二月读书志
The content of religion originates in the religious individual; it is the expression and embodiment of his sense of cosmic unity and purpose. Form in religion, however, is a product of the group. A group changes and develops more slowly than an individual does and therefore tends to lag behind. Hence form never catches up with content. Forms are preserved even though the notions or emotions behind them have changed or disappeared.
... If life has neither meaning nor purpose, the wisdom and harmony which we actually find in the world become wholly incomprehensible. God's nature is unintelligible to us; His justice cannot be measured by human standards. Nevertheless, we can assume that our sense of justice, however rudimentary, and our efforts at moral conduct, however inadequate and fumbling, are part of a larger cosmic pattern and rooted in the justice and morality of God, a refraction of that light for which our soul longs.
************************************以下讨论关于人在宇宙中的位置，对于如何生活有重要的指导意义************************
What is man's position in the cosmos? Man -- and man alone of all beings known to us -- is molded and influenced by the cosmos in two different ways: through his consciousness and knowledge of the world; and through his intuitive apperception of the world, much of which can never be consciously known, yet can be lived and experienced. What we know is merely a fragment of what we are. The individuality of a person does not manifest itself in his knowledge of reality which he derives from his senses and intellect; a man becomes an individual by the way he opens himself to the immediacy of the experience of life.
... The more a man penetrates nature with his knowledge, the less he can live and experience it with his whole being. Yet the ultimate source of our deepest certainties is not the knowledge we may accumulate but life itself. We are certain of our own existence because of the immediacy of our experience of life itself. Reason can never achieve this certainty; it is pre-rational. The deepest essence of life cannot be grasped by the intellect or "proved" by reason or scientific method. It is life itself which makes our intellect and its knowledge possible. We are not because we think; we think because we are. Living intuition speaks where our intellect fails us.
---------------From <Faith and Reason-- Modern Jewish Thought> By Samuel Hugo Bergman
"God simply would not be God without the world. This is not the trivial logical point that a ruler needs someone or something to rule over in order even to be a ruler. Rather the point is beased on a general theme in Hegel's philosophy. IN many cases, agents cannot come to self-understanding unless and until they encounter 'the other'. Thus God, like OTHER AGENTS, needs to define himself in terms of an external object, which is not God. Only by engaging with and interacting with the world can God come to gain knowledge of himself. Accordingly the story of human history is equally the story of God coming to self-awareness. The Hegelian notion of 'Geist', roughly 'the spirit of the age', is also, broadly speaking 'God's CURRENT LEVEL of SELF-UNDERSTANDING.' "
----------- Wolff's interpretation of Hegelian thoughts in <Why read marx today>
<A freewheelin time> -- By Suze Rotolo
《风物语》 --By 阿刀田高
<Predictably Irrational> -- By Dan Ariely
《狼图腾》 -- By 姜戎
《病隙碎笔》-- By 史铁生
... If life has neither meaning nor purpose, the wisdom and harmony which we actually find in the world become wholly incomprehensible. God's nature is unintelligible to us; His justice cannot be measured by human standards. Nevertheless, we can assume that our sense of justice, however rudimentary, and our efforts at moral conduct, however inadequate and fumbling, are part of a larger cosmic pattern and rooted in the justice and morality of God, a refraction of that light for which our soul longs.
************************************以下讨论关于人在宇宙中的位置，对于如何生活有重要的指导意义************************
What is man's position in the cosmos? Man -- and man alone of all beings known to us -- is molded and influenced by the cosmos in two different ways: through his consciousness and knowledge of the world; and through his intuitive apperception of the world, much of which can never be consciously known, yet can be lived and experienced. What we know is merely a fragment of what we are. The individuality of a person does not manifest itself in his knowledge of reality which he derives from his senses and intellect; a man becomes an individual by the way he opens himself to the immediacy of the experience of life.
... The more a man penetrates nature with his knowledge, the less he can live and experience it with his whole being. Yet the ultimate source of our deepest certainties is not the knowledge we may accumulate but life itself. We are certain of our own existence because of the immediacy of our experience of life itself. Reason can never achieve this certainty; it is pre-rational. The deepest essence of life cannot be grasped by the intellect or "proved" by reason or scientific method. It is life itself which makes our intellect and its knowledge possible. We are not because we think; we think because we are. Living intuition speaks where our intellect fails us.
---------------From <Faith and Reason-- Modern Jewish Thought> By Samuel Hugo Bergman
"God simply would not be God without the world. This is not the trivial logical point that a ruler needs someone or something to rule over in order even to be a ruler. Rather the point is beased on a general theme in Hegel's philosophy. IN many cases, agents cannot come to self-understanding unless and until they encounter 'the other'. Thus God, like OTHER AGENTS, needs to define himself in terms of an external object, which is not God. Only by engaging with and interacting with the world can God come to gain knowledge of himself. Accordingly the story of human history is equally the story of God coming to self-awareness. The Hegelian notion of 'Geist', roughly 'the spirit of the age', is also, broadly speaking 'God's CURRENT LEVEL of SELF-UNDERSTANDING.' "
----------- Wolff's interpretation of Hegelian thoughts in <Why read marx today>
<A freewheelin time> -- By Suze Rotolo
《风物语》 --By 阿刀田高
<Predictably Irrational> -- By Dan Ariely
《狼图腾》 -- By 姜戎
《病隙碎笔》-- By 史铁生
