The author understands that, in fact, these five words, from abstract to concrete, explain people's understanding and understanding of all phenomena in nature, society and life at different levels. If described in modern language, Lao Zi's Tao Jing refers to natural philosophy or dialectics of nature, while virtue refers to historical philosophy or political philosophy and social philosophy, benevolence refers to social management science, righteousness refers to moral code of conduct, and the last ceremony is the specific language of moral code of conduct.
In Laozi's Classic of Tao Te Ching, "Morality before morality, benevolence before morality, righteousness before righteousness, righteousness before ceremony" is actually the oldest way for people to understand nature and society, which has been expressed by many thinkers, philosophers, politicians and sociologists at different levels, in different scopes and in different ways since ancient times.
I'm afraid no one has accurately and convincingly described Laozi's life record. How Laozi can make such a complete description is really a difficult mystery. In ancient times, when I was at the level of social development, the extremely limited means of information exchange was estimated to be very limited life experience. With these limited experiences, it is really rare for me to make a "freehand" but quite complete understanding and description of such a grand and complex natural and social system, or it can be called a genius. But it also shows that human beings know nature and society can describe the whole situation from a limited part of the small world, so there is a saying that "a glimpse of the whole leopard".
The general explanation of "morality before morality, morality before benevolence, benevolence before righteousness, righteousness before courtesy" here is "losing the former first, then the latter", but the author thinks that although this explanation can make sense literally, the overall meaning of the whole sentence has become quite puzzling and may even be quite different. The author thinks that "loss" here is not loss, loss and loss in a strict sense, but the meaning of transformation, transformation or concretization. In fact, the highest realm of abstract Tao is "invisible" and "intangible", which can only be grasped by intuition, that is, "Tao can be Tao, extraordinary Tao", "name can be named, extraordinary name", and everything is evolving. However, "Tao" is everywhere all the time, and it is embodied in all forms of movement of everything in the world. Only when "Tao" is concretized or transformed into "virtue" can it be "Tao" and "name" and have more concrete practical significance. If modern language is used to describe "losing morality", that is to say, only when natural philosophy or dialectics of nature is clearly expressed or called to guide the development of historical philosophy and social philosophy, it will begin to have more specific significance, so that more people can grasp and understand it, and it can be further embodied as "benevolence"-a social management science expressed in modern language, that is, "losing morality before benevolence", thus further making social organization management practical. Furthermore, it is guided by "benevolence" (which is obviously completely different from Confucianism), that is, the general principle of social management. It is embodied in "righteousness", that is, the moral code of conduct, which has become practical in modern language. However, "code" still has some abstraction or generality. In order to make the code fully understood and observed by people in the real society, it needs to be further concretized as "ceremony"-that is, the specific language and behavior expression that embodies the moral code of conduct, which is the most practical and concrete level. In the process of transforming from the highest abstract level to the lowest concrete level, each next level is the concretization of the previous level, and the concretization result is that the previous level seems to have disappeared, but its substantive connotation is reflected in the further concretization of the next level, so it is "morality before morality, morality before benevolence, benevolence before righteousness, righteousness before righteousness" in the Tao Te Ching.
The author thinks that the above description is only a summary and general description, and it is a rather idealized and rigorous "exquisite" description. Like all concepts, it is just a visual thinking activity in the form of text. In real social life, this transformation from abstract to concrete is bound to be limited by time and space, that is to say, only concrete and different people can realize it in concrete, different times and different actual living environments.
In space, specifically, some people who are good at intuitive grasp and abstract thinking may be commonly known as thinkers and philosophers, such as Laozi, Confucius and Marx. Some people who are good at summarizing, generalizing, inducing and expressing words may be theorists, jurists and management scientists who formulate programs, strategies and plans, some people who are good at mediation, mediation, language expression and organization and command, and may be social activists and politicians. Of course, there may be a genius once in a few hundred years who can become an outstanding figure like Mao Zedong. He is not only an idea, a theory and a philosopher, but also a political leader, a military commander and a social activist. People in different regions, nationalities or countries have different thinking characteristics and tendencies, and their theories, strategies, laws or social contracts expressed in different languages are also different.
In terms of time, anyone's life is limited, and the space for anyone to move is also limited. They all live in a specific historical and social environment. It can be said that no one can cover or complete all the work from abstract to concrete and from thought to practice in his life. Therefore, this transformation from the abstract to the concrete will definitely go through several generations, a dozen generations or even a longer period of inheritance and practice, and time is only one direction. Each generation actually lives in different social environments. In such a long historical process, there must be all kinds of "distortion", "forgetting", repetition and twists and turns, and even "misleading" in inheritance, understanding and practice.
Because everything in nature and human society is just various forms of ever-changing material movement, any fixed image expression can only be a relatively stable expression of material movement forms in various fields of specific time and space, specific levels and various scales. Therefore, "Tao can be Tao, which is extraordinary" and "name can be named, which is extraordinary"-that is, any truth that can be said is not eternal, and any truth that can be named is not eternal. Any human thinking activity, ideology and its language expression (so-called theory) have only relative meaning, which is the contradictory unity of concreteness and generality. The more specific, the less general. The highest level of abstraction is the most general, but it must be at the expense of losing concreteness. Therefore, the "ceremony" mentioned here in Tao Te Ching means that the specific language and behavior of a certain moral norm cannot be eternal, but only the performance of a certain moral norm under certain historical conditions. This kind of moral code that restricts people's behavior and speech will surely become the shackles of social development if it does not change with the evolution of history. Forcibly maintaining a certain "ceremony" must be abandoned at the expense of social unrest, that is, ".
Although the invention and widespread use of paper and characters have enabled the predecessors' ideological achievements to accumulate and spread, and future generations can also "learn from history", any thoughts and theories of predecessors were produced in the historical environment at that time and could not be spread forever. Previous theories can point the way, but they can never foresee everything. That is, Lao Tzu said, "Those who know before, the Tao is brilliant, and the beginning of stupidity is also." As Engels said in his later years, "We are evolutionists, and we don't intend to impose any final laws on mankind. Presupposition on the details of future social organization? You can't even find their shadow here. " It is precisely because of this that the revival of Chinese culture must be the inheritance and sublation of traditional cultural criticism, and it must not be a "faithful retro" that quotes classics and values the ancient and ignores the present.
Explain that Laozi is ruthless in heaven and earth, taking everything as straw dogs/U4//U4 /u4/yule520/default.htm