble is that everyone has different perspectives and backgrounds, and their understanding of justice may be tit for tat.Claiming to be upholding justice, if you don't do it well, you will conquer the world, the world's military police, and hegemony. Etiquette is management, system (order), ruling, and punitive.As I have preached many times during the talk, Wang Xifeng can slap the maid's mouth with her hand, and she can pull out the hairpin to poke the maid's mouth.Management is a kind of latent violence, and management is backed by strength.It was Wang Xifeng's birthday, and Jia Lian took the opportunity to mess around. The girl who was letting Jia Lian out didn't respond to Sister Feng's call and immediately stopped and answered, calling it "Mo Zhiying", so Sister Feng "threw her arm and threw it", slapped her mouth and pulled her hairpin. This is very consistent with the situation described by Laozi.Therefore, governing the country and the world from the level of etiquette and law is even lower.

This is beautiful, but it is not without the color of moralism and utopianism.It is unreasonable to put the Dao, nature and management, order, and etiquette in complete opposition, to describe the Dao as absolutely transcendental, to reject learning and self-awareness, and to absolutely oppose the Dao of conscience, benignity and acquired learning. of.Anthropological research proves that in the primitive state and primitive society, although there are some good things, there are also barbarism, ignorance, and arbitrariness.From this chapter, we can see Lao Tzu's aversion to, foresight and vigilance against Confucianism's Taoism, self-cultivation, artificiality, and formalism.

Lao Tzu emphasizes nothing, no intention, no intention, no name, no action, no value emphasis, let alone value coercion.These are good things, a bit of anarchism, but they tend to be divorced from reality and become fantasy. Confucius emphasized that there are those who have aspirations to learn, benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom and trustworthiness, loyalty, filial piety, righteousness, five ethics, four dimensions and eight principles, and the distinction between seniority and inferiority.These are all good, but if they are not done well, they will become posturing, formalism, and full of benevolence and morality.

Full of male robbers and female prostitutes. Lao Tzu believes that the original simplicity is thick, with foundation, basis, restraint, historical accumulation and witness, and the background of the great way.And culture, value, pursuit, etiquette, will, likes and dislikes are just a thin layer of records in history, a thin layer of surface tension between Dao and simplicity. In all the chapters, Lao Tzu talked about the Dao in a tone of appreciation, but in this chapter, a proposition of Dao Hua Yu Shi comes out. I secretly think that the Tao here does not refer to the Dao, but refers to the Tao that can be said or not, which means speaking.Then "previous knowledge is the flower of Tao, and the beginning of ignorance" should be the etiquette mentioned above. It sounds nice, but it is actually the beginning of ignorance.Or it can be interpreted as "the former knows the way, the beginning of the flashy and the stupid", that is to say, stick to the previous understanding, promote the discourse of things like rites, and the flashy and stupid (flickering but ignorant) started like this.

Maybe it makes sense to be flashy and stupid, as people often say "foolish and deceitful". Here my interpretation of "pre-knowledge" is different from that of others, and it is okay. If I get it wrong, I can give up. This does not affect our main idea of ​​discussing Laozi.I don't want to use the discussion on my non-strength - the interpretation of the text.Readers can refer to the opinions of other scholars to understand it.Those who are willing to know can teach it. There is also a question of evaluation of research on human behavior.Doing nothing without thinking means that there is no motivation and purpose for doing nothing.Thinking for it is not only the action of doing, but also the motivation and purpose of doing.People who emphasize temperament, nature, and sincerity tend to reject motivation and purpose, and often regard behavior with motivation and purpose as false.For example, Liu Bei in the movie, his so-called benevolence and righteousness, can easily be regarded as a means to buy people's hearts, because he is engaged in the struggle with the Wei and Wu countries for the world, and all his actions can easily be considered as a performance Sex, in order to win the hearts and minds of the people.Especially the relationship between a man and a woman, if a non-emotional purpose is added, it will be rejected by readers immediately.Xue Baochai's various performances of self-denial and ritual return were also attacked by the Lin supporters, who said that their purpose was to obtain the status of Bao's second grandmother.Another example is the positive performance we often say. Once it is regarded as having the purpose of seeking officials and money, it seems that the evaluation of behavior will also plummet.

And purposefulness and intentionality are precisely one of the characteristics of human behavior.It is already very good to be able to not be hypocritical and false because of the purpose, to be able to not refuse at least to open one's heart to one's relatives and friends, and to be able to unite one's purpose with temperament and natural nature as much as possible.