Philosophers · 哲學家 · The Early Modern Age
Baruch Spinoza 史賓諾莎 · Benedictus de Spinoza
Expelled from his community at twenty-three, he ground lenses for a living and wrote a geometry of God, the mind, and human freedom.
二十三歲被逐出自己的社群；他靠磨鏡片為生，寫下一部關於神、心靈與人類自由的幾何學。
- Born 出生
- November 24, 1632, Amsterdam
- Died 去世
- February 21, 1677, The Hague
- Family 家世
- Portuguese-Jewish merchants who had fled the Inquisition
- Trade 職業
- Lens grinder
- Main works 主要著作
- Theological-Political Treatise (1670); Ethics (1677, posthumous)
- Languages 語言
- Portuguese, Spanish, Hebrew, Dutch, Latin
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 ban 逐出令
Spinoza was born in Amsterdam in 1632, in the community of Portuguese Jews whose families had been forced to live as Christians in Iberia and had come to the Dutch Republic to practice their religion openly. His first name was Baruch, “blessed,” which he later Latinized as Benedictus. He was a gifted pupil in the community’s school and was expected to become a rabbi or to carry on his father’s business in dried fruit. The business failed, his father died, and by his early twenties he was studying Latin and the new philosophy of Descartes with a freethinking ex-Jesuit.
史賓諾莎 1632 年生於阿姆斯特丹的葡萄牙猶太人社群；這些家族在伊比利半島曾被迫以基督徒的身分生活，後來遷到荷蘭共和國，才得以公開信奉自己的宗教。他的名字是巴魯赫，意思是「蒙福的」，後來他把它拉丁化為本尼迪克特。他是社群學校裡的優秀學生，大家期待他成為拉比，或者接手父親的乾果生意。生意垮了，父親過世了；二十出頭的時候，他正跟著一位思想自由的前耶穌會士，學拉丁文與笛卡兒的新哲學。
On July 27, 1656, the congregation pronounced on him the harshest ban in its history. He was expelled and cursed “by day and by night,” and members were forbidden to speak with him, to do him any service, or to read anything he wrote. He was twenty-three and had published nothing. The document speaks of “abominable heresies” and “monstrous deeds” and does not say what they were. He seems to have accepted the sentence calmly, and he never sought to return.
1656 年 7 月 27 日，會眾對他宣布了這個社群有史以來最嚴厲的逐出令。他被驅逐，並且「在白日、在黑夜」受到詛咒；成員被禁止與他交談、禁止為他提供任何幫助、禁止讀他寫的任何東西。當時他二十三歲，什麼都還沒發表過。文件裡提到「可憎的異端」與「駭人的行為」，卻沒有說那是什麼。他似乎平靜地接受了這個判決，而且從未尋求回去。
Lenses and letters 鏡片與書信
He supported himself for the rest of his life by grinding lenses for microscopes and telescopes, work at which he was expert enough to be consulted by the scientist Christiaan Huygens. He lived in rented rooms, first in a village near Leiden and later in The Hague, owned very little, and turned down a pension from an admirer because he thought it too large. A circle of friends in Amsterdam read his writings in manuscript and discussed them by letter.
此後的一生，他靠研磨顯微鏡與望遠鏡的鏡片維生；他在這門手藝上夠內行，連科學家惠更斯都來請教。他住在租來的房間裡，先是在萊頓附近的一個村子，後來在海牙；他擁有的東西很少，還拒絕了一位仰慕者提供的年金，因為他覺得數目太大。阿姆斯特丹有一圈朋友，讀他以手稿流傳的著作，並且用書信討論。
In 1670 he published, anonymously and with a false place of printing, the Theological-Political Treatise. It argued that the Bible should be studied like any other ancient book, that its authority is moral and not scientific, and that a state is safest when its citizens are free to think and say what they like. The book was denounced across Europe. One critic called it “forged in hell,” and its author was soon known. In 1673 he was offered the chair of philosophy at Heidelberg, on condition that he not disturb the established religion. He declined, saying that he did not know within what limits his freedom to philosophize would have to be kept.
1670 年，他匿名出版了《神學政治論》，還印上假的出版地。這本書論證：《聖經》應該像任何一本古書那樣被研究；它的權威是道德上的，不是科學上的；而一個國家最安全的時候，就是它的公民可以自由地想、自由地說的時候。這本書在全歐洲遭到譴責。有一位批評者說它是「在地獄裡鍛造的」，而作者是誰很快就人盡皆知。1673 年，海德堡大學請他擔任哲學教席，條件是不擾亂既有的宗教。他婉拒了，說他不知道自己做哲學的自由，得被限制在什麼範圍之內。
The book in the desk 書桌裡的那本書
His masterpiece, the Ethics, was finished by 1675. When he went to Amsterdam to see it through the press he found that a rumor was already abroad that he had written a book proving there is no God, and he put the manuscript away. He died of a lung disease, possibly made worse by years of breathing glass dust, on February 21, 1677, at the age of forty-four. His friends carried the desk containing his papers to Amsterdam and published them within the year, with only his initials on the title page. The volume was banned a few months later. For a century afterward “Spinozist” was a term of abuse, and then the German Romantics rediscovered him. The man once denounced as an atheist was described by the poet Novalis as intoxicated with God.
他的代表作《倫理學》在 1675 年之前完成。他到阿姆斯特丹準備付印時，發現外面已經在謠傳他寫了一本證明沒有上帝的書，於是把手稿收了起來。1677 年 2 月 21 日，他死於肺病，可能因為多年吸入玻璃粉塵而加重；享年四十四歲。朋友們把裝著他文稿的書桌運到阿姆斯特丹，在一年之內出版了它們，書名頁上只印著他姓名的縮寫。幾個月後這本書就被查禁。此後一個世紀，「史賓諾莎主義者」是一句罵人的話；後來德國的浪漫主義者重新發現了他。這個曾經被斥為無神論者的人，被詩人諾瓦利斯形容為「醉心於神」。
- 1632Born in Amsterdam生於阿姆斯特丹
- 1656Expelled from the congregation被逐出會眾
- 1670Theological-Political Treatise《神學政治論》
- 1673Declines the chair at Heidelberg婉拒海德堡的教席
- 1675Ethics completed and withheld《倫理學》完成，未敢出版
- 1677Dies; the Ethics is published去世；《倫理學》出版
The central idea · 核心觀念
God, or nature 神，或自然
The Ethics is laid out like Euclid, with definitions, axioms, and numbered propositions each proved from what came before. Its first conclusion is that there can be only one substance, one thing that exists in its own right, and that this substance is infinite. Spinoza calls it “God or Nature.” Everything else, every stone, tree, and person, is a mode of it, a way in which the one substance is for a time arranged, as a wave is a way the sea is arranged. God, on this account, did not make the world and does not stand outside it. God is the world, understood as a single self-sustaining system. And since everything follows from the nature of that system, “nothing in the universe is contingent.”
《倫理學》的編排像歐幾里得：有定義、公理，以及編了號的命題，每一條都從前面的推證出來。它的第一個結論是：實體只可能有一個，也就是憑自身而存在的東西只有一個，而這個實體是無限的。史賓諾莎稱之為「神，或自然」。其餘的一切，每一塊石頭、每一棵樹、每一個人，都是它的「樣態」，是這唯一的實體暫時被安排成的一種樣子，就像波浪是海被安排成的一種樣子。照這個說法，神沒有創造世界，也不站在世界之外。神就是世界，被理解為一個單一的、自我維持的系統。而既然一切都從這個系統的本性推出，「宇宙中沒有任何東西是偶然的」。
It might seem that such a system leaves no room for ethics. Spinoza’s answer is the point of the book. Each thing “endeavours to persist in its own being,” and our emotions are the forms this striving takes when it is helped or hindered. We are in bondage when we are pushed about by causes we do not understand. We become free, in the only sense available, as we come to understand them. “An emotion, which is a passion, ceases to be a passion, as soon as we form a clear and distinct idea thereof.” The more we see things as necessary, the less they have power to torment us, and the highest state is a calm joy in understanding that he calls the intellectual love of God. The last sentence of the book admits how hard this is: “all things excellent are as difficult as they are rare.”
看起來，這樣的系統沒有給倫理學留下任何空間。史賓諾莎的回答，正是這本書的重點。每一樣東西都「努力保持自己的存在」；而我們的情感，就是這份努力受到幫助或阻礙時所呈現的形式。當我們被自己不理解的原因推來推去，我們就處於奴役之中。當我們逐漸理解它們，我們就變得自由，這也是唯一說得通的自由。「一個屬於被動的情感，只要我們對它形成清楚而分明的觀念，就不再是被動的情感。」我們愈是把事物看作必然的，它們折磨我們的力量就愈小；而最高的狀態，是在理解之中的一種平靜的喜悅，他稱之為「對神的理智之愛」。這本書的最後一句話承認了這有多難：「一切卓越的事物，既稀有，又艱難。」
A free man thinks of death least of all things; and his wisdom is a meditation not of death but of life.自由的人最少想到死；他的智慧是對生的沉思，而不是對死的沉思。
A deliberate reversal of Plato, who had called philosophy a preparation for death. 刻意顛倒了柏拉圖；柏拉圖說哲學是為死亡做準備。
The strongest objection · 最強的反駁
Why exhort a machine? 何必勸告一部機器？
If everything happens necessarily, then whether I come to understand my emotions is as fixed as everything else. Spinoza’s book urges the reader to take a path, and his system says that the reader will take it or not as causes dictate. The same difficulty touches his own praise and blame. He calls some lives better than others and some people slaves, which seems to assume that things could have gone differently.
如果一切都必然地發生，那麼我會不會去理解自己的情感，就跟其他任何事一樣早已固定。史賓諾莎的書勸讀者走一條路，而他的體系說：讀者走不走，全看原因怎麼決定。同樣的困難也碰到他自己的褒貶。他說某些人生比另一些好，說某些人是奴隸；這似乎預設了事情本來可以有不同的發展。
He has a reply, and it is the compatibilist’s. The book is itself a cause. Reading an argument can change a person, and a determined world in which the Ethics is read differs from one in which it is not. “Better” and “worse” describe how fully a thing realizes its own nature and need not imply that it could have done otherwise. Whether this is enough is disputed. A second objection, pressed by Leibniz and by many since, is that his one substance swallows individuals. If I am only a wave on the sea, it becomes hard to say what makes my joys and sufferings mine, or why they should matter.
他有一個回答，而那是相容論者的回答。這本書本身就是一個原因。讀一個論證可以改變一個人；一個「《倫理學》被人讀了」的被決定的世界，跟一個「它沒被讀」的世界是不一樣的。「比較好」與「比較差」描述的是一樣東西把自己的本性實現到什麼程度，不必蘊涵它本來可以有別的做法。這樣夠不夠，還有爭議。第二個反駁是萊布尼茲提出、此後許多人跟進的：他那唯一的實體把個體吞沒了。如果我只是海上的一道波浪，就很難說是什麼使我的喜悅與痛苦成為「我的」，或者它們為什麼重要。
How we know · 史料
Atheist or God-intoxicated? 無神論者，還是醉心於神？
No philosopher has been read in more opposite ways. To his contemporaries the identification of God with Nature was atheism under a thin disguise: a God who has no purposes, hears no prayers, and could not have made things otherwise is no God at all. To the Romantics the same identification made everything divine. Both readings can cite the text. The geometrical form adds to the difficulty, since it hides the author’s voice behind proofs, and the proofs are often less convincing than the notes he attached to them. It is safest to begin with those notes, the scholia and appendices, where he drops the method and says what he means.
沒有哪一位哲學家被人讀得這麼兩極。在他同時代的人看來，把神等同於自然，是披著薄薄偽裝的無神論：一個沒有目的、不聽禱告、也不可能把事物造成別的樣子的神，根本就不是神。在浪漫主義者看來，同一個等同，使萬物都成了神聖的。兩種讀法都舉得出文本根據。幾何學的形式又增加了困難，因為它把作者的聲音藏在證明後面；而那些證明，往往不如他附在後面的註記有說服力。最穩當的做法是從那些註記讀起，也就是附釋與附錄；在那裡他放下了方法，直接說出他的意思。
Dharma and the West · 佛法與西方哲學
Spinoza and the Buddha 史賓諾莎與佛陀
Of the philosophers in this series so far, Spinoza is the one whose project most resembles the Buddha’s. Both begin from the fact that people suffer through their own emotions. Both trace the suffering to ignorance of causes. Both teach that the remedy is a clear seeing of how those emotions arise, and both report that such seeing is itself the change, with no further act of will required. Spinoza’s proposition that a passion ceases to be a passion once it is clearly understood could stand as a description of mindfulness. Both deny that there is a free-standing self that owns its states, and both end in a calm they decline to call a reward: “Blessedness is not the reward of virtue, but virtue itself.”
在這個系列到目前為止談過的哲學家裡，史賓諾莎是計畫最像佛陀的一位。兩人都從這個事實出發：人因為自己的情感而受苦。兩人都把苦追溯到對原因的無知。兩人都教導，解方是清楚地看見這些情感怎麼生起；而且兩人都說，這樣的看見本身就是改變，不需要再加上一個意志的動作。史賓諾莎那條命題——被動的情感一旦被清楚理解，就不再是被動的情感——可以直接拿來描述正念。兩人都否認有一個獨立自存、擁有種種狀態的自我；兩人最後也都歸於一種平靜，而且都不肯把它叫作報酬：「至福不是德行的報酬，而是德行本身。」
The difference is in the foundations. Spinoza’s world rests on one eternal, infinite substance, and liberation is seeing oneself as part of it, under what he calls the aspect of eternity. That is close to the Vedānta teaching that the self is one with Brahman, the view the Buddha’s followers argued against for a thousand years. Buddhism denies any such substance. For the Buddha things arise in dependence on one another, and there is no further thing in which they all inhere. Spinoza’s remedy is also purely intellectual. He offers arguments. The Buddhist path adds a training of attention and conduct, on the view that understanding which stays in the study, as Hume’s did, does not reach the passions (Dharma and the West, D17).
差別在地基。史賓諾莎的世界建立在一個永恆、無限的實體上，而解脫就是把自己看成它的一部分，他稱之為「在永恆的相下」來看。這很接近吠檀多「我與梵合一」的教義，也就是佛陀的後學與之論辯了一千年的那種見解。佛教否認有任何這樣的實體。在佛陀看來，事物彼此依待而生起，並沒有另一個東西讓它們全都依附其中。史賓諾莎的藥方也是純粹理智上的：他提供的是論證。佛教的道路則多了對注意力與行為的訓練，因為它認為，像休謨那樣留在書房裡的理解，到不了情感那裡（佛法與西方哲學 D17）。
Terms of art · 哲學術語
Words that come with him 跟著他一起來的詞
L. substantia ‘that which stands under’
In Spinoza, that which exists in itself and is conceived through itself. There is only one.
在史賓諾莎，指存在於自身之內、並且透過自身而被理解的東西。只有一個。
L. modus ‘manner, way’
A particular thing, understood as a way in which substance exists.
個別的事物，被理解為實體存在的一種方式。
Gk. pan ‘all’ + theos ‘god’
The view that God and the universe are identical. The word was coined after Spinoza’s death.
主張神與宇宙是同一的。這個詞是史賓諾莎死後才造出來的。
L. ‘striving, endeavor’
The striving by which each thing endeavors to persist in its own being.
每一樣東西努力保持自己存在的那份力求。
L. ‘under the aspect of eternity’
Seeing a thing as it follows necessarily from the nature of the whole.
把一樣東西看作從整體的本性必然推出的。
Gk. scholion ‘comment’
An explanatory note attached to a proof.
附在證明之後的說明性註記。
Reading check · 理解測驗
Did it land? 讀懂了嗎
1. What does Spinoza mean by “God or Nature”?
2. How, according to the Ethics, does a person become free?
3. Why did Spinoza decline the chair at Heidelberg?
Go further · 延伸
Where he appears 他出現在哪幾課
- Baruch Spinoza, Ethics, translated by R. H. M. Elwes ↗Begin with the Appendix to Part I, then the Preface to Part IV, then Part V. 先讀第一部分的附錄，再讀第四部分的序言，然後是第五部分。
- Steven Nadler, Spinoza: A Life (1999)The standard biography. 標準的傳記。
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Baruch Spinoza” ↗