Issue244 【0906G 文以载道三月四月小组】第一周第三次作业 by susanner

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Issue244
"Most societies do not take their greatest thinkers seriously, even when they claim to admire them."
很多社会并不重视思想家，即使社会宣称很景仰这些思想家。
此文几乎全是引用例子，参照wyq3335的作业，链接在下面。
[提纲]
1.惧怕这些思想家
2.歪曲他们的理论.
3.社会出于炫耀，声称敬仰他们
In general, I agree with the assertion that almost all the greatest thinkers have to face such a dilemma that most societies don’t take them seriously even when they claim to admire them.   Most societies fear them, distort them and just show them, even when they claim to admire them. Being a great thinker often means to be misunderstood, to be distorted, and even to be destroyed just because he transcends his times. From at least three aspects we could support and enrich the speaker’s contention.

In the first place, many societies don’t take their greatest thinkers seriously, but fear them deeply. Because greatest thinkers always call for something like freedom and justice in their theories, which always question the rulers and enlighten the people, some societies are terrified and then become hostile to them. obviously, it is very difficult for a society be tolerant to understand and appreciate a great thinker. To such a society, a real philosopher is really troublesome. As we know, the great thinker Socrates created the theories of virtue and justice which enlightened the people and at the same time brought great pressure into the government of Greek to make some reform. He made the rulers upset and irritated, so he  was tried for corrupting the minds of Athenian youth and subsequently sentenced to death. Tolerance is the first thing for a society to take its great thinkers seriously. Without tolerance, a society can’t make good use of greatest ideas of its philosophers.
In the second place, most societies don’t take their greatest thinkers seriously, but tend to distort the theories of greatest thinkers by claiming to admire them. For example, If a ruler want his people to be royal to him, to sacrifice their lives for him, he would like to have them moralized by some theories. He knows clearly that the people love their greatest thinkers and only by the name of them could he practice his insidious ideas and selfish plans fairly. By distorting the theories of such great thinkers, a ruler could convince his people. Confucius is regarded as a great thinker in China. When we come to his words written almost 2000 years ago, we could find there are replete with active and vivid expressions of ideas about the life and the world. But his theories were distorted badly with dull and rigid dogmas of royalism by almost every dynasty. Every dynasty used him or his theories as their best model to moralize its people and strengthen its reign. But the reign under the distortion of great thinkers will make little progress of its culture. The history of China proves that. To be honest to the theories of greatest thinkers is a key to a society to take his greatest thinker seriously. Without the honesty to ideas of greatest thinkers, a society is dangerous in self-deceiving.
In the third place, in some societies people don’t take their greatest thinkers in heart, just claiming to admire them falsely. They endeavor to pay attention to such thinkers just for showing off themselves. They have little knowledge about great thinkers but they have strong desire to show themselves up by pretending to take them seriously. For example, they have money to buy home the cannons of the great thinker Cant, and put them carefully on their beautiful shelves, but they have no time to read them. They have interest to quote them to other people, but they have no patience to read just one page of them quietly. Understanding is most difficult part for a society take his greatest thinkers seriously.
For all kinds of reasons, the fate of a greatest thinker to his society is often tragic. But in the long run, without such greatest thinkers a society could make little progress. Just because of their deep insights of the life and the world, the people know more about their society, and do more for their society, and then a much more better society could be built up. In the battle of seeking for the truth, a society have much responsibility to take its greatest thinkers seriously, without hurting them despotically, without distorting them viciously, without claiming to respect them ostensibly.
参考链接:https://bbs.gter.net/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=389107&highlight=ISSUE244

[ 本帖最后由 susanner 于 2009-1-18 12:12 编辑 ]