Hermeneutics and the Eternity of Human Mind

The eternity or immortality has been the human issue probed since ancient time. In ancient Greece, Alcmeon concluded that the doom was resulted for the humans could not make the end and the start connected, thus pointed out the essential route to solve this problem. When Plato pursued the immortal soul, the foundation was laid for religious belief. Later, people pursued for the eternity of ethics, the human history was coming into being. Nevertheless, the real way to solve this problem is to inherit and improve human mind or their conception. As early in the twenty-fourth year of Duke Lu Xianggong, Mu Shu, in answering Fan Xuanzi, said that the eternity was laid in " setting up virtuous example, providing meritorious service, and expounding ideas in writing”. The true eternity and immortality of these three can be realized only by continuous inheritance and hermeneutics. Here hermeneutics is exactly emphasizing that the inheritance of tradition means continuous explanation and innovation, and the mediation and comprehension of the ancient and the modern, and of the alienation and the familiarity, constitute the only route for the eternity of human mind.