Victor's Pursuit of Serenity Chapter 5

What makes Lao Tzu different from Julian is his philosophical temperament. He has excellent abstract ability to establish a conceptual system. In the end, he obtained "nothingness". Lao Tzu's philosophical interest is to ignore the phenomenal world, to make all things blend into abstract existence, and then to destroy their own forms and become nothingness, which is where the Tao comes from. Lao Tzu hates the complexity of things. He adopted a method that was praised by later generations as dialectics, simplifying the phenomenon into two ends, and then circling the two ends to make them meet. This is why people often quote his series of aphorisms, such as difficulty and ease complement each other, length and shortness compare, bending makes whole, bending makes straight, blessings and disasters depend on each other, and if you want to take it, you must first give it, etc.

This is a very beautiful and easy-to-grasp method. Imagine that it was created more than 2,000 years ago, and we admire Lao Tzu. If future generations are still satisfied with this closed, oversimplified, and philosophically naive methodology, then they are hopeless.

Another great influence Ethan had on later generations was his anti-intellectualism. He said, "How far are the differences between beauty and ugliness?" Knowledge that distinguishes all things is useless; to govern the world, one must abandon wisdom and debate, and to govern oneself, one must be narrow-minded and keep to the middle. He confidently said, "The sage knows without going, and sees without seeing." He knows the world's affairs without going out, because those things can be inferred and nothing is worth seeing in person. Those who love to learn are the second class, busy increasing their knowledge every day, while the goal of the first class is to reduce their knowledge every day, and finally reach a beautiful state of no learning and no worries. If you are unlucky and know something, don't tell others, because once you open your mouth, you are ignorant, and keeping silent is true knowledge.

Ethan sympathizes with the weak and opposes the powerful. His ideal society is a small country with few people, like a primitive tribe. Unfortunately, archaeological discoveries have shown us that people in the Stone Age lived a miserable life and died of wounds after a short life. The happiness of "sweet food and beautiful clothes" that Ethan imagined was not enjoyed by people at that time. Otherwise, how could humans have the interest to move towards civilization?

Ethan was an outstanding wise man, but he could not have expected that later generations would use his ideas as an excuse for not striving for progress. His wisdom was not used by later generations to enlighten their minds, but to defend their laziness. A book called "Ethan" is only a few thousand words, and the words are beautiful, but you don't need to read it, because you have already read it - Ethan's thoughts have already penetrated into your heart and mine. Moreover, Ethan himself would not advocate reading.

Don’t Read the Analects

The Analects is a book that confuses me. Perhaps it is because we are too familiar with contemporary classifications, or perhaps it is because our understanding of scholarship is a pile of evolving concepts. Julian has many titles, some of which can be called without hesitation, while others are not so stable. For example, is philosophy without a metaphysical background philosophy? Is Julian a philosopher? Is he an ethicist? Or simply, is Julian a thinker? This last question is particularly rude, but I know that more than one person has such doubts. We are used to thinking in a system, and a thought without a system does not seem to be a thought. The thoughts of later thinkers are mostly inspired by the thoughts of their predecessors, but we might as well ask ourselves, is it really impossible to think mostly inspired by personal experience and use concepts that are not specifically defined? Of course not.

There is no more reliable book than the Analects to understand Julian. In fact, it is almost the only reliable book. I hope there is a version that separates the words of Julian from the words of his disciples and others in the Analects, or even divides them into two small books. In the Analects, there are many brilliant views of the disciples, some of which are so brilliant that we keep quoting them and even forget that they are not Julian' teachings. However, if you read these two parts side by side, even the less sensitive readers can find that there is a difference in temperament between these disciples and their teacher. These disciples are not inferior to Julian in intelligence, nor do they lack deep thinking, but they are reserved and learn from others, like being a guest in someone else's house, and they can never be as free and easy as the host.

The Analects is a book of fragments. The more we read the Analects, the more we wonder why Julian became a mentor for generations. What did he teach us? He taught us what is good or right, what is bad or wrong in real life, what we should do in various situations, what is our moral foundation when we can't decide, --- but that's all? It sounds like what our parents did, or what we will do to our children and grandchildren. Is Julian just a life mentor?

I am going to make a comparison that many readers may not like. The person I want to bring up is Shakespeare. Generation after generation of people have wondered what made Shakespeare. Unlike Julian, Shakespeare did not receive a good education, did not have a high taste for literature, and his understanding of history came from a mess of popular works, and his understanding of the world at that time also came from the same source, or even worse, from the empty talk in the tavern. His life was also dull, low status, and he was busy making a living all his life. Such a person, a guy who is similar to today's TV scriptwriter, is now regarded by us as a genius among geniuses and a great man among great men. The lines he wrote are quoted by generations of people. If Shakespeare said a word about something, then no one would spend the same brain to figure out how to say it better. He said it the best.

The same is true of Julian. These days, I have quoted one of his words several times without realizing it. His words always have a chance to pop up in your mind on certain occasions, as if he is waiting there, waiting for you to remember his words. In this respect, he, like Shakespeare, has given us the best expressions, and through their circulation, has lightened the burden on our minds. Unless there is a special discovery, these expressions are always ready-made, reliable, and can be borrowed with confidence.

Is that all? Of course not. What makes Shakespeare's words timeless is his insight. So it is with Julian. What makes his words so powerful is not rhetoric, but that he sees and understands. If every phenomenon has a handle, people like them reach out and pick it up, as if by instinct, while we mortals, in our torment, cannot find that handle. How can we not admire such extraordinary intelligence expressed in such a gracious way, coupled with a broad mind - a broad sympathy for the human condition?