Young people should never read ancient texts

(translated from my Chinese blog)

This is my new project, “Nietzschean Philology”. In each installment, I’ll read a passage from Nietzsche’s original writings. By practicing text analysis, we can enhance our ability to understand the world.

The reading of "We Philologists" continues. Section 23 Nietzsche returns to the discussion of philology as a life's work, reiterating his strong opposition to young people engaging in ancient studies: young people, due to their scattered attention and triviality, modern moral arrogance, and fundamental limitations in life experience, cannot truly enter the lives of ancient people and cannot have any understanding of the true faces of the ancients.

The false enthusiasm for antiquity in which many philologists live. When antiquity suddenly comes upon us in our youth, it appears to us to be composed of innumerable trivialities; in particular we believe ourselves to be above its ethics. And Homer and Walter Scott--who carries off the palm? Let us be honest! If this enthusiasm were really felt, people could scarcely seek their life's calling in it. I mean that what we can obtain from the Greeks only begins to dawn upon us in later years: only after we have undergone many experiences, and thought a great deal.

"We Philologists" 23, Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by J. M. Kennedy 

This section returns to the question of life's purpose at the beginning of the book. The analogy of Chinese language teachers is still helpful in understanding what Nietzsche meant.

The false enthusiasm for ancient texts in which many Chinese language teachers live. --- Why does Nietzsche claim this enthusiasm to be false? His reasons are: ① young people's fragmentary and superficial impressions of the ancients; ② modern people often believe themselves to be morally superior to the ancients; ③ the lack of life experience limits young people's genuine understanding of the ancients.

I remember the first time I read "始皇既没" [meaning "The First Emperor has died" but sounding exactly like "屎黄寂寞"--literally shit-yellow-lonely] in middle school, my classmates held back their laughter, but some classes were more relaxed and burst into laughter. When we were young, we encountered vastly different ancient texts, and we would notice these trivial and tedious fragments, unable to see the bigger picture—such as the historical context of "Guo Qin Lun" (the internal danger of continuing the Qin system and harsh laws in early Han Dynasty), the ideological tradition behind the reflections of Qin's collapse (moral history view, the subtle advice on current politics through historical commentary, and the contributions of 士大夫[scholar-bureaucrat] to the narrative of the ruler's legitimacy), and the careful wording (neither using the emperor's death term "崩"[collapse] nor the neutral "死"[die] or "卒"[also die], but using "没"[diminish] to deliberately lower the historical status of Emperor Qin, while also acknowledging his profound impact on historical dynamics). Young language teachers often lack such a holistic perspective. If they happens to have such a holistic view ("born philologist"), it must be hard for them to be self-consistent and not in conflict with their surroundings.

The comparison between Homer and Scott, when placed in the contemporary Chinese context, is akin to the comparison between the Book of History and the works of 当年明月*. I believe that if Chinese language teachers were honest enough, they would prefer to read 当年明月 over the Book of History. 当年明月's writing is fundamentally not about ancient times but about modern life, employing modern thinking to forcefully interpret ancient history. (Is the Ming Dynasty considered ancient? Of course. If someone still possesses photos or objects from the late Qing Dynasty, the gloomy atmosphere is enough to make you realize it was a completely different era from today.) Therefore, modern Chinese language teachers who claim to love ancient times are, in the vast majority of cases, self-deceiving, as depicted in historical dramas, written by 当年明月, rather than the authentic and terrifying ancient behind layers of embellishment. Of course, the real ancient times will occasionally emerge from ancient texts, and at such times, language teachers will also use their usual methods to beautify, embellish, or simply ignore them. The psychology behind: the ancient that I love is just a minority of it, the sages, the scholars, and the moments of human brilliance; as for the dregs of that era, I, as a "morally superior" modern person, am fully qualified to pardon the ignorance and backwardness of ancient people, without being bound by it.

But this kind of historical progressivism is ultimately just hindsight, knowing the outcome of history (modern times) and then retroactively deducing the process. For example, in "Mozi," it is argued that ancient Chinese had already developed the prototype of modern logic, and in "Laozi," it is pointed out that the shadow of dialectics existed, yet no one ever questions why, if the ancients were truly so capable, these academic achievements did not have any follow-up? Why didn't they develop computers, the internet, and artificial intelligence two thousand years ago? And furthermore, are there any ancestral wisdoms we can borrow from now that would allow us to leap ahead of the West by a thousand years? (Those who have had their basic judgment destroyed by national pride, of course, can and have been arguing that we have been ahead of the West for thousands of years, that Chinese people's lives are million times happier than Westerners', that Chinese people are already living the highest level of earthly life, that Westerners only know how to develop technology and nothing of the human heart... To such people, I can only say, the Chinese life in the underworld is even next level, so hurry up and get buried already.)

But didn't Nietzsche also claim that modern times are superior to ancient times? Of course. But the moral arrogance of modern people lies precisely in confusing the support of the times with individual moral efforts. Today, we appear more moral and civilized than ancient people not because our individual moral standards are higher, but because the historical environment we are in makes it easier for us to act according to moral principles, as the cost of following morality is lower. As Bernard Williams put it, it is because our era has better "moral luck" and has nothing to do with the moral efforts made by each individual. If we modern people are thrown back into the harsh living conditions of ancient times, with ourselves barely able to eat and wear clothes, how many people could still maintain civilization and dignity? How many people could form a life-and-death brotherhood? And how many people could be like Zilu, who "tied his sash and died"? **

The crux of this section is the last point:

If this enthusiasm were really felt, people could scarcely seek their life's calling in it.

If a language teacher were to truly feel the enthusiasm of ancient life, he would be unable to endure living as a language teacher. Let me use a well-known example from textbook to illustrate this: "桃花源记[The Peach Blossom Spring]."***

A standard move for a modern language teacher is to interpret Tao Yuanming's essay as a utopian pastoral, as an expression of Tao's attitude of detachment from the chaotic world and indifference to fame and profit. For modern people who are deeply troubled by work, family, society, and other pressures, this is, of course, the easiest way to empathize with Tao's "Buddhist" mindset.

But is this really the case with "The Peach Blossom Spring"?

Tao's depiction of the Peach Blossom Spring features three radical aspects: complete rejection and isolation from history ("ignoring the Han Dynasty and the Wei and Jin Dynasties"); the disintegration of Confucian hierarchical order ("village paths crisscross, and roosters and dogs can be heard"—in ancient times, each family had their own fields, and the paths between them were the lanes that divided the fields; if these paths were all connected, it would mean achieving a radical communist society; even more absurdly, if following the viewpoint of 王安石†, this society was even "although there are fathers and sons, there are no lords and subjects," i.e., complete anarchism); and its inability to be reproduced and expanded ("cannot find the way again"). Imagine if one were to fully embrace the Peach Blossom Spring and the life attitude it represents. What would that mean? How would they understand history, especially historical continuity? How would they view the hierarchical bureaucratic organizations and family structures of the present? How would they cope with the vast scale of the world today, if the Peach Blossom Spring represents a tiny, unreproducible communist utopia?

The thought experiment designed by Tao in "The Peach Blossom Spring" is much more pessimistic than you might imagine. He is almost saying that to live a life of "contentment and joy," you must forget and be forgotten by history, must overcome the sense of distinction between people (which is the root of selfishness), must accept a very small-scale anarchic social form, and for this you must find some "like-minded people" to go with you to the "Peach Blossom Spring." Otherwise, do not complain that your life is not joyful. (Chen Yinke's article "On Tao Yuanming's 'The Peach Blossom Spring'" suggests that Tao's depiction may not be an imagination but a record, evidenced by the "wu-fortresses" appearing in remote areas at that time, but these small societies were often ruled by the fortress lords, not in an anarchic state, which does not match the state of not paying "king's tax" in Tao's poems.)

This is the most bitter prescription for life that Tao gave himself in the historical chaos of the transition between the Eastern Jin and the Western Jin dynasties. What kind of feeling could young people have when they read such painful thoughts? How could they possibly have such feelings? It's probably more fantastic than the craziest fantasies. Young people have never experienced political turmoil and don't know what "sense of distinction" means. They know neither that anarchy requires everyone's strivings, nor the saying "three monks and no water to drink," and they don't know that people always fight with each other. Young people can imagine a harmonious society with no disputes very naively, but it's only because they haven't seen office politics or the ugliness of human nature. In reality, even a few bundles of grass or a few pieces of meat between two peasant households, or a little bit of office resources between colleagues, is enough to cause a big argument. How can we talk about "contentment and joy"?

Then, now you ask me to go back and teach students about pastoral idylls and indifference to fame and fortune. Seriously? Which "born philologist" after thinking about this, after resonating so deeply with Tao, could endure the lightweight "standard answers" in the syllabus? Which Chinese language teacher dares to force themselves to dig to this depth in front of every classical Chinese text without doubting their lives?

This is the painful realization of Nietzsche at the age of 30 when examining his role as a philologist. After truly seeing the ferocious ancient life and, in turn, discerning the falsehood of modern life (and the equally ugly reality behind it), how could someone like Nietzsche still endure being a philologist, daily disseminating the illusory portrayals of the ancients?

At that time Nietzsche had not yet grown old, and he never had the chance to grow old by today's standards. But he imagined that when he was old, he would finally be able to empathize with the ancients, and by reflecting on his still-young self, he warned himself: "You are young, and you are very ignorant of the ancients and of life."

* 当年明月, a contemporary writer known for his popular interpretation of the Ming Dynasty in his work "明朝那些事儿" (Stories about Ming Dynasty), bestseller for decades.

** 子路, a student of Confucius well known for his stubbornness, loyalty and courage who, due to his insistence on 禮 (ritual/courtesy), was beaten to death because he kept on tying his sash when fighting.

*** A story written by 5th century poet Tao Yuanming (陶渊明). In the story, a traveler accidentally discovered a Utopian rural village called The Peach Blossom Spring somewhere unknown to the outside world, and when the traveler went back outside and told people, many tried to find it, but it was never to be found again.

† A famous scholar-bureaucrat in the Sung Dynasty 11th century, well known for his reform acts.