Philosophers · 哲學家 · Greece and Rome
Plato 柏拉圖 · Πλάτων
Socrates’ pupil and Aristotle’s teacher, who turned philosophy into literature and founded the first university.
蘇格拉底的學生、亞里斯多德的老師；他把哲學寫成了文學，並且創辦了第一所大學。
- Born 出生
- c. 428 BCE, Athens, to an aristocratic family
- Died 去世
- c. 348 BCE, Athens
- Teacher 老師
- Socrates
- Pupil 學生
- Aristotle, for twenty years
- School 學校
- The Academy, founded c. 387 BCE
- Wrote 著作
- About thirty-five dialogues, all of which survive
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 young man with a political future 一個前途在政壇的年輕人
Plato was born in Athens around 428 BCE, a few years into the long war with Sparta, into one of the city’s oldest families. On his mother’s side he was related to Solon, the lawgiver. Everything pointed to a career in politics. Two things turned him from it. The first was the conduct of his own relatives: when Athens lost the war in 404, an oligarchy of thirty seized power, two of his kinsmen were among its leaders, and it ruled by murder. The second was what the restored democracy did five years later, when it tried and executed Socrates, whom Plato, then about twenty-eight, considered the most just man of his time.
柏拉圖大約西元前 428 年生於雅典，當時對斯巴達的長年戰爭才開打幾年；他出身城裡最古老的家族之一，母親那邊跟立法者梭倫有親戚關係。一切都指向政治生涯。有兩件事讓他轉了向。第一件是他自己親戚的作為：西元前 404 年雅典戰敗，三十人的寡頭集團奪權，他有兩位親屬名列領袖，而這個政權靠殺戮統治。第二件是五年後恢復的民主政體做的事：它審判並處死了蘇格拉底；當時大約二十八歲的柏拉圖，認為蘇格拉底是那個時代最正義的人。
A letter that has come down under his name, and may be genuine, describes the result. He concluded that every existing city was badly governed, and that the troubles of mankind would not end until philosophers became rulers or rulers became philosophers. He left Athens for some years and traveled, probably to southern Italy, where he met followers of Pythagoras and absorbed their conviction that mathematics is the key to reality.
一封以他的名義流傳下來、有可能是真作的信，描述了這件事的結果。他斷定，現存的每一個城邦都治理得很糟；人類的禍患，要等到哲學家成為統治者、或統治者成為哲學家，才會終止。他離開雅典幾年，四處遊歷，大概到過義大利南部，在那裡遇見畢達哥拉斯的追隨者，並且吸收了他們的信念：數學是通往實在的鑰匙。
The Academy 學院
Around 387 he returned and founded a school in a grove outside the walls that was sacred to the hero Academus. The Academy had no fees and no fixed curriculum, and it lasted, in one form or another, for the better part of nine centuries. A later tradition says that over its door were the words “Let no one ignorant of geometry enter.” The story cannot be traced back to Plato’s own time, but it suits a school where leading mathematicians worked beside philosophers. Its most famous member arrived at seventeen and stayed twenty years: Aristotle.
大約西元前 387 年他回到雅典，在城牆外一座獻給英雄阿卡德摩斯的樹林裡辦了一所學校。學院不收學費，也沒有固定的課程；它以各種形式存續了將近九個世紀。後來有個傳說，說它門上寫著：「不懂幾何學的人不得入內。」這個說法追溯不到柏拉圖自己的時代，但它跟這所學校很相稱：頂尖的數學家在那裡跟哲學家並肩工作。學院最有名的成員十七歲入學，待了二十年：亞里斯多德。
Sicily, and the dialogues 西西里，以及對話錄
Plato tested his political ideas once in practice, and it went badly. He was invited to Syracuse, the richest city in the Greek West, to educate its young ruler Dionysius II as a philosopher-king. The pupil lost interest, the court turned hostile, and Plato was for a time kept there against his will. He went back to teaching and writing, and his last and longest work, the Laws, is a far more cautious book than the Republic.
柏拉圖把他的政治理念付諸實踐過一次，結果很糟。他受邀前往敘拉古——希臘世界西部最富有的城邦——要把年輕的統治者狄奧尼修斯二世教育成哲學家國王。學生失去了興趣，宮廷轉為敵意，柏拉圖有一段時間被違背意願地留在那裡。他回去繼續教書寫作；他最後、也是最長的一部作品《法律篇》，比《理想國》謹慎得多。
He wrote dialogues, and never appears in them as a speaker. In the early ones Socrates questions people and nothing is settled. In the middle ones, the Phaedo, the Symposium, and the Republic, Socrates sets out bold doctrines about the soul and the Forms. In the late ones those doctrines are examined critically, sometimes by a character who defeats Socrates in argument. A reader therefore never knows for certain what Plato believed, and it is likely that he intended this. He had learned from his teacher that a conclusion one has been handed is worth much less than a conclusion one has been made to reach. All of his dialogues survive, which is true of almost no other ancient author.
他寫的是對話錄，而且從不讓自己在其中開口。在早期的對話錄裡，蘇格拉底詰問別人，最後什麼都沒有定論。在中期的《斐多篇》《會飲篇》《理想國》裡，蘇格拉底提出關於靈魂與理型的大膽學說。在晚期的對話錄裡，這些學說受到批判性的檢視，有時檢視者是一個在論證上擊敗蘇格拉底的角色。所以讀者永遠無法確定柏拉圖本人相信什麼，而這很可能是他有意如此。他從老師那裡學到：別人交到你手上的結論，價值遠遠不如你被引導著自己得出的結論。他的對話錄全部流傳了下來；幾乎沒有別的古代作者有這樣的運氣。
- c. 428Born in Athens生於雅典
- 404The Thirty seize power三十人僭主奪權
- 399Socrates is executed蘇格拉底被處死
- c. 387Founds the Academy創立學院
- 367Aristotle arrives; first voyage to Dionysius II亞里斯多德入學；首次赴狄奧尼修斯二世處
- c. 348Dies in Athens卒於雅典
The central idea · 核心觀念
The forms 理型
Socrates had asked what courage is, or justice, and had found that nobody could say. Plato took the question to have an answer, and asked what sort of thing the answer could be. It cannot be any particular brave act, since each of those is brave in some ways and circumstances and not in others. It must be something that all brave acts share and none of them fully is. He called such a thing a Form (eidos). The Form of Beauty is beautiful without qualification, does not come into being or pass away, and is the same for everyone. Particular beautiful things are beautiful by “sharing in” it, as many reflections share in one face.
蘇格拉底問過勇敢是什麼、正義是什麼，結果發現沒有人說得出來。柏拉圖認定這個問題是有答案的，於是進一步問：這個答案可能是哪一種東西？它不可能是任何一個個別的勇敢行為，因為那些行為各自只在某些方面、某些情境下是勇敢的，在別的方面則不是。它必定是所有勇敢行為共有、卻沒有哪一個完全就是的東西。他把這樣的東西叫作「理型」（eidos）。「美的理型」是無條件地美，不生不滅，對每個人都一樣。個別的美的事物之所以美，是因為「分有」了它，就像許多倒影分有同一張臉。
The theory was meant to do several jobs at once. It explains how we can have knowledge although the world we perceive is in flux. It explains how one word, “just,” can apply correctly to many different things. It gives ethics an objective standard, independent of what any person or city happens to approve. And, joined to the view that the soul knew the Forms before birth, it explains how we can recognize a truth we were never taught. The philosopher Alfred North Whitehead remarked that the European philosophical tradition “consists of a series of footnotes to Plato,” and what he had in mind was this range of questions more than any of the answers.
這個理論原本要同時完成好幾項工作。它解釋了，儘管我們感知的世界流變不居，我們為什麼還能有知識。它解釋了，「正義」這一個詞，為什麼能正確地用在許多不同的事物上。它給了倫理學一個客觀的標準，不取決於任何個人或城邦碰巧贊同什麼。再配上「靈魂在出生之前就認識理型」這個看法，它還解釋了，我們為什麼能認出一個從來沒有人教過我們的真理。哲學家懷海德說過，歐洲的哲學傳統「是由對柏拉圖的一連串註腳構成的」；他心裡想的，與其說是柏拉圖的哪一個答案，不如說是這一整片問題。
To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.我說，對他們來說，真實簡直就只是那些造像的影子。
Socrates, describing the prisoners in the cave. 蘇格拉底描述洞穴裡的囚徒。
The strongest objection · 最強的反駁
The third man 第三人
The most damaging criticism of the Forms was written by Plato. In the Parmenides a young Socrates presents the theory to the old philosopher Parmenides, who takes it apart. Suppose many things are large, and we explain this by a single Form, Largeness, in which they share. Is Largeness itself large? It seems it must be, since it is what largeness is. But then the large things and the Form of Largeness are all large, and by the same reasoning there must be a second Form to explain what they have in common, and then a third, without end. The theory was supposed to explain the many by the one, and it has produced infinitely many ones.
對理型論殺傷力最大的批評，是柏拉圖自己寫的。在《巴門尼德篇》裡，年輕的蘇格拉底向年老的哲學家巴門尼德提出這個理論，而巴門尼德把它拆了。假設有許多東西是大的，我們用一個單一的理型「大」來解釋，說它們分有了它。那麼「大」本身大不大？看來它必定是大的，因為它就是「大」之所以為大。可是這樣一來，那些大的東西加上「大的理型」全都是大的；照同樣的推理，必須有第二個理型來解釋它們的共同之處，然後是第三個，沒有盡頭。這個理論本來要用「一」來解釋「多」，結果它產生了無窮多個「一」。
Aristotle added a second objection that is simpler and may be worse. Even if the Forms exist, they explain nothing. A separate, unchanging Form of Horse does not make horses, move them, or help us learn about them, and “sharing in” is, he said, an empty phrase and a poetic metaphor. What makes a horse a horse must be in the horse. Plato went on defending and revising the theory to the end of his life, and never answered these objections to everyone’s satisfaction, his own included.
亞里斯多德加了第二個反駁，比較簡單，也許更致命。就算理型存在，它們也什麼都沒解釋。一個分離而不變的「馬的理型」既不造馬、不推動馬，也無助於我們認識馬；至於「分有」，他說那是空話，是詩的比喻。使馬成為馬的東西，一定在馬裡面。柏拉圖直到生命結束都在捍衛並修訂這個理論，而始終沒有把這些反駁回答到讓每個人滿意的地步，包括他自己。
How we know · 史料
Reading an author who never speaks 讀一位從不開口的作者
With Plato the difficulty is the opposite of the one we met with Socrates. We have everything he published, and we still cannot be sure of his views, because he says nothing in his own voice. Scholars divide the dialogues into early, middle, and late, partly by their content and partly by statistical studies of his prose style, and most agree that the Socrates of the early group is closest to the historical man, while the Socrates of the Republic speaks for Plato. Ancient reports add a further puzzle. Aristotle refers to Plato’s “unwritten doctrines,” and in one dialogue Plato has Socrates argue that serious thought cannot be entrusted to writing at all, since a book cannot answer questions and says the same thing to every reader.
讀柏拉圖的困難，跟我們在蘇格拉底那裡遇到的正好相反。他發表過的東西我們全都有，卻仍然無法確定他的看法，因為他從不用自己的聲音說話。學者把對話錄分成早、中、晚三期，一部分依據內容，一部分依據對他散文風格的統計研究；多數人同意，早期那一組裡的蘇格拉底最接近歷史上的那個人，而《理想國》裡的蘇格拉底是在替柏拉圖發言。古代的記載又添了一個謎。亞里斯多德提到柏拉圖的「未成文學說」；而柏拉圖在一部對話錄裡，讓蘇格拉底論證說：嚴肅的思想根本不能託付給文字，因為書不會回答問題，而且對每個讀者說的都是同一套。
Dharma and the West · 佛法與西方哲學
Plato and the Buddha 柏拉圖與佛陀
The two agree about the starting point and disagree about nearly everything after it. Both hold that ordinary experience is a kind of captivity, that its cause is a failure to see, and that release comes through a disciplined turning of the whole person, which involves conduct as well as intellect. Both also teach that the one who is free should go back for the others.
這兩個人對起點的看法一致，對起點之後幾乎每一件事的看法都不同。兩人都主張：平常的經驗是一種被囚的狀態，原因是沒有看見，而解脫要靠整個人有紀律的轉向，這個轉向既涉及行為也涉及理智。兩人也都教導：得到自由的人，應該為了其他人回去。
The disagreement concerns what there is to be seen. Plato’s answer to change is permanence. Behind the flux stand eternal Forms, and the soul that knows them is itself immortal and akin to them. The Buddha’s teaching goes the other way on each of these points. All conditioned things are impermanent, no unchanging essence is to be found in them, and the search for a permanent self is the root of the trouble. A Platonist tries to escape from the changing to the changeless. A Buddhist tries to see change clearly enough to stop grasping at it. It is hard to find two great traditions that describe the human problem so alike and then prescribe such opposite cures.
分歧在於：有什麼可以被看見？柏拉圖對變化的回答是恆常。在流變的背後有永恆的理型；認識理型的靈魂，本身也是不朽的，並且與理型同類。佛陀的教導在這幾點上，每一點都走相反的方向。一切有為法都是無常的，其中找不到不變的本質，而追尋一個恆常的自我，正是問題的根源。柏拉圖主義者想從變動逃向不變。佛教徒想把變化看得夠清楚，清楚到不再去抓取它。很難找到另外兩個偉大的傳統，把人的問題描述得如此相似，開出的藥方卻如此相反。
Terms of art · 哲學術語
Words that come with him 跟著他一起來的詞
Gk. eidos, idea ‘look, shape’
An eternal, unchanging reality of which particular things are copies.
永恆不變的實在，個別事物是它的仿製品。
Gk. methexis ‘sharing in’
The relation of a particular thing to its Form.
個別事物與其理型之間的關係。
Gk. dialektikē ‘the art of conversation’
Philosophical inquiry by question and answer; in the Republic, the highest study.
以問答進行的哲學探究；在《理想國》裡是最高的學問。
Gk. anamnēsis
The doctrine that learning is recovering knowledge the soul had before birth.
主張學習是找回靈魂在出生前已有的知識。
The ruler of Plato’s ideal city, who governs because he knows the Good.
柏拉圖理想城邦的統治者，因為認識「善」而治理。
Any view holding that abstract objects, such as numbers, exist independently of minds and of the physical world.
凡是主張抽象對象（例如數）獨立於心靈與物質世界而存在的看法。
Reading check · 理解測驗
Did it land? 讀懂了嗎
1. Which two events turned Plato away from a career in politics?
2. What is a Form, in Plato’s theory?
3. What does the Third Man argument claim?
Go further · 延伸
Where he appears 他出現在哪幾課
- Plato, Republic, translated by Benjamin Jowett ↗Books I, VI, and VII if you read nothing else. 如果只讀一部分，讀第一、六、七卷。
- Plato, Symposium, translated by Benjamin Jowett ↗On love; the most beautiful of the dialogues. 談愛；對話錄裡最美的一部。
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Plato” ↗