Author Shu Sheng
The development of modernist thought has made instrumental rationality dominant, its indiscriminate pursuit of the goodness of classical ethics has led to the demise, and as utilitarianism has become more and more sharpened into instrumental means, Nietzsche's nihilism has inevitably taken advantage of the void.
By reducing the spirit to private emotions and personal desires, Schopenhauer advocated liberation from the pain of the will, but paradoxically, the abolition of man's will is tantamount to the abolition of man's creative capacity; the abolition of man's creative power also eliminates the fundamental difference between man and animals; and the final result is either a retreat to man's primitive state or a retreat into stillness.
But human nature seems to need to have a supremely good idea and a purposeful order in order to feel that the world and survival are tolerable. The absence of faith in the supreme good means that there is no power higher than man, and the end result will be toward nihilism. In politics, it evolves into authoritarianism; artistically, aestheticism; ethically, pragmatism; and commercialism. The spread of nihilism will further lead to relativism, which in turn will lead to a situation of self-determination, because there is no basis for convincing, so self-interest will become the greatest driving force. Utilitarianism is only one step away from pragmatism. Since pragmatism cannot find the satisfaction of desires within itself, the next step is to move toward fetishism. And the core and symbol of materialization is money. Further on, there is money worship. This is the root of modern and postmodern.
Now we need to take a turnaround path. We need an ancient sense of the sublime, even if it does not completely solve the dilemma of human existence, but it helps to produce good things after all, rather than to accelerate the decay of societies and individuals.
We may wish to reconstruct the narrative mode of ancient Greek tragedy, which is not just a simple plot that directly points to ideas, but a tortuous journey from sinking and losing to perfection that has gone through hardships.
The past cannot be traced, and the future has a long way to go. The Supreme Good is "God", the "Tao", the "Buddha", the "Tai Chi" ,...... Who knows for sure? Without the highest guarantee, we can only move forward cautiously in the shadow of nihilism, after all, there is no "Shinto", and humanity is also a must.