Twelve Letters to Youth is a compilation of articles that Mr. Zhu Guangqian contributed to General magazine edited by Mr. Xia Mianzun during his study abroad, and the letter is aimed at junior high school students. He won the admiration of young readers with his "passionate feelings, gentle attitude and rich knowledge" and gave many people inspiration and strength.
In this series, we will share with you the main ideas in the twelve letters and some experiences in the reading process.
We live in the world, what is the domination of our life? Dominated by reason or emotion? I believe that many people will choose the former. In Mr. Zhu Guangqian's time, many scholars and scholars also held this view.
However, Mr. Zhu is not a parrot and superstitious about authority, but puts forward his own different views and opinions.
"Looking at the life of the universe, the life of the society and the life of the individual with the present philosophy has only a purpose and no foresight. The so-called purpose means that life has a destination and wants to move in a certain direction. The so-called infinite sword means that life in a certain branch can't predict its destination and place by itself. "
His reasoning is that "reason is foresight, and life is not dominated by foresight, so it is not dominated by reason."
In psychology, the reaction of wit is particularly fierce, and there are two main tendencies.
One is from bentham's hedonism to McDougall William's activism.
Hedonism psychologists think that "all actions are nothing more than seeking pleasure and avoiding pain." That is to say, "behavior is the product of reason, and what reason takes is based on the speed and unhappiness of feeling."
The above viewpoint was later criticized to pieces. Activists thought that "pleasure and pain are the result of behavior, not the motivation of behavior. The motivation is smooth, so the pleasure is born, the movement is hindered, and the pain is born. " "The driving force of behavior is instinct and emotion, not reason."
I try to understand these concepts. If a person is hungry, he wants to eat steamed stuffed buns, but he has no money.
The second tendency is Freudian psychology of implicit consciousness. According to them, it is not easy to control feelings without special reason, and reason itself is just a disguised form of feelings.
For the time being, the author puts aside the question of whether reason can dominate emotion, and measures whether the life of reason is higher than the life value of emotion.
Let's assume that a rational life is perfect, and then study this assumption.
First, we should know that rational life is very narrow. If we are purely rational, art is meaningless to life. Because without emotion, music is just the vibration of the air, and pictures are just colored paper. Literature is just a string of words. If you are purely rational, then love is meaningless to life, because without emotion, the combination of men and women is only for reproduction. Let's imagine what is the point without art and love in life.
Just because people are emotional animals, with feelings, this world has become another world, and this life is another life.
Second, we should know that a rational life is very cold and unkind. There are many things that reason tells us to do, but what we really do is not as good as 1%. Most of what we do is due to emotion behind us.
Reason tells us to help the poor, but unless I am touched by pity. Otherwise, 99% of me will not pay for the poor beggar. "A man who believes in reason does calculations every day, and there are many things that are not conducive to himself. He will never do it." "There are many things in the world that only a somewhat silly person can do." "Many heroic deeds in history are emotional, not rational."
It can be seen that if human beings want to trust reason completely, the interest of life will be exploited. Morality will also be inferior. Strictly speaking, there can only be law but not morality in a purely rational world. Although people who are purely rational also talk about morality, their morality is the morality of asking questions, not the morality of asking questions. The morality of asking questions is forced by external forces. The morality of asking questions is based on the truth, and the morality of asking questions without asking questions can only bind human beings, but not give them happiness.
It is associated with the fact that there are many young people with high education and high quality in big cities today, but they are unwilling to get married. In a sense, it may also be the result of being too rational. They think too much about the house, car, tickets, children, academic qualifications, pre-marital property, and the families of both sides consider everything. As a result, their feelings are left thousands of miles away.
Regarding "filial piety", there was a saying in ancient times that all the virtues's filial piety came first, while Mr. Hu Shi put forward that "parents are ungrateful to their children." The point of view. "The child himself didn't freely claim to be born in my house, and our parents didn't get his consent, so they gave him a life in a muddle. Besides, we didn't mean to give him this life. We didn't mean to, so how can we take credit? "
Therefore, true filial piety is not a kind of reward, not a debt to pay interest. Filial piety is just a kind of love, and all love is an emotional, sincere, not rational, but an honest morality. Seeing filial piety as a debt interest or an obligation is actually the same as the last stream of Confucianism.
From the ancient theory, Confucius paid attention to the word "benevolence" when talking about morality, while Mencius paid attention to the word "righteousness". "Benevolence" is more valuable than "righteousness", which is recognized by Confucian scholars, and "benevolence" is the morality of asking the heart. Righteousness is the morality of asking questions. "The virtue of the benevolent heart is appropriate for the righteous."
Associated with the profession of teachers, the salary is not high, and they worry too much. From a rational point of view, it is not worth paying so much. However, there are still so many people who have devoted themselves like Teacher Zhang Guimei, and their deeds are earth-shaking. This is also the truth that "benevolence is better than righteousness" and "emotion is better than reason".
In a word, the author insists that a rational life is necessary, but an emotional life is better than a rational life. "Life is multifaceted. We should not only be able to" know ",but also be able to" feel ".A rational life is only a one-sided life. Reason does not have much ability to dominate emotions, even though reason can dominate emotions, and life and culture that reason is better than emotion are not ideal. "