How to read the classics, how to read the classics

Read more explanations from some famous experts.

You can also watch some documentaries. But the most important thing is to read more of the original book and experience the charm of it.

The essence of reading is to improve one's cognitive level by smashing words. However, everyone's time is limited, and it is impossible to read all the books. What kind of text are we going to read?

How should we read the classics?

I have three suggestions:

What is the book about in general? What do the details of the book say? What parts of the book are perspectives?

What parts are the facts? What does this book mean to me? In your self-questioning, the book slowly becomes a part of your body.

3.Read word for word. Books that are truly valuable must be read intensively, that is, read them word for word. For ordinary people, the level of the classics is usually higher than your comprehension, and your comprehension will gradually improve in reading without missing a word.

When we pick up a good book, we immediately enter a world of reason and reflection. Here, you meet Confucius, Mencius, Thucydides, Adam Smith and others, communicate with them, communicate with them, and make general theories, and the confusion in your heart is illuminated by the truth.

A person who develops the habit of reading is free and happy. May you also fall in love with reading.

In reading, it is best to practice the habit and ability to simply frame a mind map in your mind while reading, which can greatly improve your reading efficiency. Now, I have developed the habit of reading with purpose and focus, which can make me good at discovering key points, new questions, new ideas and new materials in reading, which will not only help improve reading speed, but also improve reading comprehension and memory efficiency. Of course, this needs to be consciously cultivated in your daily reading.

If you don't read efficiently, you can learn how to read quickly. Speed reading is an efficient reading learning method with direct reflection of the eyes and brain, after mastering, when reading articles and materials, you can quickly extract the key points, promote sorting, induction and analysis, and improve the efficiency of comprehension and memory; At the same time, the fast reading speed can also save a lot of time and do other things with ease. Mastering is not something that can be done in one or two sentences, if you want to learn, you can understand it yourself, or refer to the "Elite Speed Reading Memory Training Software", which is mainly to train fast reading, and there is also a "mind map" training, if your reading efficiency is low, you can practice and improve it.

During the reading process and after reading a book, learn to take reading notes. In the process of reading: If you encounter something important, interesting, questionable, etc., you will record it for backup and reference.

Do a good job of annotating readings. That is, to record the reading feelings or perceptions in the reading process, such as your understanding, association, inspiration, etc., of a certain sentence or a certain point of view, you must record it in time. After reading it:

Organize books in the form of knowledge frameworks or mind maps, mainly to refine the important content of books, but also include some understanding and perception in the process of reading. The knowledge framework, specially prepared is a note in the form of a mind map, which has the advantage of being convenient to add new content, when I have relevant new knowledge points and new experiences in the later study or reading, I can add it to promote the connection of knowledge and facilitate mastery and application. For some books, such as the ones that I feel very touched after reading them, I will also write about my reading feelings.

There can also be different readings of the scriptures. A scholar can take the classics as the object of academic research, and analyze a certain classic or all the works of a classic writer from the perspectives of intellectual history, cultural history, and discipline history. This is the scholarly way of reading.

But if a scripture is read only in this way, I have to doubt its qualifications as a classic, just as a scholar who reads the classics only in this way has to conclude that he does not have the qualifications of a scholar. Only the classics that are still alive today are worthy of being called classics, they not only belong to history, but also transcend history, as if there is an immortal soul in it. Because of this, individuals of different eras may feel a kind of surprise of soul awakening while reading them.

In this sense, the classics belong to everyone.

As ordinary people, how do we read the classics? My experience is that whether it is the Analects or the Bible, whether it is Plato or Kant, you might as well read it as an idle book. That is to say, the mindset and the way of reading should be relaxed.

Don't put up a shelf for learning and deliberately solve it. If you don't understand it, don't read it hard, first read those books and chapters that you can understand and can arouse your interest. There is a process of immersion and edification here, and the so-called humanistic cultivation is made in this way.

Reading the classics is really a pastime when it's not practical and interesting. In fact, many people with lively minds regard this as their best pastime. Whether or not one can feel the great pleasure of the spirit from reading the scriptures is almost a test of the quality of the mind.

However, also remember that while the classics belong to everyone, they never belong to the masses. I mean, the ease of reading the classics is definitely different from the ease of reading popular fashion books. Everyone can only go to the classics as an individual with a soul, not as an impersonal mass.

If one day you revel in the wonderful pastime of reading the classics, you will find how far you have fallen from all the pastimes of the nature of mass entertainment.

The classics are a treasure trove of human spiritual wealth, it is all around us, and the wealth in it belongs to each and every one of us. To read the classics is to enjoy this precious treasure. Anyone who has experienced such a pleasure will agree that what a great loss a person has suffered if he has lived his entire life and never set foot in this treasure house.

Those who study liberal arts inevitably have to read the classics, but many of them seem to be time-consuming and thankless, and Liu Yu compares the speed to dragging a carriage out of a swamp. Why read it so hard when it's so hard? In fact, the reason why a classic is a classic is not how many people have praised it, but that it can really help you understand the positive and negative world and yourself.

If it can't do that, either you're not good enough, or it's really nothing. As someone said, Chopin actually didn't have anything, but Jay Chou of his time.

Therefore, Liu Yu advocates an attitude of reading based on experience and problems. Since all the classics are essentially based on the author's answers and reflections on the questions of his time, then the only way to really understand them and understand them is because: first, you have a considerable understanding of the time in which he lived and its problems; Second, you think that there are similarities between the era in which he lived and the era in which you live, and you can understand the similarities and differences, and thus critically understand the significance of his thoughts for the present.

However, many of us often do not know what a large number of specific problems are, what is the soil of their thoughts, and they do not know what the similarities and differences between that soil and the world we live in today, so it is inevitable that it will take time and effort.

At the same time, most of the philosophical and social science classics were written in an era when empirical impossibility, so most classics can only be written from concept to concept, from inference to inference, from inspiration to inspiration. This way of writing often creates a lot of beautiful and enlightening theoretical frameworks, but it is difficult to verify its validity, that is, there is no possibility of falsification, and it is difficult to accumulate knowledge effectively.

Therefore, we should start from experience, from positivism, and read the classics with arrows to guide questions, not vanity at the dinner table.

How to read the classics? This is really a big problem today. Against the backdrop of absolute skepticism and historical nihilism, the crisis of the humanities and multiculturalism, it seems unfashionable to advocate reading the classics in an era of many **.

The American scholar Harold Bloom once said pessimistically in the last chapter of "The Western Canon", "Sad Conclusion": "After teaching literature at a top university all my life, I lack confidence in whether literary education can survive the current difficulties." Hillis Miller of the University of California also said at the beginning of "** Learning":

The end of literature is coming. But I believe more in his other paradoxical words: "Although its end is not far off, literature is eternal and universal."

Therefore, our reading of the classics is also necessary.

In this column of articles, we specially invited university teachers and front-line teachers in our primary and secondary schools to learn how to read classics.

Here, I just want to talk about my own views from the perspective of the reader's own mentality, because in this era full of anxiety, people have paid little attention to their hearts, and we need to use "reading classics" to comfort our tired and numb hearts, "reading classics" to turn those boring days into pleasant times, and "reading classics" to calm our minds day and night and fill them with lofty and holy thoughts.

In this way, we need to be "open-minded". The so-called "humility" is to empty the "heart", leave a space for the classics, and let the classics occupy a place in your heart. In this way, we need to read it with reverence and humility.

Today, with the prosperity of modern technology and commerce, all kinds of bizarre sensory experiences are dazzling; The ease with which information is transmitted makes people mistakenly believe that they are at the center of the world, which leads to a kind of arrogance and arrogant self-confidence. Many people doubt everything, their eyes are empty, and they treat the classics with a questioning and critical attitude, which is ignorant and wrong. First of all, we must let the classics enter our hearts, store them in our hearts, perceive them with our own hearts, and absorb their nourishment from time to time, and then look at and study them historically, objectively and scientifically under the premise of serious study and research.

Secondly, in the reading of the classics, we must not only be able to enter into it, but also be able to go out of it. On the one hand, we must read the ideas contained in the classics, put them into the real world of the present, and read them to ourselves; On the one hand, we must also read modern thoughts, read personal emotional understanding, and use the knowledge and vision of the times to give new life to the classics, so as to obtain your unique reading experience and read the classics alive. This is what the famous Italian scholar Croce said that "all history is contemporary history".

The achievements of human civilization have been passed down from generation to generation through the reading of the classics.

Earnestly experience the spiritual resources inside and study.

The most common thing to read a classic is to understand the background of the times in which it is located, to understand the life of that era from **, to figure out the feelings that the author wants to express, or to be sarcastic or admirable, and it is also very useful to understand the author's life, such as his motivation and purpose for writing the book.

And when we read a masterpiece, one is to carefully taste the techniques and meanings of some wonderful moments, the second is to integrate into the scenes in the book, substitute for the characters, so as to bring more resonance and shock to the soul, and the third is not to read books just for the sake of reading books, a good book can become a pillow book, and the mood and thoughts of reading at different times are different.

Fourth, encourage you to look at the story in the book with your own thinking, analyze the scene and practice of the protagonist from an independent perspective, empathize with others, and think about the reasons.

Then you will be able to gain the context of an era, understand the author's intentions, the wonderful points in the book, the insights you bring to the changes in your way of thinking, history, politics, culture and so on. will all accumulate in your reading.

In fact, I also think so, I feel that it is to finish a book, maybe because we are not experienced enough now, maybe after the time slowly settles, we will naturally have feelings, don't worry, take your time.

There are not many types of classic books, and different types of books, as well as your different reading purposes, have different reading methods. That is to say, you must learn to choose (use) the corresponding speed and method to read according to your own reading purpose, combined with the type and difficulty of the book.

If you want to know what this book is about quickly (such as some classics and literature), then you can read it as fast as you can if you understand it.

If you want to know if the knowledge in the book can help you, improve your ability in some aspects, or solve a specific problem and apply it in real work and life (such as practical books), then it is recommended that you read it quickly and then read it intensively. If you read directly without focus and selection, not only will it be inefficient, but the final comprehension and gain will not be high. Therefore, it is recommended to use the speed reading method, first find those parts that are practical and useful to you, and then go to the intensive reading of this part.

If you want to experience the charm of the text and the author's ingenious ideas, you can't read too fast. For example, if you read a suspenseful **, if you just want to get the answer, you will lose the fun of reading.

If you don't have any foundation in the book you want to read, it's more difficult, either go through it little by little, or change to a basic version of the book, so that you don't lose your understanding and can't read it.