Chapter 2 The Roots and Development of Section 1 "Enlightenment"

"Enlightenment", according to James Schmidt, is a question that had an answer in the 18th century but became a problem in the 20th century. What is Enlingtenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions (1).That is to say, in the eyes of the enlighteners in the 18th century, they were sure that they were the ones who grasped the rational truth, they knew everything themselves, they saw with rational eyes that others were ignorant and barbaric people, and they themselves clearly wanted to let these ignorance What poor people are awakened to, they know what they mean by "enlightenment", and they sound the horn of "enlightenment" according to the standard answer and precise blueprint of "enlightenment".However, after the great movement of "enlightenment" brought mankind to the modern society of rationality, technology, speed and efficiency, when human beings suffered from the destruction of the foundation of human existence by scientific and technological rationality, when human beings suffered from the greatness of speed and machinery The rootlessness, alienation, emptiness and despair created by the gambling table for human beings. In the 20th century, people's souls drifted high in the infinitely expanding industrial output and pollution. People's clothes were gorgeous, people's stomachs were bloated, people's Mind at a loss.Therefore, people in the twentieth century seem to be less and less aware of what the "enlightenment" movement two centuries ago was, and people in the twentieth century seem to feel more and more that the "enlightenment" movement ’ became a problem in itself.

In traditional Chinese culture, Mongolia is a hexagram in the Book of Changes: a spring comes out of the mountain, Mongolia.It refers to the flow of clear water from the dark mountain viscera, just like the process of the sun coming out at dawn, and the sky changes from hazy to bright.The image elicited by this hexagram is Mengtong: a young child who has just started learning. "Mongolian" refers to a state similar to a child's unopened mind, which is "ignorance" and ignorance.Enlightenment, that is, enlightenment, refers to making children's thinking change from a chaotic (dark) state to clarity through "education".Enlightenment is an education. (2) From the "Manifesto of the Literary Research Association" and "The Origin of the Literary Research Association Series", we can see the true desire of these cultural pioneers to change the world with culture, saying, "We initiated this association, hoping to gradually form a public library research room and the publishing department, to help the progress of individual and national literature", "Although we China claims to be a country of literature, our literary works can occupy a position on the level of world literature, but very few. For thousands of years, literature movement, lonely and powerless" (3), therefore, they want to make this era different, and they want to develop this almost barren place.Lu Xun's discourse on changing the national spirit, his attempts to wake up the sleepers in iron houses, his persuasion, appeals and running around in the hope that the cannibals will change their minds, that the numb onlookers will wake up, and that the children will be saved, all mean enlightenment and education. , It is to pass on the knowledge concept of reasonable life to those who do not have this knowledge.Hu Shi's "Suggestions on Literary Improvement" and "On Construction of Literary Revolution" are all a kind of education, which is gentle and honest education, and is a stable and nourishing education.But from Guo Moruo's "Introduction to Creation Quarterly", "Introduction to Creation Weekly", Yu Dafu's "Creation Day Propaganda", Cheng Fangwu's "Creation Daily Final Magazine Testimonials", Guo Moruo's "Creation Day Suspension Announcement", etc. Judging from the violent rhetoric of Hurricane color, the enlightener is not only the educator who imparts knowledge to the young children with his own knowledge, not only the omniscient genius, not only the whole person who is correct in everything, but also the person who faces the incomplete. The overthrower, destroyer, buryer of the world, and the creator of another flawless new world, that is to say, including those who are enlightened, including the whole world, including the original creator of the world, in In front of these people, the whole world will be denied, exposed, subverted, and started over.Who has the ability to do such a big thing, who is qualified to arrange all those other people's things, who can correctly plan the grand blueprint that involves the fate of all existence, who can be such an omnipotent person, who can be such a dare The one who recreated the world instead of God?Almost no relevant arguments were seen, no one mentioned the rights and obligations of other people, no one mentioned that other people can refuse to be reformed and refused to be enlightened, but they were vaguely and categorically told: the enlightener is omniscient and omniscient No, the enlightener is the undoubtedly correct person, and it seems to say that no matter how many or where the enlightened objects are, they have no right to choose and refuse. Some people seem to be categorically declaring that all the people in this world Things and all people are wrong, only the enlightened one is right, and it is announced in advance that the consequences of enlightenment must be good.

Regarding the Enlightenment, Kant said: "Enlightenment is man's escape from immaturity which he has imposed on himself. Immaturity is the inability to use one's own reason without the guidance of others. When the cause is not lack of reason, but When there is a lack of courage and determination to use it without being led by another, then this immaturity is self-inflicted. Sapere aude! Courage to use your own reason! This is the watchword of the Enlightenment." (4) Not long after these pioneers, someone looked behind through the wonderful blueprint of the "Enlightenment," said Frederick Beiser, "'Enlightenment' is the use of reason as the criterion for judging all beliefs, laws, arts, and texts (5). Rationality has a unique form of explanation, using universal laws as a mechanism to understand the internal and external relationships of things. This mode of thinking leads to two very different results: skepticism and natural materialism. Because of rationality It is often necessary to examine all kinds of beliefs, leading to the formation of radical criticism, and the result of its intensification is radical skepticism. Secondly, the unique form of interpretation of the Enlightenment is to put things under mechanical and mathematical laws, so that everything can be quantified and Calculation; in other words, only material existence can be understood, and what can be understood must be material." (6) Lack of care of the soul, ignoring the unknown part of life and being impossible in a general sense know part.The enlighteners are gathering their courage and carefully planning a new future world.It’s like facing the existing water in nature, the enlightener is not happy. From the perspective of the enlightener, the countless trace elements, countless information elements, countless minerals, and countless life forms contained in this natural water make this natural water Water is chaotic, hazy, and unclear. The enlightener said, use our rationality to analyze water clearly, use our courage to use water violently, let us bury the original imperfect water, let us create our own New water created by reason.Soon after, the water was so polluted it was not usable at all.The enlightener said, how can the water be polluted like this? The situation is so bad that only our rationality and courage can solve such a problem. Let us use the rationality of enlightenment to purify and remove those sodium, iron, potassium, and calcium , Zinc is added, but is such artificial water the best water, is it non-toxic water, and is it water that is beneficial to life and health?If you have to ask, you should have asked before such water appeared.Ask only after such water appears. If the answer is no, then it will not be so easy to go back and return to the natural water before pollution.

The Enlightenment thought of German origin had a lot of influence on Chinese literary and artistic thought, and even more on ideology.Ignoring the inner elements of human beings, ignoring the sanctity of human beings, despising human dignity, interpreting the infinitely rich life as a few clues that can be grasped by hand, and then instilling those terms in literary, artistic, cultural and social trends of thought, and then mobilizing A social movement that expands its borders and transforms the world, the result is bound to be disastrous. "Schmidt attributes the 'real cause of Hitlerism' to the Enlightenment philosophy's view of 'unlimited human nature', referring to the Nazis' imperial ideology and racial insanity to the 'logical outcome of the nineteenth century',  … precisely The inhuman idea of ​​the enlightenment idea of ​​modern humanity, 'it is precisely the false religion of absolute humanity that opens the way to inhuman terror'" "In the final analysis, the legitimacy of the 'popular sovereignty' of the 1918 revolution was actually is the Enlightenment and its consequences” (7).This should arouse the thought enlighteners of China to think deeply.

Liu Xiaofeng's "My Experience of Reading Lavette" sorts out a clear clue.Lovett's "From Hegel to Nietzsche" raises a question that is closely related to literary trends, social consciousness, social movements and human living conditions: "Why do the German cultural spirits cultivated by Bach, Mozart, Goethe, Beethoven, and Schiller In the end, they actually gave birth to Nazis who were mainly young Germans?" "What is the relationship between German humanism and the phenomenon of Nazis?" (8) Heidegger, Lowitt, and Strauss' "thoughts" on German thought are prominent an important clue.German classical philosophy is an important branch of modern Chinese academic thought, and has exerted a major influence on the trend of thought, ideology and social conditions of modern and contemporary Chinese literature.What German thought wants is fairness, morality, emancipation and freedom.When emphasizing people's will to power, when attaching too many important components of life to the social collective, giving too much value and meaning to the collective and society, it dilutes the value and meaning of the individual, squeezes out the space for personal life, and When the preciousness of individual life is dispelled, in terms of the attitude towards life, finally brewing and choosing the means that are farthest from happiness in terms of human happiness, and the most bleak and bloody means in terms of human prospects: rebellion and struggle. The master of "German classical philosophy" is Hegel, but Lowitt said: Hegel was "a huge mistake" (9).In order to complete the modern Enlightenment, Hegel created a huge philosophical system, which makes people fall into nihilism in an all-round way.Lowitt said that nihilism in Germany was ultimately caused by resisting nihilism. The banner at the beginning blinded everyone. The ideological thread of German post-classical philosophy is to return to classics, and the core strength is morality.What is morality? Morality is a certain inner quality of a person as opposed to the absolute truth. It can be one way or another. It is the standard of one's self.The ideological evolution caused by German humanism led to the revolutionary and political reflection of the German spirit in the nineteenth century. This political reflection penetrated into civil society, labor, education, humanity, faith, etc.This reflection also echoes eighteenth-century French thought.Rousseau, Tocqueville, Proudhon, Sorel, etc.Lukacs wrote "The Destruction of Reason: The Road of Irrationalism——From Schelling to Hitler" in 1952, discussing the rational roads of Hegel, Schelling, and Hitler. Resist', that is, a resistance to divine belief, that is, a resistance to eternal truth.The result is that individual heroes are exalted, human leaders are worshiped, human nature is erased, human rights are disdained, and basic human dignity is trampled upon.From worshiping the truth to worshiping the leader, the previous concept of taking the truth as right has changed to the fact that the leader is always right.Far from the divine existence, far from the eternal standard, the implementation of the standard, the change, the zero-time, and the standard is through the tool of violent struggle.When Heidegger gave a lecture on "Introduction to Metaphysics" in 1935, he said that German nihilism originated from Kant, and that Kant's philosophy, the beginning of German classical philosophy, was "a great mistake." (10)

Mao Zedong said in "On the People's Democratic Dictatorship", "The sound of the October Revolution brought us Marxism-Leninism."The Enlightenment trend of thought originating from Germany has monopolized the trend of contemporary Chinese literary and artistic thought for a long time, and then overflowed far beyond the literary and artistic circles, entered the level of social revolution, and then dominated social movements. It played a huge role in contemporary Chinese life and created great actions. as a result of.The Cultural Revolution was a catastrophe with loud gongs and drums. The horrific nature of the Cultural Revolution is easy to be felt and recognized by people. However, the source of German Enlightenment quietly soaked in the heroism of Chinese life and served the country and the people. The mandatory overlooking is not easy to be seen.

The other wing of the French-centered European Enlightenment is the "vulgar" modern rational culture.Strauss "From Hegel to Nietzsche" proposed "especially German nihilism".What is nihilism? "An attitude or point of view that completely denies all kinds of traditional values ​​and even moral truths." What is the concept of modern civilization?Strauss said that it is to lower moral standards and moral requirements, and equate morality with the requirement of individual rights (11).When looking at modernism as a result, one finds its source in the Enlightenment.Whether it is the German spirit or the Enlightenmentism in France and other places, the trend of their rational brewing, whether it is relaxing morality and pursuing technical material, whether it is seeking liberation by grasping human justice and morality, their trends are basically the same. To dig out man from the transcendent, divine, unknowable world of existence, from the world's many comprehensive factors, to get rid of God, get rid of emotion, get rid of soul, get rid of potential information, get rid of the unknowable and unactionable into tense self-control, using limited rationality to grasp the many information of life with single-line, representational, knowable, technical, and material materials, so that human beings enter a clear technological The Age of Reason.This era only affirms the visible, measurable, manufacturable, and verifiable existence, while the soul, inner, and potential existence of countless lives are all abandoned.The most obvious modern consequence is that people only recognize the knowledge of science and engineering and the products produced by the knowledge of science and technology, while polluting and destroying the sacred and infinitely vast spiritual space of human beings, ignoring and giving up what is actually the most important thing about human beings. , immeasurable, infinite spiritual quality and humanistic quality.This modern technological rationality has created a quick, concise, and ruthless fundamental disaster for human beings.The main manifestations of these disasters are: 1. From a social perspective, they only pay attention to the tough governance of the society, not the inner harmony of the society; they only pay attention to the criminal law, not to humanity;2. From the perspective of cultural concepts and literary trends, rebellion is right (rebellion against nature, history, the existing system, and existing civilization), and obedience is wrong (not obeying God, natural laws, and happiness in life) normal track); pay attention to negation and ignore affirmation; pay attention to destruction and neglect construction; pay attention to strangeness and despise normality.3. From the perspective of human existence, due to continuous subversion and destruction, suspicion and denial of everything, people fall into nihilism in an all-round way, make the times fall into madness, make people generally fall into alienation, anxiety, loneliness and despair, and make life always Appeared in one after another of disasters.

According to Strauss, there are three waves of concern about Western modernity. The first is the wave of complete rejection of Western classical thought traditions set off by Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Hawke. The wave of so-called "progressive ideas" started with Machiavelli's rebellion against ancient times. The optimistic concepts of "enlightenment philosophers" such as Bacon believed that as long as they get rid of the shackles of ancient ideas and various existing concepts, as long as they believe in "science" "Technology", human beings can move towards the broad road of unlimited "development" and "progress"; the second is the revolutionary wave set off by Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, and Marx, with reason as the banner and struggle as the tool; The third time was Nietzsche and Heidegger, who set off a wave of large-scale reflections on modernity continued by postmodern disciples and grandchildren. This reflection is revealing the essence of modernity, which is the transition from passion and generosity to "nihilism" (12 ).What modernity wants is "the modern against the classical", "the new against the old", "the young against the old", "the present against the past", "the lowly against the noble", from opposition to opposition, and to infinity.In the modern trend of thought, what people pursue is the constant "new" and never-ending "progress", and even use the criteria of "new or old", "progressive or reactionary", "revolutionary or conservative" Replacing the standard of "good or bad", "In such a world where everything is current, everything is changing, everything is new and trendy, and everyone claims to keep pace with the times, is there any independent A changing standard of 'good or bad'? The standard of good and evil, right and wrong, and good or bad, is capricious with 'history'? If so, is there anything precious in the world that is worth keeping in the hearts of the world, even for generations to come? Eternal things, eternal people, and eternal karma admired by people?" (13) The meaning of persistence is denied, the value of preservation is questioned, the preciousness of eternal existence is subverted, and the truly beautiful things in the world are overthrown in an instant , life is led to the disaster of chaos, impermanence and nothingness.It even harms the whole nature. In the sound of revolution, innovation, and innovation, nature is also completely transformed. Everywhere is conquered, developed, polluted, and extinct. The eternity of nature is facing challenges. Its own existence is in danger.

Schmitt believes that the "value thinking" of the Enlightenment philosophy is "barbaric" logic, "Enlightenment rationalists created a perfect robot, they must say that this is the best human being, and the organic human body must die in order to You can live in a robot." (14) Standards that are too strong, actions that are too unified, and principles that are too absolute install too many people on the big machine of society, each of which is just a screw on the big machine, and one At the beginning it seemed to be personal and for human beings, but in the end, it deviated from human beings and strangled human beings.

Why is this so, and why does the rational enlightenment that starts with people eventually lead to violent strangulation of people?The reasons may be various, but one thing is fundamental, that is, a thread of Enlightenmentism, the thread that Enlightenmentism was understood and inherited by the pioneers of the "May 4th Movement" in China only paid attention to human reason and ignored the human soul. Focuses on the parts that can be grasped and expressed in the human world, ignores the parts that are difficult to grasp and express, and only pays attention to the rough, limited, temporary, relative, dialectical, historical and material aspects of life in the universe. level, ignoring the sacred, infinite, soul, and absolute levels, only paying attention to the secular level, ignoring the level of belief, only asking for the real existence, not willing to want the existence of truth, only paying attention to the natural existence of human beings, ignoring human spiritual existence.