I. Idealism and optimism
Schopenhauer thinks that life is full of pain, but at the same time, he thinks that pain is the inevitable result of will activity, so it is not a sin, but a positive aspect of life and a topic. People realize their existence through pain. Body is the carrier and puppet of will, and pain is the content of human existence (including spirit and body). Without pain, it is impossible to show the existence of human beings. Schopenhauer said: "Will is a harpsichord, and the obstacles and obstacles to will are the vibration of the strings, knowledge is the sounding board, and pain is the sound." In Schopenhauer's view, we should allow the will to run around and make life full of pain, so that life can be meaningful; On the contrary, acts against one's will, such as loving one's neighbor as oneself and doing good deeds for others, are recognized virtues by Christianity, but they are "extremely disgusting" hypocrisy, the negative side of life and the opposite.
Human existence is painful, but pain affirms and sublimates the meaning of this existence. Therefore, Schopenhauer disapproves of suicide. Under this premise, Schopenhauer raised the question of how people treat their own lives. He has a famous saying: "Suicide is an act that has no purpose or meaning at all", which is a futile and crazy act taken by people with sound thinking in the ugliest world before us. See all Schopenhauer's articles about suicide and death. It not only allows the will to move freely, so as to enjoy life and pain; It also requires denying the will, thus making all motives invalid and becoming a clear and peaceful person; This is obviously a paradox. But Schopenhauer thinks this paradox is both realistic and unexplained. If you insist on explaining, you will go to mysticism. Schopenhauer blocked all doubts and explanations about it with practical mysticism. )
Why? Schopenhauer said, first of all, the stupidity of suicide is not that it leads to death, but that it can't bear the pain, which is survival. Secondly, suicide can't be proved to have seen through Maya (Sanskrit māhāmāyā, the great illusion, Schopenhauer refers to the world of appearances. ) is a sober move behind the illusory scene, but it is the most arrogant expression of contradictory life will, and it is also a masterpiece of Maya. Finally, suicide only stopped life, but did not stop desire; It not only has nothing to do with denying the will to life, but also affirms the latter. In this case, the will to live is expressed as the desire to die, and the desire to die is expressed as suicide. It can be seen that the denial of will is not to get rid of pain at all, not to be dissatisfied with life, but to despise the enjoyment of life, not to realize desire, not to commit suicide. Schopenhauer believes that an ascetic should gladly stand on the opposite side of the phenomenon of will-himself-and take every kind of pain for granted. In this way, he will gladly accept any new pain imposed on him by accident or others maliciously, accept any loss, humiliation and insult, and regard these as opportunities to no longer affirm his will.
People should not commit suicide, but should give up their will to life. What is its purpose? Schopenhauer believes that it is to understand the curtain of Maya, realize that everything in the universe is an illusion of will, and gain a kind of liberation from being in it and being able to find and observe these illusions calmly and clearly, and then feel heartfelt ecstasy. Schopenhauer said: "A person who completely denies the will to live, from the outside, he is indeed a poor, penniless, joyless and lifeless person, but his heart is sober and full of peace and joy." Not only that, Schopenhauer also believes that this state of clarity, tranquility and joy is "something more outstanding than all achievements" and an ideal state of life, which can only be entered by accomplished people and wise men.
It is the trilogy of Schopenhauer's theory and its essence to move from affirming pain and opposing suicide to the realm of consciousness and achievement. This is why after reading Schopenhauer's original works, we not only feel pessimistic and disappointed, but also feel the joy of being "awakened".
If the tracing and reduction mentioned above are basically correct, it is more accurate to call Schopenhauer's philosophy idealism rather than pessimism.
As a philosophical person, Schopenhauer thinks that he has understood the mystery of cosmic life, so he is not bound by any dogma and pursues a free and easy life.
Second, is Nietzsche pessimistic? Nietzsche is not a pessimist, but an extremely profound optimist.
As an optimist, Nietzsche started from the concept of "tragic spirit", which was born in the soil of Schopenhauer's theory. In fact, where Schopenhauer stopped was the starting point of Nietzsche. All his theories are inextricably linked with Schopenhauer. Although Nietzsche later lashed out at Schopenhauer and tried to cut the umbilical cord, to no avail, people with discerning eyes could still see the traces of birth. As brandeis said, in order to awaken the world and flaunt his genius, Nietzsche deliberately ignored, didn't mention or attacked the thinkers who had influenced him.
2. Tragic spirit and intuitionism
Nietzsche's aesthetic view focuses on the book The Birth of Tragedy. Nietzsche put forward a core concept: tragic spirit, and two secondary concepts: Apollo modality and Dionysian modality.
Nietzsche believes that the beauty of Greek tragedy is because it is an organic combination of two components (Apollo modality and Dionysus modality). The former represents the beauty of silence and the attitude of people to observe the world with calm reason; The latter represents vitality, which is the endless kinetic energy for people to create the world and life. When beauty and strength are combined, the highest form of art (tragedy) can be achieved. In tragedy, the former stimulates vitality and the latter awakens the beauty of dreams, and the two interact. The Greeks used it to purify the world, beautify life and sweep away the pessimistic haze. But the appearance of Socrates broke the harmonious balance of the above two components, because he carried forward the modality of Apollo and abandoned the modality of Dionysus. Life in Greek culture disappeared, leaving only a bloodless rational culture. In this sense, Nietzsche called Socrates a decadent, and thought that the task of contemporary people is to improve vitality, revive the glory and inject boiling blood into rational culture.
On the surface, Nietzsche's tragic spirit pays equal attention to reason and vitality, but in fact, he emphasizes the latter. Nietzsche saw from the tragedy that the personal destruction relieved all the pain and eliminated the root of the pain, thus gaining the ecstasy of being integrated with the universe. At the same time, he realized that personal destruction did not affect the unstoppable and endless life phenomenon, and immediately gave birth to heartfelt joy. This is the fullness of vitality and the highest beauty. Therefore, it is the essence of Nietzsche's tragic spirit to gain happiness instead of disappointment and to affirm life instead of denying it.
Nietzsche led people's eyes to Greek tragedies, believing that there was the highest beauty in them, with the aim of affirming man and his existence and value. Nietzsche believes that in order to affirm life, people need tragic spirit, look at the generation and change process of the real world with an aesthetic eye, make the real world artistic, turn the suffering of life into aesthetic happiness, turn personal tragedy into world comedy, abandon Christian pessimism, and experience happiness as life and biology from it. This is the "metaphysical comfort" given by tragedy, and it is also the ultimate meaning for life. Nietzsche said, "Existence and the world are always justified only as aesthetic phenomena."
Schopenhauer believes that what people can grasp with reason is only the appearance of things, and the internal source and motivation (that is, will) of these appearances, like Kant's things themselves, can never be measured with reason. If you want to know the activity of the will, you can only rely on intuition. Nietzsche's aesthetic view is based on this. Nietzsche believes that the suffering and destruction of the protagonist in the tragedy is an apparent world that can be understood by reason, and the activity full of vitality behind it (Dionysian modality, that is, Schopenhauer's will) can only be understood by intuition. Not only that, Nietzsche's view on tragic effect is also taken from Schopenhauer. Schopenhauer believes that Aristotle's fear and pity are not pleasant feelings, so they are not the purpose of watching tragedy, but only the means. So, what is the purpose? As mentioned above, it is the indifferent state of mind after getting rid of all the goals and property in life, or the quiet feeling after getting rid of social temptation, and other noble orientations. In a word, it is the spiritual transcendence after understanding the mystery of life. From the above point of view, Schopenhauer has the basic factors that Nietzsche can learn from by advocating spiritual pleasure and high-spirited aesthetic effect from tragedy in order to confront, see through and eliminate the troubles of life. Nietzsche just separated them, highlighted and strengthened them, and effectively expanded them into the main content of his theory.
Schopenhauer's intuitionism can be summarized in two sentences: the subject becomes the pure perception of the unconscious, and the object becomes the concept of objectifying the will. In this regard, Schopenhauer defined it from two aspects: on the one hand, the subject got rid of the entanglement of the will to survive, got lost in the object, completely abandoned himself, and became a pure subject, that is, "intuitively lost himself, got rid of this kind of labor for the knowledge originally serving the will, that is, completely ignored his own interests, desires and purposes, thus completely withdrawing his personality for the time being, thus leaving himself as a pure subject." In short, it is irrelevant and subjective, and the subject becomes an objective thing, observing things purely objectively. In this way, it makes no difference whether you watch the sunset from the prison or the palace. On the other hand, because the subject has changed, the object reflected in front of him has also changed. Its individuality has disappeared, leaving only "eternal form", that is, the concept of direct objectification of will. Schopenhauer summarized these two aspects as follows: the object is not an individual thing but a permanent form of various things, and the cognitive subject is the self-consciousness as a pure and meaningless cognitive subject. As can be seen from the above, the key to the establishment of Schopenhauer's intuitive observation point lies in the transformation of the subject: first, abandon all theoretical dogmas except the subject; Secondly, abandon all concepts and categories inherent in thought; Finally, with an unpolluted and lively heart, directly penetrate things, take me as things, and take things as me. Schopenhauer believes that only in this way can we discover the stupidity of the will world and the mystery of cosmic life under the quiet and orderly appearance world.
The connotation and differences of Nietzsche's tragic spirit, Apollo form and Dionysus form all depend on the intuitive observation point. It can be said that it is intuitionism that makes Nietzsche, a well-behaved theologian and classical philology student in his early years, the initiator and advocate of passionate and wild strong will and superman concept.
Three. Philosophy of life and cosmology
Since Schopenhauer, the research object of the history of western philosophy has undergone fundamental changes, that is, from the epistemological research before Kant and Hegel (the pursuit of the origin and function of rational knowledge) to the ontological research (the pursuit of the mystery of human ontology and the relationship between human ontology), and from the perspective of human rational phenomena to the perspective of life phenomena. Because this transformation began with Schopenhauer and then Nietzsche, which influenced the whole 20th century, it is appropriate to call them philosophers of life.
As a philosopher of life, Schopenhauer mainly answers the question of "what is man" and Nietzsche mainly answers the question of "how can man live meaningfully", both of which are unified in "will".
Schopenhauer inherited ancient Greece at the beginning of the19th century and reconsidered the question of what human nature really is. Schopenhauer's conclusion is that man is a painful creature, biology is its stipulation and pain is its content. Therefore, it is the bounden responsibility of living things to suffer and endure. Why can't pain be separated from living things? The key is will. In Schopenhauer's view, will is an inherent creativity, which is blind, accidental and unconscious, and forms creatures through the principle of individualization. If the will is never satisfied, living things will always be in pain. Schopenhauer gave this definition to people, aiming at revealing the truth of existence to human beings and making them understand it, so as to treat life with indifference and enjoy the joy of exploring the essence of life.
Based on Schopenhauer's theory, Nietzsche continued to explore. Nietzsche said, "I was the first person to know the wonderful Dionysian phenomenon." This is not true, it is a statement of greed for one's own credit! As mentioned earlier, this concept comes from Schopenhauer's "will". The difference is that Schopenhauer demanded the denial of will; In Nietzsche's view, Dionysus' modality is affirmative. Nietzsche said: "the affirmation of life, even the affirmation of its most wonderful and difficult problems, and the will to life that rejoices in its infinite vitality in the process of pursuing the highest form-this is what I call Dionysian modality." Nietzsche's so-called affirmation of Dionysian modality is an affirmation of pain, sin and all suspicious and strange things in life, which is consistent with Schopenhauer. Nietzsche's life's work is to enhance people's vitality and affirm Dionysus' modality. Nietzsche's so-called "God is dead" requires the traditional rationalism to die and replace it with instinctive vitality; The so-called "revaluation of all values" means re-evaluating all views on life problems in history from the perspective of vitality; The so-called "strong will" is the condensation of vitality; The so-called "free man" is a person who gets rid of the bondage of reason, returns to the Dionysian modality and dominates himself; The so-called "egoism" is the behavior mode that Dionysus's modality dominates himself instead of being a rational slave. The so-called "superman" is those who constantly surpass themselves, rebuild the prosperity of life and re-establish the Dionysian modality. Nietzsche believes that since Christianity, human beings have been living in the most miserable and darkest situation, because reason suppressed Dionysus' modality. Nietzsche also believes that man is a bridge rather than an end, that is to say, man must sublate himself-in this respect, it is different from Kant. In Nietzsche's view, Superman does not exist before, now and in the future, because man is a raw material, an ugly stone that needs to be pondered over and over again, and something that will never mature. Only by maintaining Dionysian modality can human beings have hope.
Schopenhauer and Nietzsche's philosophy of life is based on their world view.
Schopenhauer believes that everything in the universe is a phenomenon, and its inner ontology is will. The generation of everything in the phenomenal world lies in the activity of will. Will is internal creativity, things are its presentation form, and matter is only the constituent element. Schopenhauer said: "Once this phenomenon is eliminated, other phenomena immediately take its place and grab its material." Schopenhauer never denied matter. He believes that there are only two things in the world that can escape the domination of causality, namely, matter and natural forces (will). He said, "These two are the prerequisites for all changes.". Between these two premises, Schopenhauer sometimes said that "matter is the same as natural forces" and sometimes said that "matter is a direct reflection of will" and "it reproduces the eternity of will with the immortality of time". In my opinion, the reason for this logical confusion lies in the swing of thinking. Schopenhauer believed in Indian philosophy and saw the eternity of material existence, but he also admired Kant's theory of material itself, and was caught in a dilemma in order to prove that his will was a more fundamental force. )
Nietzsche's view of the universe is embodied in the theory of "eternal reincarnation". In Zarathustra, the theory of "eternal reincarnation" appears repeatedly like a sub-theme in a symphony. Its most concentrated performance is in the new treatment part:
Everything comes and goes; The wheel of existence is always circulating. Everything is born and everything is dead; The time of existence is always running.
Everything is destroyed and everything is reborn; Existence itself will always build the same house of existence. Everything is on and off; The cycle of existence is always true to yourself.
Thinking, thinking, around this orbit, always around the planet. Any point is the center of the universe. The eternal road is spiral.
Nietzsche believes that things (including people), as individuals, must have a process of emergence, existence and extinction, but as categories, they exist forever. In other words, the existence of things is only a cycle within the same category. This is one of them. Second, this thing disappeared, and its remains became the mother of other things. So "everything is divided and combined." The former is an eternal cycle within the same species, while the latter is an eternal cycle between different species. These two samsaras not only changed the kinds of things, but also changed the universe itself. However, if a thing changes again, as long as its essence has not changed, it is still this thing. In addition, the separation and combination of things are frequent, but because their changes are the manifestations of the changes of the universe itself, they still present the repetition of the original state. So Nietzsche said that the door of samsara is open and changeable, but any one of them is the center of the universe, because they are the steady state before the change, so that they can trace back to their past lives indefinitely. As can be seen from the above, Nietzsche's "eternal reincarnation theory" and Schopenhauer's "will-phenomenon theory" are the most internally unified.
Nietzsche strongly integrated Dionysian form into his theory. Nietzsche said: "The strong command to oneself and the strong belief in all creation are the main characteristics of Dionysus" and the main characteristics of the theory of eternal reincarnation. It means: the universe is a powerful will of eternal reincarnation. Everything is disappearing, but it is constantly being generated. Life experiences great joy in the process of generation. Therefore, the theory of eternal reincarnation just proves the abundance of strength and the indestructibility of life.
Perhaps, the connection and difference between Nietzsche and Schopenhauer in life philosophy and cosmology can be shown as follows: Schopenhauer affirmed the contingency of life and the inevitability of death, Nietzsche affirmed the inevitability of death, but at the same time affirmed the inevitability of life; Schopenhauer affirmed the eternity of will and the transience of phenomena, while Nietzsche affirmed the eternity of strong will (Dionysus) and the eternity of phenomena. Schopenhauer affirmed that people find that life itself is meaningless, but they can get clear happiness in the process of denying the will to live after discovering the mystery. Nietzsche affirmed that people can find the strength and tenacity of the will to survive from endless and unstoppable life phenomena, thus entering a highly optimistic realm.