tragic birth vol. inappropriate inspection 1876 A man who has traveled to several continents and met travelers from many countries and nations, when he was asked what is the common characteristic of human beings that he found everywhere, he replied: "People tend to be lazy." Some people think that if He would have said it more justly: they were all cowards.They all hide behind habits and opinions.After all, everyone knows perfectly well that he lives only once in this world, like something unique.And knowing that no accident, however surprising, will put together again this wonderful and scattered multiplicity: he knows this, but hides it like a villain, and why?Because he is afraid of his neighbor, who is always obstinate in hiding behind habit and hiding himself.But what makes the individual individual afraid of his neighbor, and think and act in the pattern of the crowd, and not happy to be his own?In some rare cases it may be a sense of shame, but most often it is a desire for ease, inertia—in short, what the traveler said, a tendency toward laziness.He was right: Men are more lazy than timid.And what they are most afraid of is the trouble that any unconditional honesty and frankness may cause them.Only an artist hates this kind of lazy life under the attitude of others and opinions that are easy to be adopted. Only the artist reveals the secrets, exposes everyone's inferiority, and at the same time points out that everyone is a unique spectacle.They have dared to show us man as he is, through and through, himself and only himself, and even more so that in this unique and rigorous unity he is beautiful and contemplative, as every part of nature is. A piece of work is equally novel and incredible, and it is not boring at all.When a great thinker despises human beings, it is because they are despised by their laziness: because they behave like factory products, look indistinguishable, and are not worthy of company.If man does not wish to be subordinate to the crowd, he must cease to be comfortable with himself; let him follow the conscience that cries out to him: "Be yourself!

What you are doing right now is not who you really are. "... My attitude toward a philosopher is to pay attention only to the extent that he can be a model. ... Kant was attached to the universities, subordinated to the government, remained on the surface of religious belief, and tolerated his colleagues and students: no doubt his type produced the professors and the philosophy of the professors in the major universities.Schopenhauer has no regard for the status of a scholar, stands aside, and pursues independence from the state and society-from the most outward features, this is his typical, his model... He is completely Lonely.No real congenial friend to comfort him.Between 1 and 0, as often as between being and nothing, there is an infinite gap.No one who has true friends knows what true loneliness is, even if the whole world around him is full of enemies.ah!I know you don't understand the meaning of loneliness.Wherever there is power in society, government, religion, or public opinion—in short, whenever there is tyranny of any kind, the solitary philosopher is hated; for philosophy opens to man a refuge which tyranny cannot reach: the inner cave, the labyrinth, which annoys all tyrants.That is the hiding place of the fox alone.However, it was here that they encountered their greatest danger.

... The first danger that shadowed Schopenhauer's development was isolation.The second danger is despair of truth.Every thinker who has started with Kant's philosophy has run into the danger of thinking that they are living and healthy human beings in the midst of suffering and hope, not mere wordy thinking machines or computers... Once Kant starts to develop his We find it reflected in a distressing skepticism and relativism when the universal influence ofOnly in the most active and noble souls, never in doubt, do you find that exaltation and despair of truth which Heinrich von Kleist experienced as a result of Kant's philosophy.Christ once wrote with emotion: "Not long ago I became acquainted with Kant's philosophy. And now I must tell you one of its ideas, which, if I am not afraid, will shake you as deeply and painfully as it shakes me. Same thing. We can't decide whether what we call truth is really truth, or whether it just appears to be so to us. If the latter is true, then the truth we have here will be nothing after our death And so it is in vain to catch hold of something that will follow us to the grave. If this opinion does not penetrate your heart, do not laugh at the man who feels wounded by it in the depths of his holiness, my only, My highest purpose has sunk, and I have nothing left." When will people have the natural feelings of Christ?When will they learn to measure the meaning of a philosophy by their "divine depths"?

We should study, after Kant, what does Schopenhauer mean to us?He may be the compass that guides us out of the woes of doubt or the dreaded negativity that sinks us into the cave of extreme pessimism, and to see the starry night sky again.He was the first to lead himself down this path.His greatness lies in his confrontation with the whole image of life in order to explain it.Yet the most refined minds are not immune to the error of thinking that by painstakingly studying the colors with which the image was painted, and the material beneath, one would be nearer to the interpretation. The whole future of all science is tied to the attempt to understand the canvas and the colors, not the image.We can say that the individual sciences can be used without personal injury only when one has a solid grasp of the whole picture of life and existence.Because there is no such a regular and complete image, people are like thread balls that cannot find the source, which will only make our life more chaotic and confused.As I have already said, Schopenhauer's greatness lies in this: he pursues the image as Hamlet pursues the ghost, without throwing himself into confusion, as many scholars have done, and without Like a wayward dialectician, he will allow himself to fall into the trap of concepts.The studies of all partial philosophers are attractive only insofar as we see how they lead directly to those states in the temples of great philosophy in which intellectual polemics, reflections, doubts, and contradictions are allowed. , so they avoid the challenge of every great philosophy which, when taken as a whole, often says only: Here is the image of all life, from here learn the meaning of your life !On the contrary: observe only your own life, and from it learn the meaning of life in general!

This is how Schopenhauer's philosophy is often first interpreted as follows: only for the individual himself, individually to gain some insight into his own misfortunes and needs, some insight into his own limits. ...he teaches us to distinguish between real and apparent happiness in man: how neither riches, nor honor, nor the status of a scholar can lift a man from the worthless disappointment of his existence, and why the pursuit of these ends can only be pursued from a It is meaningful for a higher and overriding purpose: to gain strength to assist nature and to correct a little of its follies and errors.Start for yourself, and eventually you will start from yourself and then for all mankind.Indeed, it is an expectation that leads us to retreat deeply and sincerely: in particular or in general, what correction can be made in the end?

(Translated by Chen Guying)