GREEK PHILOSOPHY AFTER ARISTOTLE 2

Scepticism 

怀疑论 

The English language preserves traces of both Epicureanism and Stoicism, but with different degrees of accuracy. 

英语语言保留了伊壁鸠鲁主义和斯多葛主义的痕迹，但准确度不同。

An epicure would find little satisfaction in the bread and cheese diet of Epicurus; but a stoic attitude to suffering and death fairly reflects one aspect of Stoic philosophy. 

一个享乐主义者在伊壁鸠鲁的面包和奶酪饮食中找不到什么满足感；但是一个坚忍的态度对于苦难和死亡相当反映了斯多葛哲学的一个方面。

A third contemporary school, however, made its mark on the language unambiguously: the basic meaning of Scepticism has not changed since the Sceptics of the third century bc.

然而，另一个同时代的学派，却在语言上留下了明确的印记：怀疑论的基本含义自公元前三世纪的怀疑者以来就没有改变。

The founder of Scepticism was Pyrrho of Elis, a soldier in Alexander’s army, who was an older contemporary of Epicurus. 

怀疑论的创始人是埃利斯的皮浪，他是亚历山大军队中的一名士兵，也是伊壁鸠鲁的年长同时代人。

Pyrrho taught that nothing could be known and, consistently with that view, wrote no books; but his teaching was brought to Athens in the early years of the third century by his pupils Timon and Arcesilaus. 

皮浪教导说没有什么是可以知道的，并且与这个观点一致地，他没有写任何书籍；但是他的教导在公元前三世纪初期由他的学生提摩和阿尔西拉乌斯带到了雅典。

Timon denied the possibility of finding any self-evident principles to serve as the foundation of sciences: and in the absence of such axioms, all lines of reasoning must be either circular or endless. 

提摩否认了找到任何自明的原则作为科学的基础的可能性：并且在缺乏这样的公理的情况下，所有的推理都必须是循环的或无穷的。

Arcesilaus became head of the Platonic Academy about 273 and turned its attention from the later dogmatic works of Plato to the earlier Socratic dialogues. 

阿尔西拉乌斯在公元前273年左右成为柏拉图学院的院长，并将其注意力从柏拉图后期的教条主义作品转向早期的苏格拉底对话。

He himself, like Socrates, used to demolish theses put forward by his pupils; the proper attitude for the philosopher was to suspend judgement on all important topics.

他自己，像苏格拉底一样，用来驳倒他的学生提出的论题；哲学家适当的态度是对所有重要的话题暂停判断。

Arcesilaus’ impact on the Academy was great, and it remained the home of Scepticism for two hundred years. 

阿尔西拉乌斯对学院的影响是巨大的，它在两百年内一直是怀疑论的家园。 

The Sceptics of the Academy took the Stoic system as their major target for attack. 

学院的怀疑者把斯多葛体系作为他们主要的攻击目标。

The Stoics were empiricists; that is to say, they claimed that all knowledge derived from sensory experience of concrete individuals. 

斯多葛派是经验主义者；也就是说，他们声称所有的知识都来自对具体个体的感官经验。

The appearances which things present to our senses are the foundation of all science; but appearances may mislead, and we need a test, or ‘criterion’, to decide which appearances are reliable and justify us in assenting to them. 

事物呈现给我们感官的现象是所有科学的基础；但是现象可能会误导我们，我们需要一个测试或“标准”来决定哪些现象是可靠的，并且使我们同意它们。

The Sceptics insisted that things appear differently to different species (woodlice taste good to bears but not to people), and differently to different members of the same species (honey seems bitter to some and sweet to others), and differently to the same person at different times (wine tastes sour after figs and sweet after nuts). 

怀疑者坚持认为，事物对不同种类的生物（木虱对熊来说味道好，但对人来说不好），对同一种类的不同成员（蜂蜜对一些人来说是苦的，对另一些人来说是甜的），以及对同一个人在不同时间（酒在吃无花果后味道酸，在吃坚果后味道甜）都有不同的呈现。

How can conflicts between them be resolved?

这些冲突如何解决呢？

The Stoics say that knowledge must be based not just on any old appearance, but upon appearance of a particular kind, a ‘cognitive appearance’ ( phantasia kataleptike) – an appearance of the kind which comes from a real object and compels our assent.

斯多葛派说，知识不仅仅要基于任何旧的现象，而且要基于一种特殊的表象，一种“认知的表象”（phantasia kataleptike）——一种来自真实对象并强迫我们同意的表象。

The Sceptic counters by asking how we can tell which appearances are cognitive appearances. It is no good defining them as ones which compel assent, since people often feel compelled to assent to appearances which turn out to have been misleading.

怀疑者反驳说，我们如何能够分辨哪些表象是认知的现象。把它们定义为强迫我们同意的那些表象是没有用的，因为人们经常感到被迫同意那些最终证明是误导性的表象。

The Stoics respond that a truly wise person can just tell which appearances are cognitive and which are not. But how can you tell whether you are a truly wise person? The Stoic search for a criterion seems doomed to failure: even if we found a criterion which worked, how would we know we had found it?

斯多葛派回应说，一个真正智慧的人可以直接分辨哪些表象是认知的，哪些不是。但是你如何能够分辨你是否是一个真正智慧的人呢？斯多葛派寻找一个标准似乎注定要失败：即使我们找到了一个有效的标准，我们怎么知道我们已经找到了它呢？

The debate between Scepticism and Stoicism continued for several centuries, and most of our knowledge of the arguments used on either side comes from the works of a leading Sceptic of the second century ad, the physician Sextus Empiricus. Sextus presented the Sceptical system in his Outlines of Pyrrhonism and set out refute the non-sceptical, or ‘dogmatic’, schools in the eleven books of his Against the Professors.

怀疑论和斯多葛主义之间的辩论持续了几个世纪，我们对双方使用的论证的大部分知识都来自于公元二世纪一位领先的怀疑者、医生塞克斯都·恩披里柯的作品。塞克斯都在他的《皮浪主义概论》中介绍了怀疑论体系，并在他的《Against the Professors》的十一本书中驳斥了非怀疑论或“教条主义”的学派。

Pardoned by Caesar, he returned to Italy and spent the period of the Dictatorship writing philosophy.

被凯撒赦免后，他回到意大利，并在独裁统治时期写作哲学。

Cicero was not of the first rank as a philosopher, but he is important in the history of philosophy in several ways. He set himself the task of creating a Latin philosophical vocabulary, so that Romans could study philosophy in their own language. 

西塞罗并不是一流的哲学家，但他在哲学史上有几方面的重要性。他给自己设定了一个任务，就是创造一种拉丁语的哲学词汇，这样罗马人就可以用自己的语言学习哲学。

He wrote voluminous accounts of the teaching of Greek and Hellenistic philosophers which have ever since been one of the major sources of instruction in their doctrines. His works On the Nature of the Gods and On Fate contain interesting discussions of philosophical theology and the issue of determinism. His De Finibus was an encyclopedia of the opinions of philosophers on the nature of the supreme good.

他写了大量关于希腊和希腊化时期哲学家的教导的叙述，这些叙述从那以后一直是他们的教义的主要教导来源之一。他的《论神的本性》和《论命运》包含了有趣的关于哲学神学和决定论问题的讨论。他的《论终极》是一个关于哲学家对最高善本性的看法的百科全书。

In his own opinions, Cicero was eclectic. In epistemology, he adopted a moderate Sceptical position which he had learnt from Philo of Larissa, the last head of the Academy. 

在他自己的观点中，西塞罗是折衷主义者。在认识论上，他采用了一种温和的怀疑主义立场，这是他从拉里萨的费罗那里学到的，他是学院的最后一任院长。

In ethics, he favoured the Stoic rather than the Epicurean teaching. Writing in a time of unpheaval and stress, he looked to philosophy for consolation and reassurance. He wrote without great profundity, but with warmth and elegance, and his essays on friendship and old age have been popular through the ages. His main work on moral philosophy, On Duties ( De Officiis), was addressed to his son just after Caesar’s death; it was, during various periods of history, regarded as an essential item in the education of a gentleman.

在伦理学上，他倾向于斯多葛主义而不是伊壁鸠鲁主义的教导。 在一个动荡和压力的时代写作，他寻求哲学来安慰和保证。他写作没有很深刻，但是有温暖和优雅，他关于友谊和老年的散文在各个时代都很受欢迎。他关于道德哲学的主要作品，《论职责》（De Officiis），是在凯撒死后写给他儿子的；它在历史上的不同时期被认为是绅士教育中必不可少的一项。

Cicero rejoiced at Caesar’s death, and returned to politics with a series of bitter attacks on the Caesarian consul Mark Antony. For a while he found a political ally in Caesar’s adopted son Octavian. But Antony and Octavian went into partnership to defeat Caesar’s murderers Brutus and Cassius at Philippi in 42 bc. By the time of the battle, Cicero was already dead, executed on the orders of Antony.

西塞罗为凯撒之死而欢欣鼓舞，并以一系列对凯撒派执政官马克·安东尼的猛烈攻击重返政坛。有一段时间，他在凯撒的养子屋大维那里找到了一个政治盟友。但是安东尼和屋大维合作，在公元前42年的菲利比战役中击败了凯撒的杀手布鲁图斯和卡西乌斯。在战斗的时候，西塞罗已经死了，是被安东尼下令处决的。

The alliance between Antony and Octavian did not last. Antony, having married Octavian’s sister, deserted her for the last of the Ptolemies, Queen Cleopatra of Egypt. Influential Romans switched their allegiance to Octavian, and having defeated Antony and Cleopatra at Actium in 31 bc he became the first Roman Emperor, changing his name to Augustus.

安东尼和屋大维之间的联盟没有持续多久。安东尼娶了屋大维的妹妹，但为了托勒密王朝的最后一位，埃及女王克利奥帕特拉而抛弃了她。有影响力的罗马人转而效忠于屋大维，并在公元前31年的阿克提翁战役中击败了安东尼和克利奥帕特拉，成为第一位罗马皇帝，改名为奥古斯都。

Jesus of Nazareth 

拿撒勒的椰丝

Augustus reigned as Emperor for forty-five years, until ad 14. It was in his reign that Jesus of Nazareth was born, and under the reign of his successor Tiberius that Jesus was crucified, probably about ad 30. This Jewish teacher, living in a remote province of the Empire far from the centres of Greek learning, and unconcerned with issues which had preoccupied Plato and Aristotle, was to have an effect on the history of philosophy no less decisive than theirs. But the impact of his teaching was delayed and indirect.

奥古斯都统治了四十五年，直到公元14年。就在他的统治时期，拿撒勒的椰丝出生了，并在他的继任者提庇略的统治下被钉死在十字架上，大概是在公元30年左右。这位犹太教师，生活在帝国的一个偏远省份，远离希腊学问的中心，不关心那些曾经困扰柏拉图和亚里士多德的问题，对哲学史的影响却不亚于他们。但是他的教导的影响是延迟和间接的。

Jesus’ own moral doctrine, as reported in the Gospels, was not without precedent. In the Sermon on the Mount, he taught that we should not render evil for evil; but that had been the teaching of Socrates in the Republic. He urged 100 his hearers to love their neighbours as themselves; but he was quoting from the Hebrew book of Leviticus, written many centuries earlier. He insisted that we must refrain not just from wrongdoing, but from the thoughts and desires which lead to wrongdoing; in this he was in accord with Aristotle’s teaching that virtue concerns passion as well as action, and that the truly virtuous person is not just continent but temperate. He taught his disciples to despise the pleasures and honours of the world; but so, in their different ways, did the Epicureans and the Stoics.

椰丝自己的道德教义，如Gospels所记载的，并非没有先例。在登山宝训中，他教导我们不要以恶报恶；但这是苏格拉底在《理想国》中的教导。他敦促他的听众要爱邻人如己；但他是引用了几个世纪前写成的希伯来典籍《Leviticus》。他坚持我们不仅要避免做错事，而且要避免导致做错事的思想和欲望；在这一点上，他与亚里士多德的教导一致，即美德关乎情感和行为，而真正有美德的人不仅是节制的，而且是温和的。他教导他的门徒要轻视世界上的快乐和荣誉；但伊壁鸠鲁派和斯多葛派也是如此，只是方式不同。

The framework of Jesus’ teaching was the world-view of the Hebrew Bible, according to which the Lord God Yahweh had created heaven and earth and all that was in them. The Jews were Yahweh’s chosen people, uniquely privileged by the possession of a divine Law, revealed to Moses when Israel had first become a nation. 

椰丝教导的框架是希伯来圣经的世界观，根据这一观点Yahweh创造了天地和其中的万物。犹太人是Yahweh的选民，因为拥有一部神圣的律法而享有独特的特权，这部律法是在以色列第一次成为一个国家时向摩西启示的。

Like Heraclitus, and other Greek and Jewish thinkers, Jesus predicted that there would be a divine judgement on the world, to take place amid catastrophe on a cosmic scale. What made him different was that he saw that judgement as an imminent and localized event, in which he would himself play a crucial role; he was the Messiah, the divinely appointed liberator for whose coming devout Jews had been looking for centuries. When, after his death, heaven and earth continued on their accustomed courses, his followers had to come to terms with a problem which was not faced by others such as the Stoics who placed the end of the cosmic drama in the indefinite and distant future.

像赫拉克利特和其他希腊和犹太思想家一样，椰丝预言世界将会受到神的审判，这将发生在宇宙规模的灾难之中。使他与众不同的是，他认为那个审判是一个即将到来的和局部的事件，他自己将在其中扮演一个关键的角色；他是弥赛亚，神所指定的解放者，虔诚的犹太人已经期待了几个世纪。当他死后，天地仍然按照惯常的方式运行，他的追随者不得不面对一个问题，这个问题是其他人，比如斯多葛派，没有面对过的，他们把宇宙戏剧的落幕放在了无限和遥远的未来。

Paul’s understanding of the death on the cross became indissolubly linked with the ceremonial meal instituted by Jesus on the night before his death and repeated in his memory by his followers from that day to this.

保罗对十字架上的死亡的理解与耶稣在他死前的那一夜设立的仪式性的饭食不可分割地联系在一起，并且为了纪念他，他的追随者从那一天起就一直重复着这个饭食。

According to Paul, a blessed afterlife awaited those whom God had chosen out, as objects of his grace and favour, to be faithful followers of the Saviour.

根据保罗，一个有福的来世在等待着那些被神拣选出来的人，他们是神恩典和恩惠的对象，是救世主忠实的追随者。

The future life promised by Paul was not the immortal life of a Platonic soul, but a glorified bodily existence such as Jesus himself had enjoyed when he had risen from the tomb three days after his death on the Cross. Paul’s letters were to be quoted for centuries to come whenever theologians and philosophers debated the problems of sin and grace, fate and predestination, and the nature of the world to come.

保罗所许诺的未来生活不是柏拉图式灵魂的不朽生命，而是一种荣耀的肉身存在，就像椰丝自己在十字架上死后三天从坟墓里复活时所享受的那样。保罗的书信在今后几个世纪里将被引用，无论神学家和哲学家何时讨论罪恶和恩典、命运和预定以及未来世界的本质。

The Acts of the Apostles tells us that St Paul, on a preaching journey, visited Athens and held a debate with Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. The sermon St Luke places in his mouth is skilfully crafted, and shows an awareness of matters at issue between the philosophical sects.

使徒行传告诉我们，圣保罗在一个传道旅程中访问了雅典，并与伊壁鸠鲁派和斯多葛派哲学家进行了辩论。圣路加把自己的话当作圣保罗的布道，这是巧妙地构思出来的，并显示出对哲学派别之间有争议的问题有所了解。

As I passed by and beheld the manner how ye worship your gods, I found an altar wherein was written: unto the unknown god. Whom ye then ignorantly worship, him shew I unto you. God that made the world and all that are in it, seeing that he is Lord of heaven and earth, he dwelleth not in temples made with hands, neither is worshipped with men’s hands, as though he needed of any thing, seeing he himself giveth life and breath to all men everywhere and hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath assigned, before now long time, and also the ends of their inhabitation, that they should seek God, if they might feel and find him, though he be not far from every one of us. 

当我经过并看到你们敬拜你们神的方式时，我发现了一个祭坛，上面写着：献给未知之神。你们无知地敬拜的神，我现在向你们显明。创造天地和其中万物的神，既然他是天地的主，他不住在人手所造的殿里，也不用人手来敬拜，好像他缺少什么，他自己赐生命和气息给各处的众人，并且用一血造了万国的人，使他们住在全地上，并且预先定准他们的年限和所住之地，要叫他们寻求神，或者可以揣摩而得，其实他离我们各人并不远。

For in him we live, move, and have our being as certain of your own poets said. For we are also his generation. Forasmuch then as we are the generation of God, we ought not to think that the godhead is like unto gold, silver or stone, graven by craft and imagination of men.

因为我们在他里面生活、行动、存在，正如你们自己的诗人所说：我们也是他的子孙。既然我们是神的子孙，就不当以为神性像人用手艺和心思所雕刻的金、银、石头一样。

Later legend imagined Paul in philosophical discourse with the Stoic philosopher Seneca. The idea was not wholly fanciful; St Paul once appeared in court before Seneca’s brother Gallio, and he had friends in the palace of Nero where Seneca was long influential. Both men died at about the same time, Paul probably in the persecution of Christians which followed the Great Fire of Rome in 64, and Seneca by Socratic suicide in 65.

后来的传说想象保罗与斯多葛哲学家塞内卡进行了哲学对话。这个想法并不完全是幻想；圣保罗曾经在塞内卡的兄弟加利奥面前出庭，他在尼禄的宫殿里有朋友，塞内卡在那里长期有影响力。两人大约在同一时间死去，保罗可能是在公元64年罗马大火后对基督徒的迫害中死去，塞内卡是在公元65年以苏格拉底式的自杀方式死去。

It was probably around this time that the Christian gospels began to be written. All the gospels represent Jesus as the Son of God. The gospel of St John calls Jesus also the Word of God, the instrument of divine creation. John’s language resembles that of the Jewish philosopher Philo, a contemporary of Jesus who had written treatises reconciling Platonism with the Hebrew Bible. But John’s fundamental message is very different from Philo’s: the Word of God, one with God before the world began, is the very same as the human being Jesus who had lived and died in Galilee and Judea. Greek mythology knew incarnate gods aplenty, and Alexander persuaded himself that he was the son of Zeus. But there was no precedent for the idea that the God of monotheistic Judaism, a transcendent God as far from anthropomorphism as the God of Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Plato, could take flesh and live among men. This Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, as we shall see, provided fertile ground for the development of subtle new philosophical concepts which affected people’s thinking not only about divinity but about human nature itself.

大概就在这个时候，喵咪教的gospels 开始被写下来。所有的gospels 都把椰丝描述为神的儿子。约翰日记还称椰丝为神的道，神创造万物的工具。约翰的语言类似于犹太哲学家费罗，他是椰丝的同时代人，他写了一些论文，试图把柏拉图主义与希伯来圣经相协调。但约翰的基本信息与费罗的非常不同：神的道，在世界开始之前与神同在，就是那个在加利利和犹太生活和死亡的人类椰丝。希腊神话知道很多化身为人的神，亚历山大也说服自己他是宙斯的儿子。但是没有先例可以说明单一神论的犹太教的神，一个远离拟人化的超越神，就像色诺芬尼、巴门尼德和柏拉图的神一样，能够化身为肉体并与人同住。这个喵咪教关于道成肉身的教义，正如我们将看到的，为发展微妙的新哲学概念提供了肥沃的土壤，这些概念不仅影响了人们对神性的思考，也影响了人们对人性本身的思考。

Christianity and Gnosticism 

喵咪教和诺斯底主义

In the second and third centuries Christianity, now organized into a disciplined Church, spread across the Roman Empire. It took hold mainly in the cities, in communities presided over by bishops: the Christian word for non-Christians, ‘pagan’, was originally just the Latin word for a countryman. During this period Christian attitudes to philosophy varied. Some of the early Christian writers, such as Justin Martyr, a convert to the new religion from Platonism, used texts from Plato’s dialogues to Christian purposes, claiming that Plato had been influenced by the Hebrew Bible. Others, such as the African writer Tertullian, claimed that Athens and Jerusalem had nothing in common, and condemned all attempts to produce a Stoic, Platonic, or dialectical Christianity.

在公元二三世纪，喵咪教现在组织成一个有纪律的教会，遍布罗马帝国。它主要在城市里扎根，由主教主持的社区：喵咪徒对非喵咪徒的称呼“异教徒”，原本只是拉丁语中乡下人的意思。在这个时期，喵咪徒对哲学的态度各不相同。一些早期的喵咪教作家，比如从柏拉图主义改变信仰的新宗教的殉道贾斯丁者，用柏拉图对话录中的文本来达到喵咪教的目的，声称柏拉图受到了希伯来圣经的影响。另一些人，比如非洲作家德尔图良，声称雅典和耶路撒冷没有任何共同之处，并谴责所有试图产生一个斯多葛、柏拉图或辩证的喵咪教的企图。

Orthodox Christian theologians in the second century, however, were engaged in battle less with hostile systems of pagan philosophy than with groups within the Church who devised heady mixtures of Platonic cosmology, Jewish prophecy, Christian theology, and Oriental mystery-mongering. Whereas both Jesus and Paul had preached a message that was available to the poor and unlearned no less than to scholarly rabbis or erudite philosophers, the members of these groups, known collectively as Gnostics, claimed to be in possession of special mysterious knowledge (‘ Gnosis’) which had been handed down in secret by the first apostles and which set its possessors in a privileged position apart from the simple faithful.

然而，在公元二世纪，正统的喵咪教神学家所从事的战斗不是与敌对的异教哲学体系，而是与教会内部那些设计了柏拉图宇宙论、犹太预言、喵咪教神学和东方神秘主义的醉人混合物的团体斗争。虽然椰丝和保罗都传讲了一种信息，这种信息对于穷苦和无知的人来说并不比对于博学的拉比或博学的哲学家来说少，但是这些团体的成员，统称为诺斯底派，声称他们拥有特殊的神秘知识（“诺斯”），这种知识是由第一批使徒秘密传下来的，并且使其拥有者处于一个与简单信徒不同的特权地位。

Gnostics did not believe that the material world was created by the good God; it was the work of lesser, malevolent powers, and its creation was an utter disaster.

诺斯底派不相信物质世界是由善良的神创造的；它是次等、恶毒的力量所做的，它的创造是一场彻底的灾难。

The cosmos was governed by evil powers living in the planetary spheres, and during life a good Gnostic should shun any involvement in the business of the world. At death the soul, if properly purified by Gnostic ritual, would fly to God’s heaven, armed with incantations which would open the barriers placed in its way by the evil powers. Because the world was evil, it was sinful to marry and beget children. Some Gnostics practised an ascetic discipline, others were riotously promiscuous; in both cases the basic premise was that sex was contemptible.

宇宙是由居住在行星领域的邪恶力量所统治的，在生活中，一个好的诺斯底派应该避免任何与世俗事务的牵连。在死亡时，如果灵魂经过诺斯底派的仪式得到了适当的净化，就会飞向神的天堂，带着咒语，这些咒语会打开邪恶力量在它前面设置的障碍。因为世界是邪恶的，所以结婚和生育子女是有罪的。一些诺斯底派实行了一种禁欲的纪律，另一些则放荡不羁；在两种情况下，基本的前提都是性是可鄙的。

Mainstream Christian writers denounced Gnosticism as heresy (using the word ‘ hairesis’ – the Greek word for a philosophical sect). They were more at ease with philosophers totally outside the Church, such as members of the Stoic school, which had returned to popularity under the rule of the Roman Emperors. However, the adherents of such classical philosophical traditions commonly despised Christianity, which they did not always clearly distinguish from Gnostic heresy or traditional Judaism. When the Stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius became Emperor in 161 he proved himself a callous persecutor of the Christians.

主流的喵咪教作家谴责诺斯底主义为异端（使用“hairesis”这个词——希腊语中哲学派别的词）。他们更容易与完全在教会之外的哲学家相处，比如斯多葛学派的成员，他们在罗马皇帝统治下重新受到欢迎。然而，这些古典哲学传统的信徒通常轻视喵咪教，他们并不总是清楚地区分诺斯底异端或传统犹太教。当斯多葛哲学家马库斯·奥勒留在公元161年成为皇帝时，他证明自己是一个冷酷无情的喵咪徒迫害者。

The Roman Empire had now reached its greatest extent. By the death of Augustus its northern frontier had been consolidated along the Danube and the Rhine; under his immediate successors the province of Britain had been added to the Empire and imperial rule extended along the whole of the North African coast so that the Mediterranean became a Roman Sea. Under Marcus Aurelius himself its eastern frontier was extended to the Euphrates.

罗马帝国现在已经达到了它最大的范围。在奥古斯都死后，它的北部边界沿着多瑙河和莱茵河巩固了；在他的直接继承者之下，不列颠省被加入到帝国中，帝国的统治沿着整个北非海岸延伸，使地中海成为一个罗马海。在马库斯·奥勒留本人之下，它的东部边界被扩展到了幼发拉底河。

For a hundred years after the defeat of Mark Antony the Empire had been ruled by members of the family of Caesar and Augustus. Successive Emperors had illustrated in their persons, in varying degrees, the adage that absolute power corrupts absolutely. For those within the immediate reach of the Emperors the greek philosophy after aristotle age was one of captious cruelty, interspersed with periods of clemency, torpidity, and lunacy. But while the court of Rome was a cauldron of vice, hatred, and terror, the imperial peace brought unprecedented blessings to the millions living in the far-flung provinces. Europe, North Africa, and the Near East enjoyed centuries of tranquillity such as they never experienced before or after. This was achieved with a standing army of no more than 120,000, assisted by local auxiliaries. Roman civic and legal institutions maintained order in communities across three continents, and Roman roads provided a network over which travellers brought Latin literature and Greek philosophy to remote corners of the Empire.

在马克·安东尼被击败后的一百年里，帝国一直由凯撒和奥古斯都的家族成员统治。连续的皇帝们在他们的身上，以不同的程度，说明了绝对权力导致绝对腐败的格言。对于那些在皇帝直接影响范围内的人来说，这个时代是一个挑剔的残酷时代，夹杂着宽厚、迟钝和疯狂的时期。但是，当罗马的宫廷是一个罪恶、仇恨和恐怖的大锅时，帝国的和平给生活在遥远省份的数百万人带来了前所未有的福祉。欧洲、北非和近东享受了几个世纪的安宁，这是他们以前或以后从未经历过的。这是用不超过12万人的常备军，得到当地辅助军的协助实现的。罗马的市民和法律制度维持了三大洲社区的秩序，罗马道路提供了一个网络，使旅行者把拉丁文学和希腊哲学带到了帝国的偏远角落。

The Caesarian dynasty had come to an end with the death of Nero in 69. After a year in which three Emperors siezed power and died after brief inglorious reigns, stability was restored by Vespasian, a general who had spent the last years of Nero’s reign suppressing a Jewish revolt in Palestine. Vespasian’s son Titus, who was later to succeed him as Emperor, sacked Jerusalem in 70 and dispersed its inhabitants. Henceforth, throughout the Empire, it was the Christians who were the main preservers of Jewish traditions and Jewish values.

凯撒王朝在公元69年尼禄的死后结束了。在一年的时间里，三位皇帝夺取了权力，但在短暂而不光彩的统治后死去，稳定局面由维斯帕先恢复，他是一个将军，他在尼禄统治的最后几年里镇压了巴勒斯坦的犹太人起义。维斯帕先的儿子提多，后来继承他成为皇帝，在公元70年攻陷了耶路撒冷，并驱散了它的居民。从此，在整个帝国，喵咪徒成为了犹太传统和犹太价值观的主要保护者。

Though Titus’ brother and successor, Domitian, rivalled Nero in vanity and cruelty, he was followed by a series of comparatively admirable Emperors who presided, between the years 96 and 180, over the greatest period of the Roman Empire. It was at the end of this period that the first substantial attempt was made to harmonize Christianity with Greek philosophy. Clement of Alexandria, at the turn of the century, published a set of Miscellanies ( Stromateis), written in the style of table talk, in which he argues that the study of philosophy is not only permissible, but necessary, for the educated Christian. The Greek thinkers were pedagogues for the world’s adolescence, divinely appointed to bring it to Christ in its maturity. Clement enrolled Plato as an ally against the dualism of the Gnostics, he experimented with Aristotelian logic, and he praised the Stoic ideal of freedom from passion. He explained away, as allegorical, aspects of the Bible and especially the Old Testament which educated Greeks found crude and offens-ive. In this he founded a tradition which was to have a long history in Alexandria.

虽然提多的弟弟和继承者多米提安在虚荣和残忍方面与尼禄不相上下，但他之后是一系列相对令人钦佩的皇帝，他们在公元96年到180年之间主持了罗马帝国最辉煌的时期。就在这个时期的末尾，第一次有了一个实质性的尝试，试图使喵咪教与希腊哲学相协调。亚历山大的革利免，在世纪之交，出版了一套《杂文集》（Stromateis），以餐桌谈话的风格写成，他认为对于受过教育的喵咪徒来说，学习哲学不仅是允许的，而且是必要的。希腊思想家是世界青春期的教育者，被神圣地任命在将世界的思想教育成熟，等候救世主的到来。革利免把柏拉图作为反对诺斯底派二元论的盟友，他试验了亚里士多德的逻辑，并赞扬了斯多葛派摆脱激情的理想。他以寓言的方式解释了圣经，特别是旧约中的一些方面，受过教育的希腊人认为这些方面是粗俗和令人反感的。在这方面，他创立了一个传统，这个传统在亚历山大有着悠久的历史。

Clement was an anthologist and a popularizer; his younger Alexandrian contemporary, Origen (185–254), was an original thinker. The son of a Christian martyr, Origen felt less at home than Clement in the cultural world of his time. Though massively learned in Greek philosophy, which he had learnt at the feet of the Alexandrian Platonist Ammonius Saccas, he saw himself first and foremost as a student of the Bible, whose authentic text he took great scholarly pains to establish.

革利免是一个选集编者和一个普及者；他年轻的亚历山大同时代人奥利根（185-254）是一个原创的思想家。作为一个基督徒殉道者的儿子，奥利根比革利免更不适应他所处时代的文化世界。虽然他在希腊哲学方面有着渊博的学识，他是在亚历山大柏拉图主义者阿蒙尼乌斯·萨卡斯的脚下学习的，但他首先把自己看作是圣经的学生，他花了很大的学术努力来确立圣经的真实文本。

None the less, Origen incorporated into his system many philosophical ideas which mainstream Christians regarded as heretical. For instance, he believed, with Plato, that human souls existed before birth or conception. God’s first creation had been a world of free spirits; when these became bored with endless worship, he created the present world, in which embodied human souls were in their turn given freedom which they could use to ascend, aided by the grace of Christ, to a heavenly destiny. Origen also maintained, in conflict with Christian orthodoxy, that all rational beings, sinners as well as saints, and devils as well as angels, would finally be saved and find blessedness. He modified St Paul’s doctrine of the resurrection of the body, teaching, according to some of his disciples, that the dead would rise in an ethereal form, and according to others, that the resurrection body would take the form of a sphere, which, so Plato had said, was the most perfect of all shapes.

然而，奥利根把许多哲学思想纳入了他的体系中，这些思想被主流喵咪徒视为异端。例如，他相信，与柏拉图一样，人类的灵魂在出生或受孕之前就存在了。神最初创造的是一个自由精神的世界；当这些精神对无尽的崇拜感到厌倦时，他创造了现在的世界，在这个世界里，有形体的人类灵魂依次被赋予了自由，他们可以利用这种自由，在救世主的恩典的帮助下，升到天堂的命运。奥利根还坚持认为，与喵咪教正统相冲突的是，所有理性的存在，无论是罪人还是圣徒，无论是魔鬼还是天使，最终都会得救并找到幸福。他修改了保罗关于身体复活的教义，根据他一些门徒的说法，他教导死者会以一种空灵的形式复活，根据另一些门徒的说法，他教导复活的身体会呈现球形，因为柏拉图曾说过，球形是所有形状中最完美的。

On a visit to Athens Origen proclaimed his vision of final universal salvation. Condemned as a heretic by a synod of Egyptian bishops, he went into exile in Palestine, saying that he would not wish to speak evil of the devil any more than of the bishops who condemned him. In his exile he wrote a vindication of Christianity against his pagan fellow-Platonist, Celsus. Against Celsus uses philosophical arguments in support of Christian belief in God, freedom, and the afterlife, and appeals to the fulfilment of prophecy and the working of miracles as testimony to the authenticity of the Christian revelation. Origen died in 254 after repeated torture during the persecution under the Emperor Decius.

在访问雅典时，奥利根宣布了他对最终普遍救赎的愿景。他被埃及主教的一个会议定为异端，他流亡到巴勒斯坦，说他不希望说魔鬼的坏话，也不希望说谴责他的主教的坏话。在流亡中，他写了一本为喵咪教辩护的书，反对他的异教同门柏拉图主义者塞尔苏斯。《反对塞尔苏斯》使用哲学论证来支持喵咪教对神、自由和来世的信仰，并以预言的实现和奇迹的发生为证据，证明喵咪教启示的真实性。奥利根在公元254年死去，他在皇帝德谟修斯的迫害中遭受了反复的折磨。

新柏拉图主义 

Neo-Platonism

 Contemporary with Origen, and a fellow pupil of Ammonius Saccas, was the last great pagan philosopher, Plotinus (205–70). Plotinus was an admirer of Plato, but gave his philosophy such a novel cast that he is known not as a Platonist, but as the founder of Neo-Platonism. After a brief military career he settled in Rome, toying with the idea of founding, with imperial support, a Platonic Republic in Campania. His works were edited after his death, in six groups of nine treatises ( Enneads), by his disciple and biographer Porphyry. Written in a taut and difficult style, they cover a wide variety of philosophical topics: ethics and aesthetics, physics and cosmology, psychology, metaphysics, logic, and epistemology.

与奥利根同时代，并且是阿蒙尼乌斯·萨卡斯的同门学生，是最后一位伟大的异教哲学家普罗提诺（205-70）。普罗提诺是柏拉图的崇拜者，但他给他的哲学赋予了一种新颖的色彩，使他不是作为一个柏拉图主义者而闻名，而是作为新柏拉图主义的创始人。在短暂的军事生涯之后，他定居在罗马，玩味着在卡姆帕尼亚建立一个柏拉图式共和国的想法，并得到皇帝的支持。他的作品在他死后由他的门徒和传记作者波菲利编辑成六组九篇论文（Enneads）。这些论文写得紧凑而艰深，涵盖了广泛的哲学主题：伦理学和美学、物理学和宇宙学、心理学、形而上学、逻辑学和认识论。

The dominant place in Plotinus’ system is occupied by ‘the One’. ‘One’, in ancient philosophy, is not to be thought of as a name for the first of the natural numbers in the series 1,2,3,4; rather, it is an adjective meaning ‘united’ or ‘all in one piece’. Plotinus’ use derives, through Plato, from Parmenides, where Oneness is a key property of Being. We cannot, strictly, utter any true sentences about the One, because the use of a subject distinct from a predicate would imply division and plurality. In a way which remains mysterious, The One is identical with the Platonic Idea of the Good. As The One, it is the basis of all reality; as The Good, it is the standard of all value; but it is itself beyond being and beyond goodness.

在普罗提诺的体系中，占据主导地位的是“一”。在古代哲学中，“一”不是指自然数序列1,2,3,4中的第一个数的名字；而是一个形容词，意思是“统一的”或“完整的”。普罗提诺的用法是通过柏拉图，从巴门尼德那里得来的，在那里，一性是存在的一个关键属性。我们不能严格地说出关于一的任何真实的句子，因为使用一个与谓语不同的主语会暗示分裂和多样性。以一种仍然神秘的方式，一与柏拉图的善的理式相同。作为一，它是所有现实的基础；作为善，它是所有价值的标准；但它本身超越了存在和善。

Below this supreme and ineffable summit, the next level of reality is occupied by Mind or Intellect ( nous). This is the product of the One’s reflection on itself. It is the locus of the Platonic Ideas, which both depend on it for their existence and form an essential part of its own structure. In contemplating the Ideas, Mind knows itself, not by a discursive process, but in a timeless intuition.

在这个至高无上而不可言喻的顶点之下，现实的下一个层次是由心灵或理智（nous）所占据的。这是一对自身的反思所产生的。它是柏拉图理式的所在地，这些理式既依赖于它来存在，又构成了它自身结构的重要部分。在沉思理式时，心灵认识自己，不是通过一个推理过程，而是通过一个永恒的直觉。

The next place below Mind is occupied by Soul. Soul, unlike Mind, operates in time; indeed, it is the creator of time and space. Soul looks in two directions: it looks upward to Mind, and it looks downward to Nature, where it sees its own reflection. Nature in turn creates the physical world, full of wonder and beauty even though its substance is such as dreams are made of. At the lowest level of all is bare matter, the outermost limit of reality.

在心灵之下的下一个位置是由灵魂所占据的。灵魂不像心灵，在时间中运作；事实上，它是时间和空间的创造者。灵魂向两个方向看：它向上看向心灵，它向下看向自然，那里它看到了自己的映像。自然反过来创造了物质世界，充满了奇迹和美丽，即使它的物质是像梦一样制造出来的。在所有层次中最低的是赤裸裸的物质，现实的最外层极限。

These levels of reality are not independent of each other. Each level is dependent, causally but not temporally, on the level above it. Everthing has its place in a single downward progress of successive emanations from the One.

这些现实层次并不相互独立。每个层次都依赖于它上面的层次，因果地而不是时间地。每件事都有它在从一发出的连续流出中单一向下降的进程中的位置。

The system is impressive: but how ever, we may wonder, did Plotinus convince his hearers of the truth of these mysterious, if exalted, docrines? To see how he attempted to do so, we must retrace our steps and follow the upward path from base matter to the supreme One.

这个体系是令人印象深刻的：但是，我们可能会想，普罗提诺是如何说服他的听众相信这些神秘的，即使是崇高的，教义的呢？要看到他是如何尝试这样做的，我们必须回溯我们的步骤，沿着从低级物质到至高无上的一的向上的道路前进。

Plotinus takes as his starting point Platonic and Aristotelian arguments which we have already met. The ultimate substratum of change, Aristotle had argued, must be something which, of itself, possesses none of the properties of the changeable bodies we see and handle. But a matter which possesses no material properties, Plotinus argued, is inconceivable, like the Unbeing of Parmenides. We must dispense, therefore, with Aristotelian matter; we are left with Aristotelian forms. The most important of these was the soul, which was the form of the human being; and it is natural for us to think that there are as many souls as there are individual people. But here Plotinus appeals to another Aristotelian thesis: the principle that forms are individuated by matter. If we have given up matter, there is nothing to distinguish Socrates’ soul from Xanthippe’s soul; and so we conclude that there is only one single soul.

普罗提诺以我们已经遇到过的柏拉图和亚里士多德的论证为他的出发点。变化的最终基质，亚里士多德曾经论证过，必须是一种本身不具有我们看到和触摸的可变物体的任何属性的东西。但是，普罗提诺认为，一种不具有物质属性的质料是不可思议的，就像巴门尼德的非存在一样。因此，我们必须摒弃亚里士多德的质料；我们只剩下亚里士多德的形式。其中最重要的是灵魂，它是人类的形式；而且我们自然会认为，有多少个人就有多少个灵魂。但是在这里，普罗提诺诉诸于另一个亚里士多德的命题：形式是由物质个别化的原则。如果我们放弃了质料，就没有什么可以区分苏格拉底的灵魂和桑提佩的灵魂了；所以我们得出结论，只有一个单一的灵魂。

To prove that this soul exists before and after being linked to any particular body, and is independent of body, Plotinus uses very much the same arguments as Plato used in the Phaedo. He neatly reverses the argument of those who claim that soul is dependent on body because it is nothing more than an attunement of the body’s sinews. When a musician plucks the strings of a lyre, he says, it is the strings, not the melody, that he acts upon; but the strings would not be plucked unless the melody called for it.

为了证明这个灵魂在与任何特定的身体联系之前和之后都存在，并且独立于身体，普罗提诺使用了与柏拉图在《斐多篇》中使用的非常相同的论证。他巧妙地反转了那些声称灵魂依赖于身体，因为它只不过是身体筋脉的和谐之音的人的论点。当一个音乐家弹拨琴弦时，他说，他所作用的是琴弦，而不是旋律；但如果没有旋律的要求，琴弦就不会被弹拨。

But now the problem arises: how can a world soul, transcendent and incorporeal, be in any way present to individual corruptible and composite bodies? To solve the problem, Plotinus says, we have to reverse the question, and ask not how soul can be in body, but how body can be in soul? The answer is that body is in soul by depending upon it for its organization and continued existence.

但现在问题出现了：一个超越和非肉体的世界灵魂如何能以任何方式存在于个别腐败和复合的身体中呢？为了解决这个问题，普罗提诺说，我们必须反过来问这个问题，不是问灵魂如何能在身体中，而是问身体如何能在灵魂中？答案是，身体依赖于灵魂来维持它的组织和持续的存在，所以身体就在灵魂中。

Soul, then, governs and orders the world of bodies. It does so wisely and well. But the wisdom which it exercises in the governance of the world is not native to it: it must come from outside. It cannot come from the material world, since that is what it shapes; it must come from something which is by nature linked to the Ideas which are the models or patterns for intelligent activity. This can only be the World-Mind, which both constitutes and is constituted by the Ideas, which are the objects of its thought.

然后，灵魂统治和安排物质世界的秩序。它这样做是明智和良好的。但它在统治世界中所运用的智慧不是它本身的：它必须来自外部。它不能来自物质世界，因为那是它所塑造的；它必须来自一种本质上与理式相联系的东西，理式是智能活动的模型或模式。这只能是世界理智，它既构成也被理式构成，理式是它思想的对象。

In all thinking, Plotinus continues, there must be a distinction between the thinker and what he is thinking of; even when a thinker is thinking of himself there remains this duality of subject and object. Moreover, the Ideas which are the objects of Mind are many in number. In more than one way, then, Mind contains multiplicity and is therefore composite. Like many other ancient philosophers, Plotinus accepted as a principle that whatever was composite must depend on something more simple. And thus we reach, at the end of our journey upward from formless matter, the one and only One.

在所有的思考中，普罗提诺继续说，必须有一个区别，区分思想者和他所思考的东西；即使当一个思想者在思考他自己时，主体和客体的二元性仍然存在。而且，作为心灵对象的理式是复数的。因此，在不止一种方式上，心灵包含了多样性，因此是复合的。像许多其他古代哲学家一样，普罗提诺接受了一个原则：任何复合的东西都必须依赖于更简单的东西。于是我们到达了我们从无形物质向上旅行的终点，唯一的一。

Though Plotinus’ school in Rome did not survive his death, his pupils and their pupils carried his ideas elsewhere. Porphyry’s pupil Iamblichus inspired a NeoPlatonic school in Athens. There the industrious and erudite Proclus (410– 85), who each day gave five lectures and wrote seven hundred lines, kept Plotinus’ memory green with a detailed commentary on the Enneads. Proclus was famous in his time as the author of eighteen separate refutations of the Christian doctrine of creation.

虽然普罗提诺在罗马的学派没有在他死后存活下来，但他的学生和他们的学生把他的思想带到了别处。波菲利的学生亚姆布利库斯在雅典启发了一个新柏拉图主义的学派。在那里，勤奋而博学的普罗克洛斯（410-85），每天做五次讲座，写七百行，用一部详细的《九篇集》注释，保持了普罗提诺的记忆。普罗克洛斯在他的时代以十八个对喵咪教创造论的反驳的作者而闻名。

This Neo-Platonic school of Athens was the last flowering of pagan Greek philosophy, and one of the most encyclopaedic commentators on Aristotle, Simplicius, was working there when the school came to an end in 529, forty-four years after Proclus’ death. An edict of the Christian Emperor Justinian, in the words of Gibbon, ‘imposed a perpetual silence on the schools of Athens and excited the grief and indignation of the few remaining votaries of Grecian science and superstition’.

这个雅典的新柏拉图主义学派是异教希腊哲学的最后一次繁荣，也是对亚里士多德最全面的注释者之一，Simplicius，就是在那里工作，当学校在公元529年结束时，距离普罗克洛斯死去已经四十四年了。喵咪教皇帝查士丁尼的一道法令，用爱德华·吉本的话说，“对雅典的学校施加了永久的沉默，并激起了少数剩下的希腊科学和迷信的崇拜者的悲哀和愤怒”。