People tend to pay too much attention to what others think of themselves, but others' evaluations cannot directly help us achieve happiness. The most difficult thing for a smart person to get rid of is the desire for fame and wealth. We often work hard to win the favor of others and regard other people's opinions as real existence, completely ignoring our own feelings. This also makes us very easy to be controlled by him. As long as a few good words and a few words of suppression are combined, we can control a person's change.
Schopenhauer doesn’t understand why everyone cares so much about other people’s feelings and evaluations. He believes that other people’s consciousness has nothing to do with us. Only the individual’s subjective cognition will affect the subject’s actions and other people’s opinions. , Evaluation is just an indirect factor that affects the change of the subject. At the same time, his insight has penetrated ancient and modern times. He believes that the public's thoughts are ignorant and shallow. As long as their remarks are not heard by the other party, they will try their best to slander them, and many great people have been destroyed in one day. It was great men in the past, now it is ordinary people who are exposed, and the stupid attacks of the masses never stop.
What is the relationship between reputation and happiness? If people cannot find the source of happiness from their own personality and property, they will need the third kind, reputation. You cannot find the source of happiness in yourself and can only rely on the praise of others. Such a base of happiness is weak and prone to collapse. Healthy happiness should be built from the perspective of the subject, allowing one to have a healthy body, independent mind and abilities.
Happiness comes from the satisfaction of personal peace of mind. Therefore, if you want to be happy, you must reasonably limit the impulse to worry about the evaluation of others. When people break away from the foolish thoughts of pleasing others, they can gain unexpected and peaceful happiness, and become more determined and confident. Schopenhauer also mentioned that retired life is conducive to peace of mind. Hey, because you have left a life of being supervised and watched for a long time, you no longer have to worry about others, and you can truly follow your heart. Ha, long live retirement!
However, everything worth doing is difficult.
People's ignorance of reputation gives rise to ambition, vanity and pride. What is the difference between vanity and pride? Schopenhauer believed that pride is an inner activity, a direct identification with oneself, while vanity is an indirect identification through the evaluation of others. People who are vain and arrogant tend to talk a lot because their identity comes from the outside and they need to constantly connect with external sources to receive feedback. However, people who are truly arrogant are silent and restrained, and may even be disdainful and arrogant. They only have confidence in their outstanding talents and Unique Values ??Only those with firm and unshakable beliefs are proud. But the enemy of pride is vanity. Vanity builds self-confidence and shows itself through external acclaim, while pride comes from within.
The world often suppresses proud people. Everyone hopes that others will be as mediocre as themselves. Even outstanding people must be "humbly" and not show off themselves. It is like the egalitarianism of a big bowl of rice, which makes the world only myself. However, Schopenhauer believes that only those who have nothing to be proud of themselves will belittle the quality of pride. If we do not want the moral character of others to be ignored forever, we should formalize our own moral character.
Among pride, Schopenhauer believes that the most inhumane thing is the pride of the country. Only when you are not proud of yourself can you be proud of the country. A person who is good enough should see through the country and look for the world. level interlocutor. The so-called national character is nothing more than the people in power praising one personality and belittling another based on the current situation and needs. There is no right or wrong in this regard.
It can be seen that personality is more important to individuals than national character. If people live for themselves, they must achieve spiritual freedom and get rid of all kinds of constraints bestowed by society.
Schopenhauer did not agree with political official positions. From his perspective, official positions can be described as a battlefield for uneducated people, with privileges and rituals constructed to highlight rank. The more novel point of view here is that it proposes that everyone has eyes and ears, but lacks judgment and memory. From our many online violence and large-scale entertainment events one after another, we really have no memory.
Objectively speaking, honor is the evaluation and perception of us by others, and subjectively it lies in the importance we attach to this evaluation and perception. Honor originates from shame in everyone and is a recognized value. Due to the need for cooperative survival in ancient society, everyone needs each other's recognition to survive in the group. In order to gain the recognition of others, this creates the fundamental responsibility of human beings and the responsibilities of their special status, which creates a primitive sense of shame. .
This allows people not to be bound by etiquette and law, but can also rely on free will to act reasonably because of the power of the masses.
Honor is a condition for peaceful interactions between people. Under the constraints of honor, we should respect the rights of others unconditionally. The bottom layer of honor is the eternal belief, which means that what was considered evil in the past will also be considered evil in the future. We can understand that honor is a very low-level and basic value in interpersonal communication, and the credit accumulated from personal behavior is an indirect value.
What will happen if honor is lost? Once honor is lost, it is difficult to regain, and everyone should take it seriously.
Why is honor so important because of its special qualities? Honor is not about praising someone’s noble character, but something that no one should be exempt from. Everyone can do it. Unlike reputation, People need to strive for reputation, but honor is something that people cannot lose, such as integrity.
What kind of attacks will honor receive? Slander is the only weapon that can attack honor. The best way to counter it is to use appropriate public opinion to refute such slander and to properly unmask the slanderer.
Even though honor is so important for our survival in society, with a sense of honor, we can live in a state of fame and help each other. But the value of honor is not worth mentioning compared with life. They are just better tools, methods and creeds to help people live. If a good honor cannot have any effect on oneself, then it is not worth getting at all.
Ordinary people's honor mainly protects themselves from humiliation, while official honor is to make others respect their official positions and thereby obtain so-called rights. So the demand for official honors is higher. Correspondingly, such personnel, officials, doctors, and lawyers, should have a sense of honor and the honor of serving the public.
To be honest, I didn’t understand it. In the old days, in order to gain status and respect, women formed alliances with women to deal with men together, relied on men to survive, and supported women's glory. But Schopenhauer still proposed that female honor has no origin in nature. But there is another woman in society who breaks her marriage contract, which is like a betrayal of women as a whole. It is most likely that women will rise up to judge them.
In addition, there is a unique glory that exists among a small number of the upper class of European society and people who are suitable for the upper class, which can make people have a chivalrous spirit - chivalry. I had seen the samurai spirit of Kiku and Sword earlier, and felt that the two were very similar, but it had been so long that I had forgotten the content. I don’t quite understand this spirit. Maybe this book talks about knights a lot but not enough. If you are not interested in it, you can skip it. But let’s try our best to understand it from an objective perspective first and look at each era. A proud honor.
Knightly honor depends on oneself, not the opinions of others. Even if you are being respected, as long as you are insulted by someone, you still have to take back your honor, ask him to apologize or even fight.
The honor of a knight is related to the suffering he endures. It is mentioned above that the slandered need to be taken back, but as long as the knight is completely pure and clear, there is no need to care about the stupid people who are accustomed to slandering others. Throughout the ages, successful people are the most likely to arouse anger. As long as you can prove your innocence and someone still recognizes your honor. But if someone lies, then all they have to do is resort to force.
The honor of a knight does not lie in vain arguments, just a fight. The honor of a knight does not lie in the heart of the knight, nor does he himself. The key lies in what others say and do. Therefore, when honor is attacked, there is no need to argue, just fight.
A knight will never accept an insult, but loves to give it to others. Under this principle, rudeness is always a better way of argument than any argument. No matter how talented the other party is, as long as we attack him and insult him, we can put ourselves ahead of others.
Knightly honor is the highest court - the moral high ground. The principle of power is to use brute force to solve problems. This is when reason and morality are not enough to solve the problem, using tangible force to solve the problem.
Knightly honors should be flexible. The honor of a knight can be broken, and the responsibilities can be changed, but the honor alone cannot be destroyed.
After all, knightly honor can only be used to enhance people's subjective feelings. This is a barbaric and indifferent rule of honor that has no basis in humanity and exists among the upper classes, officials, soldiers, and some people of Europe that relied on it in the Middle Ages.
When the knights were fighting you to the death, the Asians, Greeks, and Romans had no idea about this. They didn’t know that there was a group of people who felt that other people’s words were so powerful that they needed to use force to defend them. Cruel prejudice, sacrificed to so-called freedom and nobility.
Schopenhauer believed that knightly honor did not have an essential and natural origin in human nature. Today, we no longer have that kind of paranoid environment, and we would naturally think that this kind of paranoia is incredible. But the honor between countries exists in many countries, and there is almost no arbitration court between countries. It is more about force, a collection of ordinary people and knights' honor.
This is something that millions of people pursue. It can also be said to be close to Maslow's value realization, but it goes beyond it. It is a good reputation that is passed down to the world.
What is the difference between fame and honor? Fame is immortal and needs to be given by others; honor is not eternal and everyone has the right to give it to himself according to his performance under similar circumstances.
Reputation can be achieved through meritorious deeds and words. Meritorious service depends on luck, but the achievements made are like a fleeting cloud, becoming a single story that great men love to tell. Making a statement needs to rely on the character and knowledge of the person who makes the statement. Valuable works will last forever and will continue to be interpreted and endowed with epoch-making significance over time.
However, it is often difficult for those who make a speech to see their fame in their lifetime, because their works are too avant-garde and professional, so that no one in the contemporary generation wants to criticize them, and no one can criticize them.
Why no one wants to comment? Because in the end, what most people can really understand and appreciate are those who have similar tastes. Boring people like boring things, that's all.
(Ah, but, after seeing these paragraphs, Schopenhauer really quoted enough famous quotes to scold "me", I am a stupid donkey and a stupid person)
In addition to lack of intelligence, it is also because of his lack of intelligence. The despicability of human nature has caused the glorious works to be hidden by the times. People don't want to be greatly surpassed by others. To praise others is to belittle yourself. Therefore, in order to express your own importance, you have to ignore your existence.
Those ambitious people are also constantly chasing fame. What happened to them? Asking for it but not getting it. Those who are driven by ambition and disregard personal interests and happiness will probably leave no immortal legacy.
But is reputation really so important? No. After all, reputation is only the result of comparison with others. It is "second-rate", indirect, and a reflection. In the age of geniuses, how many people's brilliance has been crushed by the supreme man, even if his thoughts are comparable to those of other eras. Therefore, if you put your own values ??and standards under other people's ideas, you will undoubtedly put a layer of shackles and cages on yourself.
Others are the worst place for our happiness to rest. Your own good nature is very important to you. The happiest thing for a genius is not to accept the worship of the public, but to create a work and create an idea that is great enough to last forever. This is happiness that others can never take away from you. It comes from your own happiness. What's more, for many people who have monuments erected during their lifetimes, future generations often do not believe such comments. Most people gain fame after death, and their posthumous reputation is a reward for their purity and greatness of mind. There are also a small number of portraits that are very lucky and can become famous in their later years. Schopenhauer believes that this arrangement is very balanced, and the works that have been devoted to the young can be fed back into the dying years.
Liyan has two directions, one is to delve deeper into specialized fields, and the other is to delve into public fields. Schopenhauer believed that the more common the facts, the harder it was to construct new and true theorems. Because too many people have thought about these issues, it is too difficult to say what others have said, or they have been brainwashed by past truths and theorems for too long. This is like the three major questions of philosophy: Who am I? Where does it come from? Where to go? The concepts we can answer can almost be attributed to many systematic philosophies. (Another example is Newton's three laws. Who can imagine whether they will be revised in the future, and what new laws they will be? Sorry, I'm too superficial, a science student with weak physics knowledge)
And in the professional field Field, based on the fact that not everyone can understand it, after people pay labor to obtain it, it is easy to obtain some new theorems that are also true. The value of this discovery is based on the labor of knowledge acquisition. Schopenhauer believed that the path to expertise relies on the accumulation of knowledge and labor to make up for the required talents, such as physics, chemistry, plants, languages, etc. (I feel sorry for everyone for a second. I don’t want to learn anymore. Let’s go scold these philosophers together. Hahahaha)
Reading this chapter, I feel like a child being pointed and lectured by the teacher. , of course, this is a problem of bias in our domestic education methods. I believe the author wrote it with the idea of ??equal communication. However, this chapter is closely related to Schopenhauer's life destiny and philosophical career. In his early days, he was ignored, puzzled, and disdainful by the academic community. He was even "invisible" under the aura of Hegel. Schopenhauer, who had been lonely for decades, was It was after his death that things suddenly became lively. Therefore, such a philosopher, who has not been recognized for a long time, sees the relationship between status and people, and his views and ideas penetrate the essence.
Follow-up: "The Wisdom of Life" Schopenhauer? Life | Personality | Possession | Status | Pain | Human Nature