标题: 柏拉图如何改变你的生活 [打印本页]
作者: karin 时间: 2009-3-6 15:55 标题: 柏拉图如何改变你的生活
柏拉图如何改变你的生活
《为什么是有而不是无？伟大哲学家提出的23个问题》简评
埃里克·奥姆斯比 著 吴万伟 译
刊发时间：2008-03-28 01:04:55 光明网-光明观察
哲学起源于好奇的观点和苏格拉底一样古老。在对话《泰阿泰德篇》（Theaetetus）中，柏拉图引用苏格拉底的话说“好奇心是哲学家的标记”，实际上哲学除了好奇心没有其他来源。两千年后，伊曼奴尔·康德写到“有两种事物，我们愈是沉思，愈感到它们的崇高与神圣，愈是增加虔敬与信仰，这就是头上的星空和心中的道德律。”当然，不管是苏格拉底还是康德都并不满足于仅仅陶醉在好奇中，敬畏充当了其思想的刺激，激发他们提出问题，常常最具探索性的问题。
西方哲学史可以被看作对现实的艰苦探索的纪录，其中寻找答案的每一次尝试都成为提出更多问题的契机。在他的《为什么是有而不是无？伟大哲学家提出的23个问题》(Basic Books, 234 pages, $20)中，著名哲学家和哲学史家莱谢克·科拉柯夫斯基（Leszek Kolakowski）用这些问题为读者提供了用简洁和充满智慧地方式了解哲学这门神秘学科的途径，其中每个问题都是根本问题，都和具体的哲学家有关。科拉柯夫斯基警告说他的小书不是要作为“哲学药丸”，实际上，虽然他绝对地明白易懂，但从来没有过分简单化。他的技巧是通过讨论让本书读起来引人入胜、趣味盎然。从阿格涅斯卡·克拉考斯卡（Agnieszka Kolakowska）最初写的波兰文翻译成清楚和优雅的英文。因为他的每一章的开头都是一个问题，用自己的问题（有些问题非常非常尖刻锋利）作为结束，本书包含辩证法的紧张关系，任何一个思想家，不管多么受人敬重，没有不被挑战的。结果，即便是最乏味的观点，比如柏拉图怪异的形式理论、奥卡姆的威廉（William of Ockham）的激进唯名论（nominalism）突然之间就像演员在泛光灯照明的思想剧院中而生机勃发。
科拉柯夫斯基先生以公元五世纪雅典的苏格拉底开始，以战前弗莱堡的德国现象学家埃德蒙德·胡塞尔（Edmund Husserl）1859-1938年结束。他谈论的每个哲学家的具体问题众多，比如苏格拉底的“我们为什么做恶？”，迈蒙尼德（Parmenides）的“真实是什么？”，坎特伯雷的安瑟莫（St. Anselm of Canterbury）(1033-1109)的“上帝能不存在吗？”，叔本华（1788-1860）的“我们应该自杀吗？”换句话说，它们是真正的问题，对于我们每个人至关重要。当然，不管多么敏锐深刻，没有一个问题能够说明柏拉图、笛卡儿或者莱布尼茨（Leibniz）完整的、复杂的思想。即便如此，科拉柯夫斯基先生把像这些挑选的问题当作楔子一样使用，成功地切开最纠缠不清的体系。
在简要解释尼采的“权力意志”理论时，他说“尼采告诉我们使用权力意志，为我们自己创造生命的意义，不管传统的道德法律和继承下来的善恶观念。”接着他问“按照这个观点，我们怎么区分一个伟大艺术家和一个江洋大盗的差别呢。”我们应该同样赞美他们吗，因为两者都创造了所希望的生活的意义？新鲜的是，他有时候举手投降。叔本华反对自杀不是因为它是错误的，而是因为它没有意义。他宣称，“谁能从这些论述中发现意义？它们让人难以理解。”
科拉柯夫斯基先生精彩展现了亨利·柏格森（Henri Bergson）(1859-1941)的“创造性演化”（包括他有先见之明的攻击智慧设计），称赞这个伟大的法国哲学家，特别的直觉的观念。他注意到对于柏格森来说，直觉“能够本能地、直接地把握精神并进入精神意识的深处，抓住其独特性。” 柏格森相信“真实的东西在世界上总是独特的。”
我不知道科拉柯夫斯基先生本人是否伯格森信徒，让人羡慕的是，他的讨论没有党派偏见。不错，他确实“特别的自信”而取笑尼采，他调皮地注意到克尔凯郭尔（Kierkegaard）故意用杂乱无章的方式写作，只是为了惹恼“在他看来最惹人讨厌的人，也就是大学教授。”但是他仍然使用伯格森的直觉理论解释自己的思想，他的每个哲学家都被看作独特的，他“从内部”抓住他们的思想，不管这些思想多么希奇古怪。
科拉柯夫斯基先生也善于显示他的二十三个思想家以及他们的难题是如何重叠交叉在一起的。公元四世纪的奥古斯丁提出的耶稣为人类赎罪而殉难的宿命（divine predestination）的问题后来重新出现在帕斯卡（Pascal）的激烈论点中。奥卡姆的威廉(公元1285-1347年)以及最著名的奥卡姆剃刀告诉我们抽象的类别，比如人性或者善并没有独立存在的内涵。这种唯名论以新面貌重新浮现在伯格森对于个人独特性的坚持上。在科拉柯夫斯基先生的叙述中，只有斯宾诺莎是独特的，正如他所说的，“在整个哲学史上，没有哪个哲学家像斯宾诺莎这样孤独。”
哲学问题可能是古老的，但是它们旺盛的生命力仍然让人吃惊，这并不是说问题无法回答。正如科拉柯夫斯基先生显示的，答案比问题多，有时候甚至把问题全部淹没了。这些问题顽强地生存下来，继续困扰着我们，因为它们产生于好奇，而好奇心是取之不尽、用之不竭的。
译自：“How Plato Can Change Your Life” By Eric Ormsby
Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? 23 Questions From Great Philosophers
http://www.nysun.com/article/71951
作者: karin 时间: 2009-3-6 15:56
How Plato Can Change Your Life
By ERIC ORMSBY | February 27, 2008
The notion that philosophy begins in wonder is as old as Socrates. In his dialogue "Theaetetus," Plato quotes him as saying that "the sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher" and that in fact, philosophy has "no other origin" but wonder. More than 2,000 years later, Immanuel Kant wrote that "only two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder." These were "the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me." Of course, neither Socrates nor Kant remained content simply to bask in their wonderment. Awe acted as an irritant to their minds. It prompted questions, often of the most searching sort.
The history of Western philosophy can be seen as a record of this baffled interrogation of reality, in which each attempt at an answer serves chiefly to provoke yet further questions. In his "Why Is There Something Rather Than Nothing? 23 Questions From Great Philosophers" (Basic Books, 234 pages, $20), the distinguished philosopher and historian of philosophy Leszek Kolakowski uses such questions — each one fundamental and each one associated with a specific philosopher — to provide a concise and witty guide to this riddling discipline. Mr. Kolakowski warns that his little book is not intended as "philosophy in a pill" and indeed, though he is unfailingly lucid, he never oversimplifies. Such is his skill, however, that his discussions — translated into clear and elegant English from the Polish original by Agnieszka Kolakowska — make surprisingly gripping reading. Since he opens each chapter with a question and then concludes with questions of his own (some of them quite barbed), the book possesses the tension of dialectic; no thinker, however venerable, goes unchallenged. As a result, even the driest ideas — Plato's ghostly Theory of Forms or William of Ockham's radical nominalism — suddenly spring into life like actors in some floodlit theater of the mind.
Mr. Kolakowski begins with Socrates in fifth-century Athens and ends with the German phenomenologist Edmund Husserl (1859–1938) in pre-war Freiburg. The specific questions he associates with each philosopher range from "Why do we do evil?" for Socrates to "What is real?" for Parmenides to "Could God not exist?" for St. Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) and even "Should we commit suicide?" for Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860). They are, in other words, real questions, of vital importance to us all. Of course, no single question, however astute, can illumine the entire complex thought of Plato or Descartes or Leibniz. Even so, by using his chosen questions like wedges, Mr. Kolakowski succeeds in splitting open even the knottiest systems.
Thus, in outlining Nietzsche's doctrine of "the will to power," he remarks, "Nietzsche tells us to exercise the will to power and create the meaning of life for ourselves, regardless of traditional moral laws and inherited ideas of good and evil," and he then asks, "How, on this view, does a great artist differ in his greatness from a great criminal? Are we to admire both equally, since both created the meaning they wanted in their lives?" Sometimes, refreshingly, he throws up his hands. Regarding Schopenhauer's rejection of suicide — not because it's wrong but because it's pointless — he exclaims, "Who can make sense out of these arguments? They defy understanding."
In a wonderful presentation of the "creative evolution" of Henri Bergson (1859–1941) — including his prescient attacks on intelligent design — Mr. Kolakowski praises the great French philosopher particularly for his notion of intuition. For Bergson, he notes, intuition "unites with the thing in itself and grasps it from the inside, in its uniqueness." Bergson believed that "what is real is always unique in the world."
I don't know whether Mr. Kolakowski is himself a Bergsonian; his discussions are admirably nonpartisan. True, he does poke a little fun at Nietzsche for his "spectacular self-assurance" and notes mischievously that Kierkegaard wrote in a deliberately muddled way just to vex "that most repulsive, for him, of all figures — the university professor." But he still applies Bergsonian intuition to their thought: Each of his philosophers is seen as unique and he grasps their thought, however outlandish he may find it, "from the inside."
Mr. Kolakowski is also good at showing how his 23 thinkers, and their obsessive questions, overlap and echo one another. Questions posed by St. Augustine in the fourth century about divine predestination resound later in Pascal's impassioned arguments. William of Ockham (c. 1285–1347) — he of the celebrated Ockham's razor — taught that abstract categories, such as humanity or goodness, had no independent existence; this nominalism resurfaces, in new guise, in Bergson's insistence on the uniqueness of individual beings. In Mr. Kolakowski's account, only Spinoza stands apart; as he remarks, "In the whole history of philosophy, there is no figure as lonely as Spinoza."
The questions of philosophy may be ancient but they remain astonishingly fresh. But this isn't because the questions are unanswerable. As Mr. Kolakowski shows, the answers outnumber the questions, and sometimes swamp them. They persist and continue to possess us because they arise out of wonder, and that too remains inexhaustible.
eormsby@nysun.com
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