The first stage. In ancient Greece and Rome, death was a surprise.
The ancestors of the west faced everything in this world with amazing eyes. How did this colorful world come into being? Why is this formed? What is death and why do people die? In this context, it is more likely to be just a surprise.
The second stage is the stage of longing for death.
A manifestation of the medieval philosophy of death, why did the Middle Ages have a desire for death?
This is related to the background of the development of medieval philosophy. At this time, we know that philosophy has become the handmaid of theology, that is to say, philosophy completely serves theology.
Why?
In this context, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas are both philosophers born under the religious background. They believe that death is not a destination for human beings, but a way for human beings to go to heaven, so they emphasize that death is a better and more eternal state.
If that's true, I hope I can go to heaven early. So we say that there is a desire to die at this stage, which is a very powerful ideology.
In the third stage, contempt for death, even no longer thinking about death, is more of an escape.
People woke up from the fog of religion and began to have some rational thinking, no longer thinking about death.
Therefore, we have entered a modern western philosophy's indifference to death, a desire to face death directly, and an awakening to people during the Renaissance in the Middle Ages, so we will not talk about death.
The fourth stage is to think calmly and rationally and face it bravely.
Since the modern western philosophy of death began, people began to think very calmly and rationally. What is death? What does death mean?
Therefore, this paper also discusses the view of life and death in western philosophy from these four angles along the development vein of western philosophy.
In ancient Greece and Rome, generally speaking, what was the understanding of death at this time?
Look at it with a natural eye. That is to say, from the natural point of view, from the nature of death, people will also consider such questions at this time, such as whether people have souls, whether the souls are destroyed after death, whether there is an afterlife, and the finiteness and infinity of life.
Of course, thinking about these ultimate problems from a natural perspective is almost the most natural way of thinking of primitive people.
The first is Heraclitus. This philosopher was a very important philosopher in ancient Greece, and Lenin spoke highly of him. Because he is the originator of materialism, he first put forward the idea of dialectics of nature. Heraclitus is the founder of ancient dialectics.
Heraclitus' view of life and death is solved by material life and death. He abandoned using unnatural and supernatural reasons to explain human death, and insisted on explaining death from human material attributes. He thinks that death is not mysterious. Looking at nature from the perspective of nature is actually similar to Laozi and Zhuangzi's thoughts, but his attitude towards life and death is dialectical.
Heraclitus understands life and death from the perspective of natural change. It has a cycle theory. He thinks that life and death are a natural cycle. This view is actually a very simple and scientific view, and it is also held by most materialists.
Later, Socrates appeared. He is the first person in the west to evaluate the value of life from the relationship between individuals and society.
Socrates' views are similar to those of Confucius and Confucianism in China. Socrates linked the question of life and death with truth, goodness and beauty.
Socrates is the greatest and noblest wise man in the west. He used his life to light a bright road full of reason, truth and even the whole world.
This is the first stage of understanding death from a natural perspective. I mainly talked about two people, Heraclitus and Socrates.
At this stage of the Middle Ages, religious theology was dominant, because the irradiation of divine light and the influence of religion were probably strong desires for survival and death for ordinary people.
This representative figure is Augustine of ancient Rome. This man indulged in debauchery when he was young, but suddenly woke up in his thirties, repented of what he had done, wrote the world famous book Confessions, and converted to Christianity.
The view of life and death in the Middle Ages is a longing for death, which is contrary to common sense in human nature. However, in the whole medieval environment, when Christian theology was the mainstream thought, then death was used as a springboard to enter the kingdom of heaven. The effective transformation between life and death is achieved through death.
In modern western philosophy, the question of life and death has taken a turning point. Despise death, even stop thinking about death.
The first question is about the immortality of the soul. Spinoza, Kant and Hegel's view of life and death is that the soul is immortal.
The immortality of the soul cannot be proved by logic. Did the first man have a soul? Second, even if there is a soul, why doesn't it die?
Kant has discussed it in three major criticisms: Critique of Pure Reason, Critique of Practical Reason and Critique of Judgment, so he denied the existence of God in Critique of Pure Reason, that is to say, from a logical point of view, there is no God.
However, he found that people still need to have a god. Therefore, Kant divides people's cognitive ability into three kinds, namely, sensibility, intellectuality and rationality.
We didn't get an understanding of the soul and God from the perceptual point of view, because from the perceptual point of view, although some people say that he can feel the existence of God, it is only a person's emotional experience.
God is more of a life experience. A person who does not believe in religion will not believe in the existence of God; But for a religious person, he is a very devout believer in God.
From a scientific point of view, God cannot exist in our reality, nor can it be embodied in time and space. We can know all kinds of knowledge, sounds, colors and smells through sensibility, but we can't use this knowledge to obtain fields related to soul and God. Scientific knowledge can be proved by conventional logical proof, but there is no way for the soul god.
On the immortality of the soul, Kant thinks. There is no logical certainty about the immortality of the soul. I can't prove it from a logical point of view, but from a moral point of view, the soul is also certain.
I can't prove that God exists, but I can feel his existence. If we only regard it as the object of inner feelings, then its non-universal color will not be proved, and it will not be proved. This is the question of "immortality of the soul" that Kant talked about in Critique of Pure Reason.
The second question is Kant's view of life and death.
Kant deals with life and death, and his focus is on how people enrich their lives. He suggested that the more you think and do, the longer you will live. The longer you live, it is not the length of life, but the thickness and width of life.
This is what Kant called life and death. He emphasized that labor is enjoyment, the best way of life, and pain is the stimulation of vitality.
Many people want to be happy forever, without pain, and keep their daily affairs in a very happy emotional state. They hope that this happy emotional state will last as long as possible.
However, from the philosopher's point of view, pain is the glory of ideal. No pain, no happiness. These are two aspects of an organic whole.
Because only when people are in a state of pain will they think of getting rid of pain and stimulating their potential. These are some thoughts on the ultimate problem.
The third is Kant's understanding of suicide.
His answer is that you decide for yourself, and you make choices for your life on the basis of your conscious judgment.
Kant's point of view is that from a logical point of view, the soul is uncertain, but from a moral point of view, he thinks that labor is the best way to enjoy life. What he said is not necessarily the length of life, but its width and thickness.
We analyze Kant's self-choice of life on the basis of self-awareness and self-reflection ability. In other words, what kind of value goal do you use to judge?
Hegel also had a lot to say about life and death.
A famous view is that he thinks that death is the sublation of life, which is actually the view of Marxist philosophy. Philosophy absorbed Hegel's dialectics.
Because of this dialectical thought, some people even pointed out that Hegel's philosophy is the philosophy of death.
The absolute spirit in Hegel's system has gone through three stages: logical stage, natural stage and spiritual stage.
Formally, then, the logical stage and the spiritual stage are absolute spirits, which exist in this state of spirit and consciousness.
The first thing is to have the concept of beauty first, and then people can feel beautiful things. Obviously, these are two very natural and reasonable ways of thinking.
Absolute spirit is the form of movement and change. In the first stage, absolute spirit and conceptual category exist. He constantly moves and changes through a negative force of self, and then enters the concept of natural stage.
However, we have been trained in materialism since childhood. From the perspective of real life, what is closer to our daily life is materialism.
What is the concept of the table in the natural stage?
Then how can I get rid of the shackles of the material shell? The question of thinking has entered the third stage, the absolute spiritual stage.
To get rid of the shackles of the material shell, we have to return to the concept category, that is, to the stage of being in a mental state.
These are three different stages of absolute spirit as we understand it.
Later, Feuerbach, the pioneer of materialism, looked at death from the viewpoint of human and humanitarianism, and regarded death as the law of "belonging to human" or "human nature". He said, "We must understand the immortal faith from a humanitarian perspective"; "In spite of death, we must live our life to the fullest."
At this stage, westerners no longer take the attitude of ignoring and avoiding death, but should face "death" and actively think and plan their lives in the face of death.
Schopenhauer, the first representative figure, believes that the essence of human beings is the pursuit of the will of life.
The second representative is Nietzsche, who thinks that we should re-evaluate the value, become creative superman, and reproduce the death of achievement forever.
The third is Heidegger. Heidegger said that people should be born to die.
The fourth is post-modernism, the experience of Foucault's highest peak in life.
Through this article, we know that the thinking and development of death in western philosophy have evolved to a certain extent, and these views are enough to inspire China people to face life and death, be brave and fearless, and experience life.