【材料备份】George论尼采与我们的时代

Selections from Beyond Good and Evil

Friedrich Nietzsche

 

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“How could anything originate out of its opposite? Truth from error, for instance? Or the will to truth from the will to deception? Or selfless action from self-interest? Or the pure, sun-bright gaze of wisdom from a covetous leer? Such origins are impossible, and people who dream about such things are fools – at best. Things of the highest value must have another, separate origin of their own, – they cannot be derived from this ephemeral, seductive, deceptive, lowly world, from this mad chaos of confusion and desire. Look instead to the lap of being, the everlasting, the hidden God, the ‘thing-in-itself ’ – this is where their ground must be, and nowhere else!”1 – This way of judging typifies the prejudices by which metaphysicians of all ages can be recognized: this type of valuation lies behind all their logical procedures. From these “beliefs” they try to acquire their “knowledge,” to acquire something that will end up being solemnly christened as “the truth.” The fundamental belief of metaphysicians is the belief in oppositions of values. It has not occurred to even the most cautious of them to start doubting right here at the threshold, where it is actually needed the most – even though they had vowed to themselves “de omnibus dubitandum” [everything is to be doubted]. But we can doubt, first, whether opposites even exist and, second, whether the popular valuations and value oppositions that have earned the metaphysicians’ seal of approval might not only be foreground appraisals. Perhaps they are merely provisional perspectives, perhaps they are not even viewed head-on; perhaps they are even viewed from below, like a frog-perspective, to borrow an expression that painters will recognize. Whatever value might be attributed to truth, truthfulness, and selflessness, it could be possible that appearance, the will to deception, and craven self-interest should be accorded a higher and more fundamental value for all life. It could even be possible that whatever gives value to those good and honorable things has an incriminating link, bond, or tie to the very things that look like their evil opposites; perhaps they are even essentially the same. Perhaps! – But who is willing to take charge of such a dangerous Perhaps! For this we must await the arrival of a new breed of philosophers, ones whose taste and inclination are somehow the reverse of those we have seen so far – philosophers of the dangerous Perhaps in every sense. – And in all seriousness: I see these new philosophers approaching.

“事物怎能来自其对立面？例如，真理滋生于非真理？或者，追求真理的意志植根于追求幻觉的意志？或者，无私行为源于利己心理？或者，智者朗朗乾坤般的观照来自贪婪？这种事是不可能发生的。谁若这样梦想，谁就是个傻瓜，还可能更糟糕！凡是具有无上价值的事物，定然另有自身的源头——它们决不能生于这转瞬即逝、充满诱惑、虚幻卑微的世界，决不能生于这妄想与贪婪的大杂烩！它们乃是生于存在的怀抱，生于永恒，生于隐匿的神明，生于“自在之物” ——必定是生于此处，绝无其他可能！”。——这种判断方式是一种典型的先入之见，每个时代的形而上学家们 都在此一再露出马脚。这种评价方式是他们所有逻辑推理过程的背景。他们从自己的这种“信念”出发苦苦追求“知识”，苦苦追求那最终被冠以“真理”之名而隆重推出的东西。形而上学家的基本信念就是对价值对立的信念。尽管在开始时怀疑尤为必要，但是连他们中的谨慎者也没想到要这样做，虽说他们还自诩为“怀疑一切” 。也就是说，人们完全可以怀疑：首先，是否真有这种对立存在；其次，那些世俗的价值评判和价值对立，即形而上学家们盖上印章担保无误的东西，是否只是肤浅的判断，只是瞬间的景象？也许还是一隅之见，是自下而上的坐井观天，借用画家的常见术语来表达，是“青蛙的视角”。 即使不妨将许多价值归于真实、真诚和无私，但也许还是会有这样的情况：对一切生命来说都要来得更高尚和更基本的另一种价值，可以划到表象、欺骗欲望、自私和贪婪的名下去。甚至还可能是这样：那些好的、受人尊敬的事物的价值，恰恰在于这些事物与坏的、表面上与之格格不入的事物之间的令人尴尬的关联、纠缠、钩连，也许甚至在于两者本质上的一致。也许！——不过，谁又愿意去关注这些危险的“也许”呢！为此必须等待一种新型哲人的出现，他们会拥有某些与迄今为止的哲人不同的、甚至是相反的品位和偏好，无论如何理解，他们会关注那些危险的“也许”。——而说实在的，我已经看到他们走来了。

 

 

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Are they new friends of “truth,” these upcoming philosophers? Probably, since all philosophers so far have loved their truths. But they certainly will not be dogmatists. It would offend their pride, as well as their taste, if their truth were a truth for everyone (which has been the secret wish and hidden meaning of all dogmatic aspirations so far). “My judgment is my judgment: other people don’t have an obvious right to it too” – perhaps this is what such a philosopher of the future will say. We must do away with the bad taste of wanting to be in agreement with the majority. “Good” is no longer good when it comes from your neighbor’s mouth. And how could there ever be a “common good”! The term is self-contradictory: whatever can be common will never have much value. In the end, it has to be as it is and has always been: great things are left for the great, abysses for the profound, delicacy and trembling for the subtle, and, all in all, everything rare for those who are rare themselves. –

这种新露面的哲人是“真理”的新朋友么？极有可能：因为迄今为止的哲人无不热爱他们的真理。不过，他们肯定不会是教条主义者。对他们而言，倘若他们的真理仍然是一种人人适用的真理，那必定是与他们的骄傲和品味相悖的；而这却是迄今为止所有教条主义者为之奋斗的隐秘愿望和言外之意。“我的判断就是我的判断：别人无权轻易置喙”——某位未来的哲人或许会如是说。“人必得摆脱其人云亦云的恶劣品味。一旦旁边的人也说好，那么‘好’也就不再好了。怎样会有一种‘放诸四海而皆好’的东西呢！这话是自相矛盾的：什么东西若是放诸四海，便没什么价值了。最后，事情必定一如既往，过去如此，现在如此，将来也必定如此：宏大之物为伟人而设，鸿沟为深沉之人而设，柔情和战栗则是为文弱之人而设，那么，全面概括地说来便是：一切稀罕之物，皆为稀有之人而设。”——

 

 

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After all this, do I really need to add that they will be free, very free spirits, these philosophers of the future – and that they certainly will not just be free spirits, but rather something more, higher, greater, and fundamentally different, something that does not want to be misunderstood or mistaken for anything else? But, in saying this, I feel – towards them almost as much as towards ourselves (who are their heralds and precursors, we free spirits!) – an obligation to sweep away a stupid old prejudice and misunderstanding about all of us that has hung like a fog around the concept of the “free spirit” for far too long, leaving it completely opaque. In all the countries of Europe, and in America as well, there is now something that abuses this name: a very narrow, restricted, chained up type of spirit whose inclinations are pretty much the opposite of our own intentions and instincts (not to mention the fact that this restricted type will be a fully shut window and bolted door with respect to these approaching new philosophers). In a word (but a bad one): they belong to the levelers, these misnamed “free spirits” – as eloquent and prolifically scribbling slaves of the democratic taste and its “modern ideas.” They are all people without solitude, without their own solitude, clumsy, solid folks whose courage and honest decency cannot be denied –  it’s just that they are un-free and ridiculously superficial, particularly given their basic  tendency to think that all human misery and wrongdoing is caused by traditional social structures: which lands truth happily on its head! What they want to strive for with all their might is the universal, green pasture happiness of the herd, with security, safety, contentment, and an easier life for all. Their two most well-sung songs and doctrines are called: “equal rights” and “sympathy for all that suffers” – and they view suffering itself as something that needs to be abolished.  We, who are quite the reverse, have kept an eye and a conscience open to the question of where and how the plant “man” has grown the strongest, and we think that this has always happened under conditions that are quite the reverse. We think that the danger of the human condition has first had to grow to terrible heights, its power to invent and dissimulate (its “spirit” –) has had to develop under prolonged pressure and compulsion into something refined and daring, its life-will has had to be intensified to an unconditional power will. We think that harshness, violence, slavery, danger in the streets and in the heart, concealment, Stoicism, the art of experiment, and devilry of every sort; that everything evil, terrible, tyrannical, predatory, and snakelike in humanity serves just as well as its opposite to enhance the species “humanity.” But to say this much is to not say enough, and, in any event, this is the point we have reached with our speaking and our silence, at the other end of all modern ideology and herd desires: perhaps as their antipodes? Is it any wonder that we “free spirits” are not exactly the most communicative spirits? That we do not want to fully reveal what a spirit might free himself from and what he will then perhaps be driven towards? And as to the dangerous formula “beyond good and evil,” it serves to protect us, at least from being mistaken for something else. We are something different from “libres-penseurs,” “liberi pensatori,”“Freidenker” [free-thinker] and whatever else all these sturdy advocates of “modern ideas” like to call themselves. At home in many countries of the spirit, at least as guests; repeatedly slipping away from the musty, comfortable corners where preference and prejudice, youth, origin, accidents of people and books, and even the fatigue of traveling seem to have driven us; full of malice at the lures of dependency that lie hidden in honors, or money, or duties, or enthusiasms of the senses; grateful even for difficulties and inconstant health, because they have always freed us from some rule and its “prejudice,” grateful to the god, devil, sheep, and maggot in us, curious to a fault, researchers to the point of cruelty,  with unmindful fingers for the incomprehensible, with teeth and stomachs for the indigestible,  ready for any trade that requires a quick wit and sharp senses, ready for any risk, thanks to an excess of “free will,” with front and back souls whose ultimate aim is clear to nobody, with fore- and backgrounds that no foot can fully traverse, hidden under the cloak of light, conquerors, even if we look like heirs and prodigals, collectors and gatherers from morning until evening, miserly with our riches and our cabinets filled to the brim, economical with what we learn and forget, inventive in schemata, sometimes proud of tables of categories, sometimes pedants, sometimes night owls at work, even in bright daylight; yes, even scarecrows when the need arises – and today the need has arisen: inasmuch as we are born, sworn, jealous friends of solitude, our own deepest, most midnightly, noon-likely solitude. This is the type of people we are, we free spirits! and perhaps you are something of this yourselves, you who are approaching? you new philosophers? –

说了以上这一切之后，难道还需要我特意指出：这些未来的哲人们，他们也会是自由精神，十分自由的精神，——同样肯定的是，他们也不会仅仅是自由精神，而是比这要来得更多、更高、更大，根本就是另一种东西，是不会被弄错和混淆的。不过，我说这些时，觉得自己无论针对他们本身,还是针对我们自己——我们是他们的前导和先驱，我们这些自由精神——几乎同样负有一种义务，即从我们这儿吹散那些古老而愚蠢的先见和误解，它们像迷雾一样久久地笼罩着“自由精神”的概念。在欧洲的所有国家，甚至在美国，都在滥用这个名字，那是一种很狭隘、受拘束、被拴在锁链上的精神，它所想要的差不多就和我们意图和本能中的内容恰恰相反，——更不要说，它对于那些正在兴起的新型哲人而言根本就是关死的窗、闩死的门了。丑话少说，他们属于平均主义者，这些被叫错了的、名不副实的“自由精神”——他们巧舌如簧,妙笔生花,却是民主品位及其“现代观念”的奴隶；统统都是没有孤独的人，没有自己的孤独，呆头呆脑的乖孩儿，倒并不欠缺勇气和令人起敬的好习惯，但他们不自由，十分浅薄可笑，尤其是还特别爱好在迄今的旧社会形式中寻找一切人类苦难和失败的大致原因；殊不知这样一来，真理就被幸运地倒了个儿！他们全力追求的，是绿草茵茵的牧场上的普遍幸福，那里每个人都能生活得稳定、安全、舒适、轻松；都被他们哼唱烂了的两套曲子或者学说是“权利平等”和“同情一切受苦者”，——苦难被他们当作了必须弃之如弊履的东西。我们这些唱反调的，睁着眼睛,留着良知，是为了问，迄今为止“人”这株植物 是在哪里、又是怎样最有力地生长起来的，我们猜想，这些每次都在相反条件下发生，而且他处境的危险性必定先会剧增，他的创造能力和作伪能力（他的“精神”——）必定在长期压迫下变得精致和大胆，他的生命意志必定升级为无条件的权力意志：——我们猜想，一切种类的严酷、暴力、奴役，暗巷里和内心中的危险、隐秘、斯多噶主义、诱惑艺术、魔鬼行径，一切恶的、可怖的、暴政式的、如毒蛇猛兽一般的东西，人身上的所有这一切，作为“人类”这一物种的对立面，对其成长来说是十分有益的：——我们讲了这么多，但仍然意犹未尽，而且在这点上，我们无论畅所欲言还是沉默不语，都处于一切现代意识形态和群体需求的另一端：大概是它们的对拓者 吧？我们这些“自由精神”不是最爱讲话的，不是老想着要透露某个精神能从何处得以解放，又有可能被驱赶到何处，这又有什么奇怪的？至于“善恶的彼岸”这一危险提法的含义，我们至少得避免混淆：我们不同于那些个“自由思想家”、“自由精神”、“自由思想者” ——鬼知道那些个“现代理念”的死党还爱给自己起什么名字——，我们和他们可不一样。在许多精神国度中是主人，至少也是上宾；不断地从阴暗舒适的角落里溜走，试图将我们禁锢在此的是偏爱和偏见，是青春和出身，是与人与书的偶遇，甚至是流浪的疲惫；满怀恶意地抵制附庸的诱饵，它们会隐藏在荣誉、金钱、仕途或官能享受里边；甚至感谢艰难困苦，感谢变化多端的病痛，因为它们能让我们从某种法则及其“先见”中挣脱出来，感谢我们心中的上帝与魔鬼、绵羊与蠕虫，好奇直至成为恶习，探究直至变得残酷，毫不犹豫地伸手抓取难以把握的事物，以利齿和胃对付简直消化不了的东西，随时准备去做一切需要敏锐与敏捷的手工，随时准备好因为“自由意志”过剩去冒险，会同前前后后那些其最终意图最难看透的灵魂，登上前前后后那些无人可以踏遍的台面，还有那些隐匿在光明大氅之下的人，那些占领者，虽然继承人和败家子在我们看来没什么两样，那些人从早到晚就忙着归类收藏，守着我们金玉满堂的财富却是一毛不拔，在学习和遗忘方面堪称勤俭持家，在条条框框 里颇有创造发明，有时为些个范畴表 感到自豪，有时头巾气很重，有时又变成白天出来活动的猫头鹰；万不得已有必要时甚至是吓唬鸟儿的稻草人——今天确实有必要：因为我们与孤独，与自己那最深沉的、夜半和正午的孤独感，是生来就深信不疑、且好妒忌的好朋友：——这样的人就是我们，我们这些自由精神！也许你们也是，你们这些未来的人？你们这些新型的哲人？——

 

 

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Hedonism, pessimism, utilitarianism, eudamonianism: these are all ways of thinking that measure the value of things according to pleasure and pain, which is to say according to incidental states and trivialities. They are all foreground ways of thinking and naivetés, and nobody who is conscious of both formative powers and an artist’s conscience will fail to regard them with scorn as well as pity. Pity for you! That is certainly not pity as you understand it: it is not pity for social “distress,” for “society” with its sick and injured, for people depraved and destroyed from the beginning as they lie around us on the ground; even less is it pity for the grumbling, dejected, rebellious slave strata who strive for dominance – they call it “freedom.” Our pity is a higher, more far-sighted pity: – we see how humanity is becoming smaller, how you are making it smaller! – and there are moments when we look on your pity with indescribable alarm, when we fight this pity –, when we find your seriousness more dangerous than any sort of thoughtlessness. You want, if possible (and no “if possible” is crazier) to abolish suffering. And us? – it looks as though we would prefer it to be heightened and made even worse than it has ever been! Well-being as you understand it – that is no goal; it looks to us like an end ! – a condition that immediately renders people ridiculous and despicable – that makes their decline into something desirable!  The discipline of suffering, of great suffering – don’t you know that this discipline has been the sole cause of every enhancement in humanity so far? The tension that breeds strength into the unhappy soul, its shudder at the sight of great destruction, its inventiveness and courage in enduring, surviving, interpreting, and exploiting unhappiness, and whatever depth, secrecy, whatever masks, spirit, cunning, greatness it has been given: – weren’t these the gifts of suffering, of the disciple of great suffering? In human beings, creature and creator are combined: in humans there is material, fragments, abundance, clay, dirt, nonsense, chaos; but in humans there is also creator, maker, hammer-hardness, spectator-divinity and seventh day: – do you understand this contrast?  And that your pity is aimed at the “creature in humans,” at what needs to be molded, broken, forged, torn, burnt, seared and purified, – at what necessarily needs to suffer and should suffer? And our pity – don’t you realize who our inverted pity is aimed at when it fights against your pity as the worst of all pampering and weaknesses? – Pity against pity, then! – But to say it again: there are problems that are higher than any problems of pleasure, pain, or pity; and any philosophy that stops with these is a piece of naiveté. –

无论是享乐主义 、悲观主义 、功利主义 还是幸福论 ，所有这些思维方式都是根据苦与乐，即伴随状态和次要因素来衡量事物的价值的。这些思维方式肤浅而天真，在每个意识到塑造的力量以及艺术家良知的人那里会遭到半讽半怜的鄙视。同情你们！这当然不是你们所指的同情：这不是对“世间疾苦”，对“社会”及其中的体弱多病和命运多舛者的同情，对匍匐于我们周围遭的本性好恶、意志涣散者的怜悯；这更不是对那些怨气冲天、饱受压迫、群情激愤、渴望获得统治权即所谓“自由”的奴隶阶层的同情。我们怀抱的是一种更为高瞻远瞩的同情：——我们看到人是怎么妄自菲薄的，还有你们是如何贬低人的！——有时候，我们忧心忡忡地注视着你们的同情，抗拒这种同情，——觉得你们在此表现出的严肃比任何轻浮举动都更危险。你们也许想——没有比这“也许”更绝的了——消除痛苦；那我们呢？——好像我们想让这痛苦变得比以往任何时候都更沉重、更强烈一样！幸福安康，你们理解的幸福安康——这不是什么目标，在我们看来这就是完结！这种状态里，人立刻会变得可笑而可憎，导致了希望人灭亡的想法！痛苦的磨练，巨大苦难的磨练——你们不知道么，是这种磨练造就了人类迄今为止的一切升华？心灵陷入不幸时的张力，造就了它的坚强；目睹大毁灭时，心灵在颤栗；在承担、忍受、解释、利用不幸的过程中，心灵表现出机智和勇敢；此外还有不幸赠予心灵的那种深刻、神秘、伪装、精神、诡计和伟大：——这些不正是痛苦赠予的，经过巨大痛苦的磨练而获得的礼物么？在人身上，既能看到材料、碎片、冗余、粘土、粪便、瞎折腾、一团糟；又能看到创造者、雕塑家、铁锤般的硬朗、观望者的神性以及第七日 ——你们理解这种对立吗？你们的同情指向“人作为造物的一面”？指向那必定要被捏造、折裂、捶打、撕扯、焚烧、烘烤、提炼的一面——也就是必须且应当受苦的一面? 而我们的同情——你们难道不明白，我们截然相反的同情是指向谁的么，如果它抵制你们的同情，即抵制所有溺爱和软弱中最蹩脚的那一种？——不妨说这是同情与同情分庭抗礼！——不过必须重申，还有比各种有关快乐、苦难和同情的问题更高级的问题，而任何只针对前一类问题的哲学都是幼稚无知的哲学。——

 

 

257

Every enhancement so far in the type “man” has been the work of an aristocratic society – and that is how it will be, again and again, since this sort of society believes in a long ladder of rank order and value distinctions between men, and in some sense needs slavery. Without the pathos of distance as it grows out of the ingrained differences between stations, out of the way the ruling caste maintains an overview and keeps looking down on subservient types and tools, and out of this caste’s equally continuous exercise in obeying and commanding, in keeping away and below– without this pathos, that other, more mysterious pathos could not have grown at all, that demand for new expansions of distance within the soul itself, the development of states that are increasingly high, rare, distant, tautly drawn and comprehensive, and in short, the enhancement of the type “man,” the constant “self-overcoming of man” (to use a moral formula in a supra-moral sense). Of course, you cannot entertain any humanitarian illusions about how an aristocratic society originates (and any elevation of the type “man” will presuppose an aristocratic society –): the truth is harsh. Let us not be deceived about how every higher culture on earth has begun! Men whose nature was still natural, barbarians in every terrible sense of the word, predatory people who still possessed an unbroken strength of will and lust for power threw themselves on weaker, more civilized, more peaceful races of tradesmen perhaps, or cattle breeders; or on old and mellow cultures in which the very last life-force was flaring up in brilliant fireworks of spirit and corruption. The noble caste always started out as the barbarian caste. Their supremacy was in psychic, not physical strength, – they were more complete people (which at any level amounts to saying “more complete beasts” –).

迄今为止，“人”这一种类的每次提升，都是贵族社会的杰作——这种情况将一直延续下去：这个社会相信人与人之间存在巨大的等级差异和价值差异，并认为奴隶制在某种意义上是必要的。阶层差异根深蒂固，统治阶层不断地远观和俯视其臣民和工具，同样不断地练习服从与命令、压制与回避，一种保持距离的激情由此而生；若是没有这种保持距离的激情 ，那么另外一种更为神秘的激情就可能无从谈起，也就是不会渴望灵魂本身范围内的距离不断扩大，不会形成越来越高级、稀有、遥远、辽阔而博大的状态，简言之，“人”这一种类就不会获得提升，“人的自我克服”  ——这句道德套话在此用在超道德意义上——就难以为继。当然：对于一个贵族社会（即“人”这一种类得以提升的前提）产生的历史，人们不可躭于仁慈博爱的幻想：现实是严酷的。让我们直言不讳地说出，迄今为止世界上任何一种高等文化都是如何开始的吧！自然本性尚存的人，无论说是多么可怕都不为过的野蛮人，拥有坚不可摧的意志力和权力欲的掠食者，他们扑向较为软弱的、较为文明的、较为温和的，也许以经商或畜牧为生的种族，或者扑向江河日下的古老文化——在那里，精神与腐朽的焰火燃烧着最后的生命力。高贵的阶层在开始时总是野蛮的阶层：他们的优势首先并不在于体格，而是在于心灵，——他们是更完整的人（这在每个阶段上也有“更完整的野兽”的含义——）。

 

 

From “Note on the Plan of Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil”

Leo Strauss

 

As we have observed, for Nietzsche nature has become a problem and yet he cannot do without nature. Nature, we may say, has become a problem owing to the fact that man is conquering nature and there is no assignable limit to that conquest. As a consequence, people have come to think of abolishing suffering a inequality. Yet suffering and inequality are the prerequisites of human greatness (aph. 230 and 257). Hitherto suffering and inequality have been taken for granted, as “givens,” as imposed on man. Henceforth, they must be willed. That is to say, the gruesome rule of non-sense and chance, nature, the fact that almost all men are fragments, cripples, and gruesome accidents, the whole present and past is itself a fragment unless it is willing as a bridge to the future (cf. Zarathustra, ‘Of Redemption’). While paving the way for the complementary man, one must at the same time say unbounded Yes to the fragments and cripples. Nature, the eternity of nature, owes its being to a postulate, to an act of the will to power on the part of the highest nature.

就像我们看到的那样，对尼采来说，自然成了个问题，但他却不能抛弃自然。人类正在征服自然并且这一征服没有可以确定的疆界，由于这一事实，我们可以说自然已经成为一个问题，作为结果，人们开始考虑着去消除苦难和不平等。然而，苦难和不平等是人性之伟大的前提条件（格言239、257）。迄今为止，苦难和不平等一直被认为是理所当然的、是“给予的”、是加之于人的。因此，它们必须是被意愿的。这就是说，荒诞和偶然的丑恶统治、自然、几乎所有的人都是碎片、碎屑和丑陋的偶然性这一事实，整个的过去和现在本身都是一个碎片、一个谜、一种丑陋的偶然性——除非它们是作为通向未来的桥梁而被意愿的（参见Z，“论救赎”）。人们一方面必须为弥补性的人铺平道路，另一方面也必须无条件地肯定碎片和碎屑。自然，自然的永恒乃归因于一个假定，归因于最高自然的权力意志行为。

 

 

From I See Satan Fall Like Lightening

Rene Girard

 

The gradual loosening of various centers of cultural isolation began in the Middle Ages and has now led into what we call “globalization,” which in my view is only secondarily an economic phenomenon. The true engine of progress is the slow decomposition of the closed worlds rooted in victim mechanisms. This is the force that destroyed archaic societies and henceforth dismantles the ones replacing them, the nations we call “modern.”

诸多孤立文化中心的逐渐解体始于中世纪，并且如今已经造成了我们所谓的“国际化”，在我看来，“国家化”作为一种经济现象只是第二位的。进步的真正引擎是根植于牺牲机制的封闭世界的缓慢分解。正是这种力量摧毁了古代社会，因而也瓦解了那些取代了古代社会的社会，亦即我们所谓的“现代”。

 

 

From “Preface,” Liberalism Ancient and Modern

Leo Strauss

 

Classical political philosophy opposes to the universal and homogeneous state a substantive principle. It asserts that the society natural to man is the city, that is, a closed society that can well be taken in in one view or that corresponds to man’s natural power of perception. Less literally and more importantly, it asserts that every political society that ever has been or ever will be rests on a particular fundamental opinion which cannot be replaced by knowledge and hence is of necessity a particular or particularist society.

古典政治哲学反对将普遍同质化国家作为一个实质原则。它断言对于人而言自然的社会是城邦，也就是说，一个能够在某种视角中很好地被接受的封闭社会，或者说，一个对应于人的自然认识能力的封闭社会。它断言任何曾经存在或将要存在的政治社会都建基于一种特定的根本意见，这种意见不能被知识取代，因此，它必然是一个特定的或特殊的社会