Why did western philosophy die?

One of the author's viewpoints has been elaborated in detail in my book Questioning Human Nature, that is, the initial spirituality of human beings, that is, the moral mind, originated from 800 BC to 200 AD, and the three primitive moral spirits of human beings-the spirit of faith, the spirit of knowledge and the spirit of love-originated from the ancient Hebrews, the ancient Greeks and the ancient China people in this period, and these three primitive moral spirits rose in Hebrew, Greece and China respectively. The spiritual core of philosophy is the rationality of seeking knowledge; The spiritual core of human studies is intimacy. No matter theology, philosophy or human studies, they all originated from the heartfelt pursuit of goodness, that is, the pursuit of human moral spirit.

The ancient Hebrew prophets believed that the will of human beings to believe in God was the source or foundation of human kindness. Ancient Greek philosophers regarded people's mastery and pursuit of knowledge as the source or foundation of human kindness; The ancient sages in China regarded human feelings for mutual love as the source or foundation of human kindness. According to the author's understanding today, the goodness of the first belief spirit should actually be the originality of the ancient Hebrew people's will to seek truth; The goodness of the second spirit of seeking knowledge should be the originality of the ancient Greek spirit of rational seeking goodness; The third kind of good spirit should be the original creation of China's ancient people's emotional spirit of pursuing human beauty. The ancients attributed all the inner spirits of human beings' pursuit of truth, goodness, beauty, rationality and emotion to the pursuit of human inner goodness "heart" as opposed to "evil". It is the spiritual strength of seeking goodness (goodness) that occurs in people's hearts. These forces can restrain, restrain and regulate people's original evil and desire, so they can all be regarded as human moral and spiritual forces.

The first and later theology of mankind was formed on the basis of the monism that God created the world and believed in the unity of God. On the basis of the world's dualism of mind and matter, conceptual dialectics and the reasoning theory of formal logic, the first and later philosophy of mankind was formed. On the basis of the theory of world chaos, the theory of yin and yang and five elements, and the theory of small universe circulation between heaven, earth and man, the original human science was formed. The original theory of human studies in the East basically stagnated after the Qin and Han Dynasties in China, while the original theology and philosophy in the West not only further promoted theology, but also further developed philosophy after combining them in the Middle Ages. The combination of theology and philosophy produces natural science and theism (politics, economics, sociology, social psychology, etc.) in modern western countries. ). The belief spirit of theology has produced the rational spirit of modern scientific experiments or argumentation, as well as the rational spirit of social utility or tools in the historical process of fighting the intellectual spirit of philosophy. After that, at the end of19th century, in the historical contradiction between the belief spirit of theology and the knowledge-seeking spirit of philosophy, it first declined, and finally led to the "death" of theology and God. This "decline" and "death" all stem from human's rational examination of God. As a mysterious force in human hearts, God is increasingly suspected and rejected by rational forces, and finally exclaimed in Nietzsche's voice: "God is dead!" " After that, "God is dead" became an irreversible consensus of mankind. The loss of God, that is, the belief in God itself, has left more and more superficial religious ceremonies and even vulgar customs, which are increasingly despised by future generations.

People don't realize that the loss of belief spirit caused by the death of God is actually the death of a primitive tired spirit of human beings. This primitive moral spirit once gave birth to some kind of inner self-discipline power to restrain one's original evil and original desire in people's hearts because of some kind of fear and hope that people felt in the omnipresent belief in God, that is to say, it became the source of good power that originated in people's hearts. Now, the source of this beautiful power born in people's hearts has dried up. People find that the God who once threatened them is nothing, but people don't have to be afraid of nothingness. People find that the God who once threatened them is nothing, but people don't have to be afraid of nothingness, so people are greatly relieved and don't even have to feel guilty for committing crimes. It is precisely because of this that modern human beings have become more and more shameless and more and more ignorant of self-blame. For thousands of years, the devil with primitive evil nature hidden in people's hearts finally broke through the first line of defense of the "Pandura Box", the mysterious lid of God, which led to the death of moral spirit caused by faith. The most direct and serious historical consequence of this moral fear of God's death is the almost continuous two world wars in Europe and the world in the first half of the 20th century. In previous wars, human beings have openly shown clear evil will from ethnic cleansing to class cleansing, and since then, the cold war situation between the two major teams in the world has begun for more than half a century. By the end of the 1980s, after the end of the Cold War, new ethnic cleansing began almost immediately, such as the separatist war in the former Soviet Union, and even developed into an inhuman war in which ethnic cleansing in general was replaced by international ethnic cleansing, such as the bombing of Yugoslavia by NATO and the United States, all of which were carried out by the most powerful western countries in the world today. Westerners who have lost the moral spirit of God because of fear and belief want to revive "morality" with people's fear of the most advanced violent weapons. They don't see that this kind of morality relying on power can no longer be morality, but a deeper moral death. This should be another story.

With the death of God, the rational philosophy that was once complacent about digging a grave for God was finally in jeopardy.

The philosophical spirit of seeking knowledge, which originated from ancient Greece, was once the source of spiritual strength for people to pursue kindness from the heart. At first, it was embodied in the concept of "logos" put forward by Heraclitus (540-470 BC). Heraclitus is considered to be the first person in the history of western ethical thought to put forward the ethical thought system of cosmology. Heraclitus emphasized that "logos" is not only the universal law of the universe, but also the universal law of behavior and the "patron saint" of fate that everyone should follow. In Plato's philosophy, "logos" is the law of reason and the highest idea. In Aristotle's philosophy, "logos" is the mother of logic. In the later Stoic philosophy, "logos" became the fate of all things in the world. In the eyes of later theologians, "logos" became the theoretical basis of sacred wisdom and monotheism. Finally, in Hegel's philosophy, "logos" returned to the expression of Plato's rational spirit and became the absolute only spirit of mankind.

Because of the mystery expressed by logos, that is, the rational spirit, and people's infinite awe of the movement and life law of the universe, nature, society, human beings and other things, the study of philosophy once helped people overcome the primitive evils such as inner anxiety and willful madness and gain inner peace. Therefore, the philosophical spirit of seeking knowledge has also become the source of some spiritual strength for human beings to pursue inner goodness. However, after several centuries of evolution and development, this philosophical rational spirit, once the primitive moral spirit of western human beings, has increasingly become the rational spirit of external materialism, empiricism, pragmatism and instrumentalism. Although it is a powerful materialistic form tool used by human beings to transform nature and even society, it has increasingly abandoned the foundation or source of human initial moral spirit. At this time, philosophy has nothing to do with the moral spirit of human beings and the heartfelt good spirit pursued by human beings, but has completely become a tool of materialism and rationalism used by people to pursue secular utilitarianism.

The death of philosophy happens precisely because it abandons the moral spirit, emotion and life of human beings more and more absolutely, and at the same time, it has increasingly become a formalistic tool for individuals to struggle for power and profit in social history. As described by the author in this book, the continuous strength and development of this philosophical tool has led to the division of human race, religion, nation, country, class, friendship, family and finally individual personality. In the atmosphere of modern philosophy, human nature has not been sublimed and sublimated, but has become more and more unworthy, more and more shameless, more and more ignorant of good and evil, and even worse than animals. At least, cannibalism rarely occurs between animals, even less in humans. The more we promote the power of cannibalism on a large scale, the more we show human beings. In the past five centuries, in the process of developing killing weapons, human beings have obviously shown their own "progress", "nobility" and "superiority".

The more western philosophers in the past, the more they show their moral spirit, thus showing their concern for the common destiny of mankind in the future. However, the closer they get to modern philosophers, the opposite is often the case. They show indifference or even coldness to human emotions. They seem to know only the truth, but not the best, and even become monsters who only seek precise operation of symbols and become indifferent experts in language, sentence and semantic analysis. It includes not only some modernist philosophers, but also some so-called postmodern philosophers. They are more and more interested in more and more accurate thinking about "truth", and their thinking about "goodness" is more and more limited to the atomized individual itself, limited to only considering the external conditions of the individual's own goodness, and simply ignoring the mechanism of its internal self-discipline force. This kind of individualism "goodness" obviously has nothing to do with human moral spirit and emotion. To put it bluntly, western philosophy has inherited the individualism tradition of western theology that human nature is evil from the very beginning, so its further development and abandonment of human group morality are inevitable results.

The process of western philosophy from prosperity to decline in modern times and finally to the end of this century has been discussed in detail in the second part of this book and the first and second sections of the first chapter. What is emphasized there is that when philosophy completely breaks away from theology, rejects belief and reaches the peak of independence, it is actually the time when it completely filters out the moral spirit and no longer has the spiritual power to help human beings develop self-discipline from the deep heart. At this time, philosophy has either become a tool for pure logicians to operate conceptual truth, or a tool for rationalists to sophistry only for people's secular interests. In the past, philosophers considered the law of the harmonious existence of the universe, nature, society and human beings as a whole, and the "logos" in the sense of the law, but now only relativism and rationalism ideology are left to defend the interests of individuals and small groups (such as classes). Absolute reason, as a god, has been politely invited out of the stage of reality by Hegel, while the god of faith and the god of love have already been sentenced to death. Simply put, such a god never existed. To put it another way, that is to say, the absolute value of faith spirit and benevolence spirit is not recognized in the rational court of philosophy. If Descartes and Kant retain the status of God's belief for these absolute values, or are affirmed as "absolute commands", then in Hegel's view, reason has been declared to dominate everything, and God is the absolute rational spirit, which is enough to show that the spirit of faith and the spirit of love have been ignored. As for Wittgenstein, it is meaningless to judge all metaphysics. In fact, it is meaningless to judge the spirit of faith and kindness. Western philosophy basically came to an end when it came to Wittgenstein. In Wittgenstein's early days, the purpose of philosophy was only to "logically explain thoughts", while "logical atomism" and "logical positivism" were actually equivalent to declaring that philosophy was a purely rational tool, which had nothing to do with human belief and benevolence. "You should keep silent about what you don't understand", "Most of the sentences and propositions on philosophical issues written so far are not all wrong, but meaningless". This is tantamount to explicitly declaring that all metaphysics involving human "mind" is meaningless. Horribly, this basically means that life is meaningless. Philosophy has always hoped to find some meaning for mankind, especially the meaning of some primitive moral spirit, and now it's all over!

After Wittgenstein, the task of philosophy is to try to get rid of the trap of language setting. Philosophy should give up its attempt to explain everything and become a "pure description", which is equivalent to actually ending all the possibilities of philosophy and philosophy trying to care about the direction of human destiny. Wittgenstein prepared a lot of tasks for later "philosophers" to analyze language, semantics, sentences and so on, and philosophy itself became a tool of intellectual games, or an intellectual game of tools.

It can be said that modern western philosophy began with Descartes, and reached its ultimate peak through Kant's pioneering and creative work. At this moment, the rising road has been cut off, and only it can fall freely along the other side of the mountain. The twentieth century is the century when western philosophy came to an end. Philosophers in the traditional sense are actually becoming the burden of human ideological circles. Apart from some language, semantic and sentence analysis games, the rest are actually insignificant to the future career of mankind.

It has been pointed out that German classical philosophy is a philosophy that theoretically demonstrates the spiritual rights of human freedom. In fact, the greatest historical achievement of western philosophy is to confirm the right of human spiritual freedom. However, philosophy died because it only gave absolute freedom to human reason, which should only belong to the theory of relativity. On the road of philosophy, the British first demanded the right to freedom of thought and speech, the French first fought for the right to freedom in social behavior and rights struggle, and the Germans first demonstrated the right to spiritual freedom in theory. In Kant's view, the absoluteness of this freedom belongs not to human reason, but to faith, love of God and moral emotion, while the relativity of freedom belongs to human reason, or reason. In Kant's view, human reason is limited, and it is impossible to know things themselves and God. Although it has relative freedom rights, it is definitely not freedom itself, because it can't be absolute itself. However, in Hegel's view, Li Ren became the master of all things and himself became God. God is absolute reason, and absolute reason is God. Reason was lifted to the absolute throne by Hegel, and reason became absolute, that is, it was considered as freedom itself. Infinitely exaggerating the freedom of human material tools, as a result, it cancels the spiritual freedom of moral emotion and belief will, and cancels the spiritual freedom of human soul. Abolishing the spiritual freedom of human soul is actually the premise of destroying philosophy itself. As we have pointed out before, the initial birth of philosophy is closely related to human moral spirit. Philosophy without moral spirit is bound to die out.

Modern western philosophy begins its mission by doubting everything, but ends it by abolishing all the objects that can be doubted. It's ridiculous to think of it, but it's really fate.

When western philosophy announces to the world with the help of Wittgenstein, all metaphysics is meaningless, and we should keep silent about all unclear things. At this moment, when will philosophy not die?

What's the use of philosophy if it only speaks clearly? Philosophy only talks about individualism, materialism, logicism and secularism, which is rationalism in short. When will you not die?

What is even more frightening is that western philosophy has inherited the tradition of individualism in western theology and believes that human nature is evil. The ancient Hebrews believed that human beings were "evil" people with free souls, so there must be a God. The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that human beings were "evil" people of political freedom, so there must be parliaments, elections and codes; The British believe that human beings are an "evil" nation with economic freedom, so there must be a constitution to protect citizens' freedom to own private property, freedom of thought, speech, press and publication, and freedom of association. Americans believe that human beings are an "evil" nation with free culture, so they must have the smoothest information network.

From what has been said above, we can easily understand that the progress of modern western countries for hundreds of years is rooted in western theology, and then western philosophy confirms that human nature is evil. When this evil of human nature is pushed to the extreme by philosophy, that is, to the most extreme evil nature, how can "evil" human nature save itself? Man or man? In fact, today's human beings have begun to face this crisis: a serious human psychological crisis, that is, a serious loss of moral spirit, and a more direct cycle is to lead to a serious social and ecological crisis (such as a sharp increase in human criminal cases) and a serious natural and ecological crisis. So far, the development of philosophy has helped to open the lid of all the "Pandura boxes" and let all the inhuman physical evils roam freely in the world, but it can't drive them back. Philosophy itself has been destroyed by this evil nature, and philosophy has long been irrelevant to the pursuit of goodness in human nature. When will philosophy not die?

Philosophy is dead, what is there to doubt? Philosophy is dead, and the only hope of mankind is to rebuild the new meaning of human studies.

The more concrete judgment about the death of philosophy lies in the duality of philosophical methods. Dualism can cover everything of physical properties, from the macroscopic universe to the microscopic quarks, even from organisms to genes, but it can't cover "people" after all. Just like "1" and "0" of an electronic computer, it can simulate everything in the world, but it can't completely simulate "people" after all. This is also the fundamental reason why philosophy has to die out and human studies have to be discouraged. The exhaustion of dual methodology declared the death of philosophy, and the birth of new humanism can only be sought from the way of pluralism, at least from the way of ternary methodology. The future destiny of mankind can only be concerned, explored, reformed and hoped by people with at least ternary methodology!