Jimmy Lai, Rawls, and the Good Life

It is not part of my study plan to read Jimmy Lai’s (黎智英) essays, but I have already spent two weeks on them (along with other books). I wanted to know more about Lai after watching two interviews of him, from which I learnt that he had read through every book by Friedrich Hayek several times even though he had no chance to go to school during his childhood. He said that he also wanted to study John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice, but was not able to finish it because he considered Rawls’s theory “too leftist” (nevertheless, he had read and taken notes for two-thirds of the book!).  

Just a while ago, I was reading “I am Jimmy Lai” (我是黎智英). In this book, he relates how he started and developed his business career and how he overcame the hurdles on the way. Lai emphasizes the significance of three virtues: commitment, humility, and simplicity. It is clear to me that they are also of great importance for anyone who wants to devote himself to knowledge, and I think that to have a good grasp of them, it is unnecessary for most people to philosophize about them as what philosophers do in writing an academic paper. I would say a similar thing with regard to almost all ideas of the good life: If what we care most is how to live well, then for most of us who are not seriously sceptical of reality, we do not need to reflect upon the ideas of the good life in a highly theoretical manner; we can probably derive most value from them by simple and habitual reflection, as well as by humble and persistent practice. (First draft: December 21)