"Philosophy and Life", such a title, it is not uncommon, in the book market, there will always be such a suitable shade of books.
But the book I want to talk about, "Philosophy and Life", is a little heavier, and it is not small, and even the leader Mao Zedong who wrote the preface for him was the leader.
How can Mao Zedong preface this book?
I'll have to devote some space to the book and its author, Eschi.
Aischi, although little known, is a titan in the theoretical world.
Born in 1910 in Tengchong, Yunnan, Aischi studied in Japan in his early years, joined the socialist study group organized by the 158 figures of the Tokyo branch of the Communist Party of China, and after returning to China, he was committed to theoretical research and profound achievements in Marxist philosophy, and Mao Zedong was also his reader.
This book of Philosophy and Life can be understood as the "chat history" between Aischi and young people.
The article in the book is a reply letter written by Aischi to young readers when he was an editor in Shanghai's "Reading Life" magazine from 1935 to 1937.
The preface to the book, attached to Mao Zedong's handwriting, explores the details in detail, and even says at the end: When there is a flaw today, I will come to see you.
Such a vivid, warm, windy and fiery tone shows that Mao Zedong also carefully studied Aischi's works.
This book expounds Marxist theory in simple and simple language, which can be read as a theoretical work or as propaganda material.
As far as philosophical theory is concerned, Aischi's book is not yet a masterpiece, and Mao's selected articles explaining philosophy are much more profound than this book.
But the rare and valuable thing about this book is that it is popular and cordial, and it uses a chat method to propagate Marxism to young people.
Under the historical environment at that time, the salvation of China needed young people who were flourishing, but young people were always angry, impulsive, stubborn, passionate, angry at life, impulsive in their righteousness, obstinate in ideals, passionate about progress, and resistant to all the "vulgarity" around them.
There is no doubt that this is the absolutism that young people always have to avoid.
Esqui's book is all about helping young people avoid the harm of extreme absolutism. I summarized some of the ideas in the book, and I can roughly see the subtlety of Aischi's thought.
First of all, we must look at absolutism relatively, which is a necessary consideration for a person's growth.
Moreover, absolute darkness and absolute light are both a bias in the worldview.
We tend to fall into a kind of "absolute and relative" double standard, relative to ourselves, I am progressing, awakening, and everything external is absolute, they, decaying wood can not be carved also. This is absolutism.
Nothing is absolute, not even ideal, nor is it absolute.
The ideal must grow out of the soil of reality, the future is born out of the present, the ideal is not the idealistic Tower of Babel, not the utopia in heaven.
But while pointing out the problem of absolutism, Aischi will also extend his thinking further, exhorting the youth from the opposite side to avoid falling into absolutism in the other direction.
The absolute negation of absolutism is also absolutism - the belief that there is no ideal or truth, that ideals are the bread drawn by the power, that truth is a little girl dressed up, who has just climbed out of the trap of absolutism, has fallen into the swamp of skepticism, and then falls deeper into nihilism, that everything is a common imagination that has been fabricated, that everything is meaningless.
After dissecting these ideas, Aischi again warned the youth: Progress is not an isolated concept, progress is a systematic concept, a concept of radiation, a concept of self-promotion and others.
I must say that this kind of education is what the youth of today need, the enlightenment of thought, but they have maintained rationality, and it is no wonder that Comrade Mao Zedong will preface it for him!