Reporter | Dong Ziqi
Edit | Yellow Moon
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"Find the True Self" is a popular phrase in contemporary bestsellers and film and television dramas, and like the song "I am still the teenager I was before, there is no slightest change, time is just a test, the faith planted in the heart has not diminished" ("Teenager"), imagining the existence of the true self makes people feel comforted, as if after the changes of the world, as long as people are willing to find the original simple image in their hearts. However, what is the true self? Will the "teenager" in my heart really wait in the same place?
Chen Jiaying, a senior professor in the Department of Philosophy of Capital Normal University, pointed out in his new book "Perception, Rational Knowledge, And Self-Knowledge" that cognitive self is painful, and there is no ready-made self waiting to be discovered. The process of recalling "the boy from before" is not easy, and it is not easy to realize this in itself.
Image source: Visual China Chen Jiaying: Cognitive self needs to pass through self-deception and self-shielding
What is the true self? Chen Jiaying said that there is no ready-made self, a real self behind the mask of society; people have undergone layers of transformation in the process of becoming a person, and the self is always in the process of formation, so the process of self-recognition is not so easy to uncover the barrier and discover the true self. The first thing to admit is that knowing the self requires going through self-deception and self-shielding—people need to deceive themselves because self-deception can bring some kind of benefit, and it takes considerable courage to admit this.
People usually think about how to do things, without asking about the motive, as if the motivation of the self is self-evident. But this is not the case, even if the motive is clear in the sense of action, but the rise to reason, there is a self-deception in between. For example, people often think that they have noble motives, and they think that they act because of love or hate, but noble motives may not stand up to scrutiny, and love and hate cannot be questioned. Chen Jiaying gave an example, "I thought I was patriotic, I ran to the street to smash Japanese cars, I did this, maybe I really think that if everyone doesn't drive a Japanese car, Japan will become a poor country, China will become a rich country, but I may not do this because of this, but out of hatred of the rich, perhaps, I actually have no motive, that is, I love to toss, fool around, vent more than a lot." He wrote in the book that it is difficult to understand that deep love is difficult, and that only deep love can bring happiness to people. Just like a person who thinks that he loves a big house, but he is afraid of earning a big house and only then finds that he loves a big house, such a life will be very depressed in the end.
Therefore, self-perception is not as relaxed and pleasant as looking in the mirror and applying makeup, and may be heart-wrenching and self-whipping. So why do we need to know ourselves? Because the driving force of man's self-knowledge comes from what Aristotle said, "Man seeks understanding according to his nature", only the truth can provide a guarantee for understanding, only by understanding the truth can we live to understand, and when we recognize the truth of the self, we may do better in the future with this as a guide, although better does not mean that the future can be easier.
Perception, Knowledge, And Self-Awareness
Chen Jiaying
Republic of Beijing Daily Press, 2021
Chen Jiaying's self-perception appears at many levels, from being an actor in the real world to self-understanding, from "daily use without knowing to a complete and consistent self-understanding", and the most important layer in the middle is narrative. Narrative can help the self to form a relatively stable image, for example, for politicians, the image of integrity is very important - whether the communist or the liberal is an important aspect of winning the trust of people, if you do anything, you will be considered "opportunistic" and lose the trust of the public.
Since knowing the self is difficult, but it is beneficial, and the self is not ready-made and immutable, such a self needs to be well constructed. Starting from the recognition of the need for a coherent narrative of the self, Chen Jiaying went on to propose that the focus of self-attention should not be on what we will delete and change when we organize ourselves, but on whether we are organizing a healthy self. He agrees with Nietzsche's analogy, Nietzsche regards the life of a person as a work of art, which deletes the ugly parts and presents the overall beauty; he also believes that life is slightly different from the work of art, and the work of art has a day of completion, but the day of life is not completed. Because people face the world and live in change, and their position in the world is changing, they need to constantly rebuild themselves.
In the face of the ever-changing external world, Chen Jiaying's suggestion is that everyone needs to make some efforts to reorganize their concerns and understand the world's affairs, but the top priority is to re-establish the world that can be perceived and contacted, and to put the information of the distant world in the right place.
Trilling: Cultural philistines are people who deny themselves for the role of role-playing
Chen Jiaying's analysis of the difficulty of self-knowledge cannot help but remind people of the famous American critic Trilling in the 20th century who used many classic examples in "Sincerity and Truth" to prove that if sincerity is to avoid being cunning to people by being faithful to one's self, people cannot achieve this state without the hardest efforts. One of the interesting points is to analyze Rousseau's concerns about art pleasing the public. Rousseau's concern was that individuals living in the mass environment were constantly affected by the intellectual activities of others, which affected, stimulated, and expanded his consciousness, and the individual eventually found it increasingly difficult to understand the true self and be faithful to the self. Because of this, Rousseau believed that modern society, while increasing opinion, also controlled the meaning of the individual's own existence—and drama, literature, and art were all important opinion forces. He believes that theatrical art weakens the authenticity and autonomy of the self: literature embodies the principle of sociality, according to which the individual must give up his autonomy to gain the tolerance and respect of others, that is, the audience will also be infected with the disease of the actor, weakening his own identity by playing the character. (Rousseau, On Science and Art)
In this regard, Tririn explains, of course, it is possible to criticize what Rousseau said about the meaning of art is to "please", because the function of literature lies precisely in tearing the cloak of elegance rather than vassal elegance, but the point is that Rousseau is not concerned with artistic beauty, but with the beauty of actual people, people who can act autonomously in the compulsory social life. He was so opposed to drama because he believed that it replaced character with self-deception, "If a man learns to appreciate the exquisite storyline and shed tears for a fictional tragedy, what else can we ask of him?" Is he dissatisfied with himself? Wouldn't he rejoice for his good soul? Here, once again, self-deception appears as an enemy of the true self.
"Sincerity and Truth"
[American] Lionel Trilling by Liu Jialin translated
Jiangsu Education Press, 2006
Contrary to the self-reliant person advocated by Rousseau, it is the so-called "drifting" personality. The whole existence of this personality is to capture the signals of social opinion and the corresponding socio-cultural forces, always striving to be in step, so that it is not a self at all, but like a parrot with a tongue. Trirlin suggests that if such people can appreciate the energy of culture through art, discover and believe in personal meaning, it is not because of autonomy, but because of the rules and opinions from others.
This is reflected in Jane Austen's novels as a character who likes to role-play, such as Henry Crawford's amazing dramatic talent in Mansfield Manor, but this has also become his weakness, and he sees career choices as opportunities for self-expression, and he is not passionate about love, but rather the role-playing required by the plot. In the analysis of "Madame Bovary", Trilling also went from "going with the flow" to "the hell of clichés", suggesting that everyone in the present generation may be like Emma Bovary, trying to escape the cliché hell of Yongzhen, only to enter the cliché hell of high culture. The so-called cultural philistine, Trilling writes, no longer refers to the bourgeois resistance to culture, but to those who deny themselves for the sake of role play, and form their own experiences in reference to excellent cultural things. Art, even if it no longer pleases others, is enough to tempt people to attach their survival to the opinions of others.