Kant once said: "There are two things. The deeper and lasting I think about them, the more and more timeless the surprise and awe they arouse in my heart. One is the vastness of our heads. The brilliant starry sky, the other is the lofty moral laws in our hearts." In his opinion, the starry sky above his head remains unchanged, and the moral laws in his heart will also remain unchanged. In fact, he was not right.
The starry sky above your head can remain unchanged for tens of thousands of years, but only the earth. The movement of stars that people see is not that the stars are actually moving, but that the earth is moving. When the earth rotates and commutes, people look at the stars moving, so that they can “survey the sky and see a thousand rivers from the equator.” In fact, the stars people see are not necessarily the truth, it may be an illusion. Some stars are very far away from the earth, hundreds of light-years away. When a star explodes, collapses, and disappears without a trace, the light emitted by the star also disappears. However, the light emitted by the explosion or collapse of a star does not reach the earth immediately. In other words, the stars that people see are only the light emitted by stars many years ago, and it is likely that they no longer exist, but people still think that stars exist. After all, the light of stars is still walking on the road, so what people see The star is still in the sky, and the reality is that the star has exploded or collapsed. Many of these stars are no longer there, but people see them still firmly embedded in the night sky. The starry sky that people see is just an illusion, not all the truth. Kant believed that the starry sky above his head, that is, the starry sky with a certain degree of relativity, does not refer to the starry sky under the scientific concept. He believed that the starry sky was more durable than human beings, but in fact, he was wrong. The starry sky is not lasting, and many of them are illusions.
The starry sky can change, and the moral laws in the heart can also change. In ancient times, it was advocated that "women have no talents are virtue." Now it is advocated that women should learn knowledge, culture, and pay equal work with men. In ancient times, people could have three wives and four concubines, but now people can only have one legal wife. Then, as time changes, the moral laws also change. Is there a constant moral law? Of course there is, that is the kindness, justice, etiquette, wisdom and faith advocated by Confucian .It also makes people positive, but there are no quantitative standards, so it is difficult to achieve, and even become a tool for the ruler to fool the people. The ruler requires people to be obedient and can’t do anything against the monarch. However, when the ruler desperately seeks out the people, do people still believe in the so-called Confucian morality? Maybe they don't believe it, but only when they are forced to eat food, they will resist, but there are also many people who choose to flee the famine and beg. They are not resisting and will not question the emperor's power. So, why does morality serve the class? Of course, it serves the ruling class, and it is published after the ruling class has formulated and reviewed it. People must abide by it. In fact, it is only to safeguard the interests of the powerful class and ensure class stability. Then, the so-called morality is just a hypocritical thing, and it may not be able to be implemented, and it does not have the enforcement power of the law.
As for the lofty moral laws, people can only believe in them and hope that everyone in the society will follow them. But under the ethos led by the powerful class, laugh at the poor but not at the prostitution, and the law does not blame the public. As long as the money is made, it is good. Will some people use morality to warn young people? Of course not. If anyone still wields a moral stick and wants to knock down a piece of it, people will say that they are old antiques, and they will verbally criticize them, and even fight. So, has the era of ritual collapse and music ruin that Confucius said has come? All kinds of gains and forgetting righteousness, brother-in-law; all kinds of fancy operations, fraudulent money; all kinds of courtesy, bribery, making people's values reversed, thinking confused, and not knowing what is right and what is wrong. Perhaps it's right to have money, because "money can make the ghosts go around."
Humans cannot conquer the starry sky, but they can conquer others. They will use the money and servitude in their hands to induce others to make and spend money in an endless cycle, and they will also allow people to continue to export labor until they die. The so-called morality is just a social fashion promoted by the ruling class. Many people recognize the hypocrisy of morality, and they have to make a difference in the face. It admits morality on the surface and does not do things that are against morality, but secretly does things that are against morality.Even become a heinous person. In this way, morality has become a fig leaf for the ruling class, not a fig leaf for ordinary people.
After the dynasty changed, morality also changed, but many feudal morals did not change much, so that it affected people nowadays. Many people don't have noble moral laws in their hearts, and they don't even know what a noble moral law is, but they only know how to make money and how to enjoy them. If they talk about morality, they still think that the morals that the ancients believed were right are right. They didn't even use them critically. How can they make progress? Perhaps, after thousands of years of dynasty change, people's thinking hasn't really made much progress, and there will even be retrogression.
As a philosopher, Kant’s thoughts are somewhat profound, but for ordinary people, the starry sky above his head and the moral law in his heart will not be immutable, nor will it affect people. What a big impact.
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