Rediscover Rousseau

2019-2020 Hanzun New Year's Eve Lecture "Rediscovering Rousseau", December 31, 2019, 23:00-23:50.

Hello everyone, thank you Han Zun, and thank teacher Wang Junxiu for providing this opportunity. Let me introduce some observations about Rousseau's thought to you. When I first discussed with Mr. Wang, Mr. Wang proposed to use "Reevaluation of Rousseau" as the topic of today's report, because Mr. Wang knew that I kept pointing out some misunderstandings of Rousseau's thought in the past, so I hoped to reevaluate it. Later, after deliberation, I thought that "Rediscovering Rousseau" would be a better title than "Revaluing Rousseau." Because on the one hand Rousseau's ideas have always been the most controversial, the evaluation never stops. On the other hand, the influence of Rousseau's thought on later generations is far-reaching, and it has not left us until today, and even the academic world is constantly discovering new creations from Rousseau's thought.

We know that in the development of humanities and social sciences such as anthropology, sociology, political philosophy, etc. today, almost all the sources can be traced back to Rousseau. Rousseau is not only the Enlightenment thinker as we know it, he not only represents the highest achievement of Enlightenment thought, until today, every detail of his thought is still in effect on our daily life and public life, He provides his well-prepared answers to the problems of our time. These do not come from reassessment, but from rediscovery when we are faced with a major practical dilemma and have to look forward to human wisdom. It is in this sense that our report today is titled "Rediscovering Rousseau" rather than "Rediscovering Rousseau" Estimating Rousseau.

Marked by Raymond Aron's 1979 essay "The Rediscovery of Tocqueville", classic liberalism has seen a contemporary revival. However, Tocqueville was less than 30 years old when he wrote "On Democracy in America," too young. And he himself once said that the idea has been brewing for nearly 10 years. The historian Fuller (Furet) wrote this article to investigate the intellectual origins of Tocqueville's thought. He believes that, in the entire history of thought, there are few examples like Tocqueville, who raised a series of major questions throughout his life's intellectual activities at a young age, which is a mystery worth unraveling. After investigation, Fuller found in Tocqueville's Travel Diary that the latter was strongly attracted to the writings of Rousseau and Montesquieu.

In The Spirit of the Laws, Montesquieu tried to reconcile the contradiction between Hobbes and Locke's "state of nature". He said: "In the original state, people are born equal, but people cannot stay in the original state for a long time. Society makes people lose equality. Only through the law can equality be regained." This social process is also depicted in Rousseau's famous works. . Different from Rousseau's description through imagination and reasoning, Tocqueville tried to use Montesquieu's method to answer Rousseau's questions through his fieldwork in the United States. As Hegel later observed, "the principle of liberty first appeared in Rousseau". When Tocqueville observed the integration process of American society from the natural state to the social state, it was with the "principle of freedom" inspired by Rousseau that he understood everything from beginning to end.

My report on the rediscovery of Rousseau is planned to be completed several times, and I will discuss the wealth of thought that Rousseau left us from the perspectives of passion and affection, love and friendship, contemplation and action, repentance and grace, duty and gift.

The image of Rousseau, as Cassirer, author of The Rousseau Problem, describes it, is so extremely difficult to reconcile in the eyes of different people: "Burke denounced Rousseau as the personification of the Age of Reason. De Maistre and Bonnard ( Bonald denounced him as a champion of irresponsible individualism and a philosopher of destructive chaos. Later critics such as Sir Henry Main slammed him for establishing a 'collective tyrant' and The 'old monarchy in new clothes' is introduced again in The Social Contract. The contradictions among Rousseau's disciples were as sharp as those among Rousseau's opponents. The Jacobins were founded in his name Reign of Terror; German Romantics sang him as a liberator; Schiller portrayed him as a martyr to wisdom."

Obviously, Rousseau's thought is quite complicated, and it is not easy to understand clearly. But even Rousseau's opponents would not deny that Rousseau was a thoroughly modern man, not of his own era. Rousseau did not live like his contemporaries, but like us. This is not because Rousseau has advanced thinking, but because the secular way of life of our modern people is fundamentally shaped by Rousseau. In other words, each of us lives in imitation of Rousseau, but how is this possible?

The 18th century is called the century of enlightenment. There are many thinkers, writers, artists, etc. known as philosophers. The forerunners have appeared on the stage of history, showing their own ideas, profoundly affecting the subsequent world, and completely changing the life of our modern people. Even if people today do not know the ideological connotation of the Enlightenment, they still do not know how to live in modern society. The modern way of life has not always existed. For example, the sexy beauties that fill advertisements and the Internet today were not allowed in the pre-modern era. Thanks to the Enlightenment, sensory stimulation is no longer considered immoral. After that, the sexy aesthetic was possible. The rich content of modern life's colorful entertainment and pastimes is no longer a moral burden.

For such a change, we must start with the legalization of passion. For the first time in human history, Spinoza ran out of passion. He said: "Anyone who can really be identified as a Homo sapiens, whose soul is not agitated, and who, by some eternal necessity, knows himself, God, and things, will never know Stop being, and always enjoy the satisfaction of the true soul." That is to say, first of all, exhaust your passion, not be excited, not be moved by others, not be moved by yourself, including not be moved by your own conscience. Otherwise, it is likely to fall into what Nietzsche later described: "The competition of various inner passions, and finally one passion dominates the intellect."

So, before Rousseau, passion was not only excluded from the Christian tradition, it also had no place in the realm of reason. But Rousseau did not exclude passions. In the first chapter of Book IV of Emile, Rousseau wrote: "Our passions are an important tool for our survival. Therefore, to destroy them is really a matter of both. A futile and absurd act. It is tantamount to controlling nature and altering the works of God. If God wants people to root out the passions he has given them, he wants them to survive and he doesn't want them to survive, he does To do would be to contradict itself. He has never issued such a vague command. There is no such thing recorded in the human mind. When God desires man to do something, he does not command another The man tells the man. He will tell the man himself, he will keep in the mind of the man what he desires. . . We can achieve our purpose of staying alive. All those passions that enslave us and destroy us come from elsewhere. Nature has not given us such passions, and it is against his will that we presume them to be our passions ."

Since God has never issued such a muddled command, how can reason be guaranteed not to be dominated by passion, while preserving passion? Spinoza used reason to rule out passion, so is it feasible to invite passion back and restrain passion with reason? In Rousseau's love novel "The New Heloise", the hero and heroine in love hope to restrain their passion with reason, but they only insist on it for two months.

"The New Heloise" is named after the medieval love story "Heloise". In the twenty-fourth letter of the first volume, Rousseau remarked in the mouth of the hero: "When you see the letters of Heloise and Abelard, you know what I have told you about this book. And the words of virtue of that theologian. I have always sympathized with Heloise, whose heart was born for love. But I always thought Abelard was such a scoundrel that he knew nothing about love and virtue." So , Rousseau said to use his own understanding of love and virtue to rewrite the story. The love that Rousseau understands is the passion sublimated by the love of God, the deep affection of love. And Rousseau's understanding of virtue is not the kind of virtue that is only intended to be recommended to others, but not intended to be implemented by himself.

In Rousseau's novels, several young people taste love and friendship in passion, allowing passion to conflict with every traditional virtue. Passion breaks through the social conventions of hierarchical authority effortlessly. Saint Pule, a commoner tutor with a holy heart, falls in love with Yu Li, a noble lady. But in the face of passion, not everyone is Spinoza and can always keep his sanity. Therefore, the protagonists hope to use honor to guide passion. Honor once cultivated the European nobility and gave them noble qualities. So can honor domesticate passion? Rousseau began to think, but found two different honors. One is the honor of public opinion obtained from the praise of others, which is actually a false honor, or vanity; the other is the honor of respecting oneself, which is the real honor. So how do you respect yourself? The young people in the story, although everyone pursues noble sentiments, each virtue is never just like what others say, but according to their actual situation, they should bring those abstract concepts into a specific environment. After each person's own personal experience (épreuve), he obtains a code of moral self-discipline that is entirely voluntary, rather than the moral dogma that he or she has to abide by whether he or she voluntarily gets from a moralist or public opinion. In this way, between the so-called theory and practice, between the concept and reality in thinking, Rousseau for the first time added the personal experience of personal freedom as an indispensable link.

The idea in the mind is very different from the reality. Like non-existent ghosts, square circles, which can become ideas in thinking, but cannot become reality, these are not difficult to identify. But those virtues are not so easy to identify. Morality that cannot become reality can only be a pseudo-morality. Therefore, the presence or absence of Rousseau's personal experience becomes a sign of all virtues such as vanity and true honor, false morality and true morality. From this we can see that all the moral decrees derived from personal experience can only be valid for himself. Once others are required to directly obey, then, because of the lack of the process of others' self-experience, it becomes pseudo-morality. Rousseau's personal experience is not a psychological experience but an experience (épreuve) between the realm of thought and the realm of reality.

Rousseau was in love with two themes throughout his life, love and friendship. Before Rousseau, love was a matter of God, not within the reach of man. As the "Bible, New Testament, Gospel of John" says: "God so loved the world that he even gave his only begotten Son. All who believe in him will not perish, but have eternal life." In Europe, which has experienced thousands of years of Christian indoctrination In mainland China, according to people's notions, only gods can understand love, and people, as creatures of gods, do not understand what true love is. Therefore, people can only feel the love of God in the church (which is seen as the body of Christ). Once you leave the church, love no longer exists. In such an atmosphere of faith, there is only lust as passion in worldly life, and no true love. In other words, true love in worldly life is unimaginable.

Rousseau sublimated himself in his love for Madame Warren, distinguishing between two kinds of love. That is, the "selfish love" (amour propre) that depends on the response of others and the "true love of the self" (amour de soi) that has nothing to do with others, thus discovering what is true love in the world. It can be said that it was this historic breakthrough in Rousseau's thought that brought God's love to the world. Since then, love can enter the secular life of modern ordinary people and combine with passion to become love. When looking back on his love with Madame Warren, Rousseau once asked himself: "Where in the world are there lovers who neither worry about gain nor loss, don't people want to know if the person they love loves them?"

At that time, Rousseau was able to answer firmly: "I have never thought of putting this question to her in my life, I only asked myself whether I loved her, and she never tried me in this regard. Attitude.” The so-called worrying means that you want to get what you can’t get; the so-called worrying and losing means that you get something, but you are afraid of losing it. Worrying about gains and losses has always been an anxiety that suffers in ordinary people's love. But in Rousseau's view, this is not a problem, he has surpassed this level. So how did Rousseau do it? To understand this, one has to go back to Rousseau's first love affair with Madame Basil when he was in Turin.

One morning, Rousseau passed by a shop and saw a graceful and charming lady boss through the glass window. Unconsciously, he was attracted into the shop. After some self-recommendation, Rousseau was taken in by the female boss as a clerk. The lady boss was called Madame Basil, and Rousseau was about five or six years old, so she should be twenty-one or two years old at the time, in her prime. Although Rousseau couldn't hide his admiration, he usually kept his eyes from Madame Basil's side. But Mrs. Basil was unmoved, never seemed to notice, and was always calm and self-contained. This makes Rousseau more and more fascinated. By chance, Rousseau entered Madame Basil's room. Madame Basil was embroidering in front of the window with her back to the door, in a graceful manner. Rousseau couldn't help himself, so he knelt down behind her and stretched out his arms excitedly. Rousseau thought she could not see, but did not expect the mirror on the fireplace to reveal his secret. Mrs Basil remained calm as usual. Pointing to the cushion beside his feet, he motioned Rousseau to sit down without saying a word. Rousseau became mute and froze there. The passion of worrying about gains and losses is filling his body. Not only hoped to get the favor of the person he loved, but also for fear of making the person she loved unhappy. Madame Basil also panicked, neither welcoming nor refusing, but pretending not to see Rousseau kneeling there, staring at the needlework in her hands in a bewilderment. At this juncture, footsteps came from the stairwell.

Madame Basil was flustered and gestured to make Rousseau hurry up. Rousseau got up while taking advantage of the situation, held her outstretched hand, and kissed her twice. The critical moment came. During the second kiss, Madame Basil put her tender hand on Rousseau's lips and pressed it lightly. In this regard, Rousseau commented: "In my life, I have never experienced such a sweet moment." Although this time lost the opportunity and never came back, Rousseau's first love ended. But for Rousseau, this first love gave him the most precious thing in love—love does not need to be obtained.

Many years later, looking back on this scene, Rousseau sighed: "In the future, even if I possess many women, it will not be as sweet as the two minutes I experienced in her presence. Although I don't even have her dress. Touch. Yes, there is no enjoyment as intoxicating as the one I love from this decent woman I love. It is a grace to be around her. What her fingers have done to me A small gesture. Her hand pressed lightly on my lips, and it was all a favor given to me by Mrs. Basil. These small favors, I still feel fascinated when I look back on them today. "

Likewise, this seemingly strange obligation/favor structure of love appears in Letter 29 of Volume 1 of The New Heloise. The heroine Yu Li wrote in a letter to her cousin that she had just had sex with her boyfriend: "There is no doubt that he understands love better than me, because he is better at self-restraint. I have witnessed his struggle a hundred times. And triumphed. His eyes sparkled with desire, and on the impulse of blind passion, he ran toward me. He stopped again suddenly, as if an insurmountable obstacle surrounded me. I watched this too boldly. Dangerous scene. I felt uneasy about his passion. His sighs weighed on my heart, and I shared his troubles, knowing only to sympathize with them. I saw him nearly fainting in his convulsive agitation Under my feet, perhaps only love can forgive me. Ah, my cousin, it was pity that ruined me."

We see that Rousseau believes that true love is only for oneself, only for duty. You can be passionate, but you don’t require a response from the other party, or if the other party responds, it’s not the result of your love for the other party, but just a gift from God. Love, therefore, is a relationship of duty and gift, repentance and grace. This, of course, was an ideological outcome of Protestantism in the Reformation. In fact, Rousseau's pattern of distinction between selfish love and true love of the self runs through Rousseau's major works. In "New Heloise", several young people are drawn into almost all purely formal concepts, that is, all the concepts of beauty and goodness in the world, and experience (épreuve) one by one, using the surging passion as a clue, using this mode of distinction to distinguish the truth from the false. At the same time, this personal experience (based on personal freedom) keeps the passion from getting out of hand and has its own legitimate place.

Likewise, in The Social Contract, there are such distinctions that are ignored by almost all researchers, such as the paragraph on Locke's property rights. Those of us who know a little about classical liberalism today know that, if there is a program for classical liberalism, property rights must be its primary program. In the chapter on property in "On the Government", Locke introduced the "Bible, Old Testament, Psalm" 156:16, saying that God "gives the earth to the world" and gives it to mankind in common. Later, Locke demonstrated the possibility of personal property. In Locke's view: "Whoever fills the belly of apples . They are distinguished from the public. Labour adds something to the natural work of the mother of all things. In this way they become his private rights." Through this process a part is taken from the common and made Departing from the original natural resettlement state, there is the concept of private property rights. Otherwise, the common things are useless.

Before Locke, private property could be acquired by force, such as through war. There is a causal relationship between man and nature. After Locke, private property was obtained by people through the means of creating value—for example, labor in Locke’s case, and man and nature became a value relationship. In this way, Locke transforms what is common to mankind into private property through the "right of the first possessor". But Rousseau was not satisfied with Locke's process, because Locke's property rights, French is la propriété, the word used is consistent with the source of English property, the etymology comes from propre (Latin word proprius), which means own, exclusive, Not someone else's, emphasizing owning relative to what others have.

Rousseau disagreed with Locke's conception of property rights. As Pascal criticized Descartes in the "Book of Thoughts": "I cannot forgive Descartes, who, in all his philosophy, wanted to leave God alone. However, he could not let God touch him lightly. So that the world can move. Apart from that, he has no need for God." It can be seen that God also gave the earth to the world, and in Locke, the rest is how to divide between people God doesn't care about the land; and Rousseau believes that once it is handed over to people to divide, because people become bad as soon as they enter society, people are no longer reliable! So the process of dividing the land still requires the will of God.

So what does the will of God mean? We know that Christians repeat the word "will" in their prayers every day. In the "Bible New Testament Gospel of Matthew" 6:9-10: "Therefore you pray, and say this. Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. May your kingdom come. May your will be done on earth as it is in heaven." Amour propre is love relative to others, not true love. Now Locke, then, is not a real property right in relation to another's property (propriété). Rousseau expects an absolute property right as "every one faces God directly."

To accomplish this breakthrough, Rousseau needs to draw on another distinction, the distinction between contemplation and action. Contemplation, since ancient Greece, has carried the ethical function of people's pursuit of goodness. In Plato's Apology, Socrates pointed out that life without examination is worthless. Likewise, Aristotle sought the good in speculation. When the Greeks tried to achieve the good in the city-state, they relied on the philosopher king in the Utopia, who, in his own contemplation, designed a good life for all. The goodness of ancient Greece is not the supreme good of Christianity, which is absolute, and the goodness of ancient Greece, like the gods in its polytheism, has no absolute perfection. Therefore, the good pursued in the meditation of ancient Greece, that is, the good pursued by the love of wisdom, is to admit one's ignorance and seek knowledge, and seek to reach the state known to the gods. Because of polytheism, it is a relative good, not an absolute supreme good. In the Western world under Christian education, people believe in the only true God and pursue absolute perfection. The way is not to speculate and seek knowledge, but to rely on unthinking piety and obedience. In centuries of theological-political conflict, people tried to replace belief with reason. It was in this process of replacing blind piety and even superstition with rational contemplation that Rousseau discovered a huge hidden danger.

One of the most valuable achievements of Cassirer's Rousseau studies is the affirmation of Rousseau's unwavering Christian faith. In stark contrast, in that Enlightenment era, almost all Enlightenment thinkers struggled to replace faith with reason. Rousseau, who is also an Enlightenment thinker, cannot but be regarded as a self-contradictory monster who has cut himself off from the circle of Enlightenment thinkers. Rousseau persevered in loneliness by relying on his belief in God. Between absolute goodness and relative goodness, Rousseau chose the absolute goodness: "To prove the justice of God, this is the business and the noblest mission of mankind. Contemplation to prove. It is the freedom to create, to shape the order freely, according to the order in which man wants to live.”

The old system's reliance on contemplative scholasticism has become increasingly intolerable. The European Enlightenment changed perceptions, and people demanded that their lives be restructured in terms of freedom rather than slavery. However, Pandora's box has been opened since the first time that human beings have to rely on their own freedom to act, rather than contemplation, to create a new order. Since then, starting with the French Revolution, almost all violent revolutions can be understood within this framework. It was Rousseau who opened that box, and the first thinker to be struck by Rousseau was Kant. Inspired by Rousseau, Kant developed his own moral philosophy. Starting from Kant, people no longer pursue the good in contemplation, but instead pursue the good in practice.

So far, we have seen Rousseau realize that once the individual enters the society, the contemplative way of pursuing morality in the past is completely invalid, and it is impossible for anyone to live on behalf of others. Continuing to seek the good in contemplation is no doubt an attempt to plan, direct and choose how to live for others, but an attempt to enslave them. Philosophers shouldn't overthink their preferences for everyone else, and such a society can only keep degenerating. Therefore, Rousseau is not only not the pioneer of totalitarianism as some people think, but also the first thinker to oppose totalitarianism. He was the first to attempt to construct a community of destiny in voluntary action among people, rather than in the contemplation of individual people.

In the second chapter of the first volume of The Social Contract, Rousseau wrote: "The oldest and only natural society of all societies is the family. However, the child also depends on the father only insofar as he needs to be brought up by the father. As soon as this need ceases, the natural bond disintegrates. When the children are released from their due obedience to the father, and the father is released from their due care for the child, the two are equally independent again. If they continue to be united Together, it is no longer natural, but voluntary. At this time, the family itself can only be maintained by agreement."

Here "voluntarily", the French original is not an adjective, but an adverb: volontairement, which is the adverb form of will (volonté), in the following text, Rousseau continues the adverb form of the word "will", the adverb is used to qualify the verb, the will of God It is used to qualify all social actions of people as "voluntary (action)". Although the Chinese translations are "voluntary", "voluntary", etc., it is undeniable that what Rousseau uses to replace "God's will" is the "voluntary" social action of all.

Therefore, all social actions of man are limited by voluntariness. In this way, the connotation of "general will" lies neither in happiness, nor in safety, or even in freedom, but in the voluntary social action of all. Only voluntary action is impossible without unanimous consent. Since no one forced him to agree, he must be voluntary, and when a person tries to express disagreement, he shows his willingness. Voluntary depends only on his personal experience: as long as others do not cancel his personal experience, then he is always voluntary.

so. The will of God, who is absolutely good, is not through the contemplation of any man, wise man, or prophet. Rather, through God empowering all people to act voluntarily in society, the will of God is infiltrated into every person, every moment of action, and the "general will" as the only source of political legitimacy is achieved. This is also Rousseau's point that I just mentioned: God tells everyone what to do directly, not through anyone else. So in this turn of contemplation to action, we see that deliberative democracy, the closest solution to political legitimacy today, still regards "general will" as an objective fact rather than a subjective process. Only when we return to Rousseau's social contract theory will we rediscover that Rousseau always regards it as a subjective process based on "personal experience".

Although the "general will" in its unanimous nature is formed between people as subjects, intersubjectivity is its essential attribute. In other words, the "general will" cannot be a result, but only a process of construction between subjects. Voluntary action neither transfers the "individual's pre-determined will", but also meets the highest requirement of "unanimous consent", and at the same time ensures that no one is forced in the entire construction process. In this way, the focus of the question of legitimacy shifts to "acting voluntarily". Everyone's own personal experience is the sole source of the political legitimacy of all regimes, something that cannot be cancelled.

At this time, we turn back to Rousseau and Locke on the issue of property rights in sharp contrast. It is also God who gave the earth to the world. Locke's "On Property" is defined by people themselves, and they possess property in an exclusive way. However, Rousseau's "On Property Rights" requires that God's will be obeyed in the whole process of dividing property.

As Rousseau said in "Emile": "Everything that comes from the hand of the creator is good, but when it comes to the hand of man, it is all bad." Rousseau is very clear that in contemplation "what is given" is Well, in action, it all goes bad from person to person. The cognition that "people commit crimes innocently in action" is the tragic tradition of ancient Greece, and it is also the connotation of ancient Greek tragedy. Whether in the ancient Greek tradition, or in the Christian concept of original sin (original sin is also the connotation of this "one action sin"), this is not controversial. When Rousseau connected them with reality and used them to think about the construction of a community, some people could not read them. This is the situation of the vast majority of our scholars now. In fact, it is people who "innocently commit crimes in interpersonal actions" that Rousseau introduces God's will into actions. But God has given man freedom. He has given man extreme personal freedom including passion. In this case, man is also required to act in accordance with God’s will. It is in such a fierce conflict that seems to have no way out. , reminds us of Pascal's epigram: "I condemn equally those who are determined to praise mankind, as well as those who are determined to condemn it. I also condemn those who are determined to make fun of themselves. I can only condemn Praise those who weep and pursue." Rousseau is the "one who weeps and pursues" who inherited the essence of Pascal's thought. In this pursuit, Rousseau discovered the insurmountable limit of reason, and pointed out that contemplative people are fallen animals, and people cannot decide anything for others in their own contemplation, even the one they love the most. Instead, each person can only act in accordance with God's will through personal experience.

Acting in accordance with God's will is the limit of reason. He is conditioned by language itself, that is, by social grammar. Just as everyone's actual grammar is different, everyone's understanding of "acting according to God's will" is different, and the limit is acting voluntarily. It needs to be emphasized again that acting in accordance with the will of God and acting voluntarily are the same word in French, but today we translate it as acting voluntarily, or today we understand acting in accordance with the will of God as acting voluntarily.

On the one hand, people seem to understand that a regime without legitimacy cannot exist for a day. On the other hand, I do not understand why totalitarian regimes that seem to have no legitimacy always exist. Thus, they found evidence for totalitarian despotism in Rousseau's theory. Of course, we say, they actually have a misunderstanding. If their logic is rigorous, then it can indeed be found from Rousseau's theory that the actual existence of totalitarian autocracy is also in line with Rousseau's legitimacy. But this only explains the first perception, that a regime without legitimacy cannot exist for a day. Rousseau's theory actually explains the root of totalitarian existence, that is, unanimous submission, because submission is also voluntary, a voluntary action.

Now to summarize, we rediscover several of the main intellectual treasures that Rousseau left us. The first is the sublimation and legitimacy of passion. This has completely changed the daily life of modern people. The second is the combination of passion and the love of God to generate true love and true love. Its basic rule is that it is not relative to anyone else, that is to say, it does not look at the reaction of others, but only relates to itself. Such a kind of true love is one that can only fulfill its obligations externally, repent internally, and improve oneself. In this kind of true love, no matter what you get, it is neither a causal necessity nor an exchange of value, but a grace bestowed by God. This kind of ideological connotation only relative to one's own self (de soi) is expressed by Kant in "self-consciousness" (conscience de soi), and the philosophy of the Enlightenment is completed in a strictly prescribed sense.

Afterwards, Rousseau transformed almost all concepts of pure form with this (non-relative) model of true love. Also, later Nix adopted this model to elevate "will" to "will to power". We know that Nietzsche's will to power, like Rousseau's model of true love, only wills itself and will not others. Husserl said in the first volume of logical studies: "Just as empiricism completely misunderstands the relation between the ideal and the real in thought, so it misunderstands the relation between truth and discernment." Let us start from Here Husserl looks back at Locke, Hume and Rousseau. Locke believes that everything comes from experience. So he even deduces the universality of freedom and necessity from experience. In other words, the universality that we all know Locke rejected is the universality of the Cartesian idea of innateness, the universality a priori, either empirical universality or no universality prior to experience. But Hume was more thorough, denying even the universality of experience by rejecting causality. Hume believes that we obtain the concept of causality from experience, but experience as perceptual perception does not contain causality. What we really perceive is only that something appears now, and then something appears, which is just a series of states or continuum of conditions, they have no causal relationship and no inevitability. Hume's denial of the continuous influence of universality, in today's view, is more about clarifying the boundaries of reason and stopping reason in front of what it cannot know. After Husserl emphasized the difference between the ideal and the real in thinking, we see that Locke and Hume confuse the difference between the ideal and the real in thinking. What Hume denies is only real things, that is, in reality, real things, such as square circles, these self-contradictory things will not become reality, and Hume is not wrong. But in ideas, as absurd ideas, they can always exist. So in Arendt, on this approach, contemplation and action are distinguished, corresponding to the realm of thought and the realm respectively. If we look back at Rousseau, we will suddenly find again that Rousseau has always insisted on the distinction between contemplation and action, and repeatedly condemns those who confuse and condemn those who impose the ideas of contemplation on others without their personal experience. as false, and so on.

Before Rousseau, the word "general will" (volonté générale) in French always referred to God's will. The will of God is achieved through the voluntary action of individuals, in voluntary action as a social process, so that man regains the will of God in society, secularizing it through interpersonal union. However, the two-and-a-half-century Social Contract has been too profound for most scholars. At the same time, because of its concise and clear language, no one will find it difficult to read, so many people mistakenly think that they have understood the "Social Contract Theory", distort it arbitrarily, and then criticize their own delusions.

That concludes my report for today, thank you all, and wish you all a happy new year.

PS

Thank you everyone, thank you teachers, Teacher Wang is right. Enlightenment established freedom. We have to review enlightenment to understand freedom more deeply. Real freedom is boundless.

"I condemn equally those who are determined to praise humanity, and those who are determined to condemn humanity, and those who are determined to find their own pleasure; I can only praise those who weep and pursue. "—Pascal, "Book of Thoughts."