What is enlightenment? Seek answers

The goal of education is a "man of culture". So what is culture? Culture, its etymology is Latin culture, which means farming and cultivation, which can also be seen from the English word agriculture. Culture thus means the care and cultivation of soil, and the improvement of soil quality according to its nature. Accordingly, education is the cultivation of the soul and the improvement of the quality of the soul according to its inherent nature.

But this is just a concept of culture and enlightenment derived from Latin. In German, education is Bildung, while bild is configuration and image. Therefore, enlightenment here means construction, that is, giving something that has not yet been shaped a form or an appearance (eidos) and making it appear in this appearance. Here, the form comes from the outside first, just as we have intuitively seen the image of the picture before drawing, and the thing endowed with the form is nothing like a blank sheet of paper (not absolutely nothing, but amorphous). Obviously, this concept of enlightenment is a kind of production skill, and the original meaning of teche in Greek is "to make ...".

in Chinese, another word for enlightenment is edification. The word "Tao Ye" comes from the ceramic smelting process, that is, putting the clay embryo shaped according to a certain prior pattern into the fire of a furnace and making it set in the fire. In the process of smelting pottery, the clay embryo is shapeless soil before it is molded, 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 appropriate products according to its soil quality.

The above three etymological concepts of enlightenment constitute three metaphors. It is not difficult to see that the figurative metaphor in German is similar to the edifying metaphor in Chinese, in which the figurative metaphor or edifying metaphor belongs to the field of skills, that is, the field of hand shaping, and its product is works; Latin, on the other hand, belongs to the field of labor, which is the work of the whole body, not just the hands. In labor, the improvement of soil quality is carried out according to the inherent law of soil itself, and its law belongs to the law of the earth (as Schmidt said, "law lies in the earth itself as a reward for the work of the earth; Law is embodied through the earth itself as a fixed boundary; At the same time, law also carries itself as a sign of obvious order. Law is rooted in the earth and connected with it. " )； In the production, the rule or pattern is given to the amorphous material from the outside first. If education always educates human nature or human nature, then in the metaphor of farming, education follows the laws of nature itself, while in the construction, nature is regarded as uncontrollable disorder and should be overcome. The former is to conform to nature and make nature achieve its own completion, while the latter is to transform the contingency of nature. However, the metaphor of edifying is actually somewhere in between, because it presupposes the importance of the quality of soil itself (human nature), which will determine what kind of pottery it can make.

The above distinction results from different understanding of "nature". The word natura comes from the Roman translation of the Greek word physis. natura comes from nasci, which means birth and origin. Nature is: let ... originate from itself. However, as a matter of fact, there is no equivalent of the Latin word natura in Greek, so there is no concept of the law of the earth or the natural law in the Roman sense. In Greek, the experience of things as a whole is shown by the word physique, which means growth and emergence, with its own dominant power and beauty. However, the original meaning of the word has been partially obscured by Plato, the founder of western education, because Plato experienced the phenomenon as something that emerged from eidos, which is an ideal, that is, the appearance that emerged in it and was shaped. Because of the emphasis on appearance, the meaning of physis' emergent activities has been forgotten and obscured.

However, although Plato didn't 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 scale like soil. Education thus means retrospection or recollection of this internal scale. However, this internal scale is not human nature or qualification, but the divinity of human body, that is, it belongs not to the earth, but to the sky and gods. Therefore, arousing the soul's memory of the world of ideas is different from the cultivation of soil, and it must carry out a transformation of 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 the simple natural vision. In a sense, we can say that Plato's enlightenment is a transformation of the earth from the sky.

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 concept of education is actually equivalent to the meaning of the word "edifying" in Chinese. On the one hand, it emphasizes the importance of people's natural qualifications (the selection of soil), on the other hand, it also emphasizes the dominant role of external models (the world of ideas), the former belongs to the earth, while 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, and to illustrate all aspects of enlightenment: the soil quality of soil is human nature, the producer is a teacher, the model is an idea, the fire of smelting pottery is a classic work, and the melting pot is a learning garden. Therefore, education consists of teachers guiding students to read and discuss classic works that conform to a certain idea. These classic works, classic works, are masterpieces of first-rate figures, and they concentrate 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 has inherited the view of humanitas or humanism since the Renaissance and claimed to be "humanistic". The Renaissance was essentially the revival of Roman culture and education, which came from the enlightenment of late Greece. In the era of Roman Republic, human or humane people were opposed to barbarians, and "humane people" were Romans; The Romans improved the virtue of Rome by absorbing the late Greek enlightenment, which was translated as "humanitas" by the Romans. Therefore, humanism is essentially a special Roman phenomenon, which originated from the encounter between the Romans and the late Greek enlightenment. Therefore, any kind of humanism distinguishes human beings from barbarians in advance through the difference of education, which is equivalent to the "differentiation between China and the West". The problem is that the enlightenment of the late Greeks is not really Greek enlightenment, and in modern thought, late Greece is always regarded by people in the Roman sense. In late Greece, due to the decline of the city-state, cynicism and Stoicism occupied the forefront of philosophical education, and "man" was no longer defined from the public life in the city-state, but from the contemplation and abstinence life that evaded the city-state. In this transformation, the "logos" in Aristotle's "Man is an animal with logos" is no longer regarded as the speech in public life, and it is regarded as the so-called universal reason or natural law. Thus, the Romans misinterpreted this proposition, that is, man is an "animal rationale" and a rational animal. This is also the beginning of humanitarianism, which stipulates 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".

And citizens in the Greek sense are people who are not subject to necessities and devote their leisure time to the public life of the city-state. It is slaves who live only to make a living, and they are talking tools, which is the opposite of citizens. As a product of education, citizens appear to gain their own position in polis. Therefore, education is to make people appear in polis as they are and fit. In this way, the result of enlightenment is to produce excellent speech and action. In addition to the actions and words of the polis, there are slaves and gods, so Aristotle said that "it is either a god or a beast that leaves the life of the polis."

and "cultural man" does not include the meaning of devoting himself to the public life of the city-state. On the contrary, culture has increasingly become a private hobby and a circulating thing in the circle in modern times (not counting business-mass culture). This can be seen from the different understanding of "poetry" between ancient times and modern times: among the Greeks, poems that can enter the field of "poetics" are epics, tragedies and comedies, and they can be called poems because of their public nature, that is, they can be recited and performed in the square, which can bring people together and share them with each other, so poetry bears politics and public interests. Poetry is therefore a skill, a form that makes human destiny appear and be seen publicly. In modern times, poetry is regarded as the product of individual emotions 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 it cannot 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 kind of pleasant enjoyment and a kind of treatment for spiritual trauma, but it has nothing to do with fate and public life.

From here, we can see the difference in the purpose of the word enlightenment itself, that is, the difference between "being a human being" 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 "human beings" 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 between barbarians and barbarians", then China's traditional ethical code is also a very strict education system, which distinguishes the Huaxia nationality from barbarians. The founders of this enlightenment are Duke Zhou and Confucius. The former founded the rites of Zhou based on the induction of the destiny of Huaxia nationality, while the latter spared no effort to revive the rites of Zhou in a poor and turbulent world. The significance of Confucius is that he preserved the fire of Chinese culture-by compiling classics and creating an effective relationship between teachers and students. Confucius knew that the real basis of etiquette lies in the personality created by these classics. Even if all hopes are dashed, enlightenment is still the last hope. The Analects of Confucius recorded Confucius' disappointment with the world, but the Analects, as the carrier of the concept of education, itself constitutes a trustworthy hope. Through the efforts of Confucian scholars in later generations, the ethical code has finally become the state religion of the Chinese empire, which is closely combined with political power and can be implemented by this power.

But are we the natural successors of this enlightenment? No! This tradition of education has come 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 from the traditional forms of education in 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 will eventually be barbarization, uneducation 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 of this opposition is.

After the Cultural Revolution, intellectuals in China began a difficult reconstruction of education, but on the one hand, this reconstruction was vain because of impatience, on the other hand, it could not be carried out normally because of the dominant presence of power. More importantly, the direction of this kind of education to rebuild itself is unclear: is it in accordance with the traditional education model of 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 enslavement of people by national ideology and market image. More seriously, even if this enlightenment is established to some extent, it will find itself facing a large group of "fools" created by ideology and imagery.

the quality of soil is the innate qualification and nature of human beings. Plato had the distinction between gold, silver, copper and iron, and China also had the theory of "three qualities of sex". Education is treated differently according to different materials, because people's natural differences cannot be smoothed out. Even slaves and barbarians can accept certain enlightenment, as Plato's famous experiment confirmed. What really can't be educated is a fool. A fool is not a person with low intelligence or an idiot, because even a person with low intelligence can learn if he is willing to work hard. Some are highly intelligent, but very stupid; Others have average intelligence, but they are by no means stupid. Fools, as Bonhoeffer said, are those who are completely occupied by a predetermined concept and way of thinking, and their humanity has been used and abused by others. Stupidity is a moral defect, not an intellectual defect at all, because he allows himself to be stupid or allows 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 to what he doesn't know and unknown. We can't have a heart-to-heart conversation with a fool, even though the fool seems to have a lot of personality because of his stubbornness, because what we meet in the conversation is not him at all, but the set of slogans, slogans and images that occupy him. Fools are real rotten wood, and they can't be carved into any spiritual 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 think about whether you have submitted yourself 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 be educated. However, although power has no ability to make people stupid all their lives, it has the ability to make us not stupid and still have no chance to be educated. Because it controls most of the resources in society, the schools it runs are spreading stupidity rather than knowledge, and a student who is not stupid is almost destined to become a philistine and an opportunity owner.