Chapter 68 long night

It was only 3:30 in the afternoon when our convoy entered Copenhagen, and it was already dark.A local friend said that it won't light until eight o'clock tomorrow morning. I finally know what a long night is. It's raining and I don't want to go out.Looking at the windows of houses on the street, there is a mysterious, faint light, while in restaurants and cafes, candles are lit.There must be an old-fashioned stove burning dimly, right?The long night in Northern Europe is really a bottomless world. There are no tall buildings in Copenhagen, usually four or five floors. The Radisson SAS Hotel where we stayed is the tallest in the city.From the window, the other taller buildings are those church spires.

Darkness and loneliness can help with deep thought.A small country with only 5 million people has made outstanding achievements in the world's scientific circles, especially in electromagnetism, optics, astronomy, anatomy, medicine, nuclear physics, etc., and even produced masters in large numbers. This probably has something to do with Long Night, right?A short day reduces the effective time for menial labor without reducing the level of intelligence of a nation. However, darkness and loneliness also have a large number of downsides.Most of people's melancholy disappears in the sunshine and radiates among friends. This kind of possibility is greatly reduced here, so it accumulates and thickens, and it becomes thicker and thicker, resulting in a group psychological tendency and a widespread and strong desire to commit suicide.In the dark, only the sound of church bells can have a little psychological soothing effect, but this effect is gradually weakened by getting used to it.

I believe that in this psychological struggle, someone must swim to the other side and wave to the companions who are about to drown.Therefore, in the long night of northern Europe, besides the glimmering of scientific intelligence, there must also be the spark of human wisdom. I thought of Kierkegaard. Copenhagen was almost a natural hell for him.His father's panic, depression and disordered behavior almost shattered his entire childhood. The family suffered from constant disasters, and his physical fitness was poor.In order to escape from hell, he chose theology, and the choice of theology forced him to give up his first love.She chose to cry, and I chose to suffer, but what is touching is that his writing all his life is to build a monument to mourn love.All of Kierkegaard's deeds are related to this city.

More importantly, of course, is his thinking in the dark.His most familiar thinking result is to divide the realm of life into three stages, one is the aesthetic stage, the other is the moral stage, and the third is the religious stage.From shallow to deep, negating layer by layer, and the end point is the third stage. In fact, the aesthetic stage he mentioned, more accurately, should be the perceptual stage, that is, the stage of pursuing sensory satisfaction.Many people stay at this stage throughout their lives, but some people rise to the moral stage when they realize the boredom and immorality in it.In the moral stage, people are clear about right and wrong, their behavior is perfect, and they are flawless, but more of it comes from an external norm, a kind of self-restraint, so they will inevitably fall into pain due to suppressing their nature.Those who are aware of this pain and are willing to gain relief from a higher level may enter the religious stage.Kierkegaard believes that at that stage, a person will not be tempted by material things, not afraid of the pressure of public opinion, break free from the worldly network, be indifferent to moral judgments, just stand alone in the wilderness to talk to God, and feel bliss in the pain of repaying life's debts.

In my opinion, the most brilliant part of Kierkegaard's theory is not the description of the third stage, which he considers the highest state, but his exposure of the problems in the first and second stages.In fact, the so-called aesthetic stage and moral stage are very close to the perceptual stage and rational stage discussed repeatedly by Western philosophers, but he extended them to life and became a philosophy of life.The one-sidedness of sensibility and one-sidedness of rationality that Western philosophers have pointed out long ago, are elaborated by him in the process of life, which powerfully illustrates the fatal disadvantages of the two states of life.The religious stage he speaks of, therefore, is really only a clearing for those who have fled from those two states of life.There should be no previous ills in this open space, but what it is, can only be a lyrical and longing description.It is not easy to vacate such an open space, and we cannot demand what kind of theological or philosophical buildings he built there.

What is more worthy of our cherishment than this is that Kierkegaard pointed out the optional state of people in front of these three stages.The three stages are not arranged sequentially and step by step for everyone, they are only for selection.And this choice exists all the time, everywhere.A person jumps into different realms of life due to different choices, and the distance between them can be vast.It is not difficult to see that his proposition has already had the germination of existential philosophy, so later existential philosophers always respect Kierkegaard as their predecessors, and even call him their spiritual father.There are many scholars who have integrated philosophy and theology in history. Kierkegaard alone has been rediscovered with extraordinary value in the 20th century, but it is because he inadvertently pushed the philosophy of life to the edge of the new era.

Unfortunately, when he was still living in Copenhagen, everything was very bad.The great philosopher lived to be only forty-two, and the last and most important years of his life were exhausting.He is a devout Christian, but the more devout he is, the more he is tired of the many abuses of the Danish church, so he finally broke with the church.Ordinary citizens only believe that the church is the place of faith, and this causes relatives and friends, including his only brother, to break with him, making him unprecedentedly lonely. Another thing was that the great philosopher had had the misfortune of rubbing off on an offensive tabloid in Copenhagen that nobody could afford to mess with.Philosophers, of course, refused to give an inch, but the tabloids were eager to have such a scholar entangled with them, so there was a scuffle.It is a pity that ordinary citizens only believe the rumors and slanders of the tabloids, so he has become the first-rate villain in the hearts of the citizens.

Looking at the dark Copenhagen under the window, I thought that Kierkegaard actually encountered two opponents, one was the church and the other was the tabloids, but in the end it was the general public who really became the opponents.The townspeople are never on the Master's side, so I say that the city has been unfair to its Master. On October 2, 1855, the exhausted philosopher fell while walking and became paralyzed in the lower limbs, but refused treatment, visits, and communion. He died on November 11.Such an ending is really hard to recall. The most dazzling philosophical constellation in the nineteenth century was extinguished in the too long night of Copenhagen.