Feng Qi Collected Works (Volume 3: Human Freedom and Truth, Goodness, and Beauty)

Author: Feng Qi
Publisher:
Publishing Time: Not available
Features: This is the third part of "Three Essays on Wisdom," focusing on the discussion of transforming theory into virtue, primarily addressing issues in value theory. The fundamental viewpoint throughout the book is that human freedom lies in achieving the unity of truth, goodness, and beauty. The dialectics of cognition, when applied to the realm of value theory, manifests as the cultivation of virtue in free personalities in the creation of values such as truth, goodness, and beauty. The book is divided into two parts: The first four chapters elucidate the essence of human demand for freedom from the perspective of social practice and how it is expressed in the realm of values through evaluation and creation. The last six chapters examine the value ideals in various cultural fields (mythology, philosophy, science, morality, art, etc.), and then comprehensively discuss the free realm of the unity of truth, goodness, and beauty, as well as the path for humanity to reach this realm. Truth, goodness, beauty, and utilitarian values constitute a unified value system, through which the dialectics of cognition runs, primarily in two aspects: the unity of ideal and reality, and the unity of heaven and humanity, nature and the Dao. Labor serves as the bridge between these two unities. The principles of a rational value system include: achieving dialectical unity between the natural principle and the humanistic principle on the basis of free labor; the full development of human essential forces, i.e., the rational and irrational (emotion, will); and the mutual promotion of free individuality and collective spirit to achieve the ideal goal of individual liberation and a unified community of all under heaven. As humanity creates culture, it cultivates itself, elevates its own value, and forms free personalities.