Immanuel Kant 康德 · Immanuel Kant

🔊He entered the local university at sixteen and discovered Newton. When his father died he had to leave without a post, and for nine years he worked as a tutor in country houses. He returned in 1755 as an unsalaried lecturer, paid by the students who chose to attend, and he lectured for fifteen years on almost everything: logic, physics, mathematics, geography, anthropology, fortification. In those years he was known as an elegant and witty man, a good hand at billiards and cards and a sought-after dinner guest. He proposed, in a work on astronomy, that the solar system had condensed from a rotating cloud of gas, a hypothesis that is still accepted in outline.

他十六歲進了當地的大學，發現了牛頓。父親去世時，他還沒有職位就不得不離開；有九年之久，他在鄉間的大宅裡當家庭教師。1755 年他回來，當一名沒有薪水的講師，收入來自選擇來聽課的學生；他講了十五年的課，幾乎什麼都講：邏輯、物理、數學、地理、人類學、築城學。那些年裡，人們知道他是一個優雅而風趣的人，撞球與牌都打得好，是受歡迎的晚宴賓客。他在一部天文學著作裡提出：太陽系是從一團旋轉的氣體雲凝聚而成的；這個假說的大綱至今仍被接受。

🔊In 1770, at forty-six, he was at last given the chair of logic and metaphysics. Then he published almost nothing for eleven years. He had read David Hume, and Hume’s argument that we have no rational ground for believing in causation had, he wrote, “first interrupted my dogmatic slumber.” If Hume was right, science had no foundation. If Hume was wrong, someone had to show how the mind can know in advance of experience that every event has a cause. Kant’s friends expected a book each year, and each year he wrote that it was nearly ready. The Critique of Pure Reason appeared in 1781, eight hundred pages put on paper, by his own account, in four or five months after twelve years of thought. The first reviewers found it unreadable.

1770 年，四十六歲的他終於得到了邏輯與形上學的教席。然後，他有十一年幾乎什麼也沒發表。他讀了休謨；而休謨的論證（我們沒有理性的根據相信因果關係），他寫道，「最先打斷了我的獨斷論的迷夢」。如果休謨是對的，科學就沒有地基。如果休謨是錯的，就得有人說明：心靈怎麼能夠在經驗之前就知道每一個事件都有原因。康德的朋友們年年期待一本書，而他年年寫信說快好了。《純粹理性批判》在 1781 年問世；八百頁，照他自己的說法，是在十二年的思考之後，用四五個月寫到紙上的。最早的書評者覺得它根本讀不下去。

🔊He was fifty-seven, and the works that made him the central figure of modern philosophy were all still to come. They followed within a decade: the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals in 1785, a second edition of the first Critique in 1787, the Critique of Practical Reason in 1788, and the Critique of Judgment in 1790.

那年他五十七歲；而使他成為近代哲學核心人物的那些著作，全都還沒寫出來。它們在十年之內接連問世：1785 年的《道德形上學基礎》、1787 年的第一批判第二版、1788 年的《實踐理性批判》，以及 1790 年的《判斷力批判》。

🔊By then his life had taken the fixed form for which he is remembered. He rose at five, drank tea, smoked one pipe, lectured from seven, wrote until one, and dined at length with guests chosen from outside the university, since he disliked talking philosophy at table. At half past three he walked, alone and breathing through his nose, and it is said that his neighbors set their clocks by him. The one recorded lapse came when he was reading Rousseau’s Emile and could not put it down. Rousseau’s portrait hung in his study, the only picture in the house. It was Rousseau, he wrote, who had cured him of despising the ignorant and taught him to honor human beings.

到那時候，他的生活已經定型成後人記得的那個樣子。他五點起床，喝茶，抽一斗菸，七點開始講課，寫作到一點，然後跟賓客慢慢吃一頓午餐；賓客是從大學以外挑的，因為他不喜歡在餐桌上談哲學。三點半他去散步，一個人，用鼻子呼吸；據說他的鄰居靠他來對時。有紀錄的唯一一次失常，是他在讀盧梭的《愛彌兒》，放不下來。盧梭的肖像掛在他的書房裡，是屋子裡唯一的一幅畫。他寫道，是盧梭治好了他對無知者的輕視，教會了他尊重人。

🔊He welcomed the American and French revolutions and went on defending the principles of the second after the Terror had turned most of his countrymen against it. In 1794 his book on religion brought a rebuke from the Prussian king and an order to write no more on the subject, which he obeyed until the king died. His mind began to fail in his last years. He died on February 12, 1804. His last words, on being given a little wine and water, were “It is good.” The city turned out for the funeral.

他歡迎美國與法國的革命；在恐怖統治使他大多數的同胞轉而反對後者之後，他仍然繼續為它的原則辯護。1794 年，他談宗教的那本書招來了普魯士國王的申斥，以及一道不准再寫這個題目的命令；他遵守到國王去世為止。在最後幾年，他的心智開始衰退。1804 年 2 月 12 日，他去世了。有人給了他一點摻水的酒，他最後的話是：「很好。」全城的人都出來送葬。