1.Heraclitus: a wise man on earth
Living in the world is like a boat sailing in the sea, always facing the fear of loneliness and nihility. However, it is precisely to overcome such fear that “the great must be eternal” has become the persistent call of human beings from the heart. It seems that only by virtue of his achievements and fame can he transcend time and death and be forever remembered by future generations. Only the eternity of the great can make life seem understandable, and only “immortality” can give life a reasonable proof. The desire for eternal life is engraved in the history of human civilization.
Philosophers are the bravest knights in the quest for eternity. The gifted philosopher proudly despises the present, ignores all things that are fleeting, places all great hopes on the eternal truth, builds a solid self-sufficient city wall, and worships alone on the way to immortality.
Heraclitus, the last and most brilliant human sage among the truth seekers. The lonely hermit had a profound insight into the impermanence of world change and destruction, so he was not only uninterested in the truth and truth inquiry of others, but also different from other philosophers’ enthusiasm for fame. He was like a star that lost its atmosphere and would only turn away in disgust when facing people. However, Heraclit despised fame, but did not deny his own eternal truth. “Know yourself” is a necessity. The truth that the self knows and the person who knows the truth are still respected by the peak of human wisdom.
2. The gods of Olympus: the faces of indulgence
The first god residence in Greek mythology is the majestic and magnificent image of Olympus, which is the war between the gods and Titan. Olympus does not possess the nobility, virtue, compassion or compassion of a religious god, but is the sublimation of human beings. The happy, confident and spirited gods overturned the Titan Empire and killed the trolls. Like roses growing out of thorns, due to the impulse of Apollo’s beauty, the terror system of the original Titanic gods evolved into the carnival system of the Olympian gods after several gradual transition stages.
Nietzsche called Apollo “the father of the gods”. Apollo of Homer, the mighty and rational laws of Apollo are the first kind of intelligent survival in the face of suffering life provided by Greek mythology. At the same time, it provides a way to prove survival in the form of “theology”: Apollo showed us how much people need the whole painful world with its noble and solemn attitude, which promotes the illusion of salvation for individual people. Strong illusions and optimistic illusions, simple and magnificent, provide imaginative salvation for Homeric people.
The gods themselves led human lives, thus defending life. The gods of Apollo and Olympus can indeed explain the sufferings of life and the legitimacy of survival: the way the Greeks justify survival and the world is to make every way of survival of their own find the corresponding way of survival of God in the world of God. This system built by Homer enabled Greeks to live in the bright sunshine of the Godhouse, and even sighs became the ode of survival. However, although the spirit of the original Titan was temporarily suppressed and covered up, it was not completely destroyed. The victory of Apollo/Olympian gods was only temporary and partial. Only in the Doric country and Doric art, under the constant resistance to the Titan’s barbaric nature, did the real “permanent military camp” of Apollo god form. However, Titan only took a temporary breath in the peaceful and dignified body of Apollo. When his strength was fully accumulated, Apollo was already in a rout.
3.Prometheus: God of Rebellion
If the myth that Olympus defeated the Titan monster is still the concentrated embodiment of Apollo’s wisdom, then in the story of Prometheus, the tension of spiritual conflict has been highlighted, and the sacred mountain of Olympus itself has begun to collapse quietly. Prometheus stole kindling for the world. As the patron saint of a new culture, fire is also a metaphor of wisdom. However, Prometheus, who was full of great love for mankind, was bound to the cliff by Zeus. The myth of Prometheus, on the one hand, concentrated on the expression of “the infinite pain of a brave individual”, on the other hand, expressed “the plight of the gods”, and even “the premonition of the end of the gods”. Prometheus is a rebellious god. Although he belongs to “Apollo’s patriarchy”, he is also “the mask of Dionysus”.
For human beings, the fire ignited the ignorant world, but it was regarded as an invasion of nature and gods. So at the moment of turning around and looking back, people saw the evil in this wisdom, but it was also a crime full of dignity. This is a kind of primitive blasphemy similar to the original sin, or the primitive contradiction that cannot be eliminated. The myth of Prometheus therefore contains an extremely bitter thought: there is misfortune in the nature of things, and the world is full of contradictions, because the individuals who are striving upward like Titans are bound to desecrate the gods. The enlightenment of Prometheus’ wisdom to life is that he also defends human’s mistakes and the resulting suffering. In the myth of Prometheus, human misery converged into a profound tragic spirit, and the mixed contradictions and pains finally condensed into a sentence: “This is your world! This is the world!”
4. Silene: Your wisdom lies in death
Sileni’s wisdom shouted to the solemn Olympian gods, “Oh, go away! Go away!” He sneered and exclaimed, “Poor floating life, ill-fated child, why do you force me to say what you’d better not hear? The best thing is that you can’t get at all, that is, don’t be born, don’t exist, and end in nothing. However, for you, the next thing is to die immediately.”
If the spirit of Apollo is the salvation of the imagination of the primitive Greeks after immersion in dreams and hallucinations, the fear of suffering life has even become a strong desire for survival under the halo of the god’s residence; The myth of Prometheus interweaves all the contradictions and pains after awakening, and finally comes to the conceptual conclusion that “all existence is both fair and unjust, and is equally reasonable in both cases”; Then Sileni’s sharp sneer was the last straw on the camel’s back, the most profound and pessimistic wisdom, and finally crushed the “Greek idealism” and shallow optimism. As the educator and teacher of Dionysus, Silenius has a different wisdom from Apollo. If ordinary people take this life course too seriously and seriously, some people understand how to laugh aloof in the journey to immortality, or at least noble contempt. They often climb to the grave with irony.
