“Life is to be lived through clearly, not thought through clearly!” — I forget whom I heard this from, but it feels immensely true. Questions such as the meaning of life and the purpose of life: when our lives reach their end, life itself will give us the answers. To puzzle over them while still young only brings suffering upon ourselves, and yields no answer worth the name. Even if we do arrive at some answer, that answer often dissolves with the passage of time; when we look back in old age, it may no longer be quite the same thing at all.
But the question of life’s meaning is also one we cannot help thinking about! Because if we keep avoiding this question, always muddling along day by day, then our lives will become bewildered and adrift. When we are busy from morning till night, whether we have a clear worldview or life outlook matters very little; but when all is hushed and the mind is luminous, when we reflect deeply on ourselves, if we do not know what we are, do not know where we are headed, then we will fall into a profound despair and fear. We will feel utterly helpless — nothing whatsoever can help us face that death which will inevitably come at the end. At such times, we either hastily avoid this most fundamental reflection on ourselves, quickly find something else to do, and use busyness to escape the pain of reason; or else we continue to sink into it, until, after thinking the matter through, we can extricate ourselves.
For most people, this question is often simply evaded, or else one turns to some existing religion for comfort. But a philosopher has nowhere to evade to: any great philosopher must try to give an answer, otherwise his entire system of values and outlook on life will rest only in midair, with nowhere to land. Kant wanted to preserve immortality and God precisely because a rational morality must depend on “immortality”; without immortality, without eternity, the goal of the highest good has nowhere to stand. You may accuse immortality and God of being idealist notions, but even a thoroughgoing materialism, if it lacks “immortality,” still has no foundation for its outlook on life and values. Take, for example, what Comrade Lei Feng said: “Human life is limited, but serving the people is unlimited.” But if we tell him that serving the people is not unlimited either, that all humanity will one day perish, and that the entire universe will also move toward its end, then how is he to face it? I myself have once sunk into such pain, and in the end I came out of it; I consider that I have now, at least temporarily, thought it through! I found a way out toward eternity and immortality. I thought of a thought experiment that utterly negates eternity, but at the same time I also thought of a possible argument for the soul’s immortality. The regrettable thing is that I cannot tell this here, because this set of arguments of mine has not yet been written out, and even if it were written out, it would require a rather enormous length to discuss. Moreover, I have not yet managed to bring this possibility of necessary immortality into good unity with the value outlook I have in mind. So for a fairly long period of time I will not be saying it.
The question of immortality and God is also Kant’s third question — “What may we hope for?” What I believe is — we may hope for immortality. If believing in immortality can allow our reason to step aside from suffering, and does not plunge us into contradiction, then by all means believe it! If you cannot persuade yourself through speculative reason to believe in immortality and eternity, then please say to your own reason: “Stop here.”
So below, what I am discussing is how, on the premise that we are mortal (or cannot determine that we are necessarily immortal), we should regard our lives.
Paulsen says: “The aim desired by every animal is the normal functioning of the various life energies that constitute its nature. Every animal wishes to live in a manner consonant with its own activity; this innate quality shows itself in impulse and governs the animal’s actions. This formula applies equally to man: he wishes to live a human life, one that contains everything human, that is to say, a spiritual, historical life, in which all the spiritual powers and characters belonging to humanity have room for activity. He wishes for recreation and study, work and gain, possession and enjoyment, making and creation; he wishes for love and reverence, obedience and rule, struggle and victory, poetry and fantasy, thought and research. He wishes, as far as possible, to do all these things; he wishes to experience the relations of child to parent, student to teacher, apprentice to master; his will finds its greatest satisfaction in such a life. He wishes to live among brothers as a brother; among friends as a friend; among companions as a companion; among citizens as a citizen; and at the same time to deal with his enemies as an enemy. Finally, he wishes to experience everything that a lover, husband, and father ought to experience; he wishes to raise and educate the descendants who are to preserve and continue his life. After he has lived such a life, fulfilling his mission like an upright man, he has realized his wish; his life is complete; he awaits the end with satisfaction, and his final hope is to die peacefully.”[①]
This is a desirable pursuit in life; that is to say, life’s highest goal is the pursuit of “self-realization.” However, as for what counts as “self-realization,” the key lies in what exactly the “nature of man” is that we are to realize. It is not the case that because I am naturally capable of killing, I may simply kill someone and count that as realizing this talent. For I am by nature more endowed with a tendency to pursue the good and feel shame before evil. Only human beings are moral; to pursue the good is the nature of man as man! If what we realize is merely animal nature — for instance, because I have reproductive capacity, I therefore produce offspring — that is certainly also part of self-realization, but the self-realization proper to being human needs to manifest the noble qualities of humanity. In my understanding, “self-realization” means precisely “having a clear conscience”: I have done what I ought to have done, I have enjoyed many of the beauties of this world, I have played my own role in this human society, I have followed the moral imperative arising from human nature itself. These are enough.
In the end, let us not forget that phrase: “Life is to be lived through clearly, not thought through clearly!” If you cannot work it out, then do not suffer. Face your own heart sincerely, and face all the beauties of life cheerfully. As for the ultimate meaning, life will sooner or later tell us the answer!
December 29, 2005
[①] Quoted in [U.S.] Frank Thilly, Introduction to Ethics, trans. He Yi, Guangxi Normal University Press, 2002, p. 166
Supplementary Notes on “My Outlook on Life”
Xingding posted on 2005-12-29 22:16:39
I wrote this piece for the discussion class on Marxist philosophy, but LY didn’t call on me to speak… It feels as if everyone in this class simply never got to the point. The few classmates who went up to talk — can that even be called a discussion of life outlook? Either they chatted casually about life impressions, or said they had no outlook on life, or talked about some principles for conduct… In fact, a life outlook is not a “rule.” It is not as though, if I need a life outlook, it is to make my life follow that principle — that’s not how it is. Perhaps a value outlook can, to some extent, serve as a kind of norm; for example, I always pursue things I think are valuable. But even a value outlook is more often just an evaluative stance: I know what it is good to do and what it is not good to do, yet whether I actually do these things is a different matter. A life outlook is even less some kind of regulation of my behavior.
Whether it is a worldview, a life outlook, or a value outlook, it is better described as an “attitude” than as a “rule.” A life outlook is the attitude with which we face life: for example, what am I, what is a human being, what is life, where am I, where am I headed, and so on — these are the questions that a life outlook must confront.
Those classmates who discussed it, including LY who gave the lecture, were all talking about life outlook in a way that was “scratching the itch through a boot” — they did not hit the crux of the matter. Because even LY — though what he said was still quite good — avoided the most fundamental question of life outlook: death. When the questioning of life goes down to its deepest point, the ultimate question standing before us is death! The expansion of self-awareness that LY mentioned is not bad; that is the life outlook I proposed in last year’s Ecological Philosophy, namely expanding the “self” to family, group, society, nation, humanity, and even to nature as a whole, to the unity of Heaven and humanity. When I contemplate my own life through such a holistic “greater self,” the meaning of life is magnified — this is a rather excellent state of being. But perhaps LY also did not have enough courage to bring the word “death” into the open in his topic. Yet the question of death still cannot be bypassed, and we cannot help asking further: what if humanity itself is also destined to perish? What if the universe too is bound to perish? At this point speculative reason cannot, no matter what, get around it (even my supposedly secret philosophy of immortality cannot break through this point; at most it can provide a somewhat more persuasive hope, but let us not discuss that for now). If we want to guarantee the “rationality” of our life purpose and moral principles, then at the root the problem of death must be built on non-rational faith — just as Kant pointed out: believe in immortality and God! If we insist on using speculative reason to persuade ourselves to negate “immortality,” then instead the purpose of our lives will fall into irrationality! For however you may say your purpose is for future generations, for the people, or for heaven, earth, and the universe, speculative reason will tell you that all of those are mortal! How can you then continue to face it rationally? Of course, Kant believed that the moral law comes before religion; even if you do not believe in immortality, you still need to obey the moral law within your own heart. But if that is the case, then you will not be able to ground your moral principles in a wholly rational system — because when your argument keeps questioning layer by layer, in the end it will always fall into nothingness!
Therefore there are only two outlooks on life that can truly withstand scrutiny. The first is simply that I do not pursue eternity at all: not for descendants, not for the universe — I just “live in the present,” live each day well, enjoy each day! Of course, this outlook on life does not mean I can muddle through and ignore all principles; one must always listen to the inner moral law, because only a life that honestly listens to the inner moral law deserves to be called a real life and can withstand scrutiny; otherwise it is hypocritical and self-deceiving. The second is a life outlook founded on faith. This attitude roots itself in a non-rational belief, yet it can ensure that an entire set of life goals and standards of conduct built on such faith is rational and can withstand scrutiny; and this chain of reasoning, when pursued step by step, does not finally collapse into nothingness. Faith cannot be proven by reason, but a cleverly designed faith can also never be refuted by reason.
The two attitudes above refer to life outlooks that can withstand rational scrutiny, but a life outlook does not necessarily have to withstand rational scrutiny. It can also be something grasped intuitively: for example, I pursue a transcendent state, pursue a life of looking back on the past with a clear conscience, but do not press for its ultimate purpose — that is, I “suspend” the ultimate question, the questions of death and ultimate purpose, and wait for life itself to tell me the answer in the end. This is also a very good attitude.
In short, I very much agree with all the attitudes above. In fact, my own attitude is often in a hybrid state among these attitudes. From a pragmatic perspective, these attitudes are consistent, because all of them lead to living a morally and ethically sound life, and a happy one at that. As for which attitude to choose specifically, it depends on which one more easily allows you to believe, or at least to pretend to believe, so as to temporarily escape the pain brought by speculative reason. Personally, I am more willing to believe in a life outlook grounded in faith, but at present I do not have any suitable ready-made religious doctrine that I can wholeheartedly and willingly convert to. So I am only just beginning to construct my own system of faith. The building of such a system has no practical use whatsoever; it is purely for “amusement,” nothing more. But it really can effectively free oneself from the pain of reason directly confronting death — so why not?
If you are a thoroughgoing materialist, you will certainly find the above discussion offensive or dismiss it with contempt. If you can face your own death without any fear at all, I will sincerely express my admiration to you. But if you cannot be utterly unrestrained in this way, then please do not come criticize me, and even less should you use science and reason to attack those who have sincere religious faith. If you succeed in persuading them to negate their faith and fall into confusion, what good will that do for them or for you? As long as our actions are aligned — namely, promoting a moral, ethical, and at the same time happy life — then everyone should join hands and confront the unknown future together!
December 29, 2005
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Shangling 2009-12-21 13:14:21 [Reply]
Very professional, though there are many places I don’t understand.
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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