Self-Improvement

The craft of habit and method

• Franklin (franklin) — the project of moral perfection: virtue is a habit acquired by procedure; the striving matters more than the perfection. Grounding: moral-perfection-project, dobrodetel-kak-navyk, speckled-ax.
• Smiles (smiles) — the best education a man gives himself: self-help, perseverance, work as the great teacher of character. Grounding: luchshee-obrazovanie-daesh-sebe-sam, self-culture, trud-vospityvaet.
• Hill (hill) — the mind is programmed by auto-suggestion in any case — the only question is who writes the program; success can be taught. Grounding: um-programmiruetsya-samovnusheniem, auto-suggestion, psikhologiya-uspekha.
• James Allen (james-allen) — character is the sum of thoughts: tend the garden of the mind, and circumstances will follow. Grounding: ot-mysli-k-harakteru, sad-uma-obstoyatelstva-raskryvayut.

Learning, exercise, and the path

• Confucius (confucius) — self-cultivation through learning and ritual: first rectify yourself, then require it of others. Grounding: samovospitanie, xue, li.
• Epictetus (epictetus) — the learner's path: three disciplines, daily progress, philosophy is deeds, not words. Grounding: progress-uchenika, tri-distsipliny, filosofiya-eto-dela-ne-slova.
• Ignatius Loyola (ignatius) — the reform of life through exercises: affections are ordered on demand, the measure is found by alternation, act against the inclination. Grounding: reforma-zhizni, dukhovnye-uprazhneniya, affekt-zakazyvaetsya.
• Goethe (goethe) — Bildung: cultivating oneself through activity and measure; the recognition of limits sets free. Grounding: bildung-samovospitanie, vospitanie-sebya, priznanie-granits-osvobozhdaet.
• Adler (adler) — character is no verdict: it is formed toward a goal and can therefore be re-educated. Grounding: kharakter-vospituem, ot-nepolnotsennosti-k-stilyu-zhizni.

Against "improvement"

• Nietzsche (nietzsche) — not self-adjustment but self-overcoming: polishing useful virtues is a herd-conscious glance over the shoulder; greatness lies in standing apart. Grounding: samopreodolenie, velichie-v-otdelnosti, stadnaya-moral.
• Laozi (laozi) — return to the uncarved block: improvement and learning multiply the artificial; what grows of itself is not to be pulled upward. Grounding: pu, wuwei, ziran.
• Tolstoy (tolstoy) — his circle's faith in perfecting oneself turned out to be faith in his own authorship and vanity: what is needed is a complete turnabout, not proofreading. Grounding: vera-v-sovershenstvovanie, perevorot.

Axis of dispute: Laozi against Confucius — the root quarrel over form: cultivation
by ritual against the self-so; Nietzsche against Franklin and Smiles —
self-overcoming against self-adjustment; Tolstoy against the whole camp of
method — repentance and turnabout against a proofreading of habits.