Philosophers · 哲學家 · Greece and Rome
Aristotle 亞里斯多德 · Ἀριστοτέλης
He divided knowledge into the subjects we still study, and invented the science that checks reasoning in all of them.
他把知識分成我們至今還在讀的科目，並且發明了檢查一切科目推理的那門學問。
- Born 出生
- 384 BCE, Stagira, northern Greece
- Died 去世
- 322 BCE, Chalcis, on the island of Euboea
- Father 父親
- Nicomachus, physician to the king of Macedon
- Teacher 老師
- Plato, for about twenty years
- School 學校
- The Lyceum, Athens, founded 335 BCE
- Pupils 學生
- Alexander the Great; Theophrastus
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。
Life · 生平
A life in three scenes 三幕人生
The outsider at the Academy 學院裡的外地人
Aristotle was born in 384 BCE at Stagira, a small town in the north of Greece. His father, Nicomachus, was physician to the king of Macedon, and it is tempting to see the doctor’s son in the philosopher who later dissected cuttlefish and classified some five hundred kinds of animal. Orphaned young, he was sent at seventeen to Athens to study at Plato’s Academy, and he stayed for about twenty years, until Plato died.
亞里斯多德西元前 384 年生於希臘北部的小鎮斯塔基拉。父親尼各馬可是馬其頓國王的御醫；這位哲學家日後解剖烏賊、替大約五百種動物分類，讓人很難不在他身上看到醫生兒子的影子。他年少失怙，十七歲被送到雅典，進柏拉圖的學院求學，一待大約二十年，直到柏拉圖去世。
He was never a citizen of Athens and could not own property there. He was also never simply a disciple. Where Plato looked past the changing world to eternal Forms, Aristotle came to hold that the form of a thing is found in the thing, and that knowledge begins from careful observation of particulars. A later saying sums up his attitude: Plato is dear to me, but truth is dearer. The wording is medieval; the thought is his (Nicomachean Ethics I.6).
他始終不是雅典公民，在那裡不能擁有產業。他也從來不只是個門徒。柏拉圖把目光越過變動的世界，望向永恆的「理型」；亞里斯多德後來則主張，事物的形式就在事物之中，知識要從仔細觀察個別事物開始。後世有句話概括了他的態度：「吾愛吾師，吾更愛真理。」這個措辭是中世紀的，意思卻是他自己的（《尼各馬可倫理學》卷一第六章）。
The years abroad 在外的歲月
When Plato died in 347, Aristotle left Athens. He spent several years on the coast of Asia Minor and on the island of Lesbos, where, with his friend Theophrastus, he did much of the biological research that fills a quarter of his surviving work. Around 343 Philip of Macedon invited him to tutor his thirteen-year-old son, the future Alexander the Great. What the philosopher taught the conqueror, and how much of it stayed, nobody knows.
西元前 347 年柏拉圖去世，亞里斯多德離開雅典。他在小亞細亞沿岸與列斯伏斯島住了幾年；他現存著作有四分之一是生物學，其中大部分的研究，就是在那裡跟朋友泰奧弗拉斯托斯一起做的。大約西元前 343 年，馬其頓的腓力請他去教自己十三歲的兒子，也就是日後的亞歷山大大帝。哲學家教了征服者什麼、留下了多少，沒有人知道。
The Lyceum 呂克昂
In 335 he returned to Athens and opened his own school in a public gymnasium called the Lyceum. Its members were nicknamed Peripatetics, probably from the covered walk, the peripatos, where they talked. The Lyceum was something new: a research institute, with a library, collections of specimens, and teams compiling the constitutions of 158 Greek cities.
西元前 335 年他回到雅典，在一座名叫呂克昂的公共體育場開了自己的學校。學校的成員被稱為「逍遙學派」，這個綽號大概來自他們邊走邊談的那條有頂走廊（peripatos）。呂克昂是一種新的東西：一所研究機構，有圖書館、有標本收藏，還有團隊在彙編 158 個希臘城邦的政制。
What survives from those years is about thirty treatises, roughly a third of what he wrote. They are not polished books. They read like lecture notes, dense and abrupt, and the dialogues he published for the public, which Cicero praised as a golden river of eloquence, are lost. When Alexander died in 323, Athens turned on everything Macedonian, and a charge of impiety was prepared against Aristotle. He withdrew to Chalcis, reportedly saying that he would not let the Athenians sin twice against philosophy, and died there the following year.
那些年留下來的是大約三十部專論，約佔他全部著作的三分之一。它們不是精心修飾的書，讀起來像講課筆記，濃縮而突兀；他為一般讀者發表的對話錄，西塞羅曾讚美為「雄辯的金色河流」，卻全都失傳了。西元前 323 年亞歷山大去世，雅典轉而敵視一切跟馬其頓有關的東西，有人準備以「不敬神」的罪名控告亞里斯多德。他退居卡爾基斯，據說留下一句話：他不讓雅典人對哲學犯第二次罪。第二年他在那裡去世。
- 384Born at Stagira生於斯塔基拉
- 367Enters Plato’s Academy進柏拉圖的學院
- 347Plato dies; Aristotle leaves Athens柏拉圖去世，離開雅典
- c. 343Tutor to Alexander擔任亞歷山大的老師
- 335Founds the Lyceum創立呂克昂
- 323Alexander dies; charge of impiety亞歷山大去世；被控不敬神
- 322Dies at Chalcis卒於卡爾基斯
The central idea · 核心觀念
Reasoning has a form 推理有它的形式
Aristotle’s logical works were later bundled under the title Organon, “the tool,” and the name is exact. He did not regard logic as one science among others. It was the instrument every science uses. His discovery was that whether a conclusion follows depends on the arrangement of terms in an argument and not on what the terms mean, so that arrangements can be studied systematically. In the Prior Analytics he worked through every combination of two premises of four kinds, identified those that yield a conclusion of necessity, and showed how the rest reduce to a few basic patterns. No one had attempted anything like it. Near the end of the Organon he says so himself: on this subject there was nothing at all before him to build on.
亞里斯多德的邏輯著作後來被合編在《工具論》（Organon）這個標題下，這個名字很精確。他不把邏輯看成眾多科學當中的一門；它是每一門科學都要用的工具。他的發現是：結論推不推得出來，取決於論證裡詞項的排列，而不是詞項的意思，所以排列方式可以有系統地研究。在《前分析篇》裡，他把四種命題兩兩組合成前提的每一種情形都走過一遍，辨認出哪些必然得出結論，並證明其餘的可以化約為少數幾個基本樣式。在他之前沒有人做過類似的事。《工具論》接近結尾處，他自己也這麼說：在這個題目上，他之前完全沒有可以憑藉的東西。
The same habit of mind runs through everything else he touched. To understand a thing is to grasp its causes, and he distinguished four: what it is made of, what form it has, what brought it about, and what it is for. To live well is to exercise, over a whole life, the excellences proper to a human being, which is what he meant by eudaimonia. To be good at feeling and acting is to hit the mean between too much and too little, as courage lies between cowardice and rashness. In each field he begins by collecting the opinions of “the many and the wise,” sorts out the puzzles, and builds from there.
同一種思考習慣貫穿他碰過的一切。了解一樣東西，就是掌握它的原因；他分出四種：它由什麼構成、有什麼形式、由什麼促成、為了什麼目的。活得好，就是在一整個人生中發揮人之為人所特有的卓越，這是他說的 eudaimonia（幸福、人的興盛）。在感受與行動上做得好，就是命中太多與太少之間的「中道」，就像勇敢位於懦弱與魯莽之間。在每個領域，他都先蒐集「多數人與有智慧的人」的意見，理清其中的疑難，再從那裡往上蓋。
All men by nature desire to know.人人天生都渴望知道。
The first sentence of the Metaphysics. His evidence is that we enjoy seeing things even when it is of no use to us. 《形上學》的第一句。他的證據是：即使沒有用處，我們也喜歡看東西。
The strongest objection · 最強的反駁
The logic was too small 這套邏輯太小了
For two thousand years Aristotle’s logic was treated as finished. Kant wrote in 1787 that since Aristotle logic had not needed to retrace a single step, and had not been able to advance one either. Less than a century later it was shown to be a fragment. The syllogism handles statements built from two terms, “all A are B.” It cannot handle relations. From “a horse is an animal” it follows that the head of a horse is the head of an animal, and, as Augustus De Morgan pointed out, no syllogism can prove it. Nor can it deal with statements that mix “every” and “some,” such as “everyone loves someone,” on which mathematics depends. In 1879 Gottlob Frege published a logic that could do all this, and Aristotle’s system became one small corner of it.
有兩千年之久，亞里斯多德的邏輯被當成已經完成的學問。康德在 1787 年寫道，自亞里斯多德以來，邏輯沒有必要後退一步，也沒能前進一步。不到一百年後，它被證明只是一個片段。三段論處理由兩個詞項構成的陳述：「所有 A 都是 B」。它處理不了「關係」。從「馬是動物」可以推出「馬的頭是動物的頭」，而正如德摩根指出的，沒有任何三段論證得出這一點。它也對付不了混用「每一個」與「某一個」的陳述，例如「每個人都愛著某個人」，而數學正需要這種陳述。1879 年，弗雷格發表了一套能做到這一切的邏輯，亞里斯多德的系統成了其中的一個小角落。
A second objection concerns his authority and not his logic. Because he was right about so much, his mistakes were protected for centuries: that heavier bodies fall faster, that the earth sits still at the center, that some people are slaves by nature and that women are naturally subordinate. The fault lies partly with his followers, since Aristotle himself held that argument must give way to observation. But the last two claims are his own, argued for in the Politics, and they show how a careful reasoner can mistake the arrangements of his own society for facts of nature.
第二個反駁針對的是他的權威，不是他的邏輯。因為他對的地方太多，他的錯誤被保護了好幾個世紀：重的物體落得比較快；地球靜止在中心；有些人天生就是奴隸，而女人天生居於從屬。過錯有一部分在他的追隨者，因為亞里斯多德自己主張，論證必須向觀察讓步。但最後兩項是他本人的主張，在《政治學》裡有論證；它們顯示，一個細心的推理者可以怎樣把自己社會的安排，誤認為自然的事實。
How we know · 史料
How the books reached us 這些書是怎麼傳到我們手上的
The treatises we read were probably never meant for publication. According to an ancient story, Aristotle’s manuscripts passed to Theophrastus and then to heirs who hid them in a cellar, where they lay for some two centuries before being brought to Rome and edited by Andronicus of Rhodes in the first century BCE. Whatever the truth of the story, the arrangement and many of the titles we use are the editor’s. “Metaphysics” itself is his label for the books placed after the Physics. In the Latin West most of Aristotle was then lost for centuries and returned in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, largely through Arabic scholarship, with the commentaries of Ibn Sīnā and Ibn Rushd. To medieval readers he was simply “the Philosopher.”
我們讀到的這些專論，大概從來不是為了出版而寫的。照一個古代的說法，亞里斯多德的手稿傳給泰奧弗拉斯托斯，再傳給後人，後人把它們藏在地窖裡，一放大約兩個世紀，才被帶到羅馬，在西元前一世紀由羅得島的安德羅尼科編訂。不管這個故事有幾分真，我們現在用的編排與許多書名都出自這位編者；「形上學」這個名字，就是他給排在《物理學》之後那幾卷書的標籤。此後在拉丁語的西方，亞里斯多德的大部分著作失傳了好幾個世紀，到十二、十三世紀才回來，而且主要是經由阿拉伯學術，連同伊本・西那與伊本・魯世德的註釋一起。對中世紀的讀者來說，他就叫「那位哲學家」。
Dharma and the West · 佛法與西方哲學
Aristotle and the Buddha 亞里斯多德與佛陀
Two comparisons are often made, and both need care. The first is between Aristotle’s mean and the Buddha’s Middle Way. They share a shape and differ in substance. Aristotle’s mean is a point on a scale of feeling or action, different for each person and situation: the right amount of anger, the right amount of giving. The Middle Way (majjhimā paṭipadā) of the first sermon is a path between two ways of life, indulgence in sense pleasure and self-mortification, and it is spelled out as the eightfold path. Aristotle aims at the flourishing of a self. The Buddha’s path leads to seeing that there is no such self to flourish.
常有人做兩個比較，兩個都需要小心。第一個是亞里斯多德的「中道」與佛陀的「中道」。兩者形狀相同，內容不同。亞里斯多德的中道是感受或行動量尺上的一個點，隨人、隨情境而不同：恰當分量的憤怒，恰當分量的施予。佛陀初轉法輪所說的中道（majjhimā paṭipadā），是兩種生活方式之間的一條路——耽於欲樂與自我折磨——並且具體展開為八正道。亞里斯多德瞄準的是一個自我的興盛；佛陀的道路通向的是看清：並沒有這樣一個可供興盛的自我。
The second comparison is closer. Aristotle held that character is formed by repeated action: we become what we practice. Buddhist accounts of karma and of cultivation (bhāvanā) say much the same, and both traditions conclude that ethics is a matter of training and not only of knowing. That is the point on which both part company with Socrates. Which Western ethical theory Buddhist ethics most resembles, Aristotle’s or the utilitarians’, is a live debate among scholars (Dharma and the West, D18).
第二個比較貼近得多。亞里斯多德主張，品格是由反覆的行動形成的：我們練習什麼，就成為什麼。佛教對業與修習（bhāvanā）的說明，講的幾乎是同一件事；兩個傳統都得出結論：倫理是訓練的事，不只是知道的事。在這一點上，兩者都跟蘇格拉底分道揚鑣。至於佛教倫理最像西方哪一種倫理學理論——亞里斯多德的，還是效益主義的——是學界正在進行的爭論（佛法與西方哲學 D18）。
Terms of art · 哲學術語
Words that come with him 跟著他一起來的詞
Gk. organon ‘tool, instrument’
The traditional name for Aristotle’s six logical treatises.
亞里斯多德六部邏輯專論的傳統總稱。
Gk. peripatos ‘a covered walk’
Belonging to Aristotle’s school.
屬於亞里斯多德學派的。
Gk. eu ‘well’ + daimōn ‘guardian spirit’
Living and doing well over a whole life; often translated “happiness,” more exactly “flourishing.”
在一整個人生中活得好、做得好；常譯「幸福」，更精確的說法是「興盛」。
Gk. ‘end, goal’
That for the sake of which a thing exists or is done; the root of “teleology.”
事物存在或行為發生所為的目的；teleology（目的論）的字根。
Gk. aitia ‘cause, explanation’
Material, formal, efficient, and final: four kinds of answer to the question why.
質料因、形式因、動力因、目的因：對「為什麼」的四種回答。
Gk. mesotēs
The right amount, between excess and deficiency, in feeling and action.
感受與行動上，介於過與不及之間的恰當分量。
Reading check · 理解測驗
Did it land? 讀懂了嗎
1. What was new about the Lyceum?
2. What did Aristotle discover about arguments?
3. Why was Aristotle’s logic shown to be incomplete in the nineteenth century?
Go further · 延伸
Where he appears 他出現在哪幾課
- Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, translated by W. D. Ross ↗Books I and II are the place to start. 從卷一、卷二讀起。
- Aristotle, Prior Analytics, translated by A. J. Jenkinson ↗
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Aristotle” ↗