<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > the flowers in Yang Zhu's garden have disappeared from the landscape of Chinese thought</h1>
——Yang Zhu: A Mountain That Chinese Literati Can't Bypass (11)
Yang Zhu strictly defines the boundaries of personal, social and national interests, and is the first person to advocate the sanctity and inviolability of personal interests. From the point of view of textual expression, this is the conclusion reached by contemporary scholars influenced by Western thought.
For example, Qian Mu believes that the ideas expressed in Liezi Yang Zhu, if expressed in today's language, "the awakening of the individual self" is the idea that requires the liberation of human nature.
In Hu Shi's view, Yang Zhu's egoism is not synonymous with harming others and benefiting oneself, but to clarify the boundaries between the individual and the collective, society, and the state. It is precisely because of the unclear borders in China that it has caused the tragedy of the so-called martyrdom of martyrdom and martyrdom.
In Liu Zehua's vision, Yang Zhu exalted the value of the individual. Yang Zhu's noble self and self for me are not what ordinary people call low-level selfishness, but to show that they are a natural independent being, and their value is above everything else.
In the eyes of Western sinologists, Yang Zhu has many similarities with the epicureus of ancient Greece. Some Chinese scholars also call Yang Zhu the Epicurus of China. Epicurus lived in a time similar to that of Yang Zhu, the city-state was in crisis, and people faced "great terror and danger". As "greece's greatest enlightener", Epicurus believed that pleasure and avoidance of suffering were an instinct of all animals after birth, and the purpose of man. On the question of death, Epicurus believed that we should not be overly worried about it, but should face it calmly: "When we are alive, death has not yet come, and when we die, we no longer exist." Epicurus put forward the theory of happiness that confronts and grasps reality, and puts it into practice. At the door of his garden, he posted the dream of the ideal life he pursued: "Guest, you will live well here, and here will give you happiness and supreme goodness." ”
With his unique perspective, Yang Zhu opened up a path similar to that of contemporary Western individualism in thought. But the outcomes of the two are very different.
The flowers of epicurus's garden, after the baptism of time, have become a beautiful landscape in the Western intellectual circles, and have been blooming for more than 2,000 years. Yang Zhu's garden has disappeared from the landscape of Chinese thought, and all the flowers have become fertilizer for other people's gardens, making it difficult to find their traces.
In the face of the disaster brought to the Chinese nation by Western guns and cannons, Kang Youwei, who is more proficient in Western thought, looks for the root causes in Chinese and Western thought: Yang Zhu, together with Lao Tzu's learning, said that it was a great disaster for China. Kang Youwei claimed more than once that rebirth does not repeat death, and that Westerners are close to Yang Zhu. But he did not realize that it was the so-called individualistic ideas that led to the collapse of the Chinese Empire that became an important ideological driving force for Western society to become rich and powerful and dominate the world.
It can be said that Chinese thought and Western thought represented by ancient Greece walk on two parallel lines, when Western thought with guns and cannons become the mainstream discourse in the world today, there is no basis for the dialogue between Chinese and Western ideas, the so-called Chinese body Western use or Western body use, just a word game played when there is no way to go, becoming an eternal pain in the history of Chinese culture.
Kang Youwei's reaction, like a self-pitying student who is frightened by hooligans, can only find the root cause from his own home. 100 years have passed, and China has not died because of Yang Xue. Facing such an ending, just like facing the wrong way of the dead sheep, Yang Zhu has already burst into tears.
Yang Zhu was the earliest intellectual in China, a supporting role in mainstream Chinese society, a marginal person, a predator of this society, and an object of ridicule by mainstream society. Maybe there is no Yang Zhu in the world, and there are more people who scold, and there is a Yang Zhu...
Yang Zhu is no one. It's like the wind of spring, the lightning of summer, the floating clouds of autumn, the white frost of winter. It has come, it has come, it has come and gone, and there is no nostalgia for the noisy world, no dust, no trace...
Yang Zhu is there, not bound to the world, not tied to the world, moving from the heart, swimming from sex, full of contempt and helplessness...
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