Existentialism emphasizes the meaninglessness of life. According to Silenus, a figure in ancient Greek mythology, the best thing in life is not to be born, and because birth is not a choice for people, the second best thing in life is to die quickly.
For existentialist thinkers, absurdity is the essence of life, just like what the punished god Sisyphus in Greek mythology had to face: constantly pushing stones from the bottom of the mountain to the top of the mountain, and then the stones kept rolling down the mountain automatically. Nietzsche defined this fate of life as eternal reincarnation in the ontological sense.
Regarding this point, Nietzsche explained in his book “The Will to Power”: “The doctrine of eternal reincarnation, that is, the absolute and infinite repetition of all things-Zarathus’s doctrine, can ultimately be said to be the doctrine advocated by Heraclitus. At least the Stoics, a school that inherited Heraclitus’ basic ideas, have obvious signs of this.”
Faced with the meaninglessness of the essence of life, Nietzsche’s prescription is for humans to learn to transcend themselves, create the meaning of life, and become a superman. However, for ordinary people, superman is beyond reach, so the next best way may be to construct the value of life through faith. This is what the general public can do and should face seriously. Specifically, this involves at least four aspects of determination and action:
1. Concept, to construct or accept a value concept.
2. Faith, to make self-determination on the choice of a value concept.
3. Mission, to have a sense of mission for the realization of a belief value.
4. Practice, to carry out your mission in person.
If this is true, the value of religious belief to modern people will have the opportunity to be given a new meaning, so that we have reason to believe that after experiencing the baptism of humanism, God has not left us, but can enter people’s lives in a more approachable manner.
From a human perspective, faith is a need. There are two main rational ways to reach faith decisions: one is top-down revelation, which is a Western monotheistic tradition. From an empirical perspective, it does not have empirical necessity or certainty, nor does it have empirical universality; the other is a bottom-up belief. Although belief does not have empirical certainty or necessity, it has empirical universality.
The traditional faith of the Chinese people does not belong to revelatory faith, but to belief-based faith. Faith-based faith includes three elements of practice, namely speculation, belief and verification. Faith-based faith does not deny revelation, but denies the certainty, knowability and specificity of revelation. Revelation also needs to be a prerequisite for faith through rational speculation and decision.
The view of God in traditional Chinese culture can basically be regarded as a view of the way of heaven based on empirical speculation. This view of the way of heaven regards certain phenomena as the physical phenomena of God, and God is the essence behind this phenomenon, which is essentially consistent with Spinoza’s view of God.
Introduction of Tritao