Philosophers · 哲學家 · The Early Modern Age
René Descartes 笛卡兒 · Cartesius
He doubted everything he could, and from the one thing left tried to rebuild knowledge on the model of mathematics.
他懷疑了一切能懷疑的，再從僅存的那一樣東西出發，想照著數學的樣子重建知識。
- Born 出生
- March 31, 1596, La Haye en Touraine, France
- Died 去世
- February 11, 1650, Stockholm, Sweden
- Educated 教育
- Jesuit college of La Flèche; law degree at Poitiers
- Lived 居住
- The Dutch Republic for about twenty years
- Main works 主要著作
- Discourse on Method (1637); Meditations (1641); Principles of Philosophy (1644)
- Also known for 另以此聞名
- Analytic geometry; the law of refraction
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
A good school and a restless graduate 一所好學校，一個坐不住的畢業生
Descartes was born in 1596 in a small town in the Loire valley that has since been renamed after him. His mother died when he was a year old. At about ten he was sent to the Jesuit college of La Flèche, one of the best schools in Europe, where his delicate health earned him permission to stay in bed in the mornings, a habit he kept for life. He left with an excellent education and, by his own account, a sense that apart from mathematics he had learned nothing certain. He took a law degree to please his family and never practiced.
笛卡兒 1596 年生於羅亞爾河谷的一個小鎮，那個鎮後來改以他的名字命名。他一歲時母親去世。大約十歲時，他被送進拉弗萊什的耶穌會學院，那是歐洲最好的學校之一；因為身體孱弱，他獲准早上賴在床上，這個習慣他保持了一輩子。他帶著極好的教育離開；而照他自己的說法，也帶著一種感覺：除了數學，他沒有學到任何確定的東西。為了讓家人高興，他拿了法律學位，卻從未執業。
He resolved instead, as he put it, to study “the great book of the world,” and joined the army of a Dutch prince as a gentleman volunteer. On the night of November 10, 1619, shut up for the winter in a stove-heated room in Germany, he had three vivid dreams, which he took as a sign that his calling was to reform the whole of knowledge by a single method. It is a nice irony that the philosopher of the dream argument dated his vocation from a dream.
他轉而決心，照他的說法，去讀「世界這本大書」，並以紳士志願兵的身分加入一位荷蘭親王的軍隊。1619 年 11 月 10 日夜裡，他在德國一間用火爐取暖的房間裡過冬，做了三個鮮明的夢；他把這些夢當作一個徵兆：他的天職是用單一的方法，改革全部的知識。提出夢之論證的哲學家，把自己的志業追溯到一場夢，這是個漂亮的反諷。
Twenty years in Holland 荷蘭的二十年
In 1628 he moved to the Dutch Republic, the most tolerant country in Europe, and lived there for two decades, changing his address often and guarding his privacy. By 1633 he had finished a treatise on physics, The World, which assumed that the earth moves. Then came the news that Galileo had been condemned in Rome for teaching the same thing, and Descartes suppressed the book. Caution shaped everything he published afterward.
1628 年他搬到荷蘭共和國，當時歐洲最寬容的國家，在那裡住了二十年，經常換住址，小心守著自己的隱私。到 1633 年，他已經完成一部物理學專論《論世界》，書中假定地球在動。接著傳來消息：伽利略因為教同樣的東西，在羅馬被定了罪。笛卡兒把這本書壓了下來。此後他發表的一切，都帶著謹慎的痕跡。
In 1637 he brought out the Discourse on Method, written in French so that, as he said, even women might read it. It came with three scientific essays, one of which, the Geometry, showed how curves can be described by equations and so joined algebra to geometry. The Meditations followed in 1641. He took the unusual step of circulating the manuscript beforehand to critics, among them Thomas Hobbes and the theologian Antoine Arnauld, and printing their objections together with his replies.
1637 年他出版了《談談方法》，用法文寫成；照他的說法，這樣連婦女也讀得懂。書後附了三篇科學論文，其中一篇〈幾何學〉說明了曲線可以怎樣用方程式來描述，就此把代數與幾何接了起來。《沉思集》在 1641 年問世。他採取了一個不尋常的做法：事先把手稿送給批評者傳閱，其中有霍布斯與神學家阿爾諾，然後把他們的反駁連同自己的答覆一起印出來。
A princess, a queen, and a cold climate 一位公主、一位女王、一個寒冷的國度
His most searching critic was a young exile, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, who wrote to him in 1643 to ask how an immaterial mind could possibly move a material body. Their correspondence lasted until his death, and his last book, The Passions of the Soul, grew out of it. In 1649 Queen Christina of Sweden persuaded him to come to Stockholm as her tutor. She wanted her lessons at five in the morning, in an unheated library, during one of the coldest winters on record. The man who had spent every morning of his life in bed caught pneumonia and died on February 11, 1650, aged fifty-three.
對他提出最深入質疑的，是一位年輕的流亡者：波希米亞的伊莉莎白公主。她在 1643 年寫信問他：一個非物質的心靈，到底怎麼可能推動一個物質的身體？兩人的通信持續到他去世，他的最後一本書《論靈魂的激情》就是從這些通信長出來的。1649 年，瑞典女王克里斯蒂娜說服他到斯德哥爾摩當她的老師。她要在清晨五點上課，在一間沒有暖氣的圖書室裡，而那是有紀錄以來最冷的冬天之一。這個一輩子每天早上都待在床上的人染上了肺炎，在 1650 年 2 月 11 日去世，享年五十三歲。
- 1596Born at La Haye生於拉海
- 1619The three dreams三個夢
- 1628Moves to the Dutch Republic遷居荷蘭共和國
- 1633Suppresses The World壓下《論世界》
- 1637Discourse on Method《談談方法》
- 1641Meditations《沉思集》
- 1650Dies in Stockholm卒於斯德哥爾摩
The central idea · 核心觀念
Mind and body are two kinds of thing 心與身是兩種東西
Descartes is remembered for a method and for a doctrine, and the second follows from the first. The method is to accept only what is perceived so clearly and distinctly that it cannot be doubted, and to build on it step by step, as a geometer builds on axioms. The cogito is the first such truth. From it he draws the doctrine known as dualism. He can doubt that he has a body and cannot doubt that he is thinking. He concludes that he is essentially a thinking thing (res cogitans), whose whole nature is to think, and that body is a different kind of thing altogether (res extensa), whose whole nature is to take up space.
笛卡兒被後人記得的，是一套方法與一個學說，而後者是從前者來的。方法是：只接受被知覺得如此「清楚而分明」、以致無法懷疑的東西，然後一步一步往上蓋，就像幾何學家從公理往上蓋。Cogito 是第一個這樣的真理。他從它引出了稱為「二元論」的學說。他可以懷疑自己有身體，卻無法懷疑自己在思考。他的結論是：他本質上是一個思考的東西（res cogitans），其全部本性就是思考；而物體是完全不同的另一種東西（res extensa），其全部本性就是佔有空間。
The division did an enormous amount of work. It handed the whole material world, including animal and human bodies, to mechanical physics, and so helped to make modern science possible. And it kept the mind, with its freedom and its claim to immortality, out of the reach of that physics. Almost every later debate about consciousness starts from the picture he drew, usually in order to escape it.
這個劃分做了極大量的工作。它把整個物質世界，包括動物與人的身體在內，交給了機械論的物理學，因而促成了現代科學。同時，它把心靈連同心靈的自由、以及它對不朽的主張，放在那門物理學碰不到的地方。後來幾乎每一場關於意識的爭論，都是從他畫出的這幅圖像出發的；而出發的目的，通常是為了逃離它。
I am, I exist, is necessarily true each time it is expressed by me, or conceived in my mind.「我是，我存在」，每當我說出它、或在心裡想到它的時候，必然是真的。
The one certainty left at the bottom of the doubt. 懷疑到最底層，僅存的那一個確定。
The strongest objection · 最強的反駁
How do the two interact? 這兩者怎麼互相作用？
Princess Elisabeth saw the difficulty at once. On Descartes’ own physics, a body is moved only by being pushed, and pushing requires contact between things that have surfaces. A mind has no size, shape, or location. How, then, does my decision to raise my arm raise it, and how does a pin in my finger produce a feeling of pain? Descartes suggested that the exchange takes place in the pineal gland, a small organ at the center of the brain. That says where the interaction happens and leaves the question of how it happens untouched. He never gave Elisabeth an answer she accepted, and in the end he told her, more or less, not to think about it too much.
伊莉莎白公主一眼就看出了困難。照笛卡兒自己的物理學，物體只有被推才會動，而推需要有表面的東西彼此接觸。心靈沒有大小、形狀或位置。那麼，我「舉起手臂」的決定是怎麼把手臂舉起來的？扎在我手指上的針，又是怎麼產生「痛」的感覺的？笛卡兒提出，這種交流發生在松果腺，腦部中央的一個小器官。這說的是互動「在哪裡」發生，對「怎麼」發生的問題完全沒有碰到。他始終沒有給伊莉莎白一個她接受的答案；到最後，他差不多是告訴她：別想太多。
A second objection goes to the method. Descartes needs God to guarantee that what he perceives clearly and distinctly is true. But his proof that God exists relies on premises he accepts because he perceives them clearly and distinctly. Arnauld pointed out the circle in 1641, and it has been called the Cartesian circle ever since.
第二個反駁針對的是方法。笛卡兒需要上帝來保證，他清楚而分明地知覺到的東西是真的。可是他對「上帝存在」的證明所依賴的前提，他之所以接受，正是因為他清楚而分明地知覺到了它們。阿爾諾在 1641 年指出了這個循環；從此它就被稱為「笛卡兒循環」。
How we know · 史料
The writer and his readers 作者與他的讀者
Unlike Socrates and Aristotle, Descartes controlled how he was read. He chose his own genres with care: an intellectual autobiography in the Discourse, a set of spiritual exercises in the Meditations, a textbook in the Principles. He also published his critics alongside himself, so that the Objections and Replies is several times the length of the work it discusses. After his death the Catholic Church placed his books on the Index of prohibited works in 1663. Within a century “Cartesian” had become the name of the old orthodoxy that Newton and Locke set out to overturn.
跟蘇格拉底與亞里斯多德不同，笛卡兒掌控了自己被閱讀的方式。他仔細挑選自己的文體：《談談方法》是一部知性自傳，《沉思集》是一套靈修式的練習，《哲學原理》是一本教科書。他還把批評者跟自己並排出版，以致《反駁與答辯》的篇幅是它所討論的正文的好幾倍。他去世之後，天主教會在 1663 年把他的著作列入禁書目錄。不到一個世紀，「笛卡兒派」就成了舊正統的名字，是牛頓與洛克著手要推翻的對象。
Dharma and the West · 佛法與西方哲學
Descartes and the Buddha 笛卡兒與佛陀
Both men begin by turning attention inward and asking what can be found there, and they report opposite findings. Descartes looks within and finds a self: a single, lasting, thinking substance that is more certain than anything else. The Buddha looks within and finds form, feeling, perception, volitional formations, and consciousness, the five aggregates, each arising and passing, and no owner among them. Hume, a century after Descartes, repeated the experiment and sided with the Buddha: when he entered most intimately into what he called himself, he always stumbled on some particular perception and never caught a self without one.
這兩個人都從把注意力轉向內在開始，問在那裡找得到什麼；而他們報告的結果相反。笛卡兒往內看，找到一個自我：一個單一、持存、會思考的實體，比其他任何東西都確定。佛陀往內看，找到的是色、受、想、行、識，也就是五蘊，各自生起、各自滅去，其中沒有主人。在笛卡兒之後一個世紀，休謨重做了這個實驗，站到了佛陀這一邊：當他最貼近地進入他稱為「自己」的東西時，他總是碰到某個個別的知覺，從來沒有在沒有知覺的情況下抓到一個自我。
On mind and body the comparison is less direct. Early Buddhism distinguishes nāma, the mental, from rūpa, the material, which sounds like dualism. But neither is a substance. Both are processes, and in one well-known simile name-and-form and consciousness are said to depend on each other in the way that two sheaves of reeds stand by leaning together (Saṃyutta Nikāya 12.67). Elisabeth’s question, how two utterly different substances can act on each other, does not arise in that form, because there are no substances to begin with.
在心與身的問題上，比較就沒有那麼直接。早期佛教區分 nāma（名，心理的）與 rūpa（色，物質的），聽起來像二元論。但兩者都不是實體。兩者都是過程；在一個著名的比喻裡，名色與識被說成互相依待，就像兩束蘆葦靠在一起才立得住（《相應部》12.67）。伊莉莎白的問題——兩種截然不同的實體怎麼能互相作用——不會以那種形式出現，因為打從一開始就沒有實體。
Terms of art · 哲學術語
Words that come with him 跟著他一起來的詞
L. dualis ‘containing two’
The view that mind and body are two distinct kinds of thing.
主張心與身是兩種不同的東西。
L. substantia ‘that which stands under’
A thing that exists in its own right and bears properties.
憑自身而存在、並且承載性質的東西。
L. ‘thinking thing’ / ‘extended thing’
Descartes’ names for mind and for body.
笛卡兒對心靈與物體的稱呼。
His mark of truth: a perception so evident that one cannot doubt it while attending to it.
他的真理標記：一個知覺明白到只要專注於它，就無法懷疑它。
L. Cartesius, the Latin form of his name
The charge that he uses clear and distinct perception to prove God, and God to validate clear and distinct perception.
這項指控：他用清楚分明的知覺證明上帝，又用上帝保證清楚分明的知覺。
The difficulty of explaining how an immaterial mind and a material body affect each other.
如何解釋非物質的心靈與物質的身體互相影響，這個難題。
Reading check · 理解測驗
Did it land? 讀懂了嗎
1. Why did Descartes suppress his treatise The World in 1633?
2. What does Cartesian dualism claim?
3. What was Princess Elisabeth’s objection?
Go further · 延伸
Where he appears 他出現在哪幾課
- René Descartes, Discourse on Method, translated by John Veitch ↗Short, autobiographical, and written to be enjoyed. Parts 1 to 4. 短、帶自傳性、寫來就是要讓人讀得愉快的。讀第一到四部分。
- René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, translated by John Veitch ↗
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “René Descartes” and “Elisabeth, Princess of Bohemia” ↗