But this is just a concept derived from Latin culture and enlightenment. In Germany, education is bildung, while Bild is configuration and image. Therefore, enlightenment here means construction, that is, giving something that has not yet formed a form or an representation (eidos), and making it appear in this representation. Here, the form first comes from the outside, just as we have intuitively seen the image of the picture before painting. What is endowed with form is not like a blank sheet of paper at all (not absolutely absent, but amorphous). Obviously, this concept of enlightenment is a production skill, and the original meaning of teche in Greek is "manufacturing …".
In Chinese, another word for enlightenment is enlightenment. The word "Ye Tao" comes from the process of ceramic smelting, that is, the clay embryo shaped according to a certain pattern in advance is put into a furnace and solidified in the fire. In the process of pottery smelting, the mud embryo is unformed soil before molding, and its shape comes entirely from the mold. However, even here, the requirements for soil quality are quite strict. Not all soil is suitable for making pottery. On the contrary, the soil itself must be strictly selected, shaped and made into suitable products according to its soil quality.
The three etymological concepts mentioned above constitute three metaphors. It is not difficult to see that the metaphor in German is similar to that in Chinese, in which metaphor or edifying metaphor belongs to the field of skills, that is, hand shaping, and its products are works; Latin, on the other hand, belongs to the field of labor, which is the labor of the whole body, not just the labor of the hands. In labor, the improvement of soil quality is carried out according to the inherent law of soil itself, which belongs to the law of the earth (as Schmidt said, "the law lies in the earth itself as a reward for the earth's labor; Law is embodied by the earth itself as a fixed boundary; At the same time, the law itself is also a sign of obvious order. The law is rooted in the earth and connected with it. " ); In the process of making, the amorphous material is endowed with rules or patterns from the outside. If education always educates human nature or humanity, then in the metaphor of farming, education follows the laws of nature itself, while in construction, nature is regarded as uncontrollable disorder and should be overcome. The former is to conform to nature and make nature realize its own completion, while the latter is the chance to transform nature. But the metaphor of Tao Ye is actually somewhere between the two, because it presupposes the importance of the quality (humanity) of the soil itself, which will determine what kind of pottery it can make.
The above differences stem from different understandings of "nature". The word natura comes from the Roman translation of Greek physis. Natura comes from nasci, which means birth and origin. Nature is: let ... come from itself. However, in fact, there is no word corresponding to Latin natura in Greek, so there is no concept of earth law or natural law in the Roman sense. In Greek, the experience of things as a whole is expressed by the word physique, which means growth and emergence, with its own dominant power and aesthetic feeling. But the original meaning of this word has been partially blurred by Plato, the founder of western education, because Plato experienced the phenomenon as something emerging from eidos, which is an ideal, that is, what emerged in it and was shaped. Due to the emphasis on appearance, the significance of physical emergent activities has been forgotten and blurred.
However, although Plato did not have the natural law in the Roman sense, he got something similar to it on the surface, that is, the existence of the world of ideas. The human soul carries an innate world of ideas, so it also has some internal dimensions like soil. Therefore, education means reviewing or recalling this internal scale. However, this internal scale is not human nature or qualification, but the divinity of the human body, that is, it belongs not to the earth, but to the sky and the gods. Therefore, arousing the soul's memory of the conceptual world is different from the cultivation of soil, and it is necessary to transform the eyes, which is incompatible with the earth and the world. As Husserl said in many introductions about phenomenology in later generations, the intuition of phenomena must first suspend simple natural vision. In a sense, we can say that Plato's enlightenment is a transformation from heaven to earth.
Therefore, in the Republic, Plato still regards enlightenment as a kind of production based on a certain purpose, that is, shaping people. In this way, Plato's view of education is actually equivalent to the meaning of the word "edify" in Chinese. On the one hand, it emphasizes the importance of human natural qualification (the choice of soil), on the other hand, it also emphasizes the leading role of external mode (the world of ideas), the former belongs to the earth, and the latter belongs to the sky and the gods. The equivalence of this meaning enables us to implement the metaphor of "edifying" in this paper's understanding of enlightenment to explain all aspects of enlightenment: the soil quality is human nature, the producer is a teacher, the model is an idea, the fire of refining pottery is a classic, and the furnace is a learning garden. Therefore, education means that teachers guide students to read and discuss classic works that conform to a certain idea. These classic works, classic works, are the masterpieces of first-class figures, which condense the flame of human wisdom.
These two words belong to Greek origin and Latin origin respectively, and also imply the difference between Greek education and modern education, because modern education inherits the viewpoint of humanitas or humanism since the Renaissance and calls itself "humanism". Renaissance is essentially the revival of Roman culture and education, which originated from the late Enlightenment in Greece. In the era of Roman Republic, human or humane people were opposite to barbarians, and "humane people" were Romans; The Romans improved the virtue of Rome by absorbing the late Greek Enlightenment (translated as "humanitas" by the Romans). Therefore, humanism is essentially a special Roman phenomenon, which originated from the encounter between the Romans and Greece in the later period of the Enlightenment. Therefore, any kind of humanitarianism distinguishes human beings from barbarians in advance through educational differences, which is equivalent to "the distinction between China and the West". The problem is that the late Greek enlightenment is not the real Greek enlightenment. In modern thought, late Greece is always regarded by people in the Roman sense. In the later period of Greece, due to the decline of the polis, cynicism and Stoicism occupied the forefront of philosophy education. "Man" was defined not from the public life of the polis, but from the meditation and abstinence life of the polis. In this transformation, the "logos" in Aristotle's Man is an animal with logos is no longer regarded as the speech in public life, but as the so-called universal reason or natural law. Therefore, the Romans misinterpreted this proposition, that is, man is an "animal principle" and a rational animal. This is also the beginning of humanitarianism, which defines the essence of all humanitarianism in later generations. Even the "irrational" humanitarianism is still within the boundaries delineated by this beginning. In this sense, "cultural man" is defined as "humane man".
Citizens in the Greek sense are people who are not dominated by necessities. They devote their leisure time to the public life of the polis. Those who live only to make a living are slaves, talking tools, and opposed to citizens. As a product of education, citizens seem to have gained their position in the city-state. Therefore, education is to make people present their original appearance and suitable appearance in the city-state. In this way, the result of enlightenment is to produce excellent words and actions. In addition to the actions and words of the polis, there are slaves and gods, so Aristotle said, "It is either God or beast who leaves the polis."
And "cultural man" does not contain the meaning of devoting to the public life of the city-state. On the contrary, in modern times, culture has increasingly become a private hobby and something circulating in the circle (not counting business-mass culture). This can be seen from the different understanding of "poetry" between ancient and modern times: among Greeks, poems that can enter the field of "poetics" are epic, tragedy and comedy. They can be called poems because they are public, that is, they can be recited and performed in the square, which can bring people together and share with each other, so poems carry political and public interests. Therefore, poetry is a skill, a form that makes human destiny appear and be seen by the public. In modern times, poetry is regarded as the product of individual feelings or the aggregation of individual experiences, so lyric poetry and intellectual poetry occupy the territory of poetics. Here, poetry is purely private, and its author and reader communicate one-to-one, but they can't be shared in essence, because modern aesthetics is based on the individuality of feeling (aesthetics is sensory science), and there will never be two identical individual feelings. Reading poetry becomes a private event, which may be a pleasant enjoyment and a treatment of mental trauma, but it has nothing to do with fate and public life.
From here, we can see the different purposes of the word enlightenment itself, that is, the difference between "being a man" and "being a citizen" This difference also exists in front of each of you. But the first question for you is: at this moment, what kind of people can we be in such a country that has not completely shaken off the shadow of tyranny? Is it possible for us to become "people" or real citizens? Or have we been and will continue to be slaves and barbarians for a long time?
If "culture" is used in the sense of "distinguishing foreigners from barbarians", then China's traditional ethics is also a very strict education system, which distinguishes the Chinese nation from barbarians. The founders of this enlightenment were Duke Zhou and Confucius. The former founded the rites of Zhou based on the induction of the fate of the Chinese nation, while the latter spared no effort to revive the rites of Zhou in a poor and turbulent world. The significance of Confucius lies in that he preserved the fire of China culture-by compiling classics, he created an effective relationship between teachers and students. Confucius knew that the real foundation of etiquette lies in the personality shaped by these classics. Even if all hopes are dashed, enlightenment is still the last hope. The Analects of Confucius records Confucius' disappointment with the world, but as the carrier of educational ideas, the Analects itself constitutes a trustworthy hope. After the efforts of later Confucian scholars, the ethical code finally became the state religion of the Chinese empire, which was closely combined with political power and could be implemented by this power.
But are we the natural successors of this enlightenment? Don't! This educational tradition came to an end under the impact of various cultural movements and revolutions in modern times. Of course, the most serious one was the Cultural Revolution, because it openly opposed all forms of education, whether from Western Europe or China. In a society that thinks that "the lowly are the cleverest", disbands universities and requires intellectuals to go to the countryside to reform, the result is ultimately barbarization, uneducated and hooliganism of the whole society. The opposition to enlightenment is the release of desire and evil in human nature, no matter what the name is.
After the Cultural Revolution, intellectuals in China began a difficult reconstruction of education, but on the one hand, this reconstruction was futile because of impatience, on the other hand, it could not be carried out normally because of the domination of power. More importantly, the direction of this kind of education self-reconstruction is not clear: is it according to the traditional education model in China or the European education model? If we follow the former, we must face the insurmountable problem of modernity; If we want to follow the latter, we find that the resources we can rely on are extremely scarce. Up to now, we don't have a slightly effective education system, let alone to fight against the slavery of people by national ideology and market image. What's more, even if this enlightenment is established to some extent, you will find yourself facing a large group of "fools" shaped by ideology and images.
The quality of soil is the innate qualification and nature of human beings. Plato has the distinction of gold, silver, copper and iron, and China also has the theory of "three products of sex". Education is treated differently according to different materials, because people's natural differences cannot be erased. Even slaves and barbarians can accept some enlightenment, which is confirmed by Plato's famous experiment. It is a fool who really can't stand education. A fool is neither a person with low intelligence nor an idiot, because even a person with low intelligence can learn it if he is willing to work hard. Some people are very clever, but very stupid; Others have average intelligence, but they are by no means stupid. Fools, as Bonhoeffer said, are people who are completely occupied by a predetermined concept and way of thinking, and their humanity is used and abused by others. Stupidity is a moral defect, not an intellectual defect at all, because he allows himself to be stupid and others to be stupid. A fool's mind is blocked by the prejudice imposed on him by power and custom, so that he can't learn and open his heart to what he doesn't know and unknown. We can't have a heart-to-heart conversation with a fool, although this fool appears to have a great personality because of his stubbornness, because it is not him at all that we meet in the conversation, but the set of slogans, slogans and images that occupy him. A fool is a real deadwood, and he can't carve any mental shape. For a fool, what is needed is not enlightenment, but spiritual redemption, that is, heaven or God can open his eyes one day. Therefore, before you accept enlightenment, you should first consider whether you have surrendered to stupidity.
Power always bases its rule on people's more or less stupidity, but people are unlikely to be fools all their lives. Getting rid of stupidity is the first step to education. However, although power does not have the ability to make people stupid all their lives, it does have the ability to make us not stupid, and there is still no opportunity for education. Because it controls most of the social resources, the schools it runs spread stupidity rather than knowledge, and a student who is not stupid is almost doomed to become a philistine and an opportunist, that is, a slave and a barbarian. For him, all knowledge is meaningful only when it can obtain material benefits for him, that is, when it can be used to make a living; Living for a living is just the standard definition of slavery. Similarly, all virtues and manners are superficial to him, and his inner desires and wildness still occupy his essence. He happened to be a savage at heart. At the same time, all things and ostentatious behaviors that are not aimed at making a living purely come from vanity, that is, imitation and jealousy of others' desires. In this sense, we are vain. Therefore, our society is a collection of fools (good or bad), slaves, barbarians and vain people. You may hate to say this, but I'm telling the truth. You've been denying yourself with all kinds of self-deception.
Are you willing to be a slave, a savage and a vain person all your life? I don't think anyone will. The problem is that you don't have the resources and opportunities for education. You must have wanted to be a real person or a real citizen, but you finally found that you didn't have the ability at all, so you gave up. Indeed, the distressing poverty in this country-spiritual poverty-makes it impossible for you to meet even better teachers to shape you according to your ideas. Everyone has a destiny, but you can't find the key to it, so no destiny constitutes your destiny. As communicators, teachers should first carry out spiritual education. Under the authoritarian system, such an opportunity is almost unique, because teachers under this system are not only propaganda tools of ideology, but also disseminators of technical knowledge. Similarly, before being educated, you have no ability to distinguish between classics and spirits, so you can easily become a prisoner of commercial culture and a consumer of violent, romantic narratives and images, because they cater to your physical desires, wild and narcissistic romantic imagination.
Therefore, we have no potential soil here, only some stupid deadwood and vanity bubbles; There is no teacher who is a Potter, only a public servant of the state system and a conveyor belt of technical knowledge; There is no idea, only ideology or ideology; There are no classics that preserve the spiritual flame, only the sewage of violence and romantic narrative on the commercial and cultural assembly line; There is no melting pot as a real university, only a vat that corrodes and pollutes everything-is education possible in such a country?
In our country where the educational tradition has been interrupted and not rebuilt, education can only be self-education, if you don't want to be a slave, a savage and a vain person all your life. Fortunately, the classic works that make self-education possible are still there-although they are not complete, they are enough for education. Although few people patronize, they are never stingy with those who are willing to listen carefully. As long as it is quiet, pious and careful, people can hear the great thoughts of the past talking in it, and see the secret of charcoal fire and the persistent red light. As long as we blow on them, they will burn again. Once the kindling they keep enters people's hearts, it will grow on its own like a plant and draw its own fuel from everything around it. Once this flame is turned on, it illuminates a person's spiritual vision, which will bring an experience to that person: everything has never been exquisite and clear, thus showing unparalleled beauty before his eyes.
Yes, a person who only knows that ideology is deceptive and knows common sense in the world is just a person who is not stupid. He may still be a slave, a savage and a vain man. Only those who are aware of their nobility, beauty and sacredness at the same time can be called educated people. Educated people are spiritual people, and the spiritual elements are intuition, leisure, concentration, imagination, judgment and determination.
Intuition is the ability to observe the appearance of things, which includes not only physical feelings such as vision, hearing and touch, but also the intuition of the mind about ideas or identities, that is, the sense of form. Because our eyes in daily life are always covered by ideas and prejudices, we can't really see things themselves, that is to say, there is no original experience (original intuition), only copying, copying and imitating ready-made experiences, just like we copy emotions from novels and movies. Therefore, the acquisition of intuition first depends on the shelving of one's own prejudice, which is idle power. In Wei Yi's words, the essence of intuition is to "temporarily stop thinking, let thoughts idle, let things penetrate, and put all kinds of existing knowledge and concepts that must be used on the edge of thoughts, but at a lower level, they are out of touch with thoughts. Thought should be like a person standing on a mountain. He looked ahead and saw the trees and plains under his feet, but he didn't really look at these things. Thought should be idle, waiting, not looking for anything, but ready to accept what will enter its naked truth. " But this kind of leisure itself must be focused at the same time, that is, its expectation must be a kind of gaze at the same time, which is concentration. Concentration is the premise of any study, but it is also one of the real goals of any study. The purpose of learning is not to let people learn ready-made knowledge, but to focus on it and make it sharp and concentrated. Things will only appear under the needle-like gaze, such as flowers blooming on embroidered cloth, and the essence of spirit lies in this gathering ability. Imagination is the intrinsic element of any intuition, because the intuition of ideas can only be carried out through the free change of imagination; At the same time, imagination is also the premise of any creation, and the spirit breaks through the encirclement of ready-made things. However, any imagination, if beneficial, must contain the details of things, which is brought about by a superb ability to distinguish. Judge to make this distinction. It is the ability to distinguish things or connections between things. It enables people to distinguish between true and false, beauty and ugliness, and good and evil. Judgment can be truly profound and subtle when it is concentrated. Together, the above abilities can make people carefully separate things from all kinds of illusions, hallucinations, ambiguities and ambiguities that cover them, and maintain their loyalty to the original experience. The end point of such a spirit is determination-determination is an effort to invest in a higher person. It is not the kind of interest balance and choice based on rational calculation, but an out-of-body experience based on a premonition of one's own destiny when one cannot choose. The decision proves that man is something beyond himself and establishes the relationship between man and the higher. In decision-making, the spirit is ultimately generated as fate.
Because spirit is always generated as a language, it is contained in the language itself. The highest forms of language are poetry and philosophy. Poets and philosophers are teachers of a nation. Therefore, the way to get the spirit is to listen to poetry and philosophy-poetry here refers to all creative works of art, not just poetry.
Reading poetry? You will say that you have read many poems since you were a child, and you can write. But what are you reading and writing? Indeed, this country is a country of poetry teaching in its ancient tradition, and poetry learning is regarded as an important part of education, which stipulates a person's life rhythm and breath. However, this tradition has now ended, because the world picture has undergone fundamental changes. The world we live in is dominated by logos from the West, and the language we use to speak and write is no longer ancient Chinese. In this way, reading ancient poems is still a part of education, but it can no longer effectively support a person, let alone give him a spiritual form. Now writing ancient poems is just an act of showing off one's ancient Chinese level, or a social entertainment activity, which has nothing to do with the writer's own survival. Trying to use a dead language (euphemistically called "poetry") to fight against technical rationality is completely impossible, just as ridiculous as letting a dead man compete with the living. Of course, we can summon the spirit of Chinese from ancient poetry, but this spirit must be attached to a brand-new language style-modern Chinese. Poetry in this era can only be China's modern poetry. It certainly needs to draw all possible nutrients from tradition, but it must be a brand-new creation.
But real poetry must be difficult. Its writing and reading are both a challenge or an offence to people. Because poetry in the modern sense is an experience, a delicate balance between mind and emotion, rather than an unrestrained emotional catharsis. Modern poetry puts an end to false beauty and empty clutter, and becomes a mature and delicate mind's accurate observation of the world and our own experience. I believe that by reading modern poetry, you will gain the exquisiteness of your own feelings and experiences, and a mind that keeps tension between richness and simplicity.
If the education of poetry makes you feel the delicacy and beauty of your own experience, then philosophy can awaken your inner depth and Excellence. But I can't say too much about philosophy here. I just want to say that if you are willing to read the works of the greatest minds such as Plato, Aristotle, Kant and Heidegger-even if there is only a thin copy of Phaedo, Nicodemus Kyle Ethics, Principles of Moral Metaphysics or poems, words and thoughts, you will benefit for life. As Strauss said, "Only when we often understand something meaningful can we exert our understanding." This understanding will not only improve your judgment and spiritual taste, but also enable you to gain the decision-making ability at the turning point in your life-we know that not all intersections can be compared by rational calculation, but at this moment when it is difficult to choose and choose, the judgment from your understanding of your mind and talents will give you a spiritual intuition and hunch, and the decision made from it will open and stipulate your life's destiny.
Education will enable you to gain freedom and Excellence. Although these two words represent the highest values of modern and ancient times respectively, there are also some contradictions and conflicts between them. The law you study can only be a skill to exercise freedom if it is combined with your own consciousness. Otherwise, it is just an iron cage of procedures, or worse, it is a cover for you to corrupt yourself and society. Finally, I want to quote what Strauss said when talking about free education:
"Liberal education, as a constant exchange with the greatest ideas, is the highest form of meek experiment, not just humility. At the same time, this is a brave adventure: it requires us to completely break through the flashy world of the wise, which is exactly the same as the world of their enemies, and break through its noise, impetuousness, rashness and cheapness. It requires us to be brave, which means that we are determined to treat all accepted opinions as pure opinions or ordinary opinions as extreme opinions, which are at least as likely to make mistakes as the least familiar and unpopular opinions. Liberal education is liberated from vulgarity. The Greeks have a wonderful word to describe vulgarity; They call it apeirokalia, describing its lack of experience of beautiful things. And free education will give us this experience, in the United States. "