Chapter 53 <This is also right and wrong, and that is also right and wrong>

Zhuangzi, an ancient Chinese thinker, was a relativist. He advocated the unity of all things and believed that there is no difference between things.In Zhuangzi's view, existence and non-existence, success and destruction, life and death, each other and this, big and small, thick and thin, longevity and death, beauty and ugliness, good and bad, noble and cheap, right and wrong are all the same , there is no need to distinguish them. For example, right and wrong, Zhuangzi believes that right and wrong are right and wrong, and that is right and wrong, and this is right and wrong. There is no unified standard for measuring good and bad, beauty and ugliness, right and wrong. You have your standard, and I have mine. The world does not have public right, but what it is.

He gave an example: People who sleep in humid places will suffer from low back pain. Is it the same for loach?People feel scared when they climb high trees. Is it true that monkeys are also like this?So, among humans, loaches, and monkeys, who chooses the right place to live? Mao Qiang and Li Ji (both beauties in ancient legends) are considered beautiful by people, but when the fish saw them, they dived into the bottom of the water in fright, the birds flew high in fright when they saw them, and the moose ran away when they saw them. Then, who is the standard for measuring beauty and unbeauty among people, fish, birds, and moose?People like to eat beef and mutton, deer like to eat grass, centipedes like to eat snakes, and crows like to eat mice.So, which one is the correct one, humans or animals?

Zhuangzi's conclusion is: right and wrong are a mess, each thing has its own standard, the public is right, and the old is right, there is no definite objective standard, so it is impossible to correctly understand things. There is not only the difference between mutual distinctions, but also the identity of interrelationship among objective things.Zhuangzi's mistake is to infinitely exaggerate the identity of things and deny the difference between things. There is a rule in logic: when comparing two things, there must be comparability between the two, and things that are not comparable cannot be compared.

As early as in the "Mo Jing" in ancient my country, the rule of non-comparison of different kinds was put forward.For example, if someone asks the question which is longer, wood or night, it violates this rule.Because the length of the stick refers to the length of space, and the length of the night refers to the length of time, the two cannot compare which one is longer and which is shorter. Taking the example given by Zhuangzi, since humans, loaches, and monkeys belong to different species, the natural attributes of the three are very different, so it is impossible to compare which one chooses a better or worse place to live.The same goes for the case of beauty or not.Humans are rational animals with social attributes. Humans have a question of whether they are beautiful or not. Fish, birds, and elks do not have the question of whether they are beautiful or not.When fish see Mao Qiang and Li Ji, they dive into the bottom of the water, when birds see them fly high, and when elk see them, they run away quickly, not because Mao Qiang and Li Ji are not beautiful, but because they are afraid that people will catch them.

Zhuangzi compares incomparable things by forcing them together to demonstrate non-standard subjectivity. This is a sophistry technique.In the field of social history, we admit that when a certain social event or social behavior has different effects on the interests of different classes and different people, people will indeed make different evaluations of it, but this fact does not prove that there is nothing wrong with measuring right and wrong. objective criteria. According to the point of view of historical materialism, this objective standard is to see whether a certain social event or behavior is conducive to the development of productive forces and social progress, and whether it is in line with the fundamental and long-term interests of the people; In other words, it is to see whether it conforms to social morality. In our country, it is to see whether it conforms to the socialist moral norms.If you leave this standpoint and standard, you will fall into the sophistry of relativism where right and wrong are unclear, good and bad are hard to distinguish, and that is also right and wrong, and this is also right and wrong, just like Zhuangzi.Lenin pointed out: Taking relativism as the basis of the theory of knowledge will inevitably lead one to either fall into absolute skepticism, agnosticism and sophistry, or fall into subjectivism. ("Selected Works of Lenin", Volume II, 1972, p. 136)