← The Story of Philosophy · 回哲學史
B4 · The Story of Philosophy 哲學史 · Athens, 431–399 BCE
In 399 BCE a jury of about five hundred Athenians found a seventy-year-old man guilty of impiety and of corrupting the young, and sentenced him to death. He had written nothing, held no office, and spent his life asking people questions in the marketplace. This lesson tells the story of the trial, explains why a democracy put a philosopher to death, and asks why this one execution became the founding story of Western philosophy.
西元前 399 年，大約五百位雅典公民組成的陪審團，判一位七十歲的老人犯了不敬神與敗壞青年的罪，並判他死刑。他沒有寫過任何東西、沒有擔任過公職，一生都在市集裡向人提問。這一課講這場審判的經過，解釋一個民主城邦為什麼處死一位哲學家，並且問：為什麼這一次處決，成了西方哲學的創立故事。
Socrates was tried by a democracy in a time of defeat and fear, and he chose to die rather than stop asking questions. His death turned philosophy from a set of theories about nature into a way of life that could cost everything.
蘇格拉底是在一個戰敗與恐懼的時代，被一個民主城邦審判的；而他寧願死，也不肯停止提問。他的死，把哲學從一套關於自然的理論，變成了一種可能讓人付出一切的生活方式。
中文翻譯Every paragraph has a Chinese translation. Tap 中譯▾ under a paragraph to open that one, or use Show Chinese · 顯示中譯 at the top to open them all. 每一段都有中譯：點段落下方的「中譯」只開那一段，或按上方的「顯示中譯」一次全部打開。
Where we are · 我們在哪裡
The gold band covers the Peloponnesian War and its aftermath, ending with the trial. Plato was about twenty-eight when his teacher died. In China, Mozi was arguing against the Confucians at the same time.
金色的區塊涵蓋伯羅奔尼撒戰爭及其後果，以審判作結。老師去世時，柏拉圖大約二十八歲。在中國，墨子同時正在反駁儒家。
The scale changes at the dotted lines: it is stretched for the ancient world and the last two centuries and compressed for the Middle Ages, so that crowded periods stay readable. Dates before about 400 BCE are approximate. 比例在虛線處改變：古代與最近兩百年放大、中世紀壓縮，好讓人物密集的時期看得清楚。約西元前 400 年以前的年代都是概數。
The story · 課文
Socrates was a stonemason’s son who fought as an infantryman for Athens and spent the rest of his time in conversation. He wrote nothing. We know him through his students, above all Plato and Xenophon, and through a comedy that mocked him, Aristophanes’ Clouds. In Plato’s Apology, his speech at the trial, he explains how his mission began. His friend Chaerephon went to the oracle at Delphi and asked “whether anyone was wiser than I was, and the Pythian prophetess answered, that there was no man wiser,” in Benjamin Jowett’s translation. Socrates was puzzled, since he knew he was not wise, and set out to find someone wiser by questioning politicians, poets, and craftsmen.
蘇格拉底是一位石匠的兒子，曾以步兵身分為雅典作戰，其餘的時間都花在交談上。他沒有寫任何東西。我們透過他的學生認識他，尤其是柏拉圖與色諾芬；也透過一齣嘲笑他的喜劇：亞里斯多芬的《雲》。在柏拉圖的《申辯篇》（他在審判中的發言）裡，他解釋了他的使命怎麼開始。他的朋友凱勒豐到德爾斐的神諭所，問「有沒有任何人比我更有智慧；而那位皮提亞女祭司回答：沒有人更有智慧」（Benjamin Jowett 譯）。蘇格拉底很困惑，因為他知道自己沒有智慧；於是他去詢問政治人物、詩人與工匠，想要找到一個比他更有智慧的人。
What he found made him enemies. Each expert claimed to know things he did not know, and when Socrates questioned him in public, the claim fell apart. His conclusion was modest and devastating: “he knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know.” This was the meaning of the oracle. His only wisdom was knowing the limits of his knowledge. Young men from wealthy families followed him around and imitated his method on their elders, which did not make him more popular. To many Athenians he looked like the character in Aristophanes’ play, a clever talker who studied the sky and could make “the worse appear the better cause.”
他的發現為他樹了敵。每一位專家都自稱知道他其實不知道的事；當蘇格拉底在公開場合詢問他時，這種自稱就瓦解了。他的結論既謙虛又致命：「他什麼也不知道，卻以為自己知道；我既不知道，也不以為自己知道。」這就是神諭的意思：他唯一的智慧，是知道自己知識的界限。富裕家庭的年輕人跟著他四處走，並把他的方法用在自己的長輩身上，這並沒有讓他更受歡迎。在許多雅典人眼裡，他看起來就像亞里斯多芬劇中的那個角色：一個研究天空、能把「較差的理由說成較好的理由」的聰明辯士。
The formal charge, as Socrates reports it, was that “Socrates is a doer of evil, who corrupts the youth; and who does not believe in the gods of the state, but has other new divinities of his own.” To understand why a democracy brought it, look at the years before. Athens had just lost a twenty-seven-year war with Sparta. In 404 BCE the Spartans installed an oligarchy, the Thirty, who executed hundreds of citizens before democracy was restored the next year. The leader of the Thirty, Critias, and another of its members had been companions of Socrates. So had Alcibiades, a brilliant general who had betrayed Athens to Sparta. An amnesty forbade prosecutions for political crimes of those years, so the charge was impiety. But to many jurors, the old man who taught young aristocrats to question everything must have looked dangerous.
照蘇格拉底的轉述，正式的起訴是：「蘇格拉底是一個作惡的人，他敗壞青年；不信城邦所信的神，而有他自己的新神靈。」要理解一個民主城邦為什麼提出這項起訴，得看看之前的那些年。雅典剛剛輸掉了一場與斯巴達打了二十七年的戰爭。西元前 404 年，斯巴達人扶植了一個寡頭政府，「三十人」；他們處決了幾百名公民，第二年民主才恢復。三十人的領袖克里提亞斯，以及另一名成員，都曾是蘇格拉底的同伴；亞西比德也是，他是一位才華洋溢、卻把雅典出賣給斯巴達的將軍。一項大赦禁止起訴那幾年的政治罪行，所以起訴的罪名是不敬神。但在許多陪審員眼裡，那個教年輕貴族質疑一切的老人，想必看起來很危險。
Socrates did not plead for mercy. He told the jury that he was like “the gadfly who stirs the generous steed into motion,” and that he could not stop philosophizing, because “the unexamined life is not worth living.” The jury voted to convict, but narrowly. “Had thirty votes gone over to the other side,” he said, “I should have been acquitted.” At the penalty stage the prosecution proposed death, and Socrates at first suggested that he deserved free meals at public expense, as an Olympic victor did. More of the jury voted for death than had voted for guilt. His friends arranged an escape, and in Plato’s Crito he refuses it, arguing that he will not break the laws of the city that raised him.
蘇格拉底沒有求饒。他告訴陪審團：他就像「那隻刺激良馬動起來的牛虻」；他不能停止從事哲學，因為「未經檢驗的人生不值得活」。陪審團投票定罪，但票數很接近。他說：「只要有三十票轉到另一邊，我就會被判無罪。」到了量刑階段，控方提議死刑；蘇格拉底起初表示，他應得的是由公費供應飲食，就像奧林匹克的冠軍那樣。投票判他死刑的陪審員，比判他有罪的還多。他的朋友安排了逃亡；在柏拉圖的《克力同篇》裡，他拒絕了，論證說他不會違反養育他的城邦的法律。
Plato’s Phaedo describes the last day. Socrates spends it discussing whether the soul is immortal, then drinks the hemlock calmly while his friends weep. His last words, in Jowett’s translation, were “Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius; will you remember to pay the debt?” The narrator ends: “of all the men of his time whom I have known, he was the wisest and justest and best.” We should remember that this is a portrait by a devoted student, written years later and shaped by Plato’s own philosophy. Xenophon’s account of the trial is different in tone, and modern historians debate how much of Plato’s Socrates is the real man. What no one doubts is the outline: a philosopher was tried, refused to compromise, and died.
柏拉圖的《斐多篇》描寫了最後一天。蘇格拉底用這一天討論靈魂是否不朽，然後在朋友們的哭泣中，平靜地喝下毒芹汁。他最後的話，Jowett 譯作：「克力同，我欠阿斯克勒庇俄斯一隻公雞；你會記得替我還這筆債嗎？」敘述者這樣結尾：「在我所認識的那個時代的所有人當中，他是最有智慧、最正直、最好的。」我們應該記得：這是一位忠誠的學生多年後所畫的肖像，並且被柏拉圖自己的哲學所形塑。色諾芬對這場審判的記述，語氣不同；現代歷史學家也在爭論，柏拉圖筆下的蘇格拉底有多少是真實的那個人。沒有人懷疑的是輪廓：一位哲學家受審、拒絕妥協，然後死去。
That outline changed philosophy. Before Socrates, Greek thinkers mostly asked what the world is made of. Socrates turned the question toward how one should live, and he insisted that the answer must survive questioning. His death gave that insistence a terrible seriousness. Plato, who had planned a political career, turned away from politics and spent his life writing dialogues in which Socrates is the hero, and founded a school to continue the conversation. The trial also left a lasting question for democracies. Socrates was condemned by ordinary citizens, by majority vote, in a lawful trial. Whether a free society can tolerate the people who question its deepest beliefs is a question that has been asked again in every century since.
那個輪廓改變了哲學。在蘇格拉底之前，希臘思想家大多問的是世界是什麼做的。蘇格拉底把問題轉向一個人應該怎麼活，並且堅持答案必須經得起詢問。他的死，給了這份堅持一種可怕的嚴肅。原本打算從政的柏拉圖，從此離開政治，用一生寫以蘇格拉底為主角的對話錄，並創立了一所學校，讓這場對話繼續下去。這場審判也為民主社會留下了一個長久的問題：蘇格拉底是被普通公民、以多數決、在合法的審判中定罪的。一個自由的社會，能不能容忍那些質疑它最深信念的人？這個問題此後的每一個世紀都有人再問一次。
What this age changed · 這個時代改變了什麼
Cicero later said that Socrates called philosophy down from the heavens. After him, ethics, the question of the good life, stood at the center of philosophy beside the study of nature.
西塞羅後來說，蘇格拉底把哲學從天上叫了下來。在他之後，倫理學，也就是美好人生的問題，與自然研究並列，站到了哲學的中心。
Socrates left no system. He left a practice: ask what a word means, test the answer against cases, and admit what you do not know. Teachers still call it the Socratic method.
蘇格拉底沒有留下任何體系。他留下的是一種實踐：問一個詞是什麼意思，用例子檢驗答案，並承認自己不知道的。老師們至今仍稱之為蘇格拉底法。
The trial made the conflict between free inquiry and public opinion a permanent theme. Plato’s Republic, Mill’s On Liberty, and modern debates about academic freedom all return to it.
這場審判使自由探究與公眾意見之間的衝突，成了一個永久的主題。柏拉圖的《理想國》、彌爾的《論自由》，以及現代關於學術自由的辯論，都一再回到它。
Key people · 關鍵人物
Athens · 雅典
A stonemason’s son and soldier who questioned his fellow citizens about justice, courage, and virtue, wrote nothing, and was executed for impiety at about seventy.
一位石匠之子與士兵；他向同胞們詢問正義、勇氣與德行；沒有寫任何東西；大約七十歲時，因不敬神被處死。
Athens · 雅典
Socrates’ most famous student, who turned from politics after the trial and made his teacher the hero of the dialogues. Our main source, and an interested one.
蘇格拉底最有名的學生；審判之後離開政治，讓老師成為對話錄的主角。他是我們最主要的史料，也是一個有立場的史料。
Athens, later exile · 雅典，後來流亡
A soldier and writer who also knew Socrates and wrote his own Apology and Memorabilia. His Socrates is more practical and less philosophical than Plato’s.
一位也認識蘇格拉底的軍人與作家，寫了他自己的《申辯》與《回憶蘇格拉底》。他筆下的蘇格拉底，比柏拉圖筆下的更實際、較少哲學味。
Athens · 雅典
The great comic playwright whose Clouds (423 BCE) showed Socrates hanging in a basket studying the sky and teaching students to win unjust arguments. Socrates says the play shaped the prejudice against him.
偉大的喜劇作家；他的《雲》（前 423 年）把蘇格拉底演成吊在籃子裡研究天空、教學生打贏不正當官司的人。蘇格拉底說，這齣戲塑造了人們對他的偏見。
Primary text · 原典
These lines from Plato’s Apology are some of the most quoted in philosophy. Read them as parts of a courtroom speech, addressed to a jury that was about to vote.
柏拉圖《申辯篇》裡的這幾句，是哲學中被引用最多的話之一。把它們當作一篇法庭演說的一部分來讀：說給一個即將投票的陪審團聽。
Plato, Apology 柏拉圖《申辯篇》 · tr. Benjamin Jowett
He knows nothing, and thinks that he knows; I neither know nor think that I know.
他什麼也不知道，卻以為自己知道；我既不知道，也不以為自己知道。
This is the source of the popular line “I know that I know nothing,” which Socrates never says in these words. His claim is narrower: he knows that he lacks expert knowledge of the most important things.
流行的那句「我只知道我一無所知」就是從這裡來的；但蘇格拉底從來沒有用這些字說過。他的主張比較窄：他知道自己對最重要的事缺乏專家般的知識。
The unexamined life is not worth living.
未經檢驗的人生不值得活。
He says this when explaining why he cannot accept exile on condition of silence. The claim is about his own life and his mission, though it has been read ever since as advice to everyone.
他是在解釋為什麼不能接受「以沉默為條件的流放」時說這句話的。這個主張關乎他自己的人生與使命；不過此後它一直被當作給每一個人的忠告來讀。
The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our ways—I to die, and you to live. Which is better God only knows.
離別的時刻到了，我們各走各的路：我去死，你們去活。哪一個比較好，只有神知道。
The last sentence of the speech. Socrates claims no knowledge of what death is, consistent with his whole defense, and leaves the question open.
演說的最後一句。蘇格拉底並不自稱知道死亡是什麼，這與他整篇辯護一致；他把這個問題留著。
Advanced English · 高級英文
Socrates was charged with impiety and corrupting the young.
蘇格拉底被控不敬神與敗壞青年。
The indictment accused him of introducing new divinities.
起訴書指控他引進新的神靈。
The Thirty were a brutal oligarchy installed by Sparta.
三十人是斯巴達扶植的殘暴寡頭政府。
An amnesty forbade prosecutions for crimes under the Thirty.
一項大赦禁止起訴三十人統治期間的罪行。
Thirty more votes would have acquitted him.
再多三十票，他就會被判無罪。
Socrates called himself the gadfly of Athens.
蘇格拉底自稱是雅典的牛虻。
He refused to compromise, even to save his life.
即使為了保住性命，他也拒絕妥協。
He drank the hemlock calmly while his friends wept.
他在朋友們的哭泣中，平靜地喝下毒芹汁。
Reading check · 理解測驗
1. What did the oracle at Delphi tell Chaerephon?
2. What was the formal charge against Socrates?
3. Why might many jurors have seen Socrates as dangerous, according to the lesson?
4. Why did Socrates refuse to escape, according to Plato’s Crito?
5. Why does the lesson say Plato’s account must be read with care?
Socrates said the unexamined life is not worth living. Is that true for everyone, or only for someone with his mission? About 150 words.
蘇格拉底說未經檢驗的人生不值得活。這對每一個人都成立，還是只對一個有他那種使命的人成立？約 150 個字。
Imagine you were a juror in 399 BCE who had lost a son under the Thirty. Write a short speech explaining how you would vote and why.
想像你是西元前 399 年的一位陪審員，你的兒子死在三十人的統治下。寫一篇短短的發言，說明你會怎麼投票，以及為什麼。
Can a free society tolerate people who question its deepest beliefs? Give a modern example and your answer.
一個自由的社會，能不能容忍質疑它最深信念的人？舉一個現代的例子，並說出你的答案。
Go further · 延伸
