On June 2, 1927, Wang Guowei sank himself in Kunming Lake.
Wang Guowei is a proper master of the Republic of China, with philosophy, aesthetics, songwriting, drama, history, paleography, archaeology, etc., all of which are exquisite.
A generation of masters smoked a cigarette in the Summer Palace and threw themselves into the lake, this sudden trick is puzzling, so there are too many sayings: the pain of losing a son, the daughter-in-law running away, the close friend breaking off, the collapse of the Great Qing... Until now, there is no conclusion. Lu Xun said that Wang Guowei was "as honest as a ham", so what obstacle can such an honest person get over?
I have heard a strange saying, when I was young, an old gentleman who experienced the Republic of China era told me: Among the many reasons, you are missing one. Wang Guowei had a knot in his heart, that is, he spent a lot of energy on the useless study of philosophy. In the words of Wang Guowei: All learning can be persuaded by Lilu, but philosophy and literature alone are not.
The Great Qing Collapsed, but this old man at the end of the Qing Dynasty was powerless, especially this noble philosophy, which was completely useless at a critical moment in history, so the master left with a despair for philosophy and the unbearableness of his life.
Philosophy is so useless, but for cultural people, it is absolutely impossible to know nothing, even if you are only vassal of elegance. Traditional scholars are the same, saying that if you don't work the I Ching, then you are a person without culture; this is a bit like in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, if you didn't even understand Mr. Lu Xun's Diary of a Madman, don't talk about literature. To tell the truth, Mr. Lu Xun's "Diary of a Madman" is really difficult to understand, because it cannot be immersed.
So what is the use of philosophy?
No one really made it clear.
The ancient Greek philosophers said that it was the study of wisdom, and I have always thought that this is an unsophisticated, but very reliable statement. What wisdom is, is not a craft, nor is it the Eighteen Dragon Palms, it is an ability to think, and in this sense philosophy is more a training of thinking.
Hegel said that religion, philosophy and art are the highest realms of human beings. The British defined this realm as the terminal of knowledge, and when science encounters a dead end that science has no solution to, such as ion entanglement, this requires philosophy to do logical cleanup. The British have always been rigorous, they are very much like the masters of stocks, always trading on the left. In the eyes of the British philosopher Russell, philosophy is not a great wisdom at all, it is a boring traffic cop. If you ask Mr. Russell whether it is better for me to go to Xi'an or Nanjing today, he cannot answer you; what he can tell you is which bus to Xi'an and which bus to Nanjing. Is that wise?
So, I thought that when I started studying in college, the tutor ordered a few books, as if he had forgotten that my disciple had selectively lost his memory; I said: Teacher, why don't you teach me? The teacher said: How many things are taught? You can't read all the papers on chemistry published internationally every day, do you read them all? No, philosophical monographs are also vast, do you all study? Then I promise you to learn to be a nerd, and the book I give you is a path to learning, you go down, out of a sudden enlightenment, you debut.
Therefore, the use of philosophy is not the use of magic numbers, as Lao Tzu said: The Tao can be very Tao, and the name can be very famous. Philosophy is useless, there is a way to take it. If you don't want to learn to be a nerd, remember the German existentialist Karl. Theodore. Jaspers's famous quote: If I give up loving you, my whole philosophy will have no meaning.
As for the death of Mr. Wang Guowei, it is fixed on Chen Yinge's words: with a remnant despairing of the demise of the Qing Dynasty, with a scholar despairing of the decline of a culture, and a scholar born without evidence - a sad life has created his tragic life. “