Chapter 22 The Thief Who Reads Spinoza - If Stones Were Sentient...

Over the years, Taiwan's local consciousness has been quite high, and it has reached a point where it is unreasonable, which makes many people worry.However, although the history tells us that this kind of national and regional passion tends to become a kind of uncontrollable prairie fire, which burns others and burns itself, but we always tend to have a kind of helpless tolerance for it and believe in it. It has an innate human emotional foundation, so it is difficult to get rid of it, and it is not easy to be harsh. The trouble is that such emotions usually have a way to find the nutrients that make them "grow as tall as a big tree" in their own historical memory-although in history, a nation usually has its ups and downs, Being bullied by others has also bullied others (otherwise, to be honest, it would be difficult to survive to this day), but the past is easy to take for granted, and the memory of bullying others is even more easy to forget. Therefore, every nation makes this type of memory. , the basic tone is always quite desolate and resentful, it is not difficult to support the conclusion of "being the sorrow of a ×× person", the reasons are readily available, and no moving imagination is required.

For example, while it is very sad for Taiwanese to recall history, it is also difficult for us to recall that those who are not unaware of the Jianan Plain, Lanyang Plain, Taipei Basin, and Taichung Basin have relatively fertile soil and better crop growth, so The poor aborigines, who are also relatively easy to earn a living, have to work so hard to live in the harsh mountains where life is not easy. In this respect, the Netherlands, a small country with a land area about our size and a population density about ours, is special. I have personally been to this country, and my impression is not bad. Apart from seeing that marijuana can be bought everywhere, I met a middle-aged male lawyer inexplicably. This person took us to the famous windmill with great enthusiasm. He also entertained us with a good pan cake at a famous family-style country restaurant nearby. The restaurant owner's daughter is only seventeen years old, and she is the only waitress. She is so pretty and shy. Among the companions, a relatively shameless Taiwanese male forced her to take a group photo, so there are photos to prove it. Since then, I have heard people say that the Dutch are stingy, and they always get up and refute.

We asked lawyers, is English unimpeded in the Netherlands?The barrister's answer was not only English, but also French and German, "We are a small country and live by doing business. We can't expect people to learn Dutch well before coming to us."——A few years later, I still listen to There is another less serious way of saying the Dutch: the so-called Dutch is substandard English, plus substandard French, plus substandard German. If we think that the history of the Netherlands is not sad enough, so that the national passion cannot be ignited, then it is a big mistake-the misfortune of the Dutch land, in addition to being small and low and threatened by the tide of the Atlantic Ocean, is even more fatal. Because it is placed between the two powers of Germany and France without any hindrance, it is a natural good battlefield. Therefore, from the Franco-Prussian War to the First and Second World Wars, they were "not to be fought", like the largest city in the Netherlands. The great port of Rotterdam, which still looks like a small tree today, was rebuilt because it was almost completely destroyed by the bombing of the Nazi Air Force during World War II. Dutch lawyers also told us that just one breach in the battle caused hundreds of thousands of people to die. The Dutch died overnight.

And if we think that the Dutch lack a glorious history and have a tendency to be masochistic and nihilistic, it is a big mistake-everyone knows that the little Netherlands once dominated the seven seas in the seventeenth century, and even Taiwan, which is so far away More importantly, the Netherlands, which was founded by free citizens and free merchants, was the first country to break away from narrow religious hatred and persecution, and the most free and tolerant country in thought and speech. Beyond the soul, it has become the first choice for European thinkers to avoid religious and political persecution in the period of rationalism: it provides an undisturbed thinking space for the first person in the era of rationality, Descartes of France, and accommodated the most important democratic enlightener in history , England's Locke avoided political harm, and produced the philosopher Spinoza who is known as the most noble personality and the most consistent in words and deeds in human history (in fact, Spinoza's previous generation was precisely because of avoiding the persecution of the old religion. from the Iberian Peninsula).It is no exaggeration to call the Netherlands in the 17th century the lighthouse of rationality in continental Europe, and even in the whole world.

In addition, those who study and love art will not fail to be amazed by the abundance and power of Dutch painters, just as football fans are amazed by Dutch Cruyff, Gullit and Van Basten.But we will leave it to the book "The Thief Who Painted Like Mondrian" - yes, Mondrian is also Dutch. This time, after quoting Kipling in England, Mr. Rodenbaud began to study Spinoza in Holland. To be honest, I really don’t know why his brother read Spinoza, no matter if he is a thief or a second-hand bookstore owner, except for professional philosophy researchers, who would read Spinoza today?And even if they are professional philosophy researchers, how many people are willing to re-read Spinoza?For example, when it comes to writing, it is conceivable that Russell, a British philosopher who is very professional, said: "It is enough to read the description of each proposition and then study the commentary."

At first glance, it seems that it is because of Spinoza’s writing style——Spinoza is most likely the most rigorous, honest, and thoroughly boring thinker in the period of rationalism. Confidence is also the most powerful. Therefore, the way he writes books is almost completely imitated by the style of geometry. There are definitions, axioms, and theorems. Come on, not only does it sound like chewing wax, but today we know that the rational deduction of pure mathematics will not work. Its purity is not the so-called wisdom of "penetrating the appearance and pointing directly at the core truth", but a serious reduction. , therefore, the conclusions obtained are always absurd.

However, regardless of thinking and writing methods, in the development of human thinking history from generation to generation, individual thinkers already have a very helpless fate. How to say it?There is a fable in China about Lu Dongbin, the head of the Eight Immortals: According to legend, an immortal wanted to teach Lu Dongbin the art of turning a stone into gold.The fairy's answer was, no, after five hundred years, it will return to be a stone, so Lu Dongbin, who is inclined to absolutism, thanked him and stopped learning-go to Shengmiaoyuan, and the treasure will be turned into a stone.

Everyone has their own ambitions, which is nothing to say, but today we have to say this, fortunately, not all human philosophers, thinkers, and builders of many theories, like Lu Dongbin, choose between "all/none", Like a determined person who longs for a grain of sand to be pure and love a young kid, otherwise, in the long river of thinking, human beings would probably never be able to make a step forward, because the progress of human thinking is based on the succession of generations of thinkers Mistakes, corrections, demolition, and reconstruction—probably because of this, Lu Dongbin did not become a hard-working scholar, but eventually became a god who does not eat the fireworks of the world and does nothing but play.

I don’t remember which scholar once said such sour but somewhat true words. He said that as a theorist, ego usually has to be much smaller than a literary and artistic creator. The reason is simple enough, you won’t If you don’t understand in advance, the academic theory you have exhausted your efforts or even your whole life to construct is only used to be overthrown by later generations and used as a necessary stepping stone for the next more extensive, more advanced, and more reasonable academic theory.Literature and art may not be called eternal and immortal, but after reaching a certain level, it has a very strong resistance to time. People who read it hundreds or even thousands of years later can still be fresh and fierce like a sword. It is new, such as Homer, Shakespeare, Li Bai or Tolstoy, etc.Unlike knowledge and theory, it seems that it is only for the next demolition to be built with painstaking efforts. The right part will soon become common knowledge, just like today everyone knows that the earth revolves around the sun, and it no longer arouses surprise and joy. As a result, it becomes invisible, and what is highlighted and left behind is often only the wrong place, which can be used for new theories and new theories as counter-evidence, or just for the sacrifice of the flag when the swearing-in departs.

Therefore, let alone turning back to stone after 500 years, with the popularization of human knowledge and the continuous acceleration of the rhythm of history, it often collapses before you are alive, or a year or so short, or it is more sad and more common Yes, silently forgotten in the corner of history.You said: How can a narcissistic person, a self-centered person, know this and be willing to bet his life on the quicksand of fate? Of course, such words may be a little too self-deprecating. Important thinkers in history and their historical theories or famous sayings, whether correct or not, are actually very resistant to the erosion of time, and they will inspire future generations of thinkers for a long time. For example, Descartes and his "I think, therefore I am", for example, Leibniz and his "Monadism"; but on the other hand, we really have to admit that at that time, these famous sayings and theories were revealed in black and white and worked hard to demonstrate After all, we are asked to pretend that we do not know the subsequent hundreds and thousands of years, to trudge innocently again through the long and tedious process of argument, and finally see a person we are old A common sense conclusion known earlier, or worse, an absurd conclusion, which is indeed not very in line with the basic rationality of people.

Who has read Descartes' "Principles of Philosophy" carefully?Or Locke's Essay on Human Intelligence and Political Treatise?This is not a provocative accusation, but an investigation and a metaphor. If the answer is no, you probably haven’t read Spinoza’s most important work, Ethics. In other words, you are better than our Mr. It is much more reasonable and business-like to do. The geometry of life and the boundless sea of ​​books, even though it is so irrational, I personally still tend to advocate that it is better to read the original classics as much as possible-the thoughts here are quite complicated, and I am a little silly. I want to say that at least I can understand these Thinkers who rack their brains for human beings or even risk their lives, express a certain minimum courtesy and respect; a little bit suspicious, and always vaguely treat the second-hand narrators and organizers (although they may also be very Great scholars) are a little worried, fearing that they will inevitably miss something and fail to convey the complete picture to us; a little curious, I want to use the language and focus of discussion at that time to go back and forth like traveling through a time tunnel. At that time, I felt the temperature and atmosphere of reality at the beginning of the theoretical construction; I was a little bit hopeful and lucky, and wondered whether it would be possible to find new sparks of enlightenment if I went through the thinking path of the original thinker again, or at least let today’s The unthinking common sense has once again shown its rich and solid thinking foundation and reproduced its vitality. If we don't care so much about the rationality of "input/output" (I personally always find it strange that we don't care about such rationality most of the time in our lives, why do we suddenly feel this way when it comes to reading books? How about asking for return on investment?), even if it is as boring as Spinoza, you will find something very interesting. I am personally most interested in at least two points: one is Spinoza's statement that "whoever loves God can never expect God to love him back"; ", it will also believe that its fall is due to its own will, thus touching the issue of "determinism/free will" that is still debated. Spinoza certainly considered himself, and posterity tends to believe, a very devout religious believer, and the calling of his mind was to prove the existence of God rigorously and beyond doubt (for those who want to know the process of proof, Well, please read his "Ethics" yourself), but even in the Netherlands, he was persecuted by religion for life, not to mention excommunication, and at one point had to leave Amsterdam to grind lenses for a living , which certainly enriched his optical knowledge, but also worsened his lung disease, so that he only lived to be a short forty-five years before he died peacefully—he died peacefully and fearlessly indeed. Spinoza, who treated the existence of God as a mathematical problem, said that people should not expect God to love him. Of course, it is not a moral exhortation of "doing good in silence without asking for reward", but what Spinoza revealed and proved God, there is no such thing as loving or not loving people at all-to put it bluntly, his god is actually the entire nature itself. There are still independent entities outside the natural world, such as man-made creations. In fact, according to Spinoza, God is completely infinite and has nothing outside. Individual souls and matter are not entities, but are completely contained in God. Among them are some manifestations of gods. Since gods and humans do not have a relative relationship, there is no question of love or not. In other words, Spinoza has completely eliminated the concept of the Personality of God, and consequently, all relative terms and concepts that involve judgment and have moral choices, such as good and evil, justice, omniscience and omnipotence, have all lost their meaning. , leaving only the orderly, strict, and exception-free rules themselves, as Russell said, "Everything is governed by an absolute logical necessity, there is neither so-called free will in the spiritual realm, nor There is no coincidence in the world." In Umberto Eco's famous novel "The Name of the Rose", Essen, a student, asked his teacher Friar William: "If you say that God is completely free, what is the difference from saying that God does not exist?" ——Spinoza is exactly the opposite, but the question is not far away: If there is no existence except God, what is the same as there is no God? Christianity, no matter whether it is Protestantism or Oldism, of course cannot bear this, of course it wants to ask Spinoza to do it. This is naturally a bit unfair. In fact, thinkers in the era of rationalism, including Descartes and Spinoza, are basically devout believers (to varying degrees), and their original intention is to do their best to help After all, there are still so many people in this world who do not believe in God, and a more powerful and convincing theological theory needs to be found. However, the Christian Personality God, whether used to intimidate or persuade good people, is very effective in practical preaching.But for thousands of years, there have always been inseparable contradictions in theory (an omnipotent and omniscient God and a personal God are basically impossible to coexist, we have a chance to talk about this), these thinkers want to pass scientific and objective demonstrations, Once and for all to solve the problem of the existence of God, they are also confident that they have really done it; however, the church’s ignorance also has its reasons. When this God is no longer the one they are familiar with from the "Bible Old Testament" to today, When God no longer has the power of moral consolation and persuasion, such as listening, communicating, punishing evil and promoting good, justice and judgment, etc., and when God can directly replace it with order, law, principle or natural law, then atheism is just a leap away. It's just a step away.In fact, the fear of the church is correct. This is indeed the beginning of the most dramatic disenchantment in human history. These thinkers who want to help lead people away from God step by step unexpectedly. It is conceivable that in the frightening rational world constructed by Spinoza in which the lines are simple and everything operates according to inevitable rules, there must be no such thing as "freedom" with a high degree of autonomy and choice. Right?This is true, but it is strange that in the book "Ethics", Spinoza spent a full fifth of the space discussing the issue of human freedom. It is also conceivable that Spinoza's freedom is by no means the freedom we understand in today's common sense - the reason is very simple, if everything operates according to strict rationality and cannot be changed, then only humans can adapt Oneself (of course, strictly speaking, this should also be determined, there can be no adjustment problem, but let’s not worry about it here), therefore, this freedom refers to a certain psychological state after truly understanding the law of irresistibility. A state of magnanimity, rather than an external right of choice, is, in Spinoza's own words, "a man guided by reason, who lives in the state in obedience to public laws, is better off than in solitude in obedience to himself alone." for freedom." Let us take death as an example. A person who truly understands that the inevitability of death cannot be changed by human will, and thus faces death calmly and healthily, is far more comfortable and happy than a person who is always worried about death and troubled by death. This is what Binozza meant by freedom. Therefore, this freedom is basically religious, rather than political society. It may be quite useful for priests, priests, and psychiatrists to comfort people with mental problems, but it is extremely useful to use it as a political proposition in the public sphere. Terrible, this is a kind of "surrenderer's philosophy", which is a majestic rhetoric for the centralizers to ask everyone to be obedient citizens. It can be translated in vernacular as "the decree (some kind of severe punishment) will only be troubled by those who intend to violate the decree. For other people who abide by the law, the law does not exist.”——Isn’t this a phrase we are most familiar with during the martial law period, and we have to listen to the people in power every few days? Therefore, Spinoza believes that the people have no right to rebel, and people can only adapt and change their mental state to "feel good about themselves." By the way, it is clear that free will does not exist, and that is what Spinoza was saying when he used the metaphor "if a stone had sentience—" .A stone is thrown, its course of flight and the way it falls, of course the will of the hand that threw it, and not of the stone itself, the free will of the stone is but an illusion of freedom, born of ignorance, It stems from ignorance of the driving force behind it, from ignorance of the irreversible strict and decisive laws of nature. This discussion of "determinism vs. free will" has been going on throughout human history, and it continues to this day—especially after the Marxist historical determinism became popular later, it is no longer just an abstract philosophical debate, but a rather The degree is related to the human situation and way of life, and things become urgent and very important. But here, it is really inconvenient for us to discuss further, I can only directly quote the views of Isaiah Berlin, the greatest contemporary freedom master, as a response-Isaiah Berlin believes that determinism assumes a superhuman The power and laws of God (God or the rules of history) have gone beyond the grasp of human cognition and language to some extent. Therefore, it has become a certain belief or choice that cannot be refuted by theory.But Isaiah Berlin asks those who believe in determinism to think carefully, determinism and free will are completely incompatible, and once we believe in determinism, we will irrevocably cancel all existing moral, ethical and legal terms and concepts, even all comparative terms and concepts will become illusions together, there will be no good and evil, no moral responsibility, no nobility and nobility, no human hope, frustration, reflection and repentance, etc., and we will face a completely different world. same world... A stone falls, as is common today when it rains in the mountainous areas of central and southern Taiwan. No matter whether it kills pedestrians, destroys farmhouses, cuts off roads and bridges and hinders traffic, we will not blame this stone, let alone prosecute it. It serves a sentence of compensation, because it is just a stone, and its fall is not determined by itself, regardless of whether it is conscious or not—— How could such a philosopher, such a book, such an opinion, come from our dear young son of Mrs. What do you believe?Why did he study Spinoza? Based on my personal understanding of Rodden Barr, I believe that even in the face of the threat of arrest and trial by the New York law enforcement authorities, what he will do is to try to find the real responsible murderer, let justice be done, and not Invoke Spinoza's philosophy of determinism and tell the police that I'm just a stone being thrown, I don't have free will, what you should arrest is the strict laws of nature, the god in the sky, arrest him, read him the right to listen to him... Because this is a thief full of personal dignity.