Zhao Tingyang: The significance of history lies in the fact that ideas are not information registers

History is the philosophical question closest to time, and in this sense, the philosophy of history is not only a "philosophy of history", but also a metaphysics of infinite consciousness, that is, a metaphysics of the question of infinity. Human time contains a variety of dimensions of possible life, containing the possibility of unfolding in countless directions, so history is a multi-dimensional concept of time, which cannot be expressed as linear time, and history has no established law, which is the mystery of history.

History without a philosophy of history is just a story, just a historical fact that expresses a slice of life. If the story is not placed within some kind of meaning framework or question thread, it has no meaning in itself. The meaning of history is in ideas, not in information registers. The philosophy of history attempts to reveal the historicity of history, that is, the way in which time is organized by giving meaning to time and thus turning time into history, and at the same time, it also means a way of growing civilization, that is, the way of history.

History is based on time, but it begins with language, that is, language creates history. The living body of history is language, history is used to speak, history is spoken, history exists in speech, and it does not exist if it is not spoken. In the sense that behavior creates things, man is the creator of history, so man is the subject of history, but in the sense of establishing a spiritual index by narrating events, the subject of history is language. The concept of "history" has a dual meaning: (1) what has been done in the past, and (2) what has been said to be in the past.

If it is something that has been done in the past, then the subject of history is man, and if it is said that the past is done, the subject of history is language - the history that is said has been transformed into a spiritual world shared by civilization and even human beings, and no longer belongs to individual actions or memories.

It is said that in the pre-linguistic era, humans already had the ability to actively remember experiences, which is generally attributed to the automatic use of tools. Memory is a resource of history, but the memory of the pre-linguistic era has not yet been transformed into history, and the memory of that time has not yet formed a question that must be reflected, but only an experience worth repeating. Reflection is the beginning of history. If reflection on universal problems leads to philosophy, then reflection on special problems initiates history, and philosophy of history in turn turns special problems into universal problems.

It is only when people have a divergent understanding of the experience of existence that they begin to form things that must be reflected, that is, things that must be "said", so that human beings create a language that can express controversy from the natural and tacit signaling system. The signaling system must not be controversial, otherwise it will lose its communication function, and language expresses all disputes, and controversy means mutual reflection, so ideas are generated.

The origin of language, thought, and reflection is the same creation event, all beginning with the invention of the negative word (no; not). The creative magic of the negative word lies in the fact that it frees itself from necessity and opens up possibilities, allowing man to have a world of consciousness made up of multiple possibilities. The invention of the negation was a major event in the book of human creation, and before that, consciousness was only subordinated to biological instinct and repetitive experience, but was not aware of other possibilities, and therefore did not produce different opinions, and without different opinions there would be no different lives.

When the negative word activates the plural possibilities, making the non-existent thing become the existence of consciousness, then consciousness has an infinite number of possible worlds synchronously, and also makes language a world containing multi-dimensional time, theoretically containing all possible worlds, and also containing all time dimensions, everyone's time, man's time, the time of the ancients, the time of today, and the time of the future, all exist in the time of language at the same time, so the events of the past and present are organized into a synchronic object of consciousness. So, with language, time can be organized into history. Anything, whether great or small, exists only in indexable history if it is said. In this sense, the subject of history is language.

People have reason to ask, and in fact they often ask: Is history true? How can we believe things that no longer exist and cannot be seen? I am afraid that it depends on the conditions under which it is true. Since the past cannot be repeated, the facts of the past are not scientifically reproducible and cannot be true in the scientific sense.

Therefore, a more accurate question is: What history is true, and does history need to be truthful?

We need to consider two kinds of realities: one is the fact that it happened in time. This is a fact that belongs to the past perfect tense, for example, the character archetype of the Yellow Emperor, the events of Dayu's control of the water or the Battle of Changping itself. But the event itself no longer exists, and what is known is only an account of the event. Any account of archetypal characters or events, whether objective or subjective, is literary.

Whether the Yellow Emperor was really that great, there is no empirical evidence; whether Dayu's control of the water is true remains to be verified; whether the Battle of Changping really killed 400,000 soldiers may not be credible. The other kind of truth is the fact that "contemporaneity" has been taking place over time, that is, the verbal fact that belongs to the present continuous tense. For example, the myth of the Yellow Emperor hanging his clothes and ruling the world, the legend of Dayu's control of the water, or the story of the Battle of Changping, these accounts exist in language and constitute a reality in a spiritual world.

The first kind of reality is the truth of the past that archaeology and history are trying to rediscover, that is, the truth of temporality.

Since the past cannot be reproduced and reproduced, even if archaeology is fortunate enough to find some ironclad evidence to prove the existence of some past events, it cannot confirm the story description of the past events, that is, historical research can at most reach the individual "proposition truth", but it is impossible to achieve the entire "story truth", and can only prove some "existence propositions" about events, but cannot prove the "descriptive propositions" about events. For example, archives, videos, photographs, signed documents, and other materials can prove the defeat and surrender of Germany and Japan in 1945, but they are not enough to prove the details of World War II.

The second kind of truth is the verbal fact in history, that is, the historical truth, which is both a cultural existence and a psychological existence in language.

Perhaps the facts conveyed are not completely in line with the truth of the past, and even have big differences, but the "words" of those stories are facts, and they play a role in shaping culture and psychology in history, carrying the meaning and value of history. In terms of its shaping power on the spiritual world, the truth of words is more powerful than the truth of the past, and those truths that disappear with time have not shaped the spirit of a culture and have not become the spiritual life of people from generation to generation. If archaeology succeeds in rediscovering the truth that has disappeared, of course, it will add new knowledge of history, but its truth still cannot negate the historical image that has been circulated, because the historical image that has been circulated has acquired a spiritual value independent of the truth, and it exists in the spiritual world as a spiritual fact.

Those who are obsessed with the truth of the past may complain that what happened in the past is never what history says it is – it is true, but the problem is that history as a narrative cannot be exactly what it was, and it is worth thinking about what people need is a spiritual story rather than an honest story.

Who would believe that the Fool Moves Mountains is a real event, but the archetypal facts are certainly not as spiritual as this fable. Therefore, the two realities, the truth in time and the truth in the story, are juxtaposed, not a trade-off, one constructs knowledge and the other constructs spirit.

The past disappears in time, but it exists in history, and in this case, time becomes history. If history that has become a spiritual form is always present, then is the historical tense in the past tense? The past that disappears in time certainly belongs to the past perfect tense, but the historical narrative is not in the past tense, but in the present tense, more precisely, as long as it is history in circulation, it belongs to the present continuous tense, and it is an unfinished or even unfinished composition. The present tense of history has some similarities with Croce's thesis that "all true history is contemporary history", but the perspective of observation is different, and therefore the understanding is also different.

The fact that the historical tense is always in the present tense does not mean that the historical point of view is always the contemporary point of view, but on the contrary, the contemporary point of view is often the present present present of the historical point of view, and even if it is a new point of view of the contemporary, it also carries the gene of the historical point of view. The contemporaneity of history lies not only in the interest that the past conforms to reality, but also because the spiritual world defined by history is present with the times and has never faded contemporaneity, that is to say, the spiritual world of history is the spiritual world in which we are always in it, and the spirit does not have another world outside history to live in. It is true that we will encounter new problems that have never been seen before, but it is impossible to have a contemporary perspective that is completely independent of history, because much of our ideological content is historical.

History is the mode of existence of all spiritual facts, so history always exists in the present tense, and at the same time, history is an unfinished world, so it will always be contemporary—unless a civilization is destroyed. The meaning of history is to turn things that once existed but disappeared in time into stories that have always existed in order to carry the spirit, in this sense, history is a meaning for existence to continue to exist, and it is also a methodology for existence to be eternal, so history is the ring of reality.

As far as the limited ability to describe history and people's limited ability to read history are concerned, history can only record very few things that have happened. It is impossible for people to use too much real time to read the past, and it must be because the accounts about the past are of great value, otherwise people will not use their extremely limited lives to read the past and live the lives of others with their own lives.

Obviously, if something is worthy of history, then it should have irreplaceable and irreducible value for the present and the future, for a civilization, so that people are willing to let it occupy a part of the present time.

For example, the place of memory that carries the past is the relic, where nostalgia can be felt, and its emotional intentionality points to the past; antiquities that can explain the past but cannot explain the problems of the present are relics, and the intellectual intentionality of antiquities also points to the past; history that has always lived in the present and has a contemporary role is heritage, mainly including spiritual concepts, myths, and myths that have never left the scene in time. Historical stories, methodologies, intellectual scholarship, political systems, but also relics or relics that have regained their contemporaneity through new interpretations and thus become heritage.

It can be said that relics and relics are reminders of history, and heritage is where the value of history lies. Therefore, history can also be seen as an evaluation-selection system for heritage.

So, what is the selection criterion or elimination criterion of history? As the ring of reality, history is concerned with: What past events need to be preserved forever? What spirit can become a legacy? What system is the basis of reality? What issues are always contemporary? Obviously, history has commonality and sharing, therefore, theoretically (or in practice), history records things that are worthy of a collective to recall or experiences that need to continue to be preserved, and it is the historical narrative that creates the collective experience and collective memory, that is, the life deeds of a civilization, including both brilliant achievements and suffering lessons.

As mentioned earlier, history cannot be truthful, and even people do not want history to be completely truthful, but pay more attention to history with spiritual and ideological added value, therefore, history is always a creative narrative, a form of growth of civilizational genes, which explains to each generation where "we" came from, what we are, what great deeds or stupid failures, and it shapes experiences that can be shared together, unanimous tacit advice, Unspoken common emotions and memories as common topics, in short, history carries stories that can be shared together, and these stories in turn become spiritual traditions that explain life.

It is through history that a civilization is able to affirm its traditions and spirit. Gong Zizhen knows very well that if you lose history, you will lose your spiritual basis: "If you destroy a country that destroys people, you must first go to its history; you must first go to its history if you destroy the people's discipline and discipline; you must first go to its history if you have no human materials and the religion of the people who annihilate it; and you must first go to its history if you destroy the ancestors of the people" ("The Complete Works of Gong Zizhen, Series I, Ancient History Hook Shen II"). To lose history is to become a spiritual refugee.

However, is history only the history of a civilization or a country? Is there not a history that includes all civilizations or all nations? Some historians do have the will to write the entire history of mankind, and their representative works include Hegel's universal history or Marxist historical materialism. Universal history presupposes that human beings have a universal and inevitable law of evolution, but this universal law has no proof of universal necessity, and is only a hypothesis.

Today, there is a rise in "global history", but I am afraid that some of it does not live up to its name. In fact, global history is only the history of material circulation, cultural exchanges, or political intervention between "some regions", and it is not as strong as universal history in terms of ideological explanation. However, global history does not believe in the assumptions of universal laws in universal history, but tries to replace assumptions with actual descriptions, and thus outperforms universal history in terms of truthfulness.

However, for the time being, the main basis of historical narrative is still that of countries, nations or civilizations, and global history has only expanded the scope of observation, from countries to regional relations, but there is no methodology of world history based on the world scale, and neither universal history nor global history can become a spirit of sharing, because the spirit of universal sharing has not yet been formed, so neither universal history nor global history is far from world history.

Why is it not possible to write a real history of the world? The fundamental reason is that the "world" has not yet been formed, and the history of the world is only an imaginary history. Since the world shared by all mankind has not yet been formed, it is impossible to generate a world history with a shared spirit. There is no fact that there is no equivalent to the concepts of universal history, global history or world history – the world does not yet exist. It is only when the world becomes the world in the future that it is possible to produce world history.

Although the construction of a spiritual world with history transcends the problem of epistemology, it does not mean that history has nothing to do with the truth, but that the truth of history and imagination together create a spiritual world, and jointly construct the image, thoughts, experiences, advice, emotions and memories required for the establishment of a civilizationand the secret of "the change of the past and the present".

There is no doubt that history contains many important questions on which both benevolence and wisdom have their own views, but if it boils down to one question, I would like to say that the question of history is the life and death of civilization, because civilization and history live and die together. If history is only a matter of verifying historical facts and has nothing to do with the life and death of civilization, then history is not so important, and knowledge that has nothing to do with life and death cannot be very important.

The reason why people are so interested in the experience of success and failure, prosperity and decline of chaos, or gain and loss is because it is a matter of life and death. The value of what people do is explained by civilization, so the meaning of life and death of everything ultimately lies in the life and death of civilization. The life and death of civilization is an ontological question that explains that "continuing to exist" is what "existence" means, and therefore, history is not just history, but also metaphysics.

The way of survival of a civilization is the way of growth of a civilization and the methodology for maintaining its existence, that is, the way of history. How deep the historical path is, where it goes, and how far into the future depends on what kind of chain of meaning and problem it can form. It can be said that the chain of meaning and the chain of problems of history means the fate of a civilization, which determines whether a civilization can continue to exist, how long it can exist, and also determines the life and death of a civilization. In this sense, history is an existential question.

The metaphysics defined by Aristotle ignores the historicity of existence and only studies the pure existence of suprahistory. The concept of being, which is merely conceptual and logical, can lead to "metaphysics in general", but it cannot be an ontology that explains life, and metaphysics that does not explain life is practically useless. "Being" as defined by metaphysics in general is trapped in a pure concept, which means that it has not entered history from time, and there are no historical deeds, which means that "existence" has never appeared.

Since there are only concepts and no deeds, there is nothing to say, and it is impossible to form questions that need to be reflected. The general metaphysical "being" is impoverished, because there is no historical existence but a tautology of itself, and the pure time that goes with it is always the present, unchanging, equal to static, with neither past nor future, no previous question and no next. The most serious problem with the anti-historical notion of existence is the loss of the future, that is, the time of pure existence is only an infinite repetition of the pure present, and there is no history and no future.

History makes existence open up a time of its own existence from ordinary time, and it can also be said that when an existence has a "time of its own" marked by its deeds, it has history. The so-called historicity is a way for a civilization to create and organize "its own time", that is, a way to turn time into history. The historical interpretation system is first based on the classification of time, and the "life time" is identified according to the calendar and chronology of the way of life, and on this basis, the deeds worth remembering further form humanistic clues in time, and establish the meaning and problem associations between everything done by human beings, that is, the meaning chain or problem chain, which also defines the "human time". History—the process of existence with ever-changing deeds—gives meaning, value, signage, and clues to undifferentiated general time, and thus makes "existence" present through deeds.

Why is one moment more important than another, why do some moments have to be remembered and some moments are just like years? It depends on whether a moment has a humanistic temporal significance, and thus distinguishes it from an undifferentiated year. Each inherently undifferentiated moment acquires a unique meaning because it can be a link in a chain of meaning or a chain of problems in history. There is no moment that can define its meaning by itself alone, in history, it is always the later things that give meaning to the previous things, and the subsequent work to prove the meaning of the previous work, that is, the meaning is always to be future, and the meaning is not a constant of things, but a function of the future.

Without follow-up, the previous work would be meaningless in the fracture. Therefore, there is no present that can have meaning because of itself, and no present thing can preserve its meaning by itself, and the meaning and value of everything in history are not self-sufficient, but depend on its extension in subsequent history. The so-called "intrinsic value" is a metaphysical illusion. If there is no chain of meaning and chain of questions, time will wipe out all value. History is there, meaning is there.

History also means a ruthless fact, either for the sake of the waves or for snobbery, and usually only the deeds of emperors or saints and great men are left in history, lest history become too bloated and cumbersome to read. But this "principle of distinction" has nothing to do with discrimination, but with what needs to be remembered, what needs to be reviewed, and what needs to be constantly interpreted and re-understood. As mentioned earlier, it is impossible for people to exchange too much real time for the time of people who have passed by, so history is always the history that future generations want to see.

If an event is to be remembered, to be discussed again and again, and to be protected, the historicity of the event must be contemporary, with enough spiritual energy to occupy the long time since it happened. Therefore, history is not only a portrayal of the past, but also a construction of a chain of meaning and a chain of problems. It is only when a thing becomes a mental scale of time that it exists in history as a link in the chain of meaning or the chain of questions. Most of the past is destined to pass away, and most of the heroes are swept away by the waves, so history itself is tragic.

Since the nature, effect, impact, and value of an event need to be developed in a long chain of meaning or problem, does this dissolve the meaning of the context at the time? The once-popular teleological view of history held that the significance of an event lies in its historical mission, which is predetermined by the distant end of history (the so-called end of history). This article is transferred from "Design and Philosophy", ID: PhilosophyDesign, typical examples include Hegel's view of history, Marxist view of history, and liberal progressive view of history. According to this theory, the ultimate purpose of history is the indexing of the meaning of all events, and each event can be checked according to the foretold ultimate purpose of history, as if there is a mysterious force that has compiled a historical dictionary based on the ultimate purpose of history before history has happened, and can be used to check the meaning of each event. But the problem is that the meaning of the ultimate goal itself cannot be checked, there is nowhere to prove, and it is an unsolved case.

Contemporary historiography is reluctant to use unsolved cases as a basis, so it discovers "context" and makes it a new coordinate for interpreting events. The context in which an event occurs determines the role and impact of the event, that is, the meaning of the context, which is equivalent to saying that each context itself is a dictionary of the correct meaning. Contemporary historiography attaches great importance to the meaning of context, and it is generally believed that context can truthfully explain the meaning of an event, so to understand an event, it can only be located in the context in which it occurred.

Returning to the context is certainly an important condition for understanding events truthfully, but it is a suspicious imagination to describe the context truthfully, and it seems that there is no historical epistemology that can ignore Croce's proposition. In addition, we must not forget that there is also the issue of "the passage of time". "Migration" It is not to question whether it is really possible to faithfully return to the context of the time, nor to question the importance of the context, but to remind that every context is uncertain and non-closed, or that the context is always unstable or unshaped, always in a state of continuous change, so it is difficult to determine an independent and effective context, which can be seen that the context is not a self-sufficient state of affairs that can be cut out of the historical process in isolation, nor is it a historical space that has been explored, but a dynamic continuum without borders, so there is nothing"Closed context", and only "regeneration context".

Regenerative context means:

(1) The context is superimposed by multiple levels of situations, just like there are multiple layers of minerals. How many meanings a context can show depends on how many ways we can develop it, so the context cannot be closed, and there are always new questions that need to be answered constantly, and future generations can rediscover different levels and different aspects of the past context with different exploration methods, so as to make a variety of different or even contradictory but equally valid explanations. This is not to support a historical relativist interpretation, but only to acknowledge the complexity of history and the multi-layered meaning of context. Historians can find the roots of modernity in the context of the Enlightenment, the Renaissance, the Middle Ages, and even ancient Rome and Greece, and can also analyze the foundations of modernity in the economic, technological, social, political, or ideological contexts. While modernity is an old topic, contemporary historians are discovering new contexts for modernity.

(2) Since a context is a process of continuous generation rather than a given and stable structure, the context is presented as a superposition of multiple contexts in time, but people usually focus on a certain slice of the context, but the "slice" of each context is not enough to form a full explanation, but if the whole historical process is regarded as the context of one thing, it is equivalent to dissolving the context. So, where is the limit of context? This is a difficulty in forming an effective explanation.

(3) The contextual continuum in evolution is not as uniform as mathematical time, and some of the evolutionary links are the moments of history-making, or the rise and fall of the transition, or the change of dynasties, or even the changes of ancient and modern times. The importance of a moment is always in its "after-effect", which may be a distant after-effect, so the context becomes a series of contexts without an end, and it is always necessary to "observe the after-effect". For example, the invention of paper, gunpowder, and movable type printing was not considered an epoch-making event in the context of the time, but was only the invention of cheap or convenient items, and had not yet shown the power to make history. Therefore, the explanatory power of a specific context locked in a certain moment has its limitations, and the historical significance of an event must be slowly unfolded in the aftermath.

Obviously, it is the "after-effects" of an event or context that are the key to understanding history. In order to analyze the historical aftereffects, we therefore introduce the concepts of chain of meaning and chain of problem. The chain of meaning and the chain of questions mark the spiritual scale of history and can show the mileage of the spiritual evolution of history. From this point of view, the deep part of the history of events is actually the history of ideas, or in other words, the history of ideas is the deep structure of the history of events. Collingwood was the first to assert that history is essentially the history of ideas, but the "history as the history of ideas" that we are trying to analyze here is only half similar to Collingwood's understanding, and the other half is not.

Only part of the ideas contained in history are the thoughts of the parties involved in the event, and the thoughts of the parties must have historical aftereffects in order to gain great significance, that is to say, the ideas in history must be able to be expanded into a chain of meaning and a chain of problems to be valuable, therefore, the key to discovering the ideas contained in history is to construct a chain of meaning and a chain of problems for them, and "repeating" the thoughts of the parties is only a relatively minor issue. In fact, Collingwood's theory of "thought reenactment" has been questioned by many because it is difficult to avoid imposing an understanding or even a condemning theory. In any case, our argument here is half-Collingwoodian, i.e., the recognition that the history of ideas is the deep structure of the history of events.

Braudel does not necessarily agree with this seemingly "idealistic" view, for him the history of the evolution of the "materialistic" structure of economic and social life is the deep history. A materialist understanding of history is undoubtedly useful in explaining the evolution of material life, but at the same time it still needs a thread that can explain spiritual life. Here, we need to understand "intellectual history" as a broad concept: the so-called ideology is not limited to the ideas and theories in historical documents, nor is it only the thoughts of the parties concerned, but also the concepts cast in the system, that is, the institutionalized concepts contained in all social game rules, including political systems, laws, ethics, distribution rules, cultural standards, education systems, time and space management systems, and so on.

The concept that is transformed into institutional practice is neither idealistic nor materialistic, but has both conceptual and practical practical power. The "thought" that history is concerned with is precisely the intersection of material life and the spiritual world, where the material and the spiritual are not disputed, but are one. The sufficient chain of meaning and problem lies in the dual inheritance and mutual construction of system and thought.

Unfolding in the chain of meaning and the chain of problems is the question of a civilization as a whole, which is related to the ability of a civilization to grow. In terms of potential, the chain of meaning and the chain of problems can stretch infinitely, but in reality it is also possible to produce irreparable interruptions due to external destruction or internal self-destruction, that is, the death of a civilization. We have no ability to predict where a civilization's chain of meaning or problem will stop.

The chain of meaning and the chain of questions are actually complementary functions of a way of civilization growth. The function of the chain of meaning lies in the self-affirmation, reproduction, strengthening and deepening of the spiritual gene, so that a civilization can maintain what it is despite changes, and the function of the chain of problems lies in the self-reflection, renewal and creation of a civilization on its own spiritual genes, so that a civilization can continue to renew while maintaining what it is. The chain of meaning is extensive, and the chain of questions is reflective, which combine to become a kind of civilization's ability to construct itself, that is, the ability to reflexivity in a civilization.

The ability to construct the chain of meaning and the chain of questions lies in the fact that they are always in a state of mutual activation: if there is no chain of questions, the idea becomes a definitive conclusion, and the definite theory inactivates the thought, and if there is no chain of meaning, there is nothing worth asking, and there is no need for thought. The chain of meaning and the chain of questions jointly construct historical links, which do not establish event relationships according to natural time sequences, but can establish links between issues or meanings at any point in time, so this link does not express the causality of events, but the relevance of meaning.

For example, it is possible for an event from a thousand years ago to be resurrected after a thousand years, so that the connection between an event of a thousand years ago and an event a thousand years later is a historical link of meaning or issue, although not temporal. It is only the historical links of factual processes, meanings, or issues that constitute spiritual history that the temporal connection between events constitutes spiritual history. To put it simply, the factual process is not history, but the chain of meaning and the chain of questions are.

The chain of meaning and the chain of questions identify a key clue for history to understand its own historicity, and are the signposts for history's reflection and interpretation of itself. This self-retrieval is obviously autocorrelated, and autocorrelation is a logical daunting trap, but the self-retrieval of history is an open, dynamic circulatory system that avoids paradoxes by forming a persistent effect through inconclusive dynamic autocorrelation. Through the notion of a chain of meaning and a chain of questions, we are able to examine how a history constructs itself.

Obviously, no historical fact, whether it is an event or a person, is not enough to construct its own meaning, and it must be extended through the chain of meaning and the chain of problems to form "historical significance", and the importance of any historical fact depends on the extension of the chain of meaning and the chain of problems. As long as the extension of the chain of meaning and the chain of questions does not end, history is the spiritual world that is always active. Therefore, historical significance does not belong to a historical fact itself, but to the futurity of the issues raised by this event, without which there is no meaning.

No historical fact is the answer, but a question for the future, and in this sense, all history is a relation. All eventual or contextual meanings are modified, replaced, discarded, or resurrected in the chain of meaning and questions that are constantly bifurcating and evolving. There is no pre-procedure for the way of history that does not exist for the sake of the future, and the chain of meaning and the chain of questions that focus on the future implies a framework of historical analysis and interpretation that does not presuppose any historical end or ultimate goal.

For the construction of the chain of meaning and the chain of problems, the most basic concepts are "change" and "birth". This is the core idea of "Zhou Yi". The purpose of change is to be born, and the so-called "life is easy". Being is only alive if it continues to exist, otherwise it is only dying, therefore, being alive is the transcendental purpose of existence. The existence that cannot be changed is only the tautology of existence, and the repetition of itself is equal to death, and the tautology is eternal truth in logic, but eternal death in ontology, so it is easy to say that life is easy. Birth is the starting point of all historical problems, and in the ontological sense, "continued existence" as a question precedes "existence". Without life, existence cannot create any problems. The changes that unfold around the things of life make up history.

There are two decisive major events in history: "writing" and "telling". This is the second set of basic concepts in historical analysis.

"Zuo" means creation, and its key meaning is to create the future, that is, to create a certain order of existence with the energy to continue to exist, and "Shu" is the spiritual interpretation of "Zuo", that is, to explain the concepts and problems contained in the great creations that have already taken place. "Writing" creates the chain of meaning and problems of history, while "writing" explains the extended chain of meaning and problems, and in this sense, "writing" and "speaking" are the life forms of history. Any kind of "writing" or "statement" must inherit the meanings and issues opened up by the previous "writing" and "statements", and at the same time open up the meanings and problems of the "writing" and "statements" in the future.

The Zhou Yi Ji Ci Xia has a review of the great "works" of early civilization, listing the inventions of material technology and spiritual systems, including metaphysical concepts-imagery systems (gossip), fishing and hunting nets, farming tools, trade markets, political systems, language and writing, boats, horses and carriages, houses and dwellings, coffins and tombs, and so on.

Ancient books such as Shangshu, Han Feizi, Guanzi, Lü's Spring and Autumn Period, Huainanzi and Shiben also record similar major inventions in ancient times, including political systems, astronomical calendars, safe dwellings, the use of fire, planting, fishing nets, chariots and horses, written books, pottery utensils, criminal laws, castles, music, musical instruments, maps, medicines, weapons, dresses, shoes, boats, ox farming implements, markets, and so on. Judging from the above "works" recorded in ancient history, the creations of the ancients have created a future that is conducive to the endless life of mankind.

All the major events that have a historical effect on life are worth remembering and explaining, but not all things that must be "remembered" are worth "remembering". The things that are recorded become the ledger of history, and the meaning of the words revealed the way of history, that is, the things that are worth "telling" must be the legislation of the order of existence. "Writing" transcends the passage of time and is always present through "narration", which becomes the spiritual basis for future generations to continue to create, so the continuity of the spirit lies especially in the transformation of "what is done" into "said".

As Zhang Xuecheng said, the legislator is the Duke of Zhou, and the founder of the religion is none other than Confucius.

Although the establishment of Confucius's religion is not institutional legislation, it is spiritual legislation. Sima Qian believes that Confucius's merit is not only "narration", but also the "work" of spiritual legislation: "On poetry and books, as a spring and autumn period, scholars have done it to this day" ("Historical Records, Volume 130, Taishi Gongzi Preface"). Confucius's "writing" of the Spring and Autumn Period confirmed the supremacy of historiography in the Chinese spiritual world, and almost turned history into faith. Confucius was not the founder of historical consciousness, but he was the standard-setter, and his criterion, that is, humanity must conform to the way of heaven. The so-called Spring and Autumn righteousness lies in using the way of heaven to distinguish what is a mutable or immutable order.

Obviously, it is not that no order must be changed—otherwise the legitimacy of the "Tangwu Revolution" cannot be explained—but that it must be in accordance with the way of heaven. It can be seen that the important thing that needs to be remembered is that it contains the great righteousness that conforms to the way of heaven. Sima Qian said it most clearly, he knew what history does not write: "If it is not the world, it will not survive" ("Historical Records: The Family of the Marquis").

The principle is clear that things related to the rise and fall of the world are major events, but what things really determine the rise and fall of the survival are not necessarily the most conspicuous events. Legislators, institutional revolutions, or life-and-death battles are certainly matters of general interest, but we cannot ignore those relatively slow changes, and gradual changes may contain more profound changes. Marx and Braudel, among others, argue that gradual changes in economic, technological, and social life are more profound events, especially when viewed on a "long-term" scale.

The Chinese historiographical tradition based on the Spring and Autumn Period and the Records of the Historians recognized the significance of the long-term scale earlier, and Sima Qian's principle of "changes through the past and the present" is the best expression of the long-term principle. The most far-reaching events are often not realized until much after the fact, so people continue to revise historical interpretations after the fact, and even give subversive new interpretations hundreds of years later, so that the conclusions are never conclusive, and ancient history is always new. Braudel was right, the big event is not the news of the moment, not the debate of the moment, the real big thing may be the inconspicuous and meaningful change, especially the evolution of institutions and technology.

To this, I believe that it is necessary to add the evolution of ideological methodology and conceptual systems. It can be seen that, after all, it is the general righteousness that defines what is a big thing, not the other way around. Confucius was clearly aware of this, and saw the hidden and far-reaching consequences in the subtle changes. Confucius believed that Ji's eight dances in the court were "tolerable or intolerable", and although this kind of violation was not a sensational act, it foreshadowed the trend of etiquette and happiness. Confucius's "Spring and Autumn" method is the law of determining major events with great righteousness.

There is no greater historical event than the changes of the past and the present. Therefore, the concepts of "ancient" and "modern" are the third set of coordinates for understanding historical changes. Different from the mental tense of the trichotomy of "past-present-future", the dichotomy of "ancient-modern" expresses the historical tense, which is a division of historicity, but not a division of temporality. Although the "future" has not yet arrived and falls outside the "ancient and modern", it is a voiceover that explains the concept of the ancient and the modern, and is the whole meaning of the ancient and the modern. If there is no future, "present" is the end symbol, and "ancient" loses its meaning with the end of history.

In the same way as life, the life and death of the spiritual world also depends on whether it can continue to grow and extend. For example, the meaning of an ancient text that is completely undecipherable is the sealed meaning of death, a relic, but no longer a usable heritage.

The future does not yet exist, so the future is not an object of knowledge, but the future is a question that has to be considered, so it is a metaphysical problem. Mozi once said: "If you can't plan but can't, you will know what you have in the past, and you will know what you know" ("Mozi: Not Attacking"). The principle of Mozi had a greater success rate in ancient times, when changes were slow, but it was not universally valid. Even in ancient times, where experience was relatively stable, the knowledge of the past was not necessarily reliable, so when experience failed, it was necessary to create something and reopen the possible path of the future. Mozi's "knowledge of the past" only tells half of the future problem, and the other half of the problem is "to open up".

"Doing" brings existence into a state of change, so that even chronos become kairos, and time becomes history. The image of "today" is Mu Duo, which is the king's order to inform the new law to bid farewell to the old law, so although "today" is at this time, its meaning is in the future. The creation of what can be called "present" necessarily means the beginning of an existential order, and it can be seen that "present" is a historical tense that contains a futuristic, proclaiming the presence of the future in advance and having contemporariness, so that time exceeds the present state of the present.

"Ancient and modern" are both historical tenses defined in terms of "make", referring to the historical creation of the past perfect tense and the historical creation of the present continuous tense, respectively, so there is a temporal dislocation between them and the natural tense. If there is no change in the existing order of existence and no new "work" in the existing life, then even if it belongs to the present tense in the time tense, it still belongs to the "ancient" in the historical tense; if a system or spiritual structure has not changed, even if it belongs to the creation of a long time ago, it will always have the contemporaneity of "present". Defining the historical tense in terms of ancient and modern concepts, it can be seen that a natural time can be very long and its history is very short, or conversely, a natural time is very short and its history is very long.

The essence of the difference between ancient and modern lies in the change of the order of existence, which is manifested in the concept of "revolution" in a broad sense, including not only political revolution and institutional revolution, but also cultural revolution and technological revolution, etc., and usually the institutional revolution that attracts the most attention. As far as the ancient and modern Chinese system is concerned, it can be said that there have been three institutional revolutions: the changes of the Shang and Zhou dynasties, the changes of the Zhou and Qin dynasties, and the changes of modern China. The historical consciousness of the distinction between the ancient and the modern may have originated from the historical experience of the "Tangwu Revolution", but it is due to Sima Qian, who realized the chain of meaning of "connecting the ancient and the modern".

The "ancient and modern" that Sima Qian reflects on is mainly the changes of the Zhou and Qin dynasties, which are not only a change of dynasty, but also a revolution of the system, which means that the change of historical tense is far more than a change of stars. Sima Qian does not seem to see that the changes in the Shang and Zhou dynasties were also a change in the ancient and modern times of an institutional revolution, because according to the understanding of the Han Dynasty, the political and social system from the Yellow Emperor Yao Shun Tang Wu to Qin Shi Huang has always belonged to the royal system of the world, so it is classified as the "ancient" of the pre-Qin Dynasty. This understanding of the Han Dynasty is not very accurate, but it is harmless.

The royal politics represented by the three dynasties may have been a common ideal from the Yellow Emperor to the pre-Qin dynasty, but the system of the world, including feudal princes and institutionalized ritual music, was created by the Western Zhou Dynasty. Before the Zhou Dynasty, the Yaoshun Xia Shang capital was only a system of universal covenants, and an institutionalized system of heaven had not yet been established. Qin Shi Huang abolished the feudal princes and established the unification of counties and counties, this "great unification" system is a work of creating history, the strength is comparable to the work of Zhou Gong, relative to the "ancient" historical tense, Qin created the "present" historical tense. If we only talk about the past and the present in terms of institutional changes, then the more than 2,000 years after the Qin Dynasty have always belonged to the "present" of the Qin and Han systems. The "present" of the Qin and Han dynasties ended at the end of the Qing Dynasty and became "ancient".

The "present" of modern China is the "present" that has not yet been shaped and is still under construction, that is, the so-called modernity. However, China's modernity has not yet been completed, and the globalization movement has deeply involved modern China in the global "present" shared by the whole world, so today's China is in two overlapping historical tenses at the same time. In addition to the dual tense of modernity and globality, we are also facing a technological revolution that is more profound than the institutional revolution, such as artificial intelligence, gene editing, and quantum physics, which is an existential revolution that may lead to the "change of being", and is a predicted future tense, so that we are in the three "present" historical tenses at the same time. This is something that has never been done since ancient times, and there is the most complicated fate in it, and it is not left to be left alone.

As far as the state of society is concerned, all changes in ancient and modern times are presented as a cyclical transformation of governance and chaos, so "governance and chaos" is another set of historical analysis concepts juxtaposed with "ancient and modern" to analyze the orderliness of society. Mencius said: "The life of the world is long, and one rule is one chaos" ("Mencius Tengwen Gongxia"). "Liutao" also said: "The world is bustling, one profit and one void, one rule and one chaos" ("Liutao, Volume 1, Profit and Void").

Surplus and deficiency are the level of material wealth, and control of chaos is an indicator of order. This hypothetical view of Jiang Taigong points out that there is a high correlation between chaos and surplus and deficiency. In ancient societies, order and material abundance were almost inevitably related, and it was rare to be out of touch, but strangely, today's developed societies seem to be moving towards a kind of social disorder caused by conceptual disorder, which shows that the relationship between chaos and surplus may not be forever. In any case, the cycle of chaos is still a pattern of change for which there are no counterexamples.

The theoretical advantage of the model of governance and chaos analysis is that the degree of orderliness of society, state, or culture is the most effective universal criterion for historical evaluation, because "order" can be objectively assessed and has clear empirical criteria. Troubled times mean the failure of spiritual systems, systems, and social strategies, so they are out of order, and governing the world means the success of spiritual systems, systems, and social strategies, so order. To be more precise, "governance" means that a society has reached a stable equilibrium that is conducive to the economy and the development of a rich life, and the so-called state of living and working in peace and contentment makes people willing to accept the ready-made rules of the game without destroying their enthusiasm; "chaos" is the opposite, with economic imbalance and social disorder, and everyone is willing to break the rules, because only by breaking the rules can we make a profit. Whether it is governance or chaos, it can be proved by measurable indicators such as economic indicators, cultural richness, crime rate, rule effectiveness, social satisfaction, etc., and the evaluation criteria of governance and chaos are rarely disturbed by values.

"Governance" is not necessarily the optimal state, but it is a necessary condition for social cooperation and social improvement. The "chaos" model attempts to explain "what is effective order" rather than "what should be", or in other words, it tries to explain "what are the social conditions of good and bad" rather than "what is the best ideal society". The question of what is good or bad in life can be clearly defined.

Human suffering, deprivation, calamity, conflict, repression, slavery, and other misfortunes all have a threshold of tolerance, so that human beings have a consensus on what is unbearable, and as for what is an ideal society, it is a borderless question, people can always fantasize about better things, and there is also a lack of consensus on the understanding of good things. Therefore, the model of chaos control based on measuring the degree of suffering is a model of historical analysis with universal validity.

The chain of meaning and the chain of problems of history form a bifurcated path in the historical time and space defined by change, creation and narration, ancient and modern, and governance and chaos. Historians have narrated different historical stories based on the different chains of meaning and problems they have discovered, so that the history we read is presented as an overlapping multidimensional time and space, although there is only one world, there are multiple historical narratives, so that the world becomes plural in history.

The chain of meaning and the chain of questions contain the ability to extend infinitely, so that the living world has an inherent infinity, so that the metaphysical infinity is no longer a transcendental question mark far away, but becomes an internal problem of life that is close at hand.