【英文翻译版32】德梅特拉·卡西米斯:《理想国》

【英文翻译版32】德梅特拉·卡西米斯:《理想国》

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How would you design an ideal city?

你会如何设计一座理想之城?

 

Zachary Davis: Imagine you could start from scratch and create the ideal city. What parts would you keep from your current city? What would you change? How would you design it? Who would be in charge?

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:假设你可以从零开始建立一座理想的城市,你会保留现有城市的哪些部分?会改变哪些?你会如何设计这座城市?又会让谁来治理?

 

Zachary Davis: This thought experiment was explored almost 2,400 years ago in the Republic, a text written by the ancient Greek philosopher Plato. Although he doesn't actually build this ideal city, he does go into great detail imaging how it would be structured and how it would operate.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:大约2400年前,古希腊哲学家柏拉图在其著作《理想国》中展开了这项思想实验。尽管他并没能真正地建立这样一座理想的城邦,但他详细地阐述了这座城邦的结构与运行方式。

 

Demetra Kasimis: I've always understood it as pointing to the value of trying. That we might aspire, we might dare to dream about something different. And that actually would take a lot of work to put into practice. But that the most important part is carefully considering what it would mean to reform a society. In a way that would be meaningful and might lead to lasting political change. I'm Demetra Kasimis. I am an assistant professor of political science at the University of Chicago.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:我一直觉得,它展现了尝试的价值。我们可以有伟大抱负,可以大胆畅想一些与众不同的事情。而且要做很多事情才能将设想付诸实践。不过最重要的一步是要仔细思考社会变革意味着什么。从某方面看,它影响深远,或许会带来政治方面的持久变革。我是德梅特拉·卡西米斯,是芝加哥大学的政治学助理教授。

 

Zachary Davis: Plato poses this hypothetical in order to get a deeper understanding of justice and human behavior, and what it would look like to create a more just society.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:柏拉图提出理想国的构想,是为了更深入地了解正义、人类行为以及如何建立一个更公正的社会。

 

Demetra Kasimis: Even if it's a failure in the sense of it would be really hard to pull off, that there's great value in starting to think in that way, because even that will actually influence your everyday actions. And that's the beginning of change.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:即便从结果来看这一设想并不成功,因为它很难实现,但这种思考仍然很有价值,因为它会影响你的日常行为。而这就是变革的开端。

 

Zachary Davis: Welcome to Writ Large, a podcast about how books change the world. I’m Zachary Davis. In each episode, I talk with one of the world’s leading scholars about one book that changed the course of history. For this episode, I sat down with Professor Demetra Kasimis to discuss Plato’s Republic. So what do we know about Plato, the author? Why do you think he was motivated to write this text?

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:欢迎收听:100本改变你和世界的书,在这里我们为大家讲述改变世界的书籍。我是扎卡里·戴维斯。每一集,我都会和一位世界顶尖学者探讨一本影响历史进程的书。在本集,我和德梅特拉·卡西米斯教授一起讨论柏拉图的《理想国》。我们对柏拉图有何了解?您觉得他为什么会写这本书?

 

Demetra Kasimis: Well, Plato was born in Athens sometime around 427 B.C. and he was born into an aristocratic family. His  uncle[A1]  was Critias, who was the leader of a 30 person junta that took over in 404 or 403, and suspended democracy and imposed a kind of violent regime for a few months in Athens.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:柏拉图于公元前427年左右出生在雅典的一个贵族家庭。他的舅舅是三十僭主之一克里提亚斯。“三十僭主”于公元前404或403年在雅典上台。他们推翻了民主制度,几个月里以暴力手段进行统治。

 

Zachary Davis: This may sound familiar if you listened to last week’s episode on Plato’s Apology where we also talked about this violent regime. The regime was led by Sparta, Athens’s chief rival. They fought for almost thirty years in what is known as the Peloponnesian War.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:大家若是听过上一期关于柏拉图《申辩篇》的内容,对这段历史显然不会陌生。上一期我们也提到了三十僭主的暴力政权,这个政权是在雅典的敌对城邦——斯巴达的支持下建立的。在此之前,雅典和斯巴达进行了一场长达三十年的战争,史称伯罗奔尼撒战争。

 

Zachary Davis: In the end, Sparta defeated Athens and established an oligarchy called the Thirty Tyrants, which ruled the city for roughly eight months. Plato grew up during this war and was in his early twenties when the Thirty Tyrants ruled over Athens.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:最终,斯巴达击败了雅典,建立了名为“三十僭主”的寡头政权,在雅典统治了八个月。柏拉图在这场战争期间长大。“三十僭主”时期,他正好二十来岁。

 

Demetra Kasimis: He turned away from it, or his disillusionment, you know, had to do with politics and seeing how, what might have been a kind of I don't know, at first an idealistic or seemingly beneficial political experiment could turn ugly. And I think that probably, you know, left a really strong impression on him about what political change, really meaningful political change, looked like.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:他的幻想破灭了,这和当时的政治情况有关。我猜他可能发现,或许最初的政治实验也洋溢着理想主义精神,或是看上去很好,可结果却丑恶不堪。这可能让柏拉图深深地感受到真正重大的政治变革是什么样的。

 

Zachary Davis: Plato received his informal philosophical training from Socrates, an older philosopher who lived in Athens. Socrates never wrote anything down. Most of what we know about his life and philosophies comes from Plato.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:柏拉图在老一辈哲学家苏格拉底那儿接收着非正式的哲学教育。苏格拉底从未写过任何文章,我们对他生平与思想的了解大多源于柏拉图。

 

Zachary Davis: Many of Plato’s works are written in Socrates’s voice, including the Republic. This text is an imagined conversation between Socrates and other characters. Can you tell us what the book reads like? Like, what's the shape of it? What's the writing like?

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:柏拉图的许多作品都是以苏格拉底的口吻写的,《理想国》也不例外。这本书虚构了苏格拉底与其他人之间的对话。您可以告诉我们这本书的内容吗?它是什么样的?有哪些文章?

 

Demetra Kasimis: What you find is that it's a first person narration. There is an “I” that kicks off the text. “I went down to the Piraeus yesterday.” That's how the Republic begins. It just sort of throws you into the action.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:你会发现这本书是以第一人称叙述的。全书第一句便是“我”如何如何。“昨天我来到比雷埃夫斯港”——这就是《理想国》的开头,让你马上把自己代入到当时的情景中。

 

Zachary Davis: The Republic consists of ten books narrated by Socrates. In Book One, Socrates begins by recounting the previous day’s activities, when he went to the port city of Piraeus with a younger man named Glaucon, one of Plato’s brothers. They were attending a religious festival. On their way home they run into Adeimantus, another one of Plato’s brothers, and Polemarchus, an Athenian nobleman. Adeimantus and Polemarchus are headed to Polemarchus’s father’s house and want Socrates and Glaucon to join them.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:《理想国》共有十卷,都是苏格拉底与他人的谈话。在第一卷中,苏格拉底讲了自己前一天做的事情:他和一个年轻人格劳孔去了比雷埃夫斯港。格劳孔是柏拉图的一个兄弟。他们那天参加了一个宗教节日活动。回家的路上,他们遇到了柏拉图的另一个兄弟阿德曼图斯和一个雅典贵族玻勒马霍斯。阿德曼图斯和玻勒马霍斯要去玻勒马霍斯的父亲家,并希望苏格拉底和格劳孔与他们一起。

 

Demetra Kasimis: And they joke around about whether they can overpower, you know, Socrates and convince him to come home. And so, very quickly, it's a question about the majority, right? The majority, does the majority kind of rule. It's about numbers. It's about power. And that's just the kind of like, it's humorous, but it's also immediately you get the sense of how important conversation and persuasion is, and when is something about force and when is it about persuasive speech and the kind of blurred lines between the two of them.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:他们开玩笑说,想看看能不能说服苏格拉底和他们一起过去。显然这和多数人的意见有关,对吧。多数人是否可以支配少数人,这关乎人数,也关乎权力。当然书里这段只是在开开玩笑,但也可以让你立刻明白对话与说服是多么重要,什么时候涉及到权力,什么时候涉及到劝服别人,这两者间的界限又是如何模糊。

 

Zachary Davis: They arrive at the house, and Socrates starts a conversation with Cephalus, Polemarchus’s aging father, on the merits of old age. This conversation quickly evolves into one about justice. As they talk, the other three characters chime in with their definitions of justice. Socrates pokes holes in their definitions and questions them further.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:到了玻勒马霍斯的父亲家之后,苏格拉底开始和玻勒马霍斯的老父亲塞弗勒斯谈论老年的好处。这场谈话很快变成了对正义的讨论。他们交谈时,另外仨人也插嘴谈了谈自己对正义的定义。苏格拉底则找出了他们定义中的漏洞,进一步对他们提问。

 

Demetra Kasimis: Very quickly, you forget that there is voice that's narrating the whole thing because you are thrown into the dialogue. But the text is not a dialogue, it's prose. And that allows you a kind of or it affords you a kind of glimpse into people's reactions to what's being said.And it encourages you not to take it all at face value or to question. That kind of interplay between people and then the sense of an interiority.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:很快,你就会忘记整件事情是柏拉图自己虚构的,因为你已经完全沉浸在对话中了。但全书又不完全是对话,还带点散文的味道。这样你就能更好地体会人物对谈话内容的反应,也不容易对这些内容全盘相信或全盘质疑。你可以体会到人与人之间的互相影响以及内在的感觉。

 

Zachary Davis: Discussions like these were very typical in classical Athens.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:这类讨论在古代雅典很常见。

 

Demetra Kasimis: And so you see really quickly in the Republic that these sorts of questions about what justice is, are the sort of the stuff of light conversation, but that the light conversation is always kind of moving between humor and seriousness, and the stakes can become really great really quickly.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:很快你就会在《理想国》中看到这类关于正义的探讨。虽然这些只是闲聊,但却既幽默风趣,又不失严肃,而且探讨的话题很快会变得很宏大。

 

Why did Plato write in the voice of Socrates?

柏拉图为何要以苏格拉底的口吻来写作?

 

Zachary Davis: Why did Plato write in the voice of Socrates? Why didn't he put his name on everything and say, this is these are my teachings? I mean, it seems almost like a kind of worship, you know, a complete love and adoration for this figure in his life.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:柏拉图为何要以苏格拉底的口吻来写这本书?他为什么不直接用自己的名字,说这些都是他的理念?这似乎像是在用一生对苏格拉底致以崇高的敬意与倾慕之情。

 

Demetra Kasimis: I mean, sure, from one angle it's worshipful in so far as he devotes his life to creating this figure, bringing him to life. But the question of why he doesn't speak for himself, why he speaks through Socrates. It's a really fascinating and you know, complicated question, because of course, most people assume that Plato does speak for himself.Even though he says nothing himself and he speaks through, if you want even say that, right? That's kind of like probably a little stronger than what I would what I would say, speaks through his characters.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:没错,从某个角度看这确实是在致敬,毕竟柏拉图一生都在努力将苏格拉底的形象刻画得栩栩如生。但问题是他为什么不以自己的口吻叙述,而是要用苏格拉底的口吻?这个问题很有意思,也很复杂。大部分人其实都觉得柏拉图其实还是在传达自己的思想,尽管不是以自己的口吻叙述,而是借助自己笔下的人物来叙述。这么说可能比我刚刚说的更准确一点。

 

Zachary Davis: There is no Plato character in the Republic, so Plato is able to construct a dialogue that explores many different perspectives, without claiming any one of them is the correct perspective or even his perspective.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:《理想国》中没有柏拉图这个人物,所以柏拉图可以虚构一场对话,探讨方方面面,而不用点明哪个方面的思考是对的,或者符合自己的想法。

 

Demetra Kasimis: And I think all of that, in a way, is being taken up or foregrounded by Plato when he creates that distance between the author of the work and the character, and then there's the question of the reader and how you want to interpret what is being said. There is no one there to tell you for sure that this is what Plato means, right?

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:我觉得从某种程度上看,既然柏拉图没有把自己塑造成书中的人物,那么他也就将所有方面的思考一一呈现在书中。这其实从读者的角度作了考量,思考要如何阐明讨论的内容。书里没有人言之凿凿地说,这才是柏拉图的意思,对吧。

 

Zachary Davis: In Book Two, Socrates continues his conversation on justice with Glaucon and Adeimantus. Socrates points out that there are two types of political justice, the justice of an individual and the justice of the community, or city.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:在第二卷中,苏格拉底继续与格劳孔和阿德曼图斯探讨正义。苏格拉底指出,政治正义有两类,一类是个人正义,另一类是集体或城邦的正义。

 

Zachary Davis: He concludes that because the city is bigger than the individual, it would be easier to look for justice there first, and then see if there are any parallels to be drawn to the individual. He proceeds to create a hypothetical, perfectly just city based on reason, in order to see how and where justice enters. This perfect city is called Kallipolis.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:他总结说,由于城邦高于个体,因此先寻求城邦正义,然后再看看哪些点可以对应到个人正义,这么做会容易一点。他进而设想了一个基于理性而运行的完美城邦,来看看正义在何处如何体现于城邦之中。这个完美的城邦叫“美善之邦”。

 

Zachary Davis: What's the kind of point of that approach? You know, just delighting in the power of reason?

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:这样设想的意义是什么?仅仅是为了欣赏理性的力量吗?

 

Demetra Kasimis: He's kind of proposing a hypothetical situation, like if we were to found a new city, how would we do it? And so that kind of hypothetical, that kind of conditional, you know, if we wanted these sorts of things, if we wanted to understand what justice really is, how would we do it?

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:他在提出一种设想:假设我们要建立一座新城邦,那要怎么做呢?所以在这样的假设下,如果我们要理解什么是正义,那么我们要怎么做?

 

Demetra Kasimis: I think too often when we think about Plato or we think about the Republic, we think that it's a kind of blueprint for constructing this sort of ideal city that has been, of course, over the 20th century, variously described as a totalitarian regime. But really, we're invited into a kind of thought experiment. And that's not quite the same as an endorsement, right? Or as a kind of advocating of a regime that you would want to implement.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:我觉得我们提到柏拉图或者《理想国》时,往往总是把它看作建设理想城邦的蓝图。这种城邦政权在20世纪被以各种方式描述成了极权政权。但实际上,柏拉图仅仅是带领我们进行一场思想实验,并不是在支持极权,也没有倡导建立这样的城邦。

 

Zachary Davis: Although Plato isn’t offering up instructions for how to build the perfect city, this experiment puts society into focus and gives us a new lens through which to view ourselves.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:尽管柏拉图没有一步步阐明如何建立这座美善之邦,但这场思想实验关注了社会组织形式,为我们提供了审视自我的新视角。

 

Demetra Kasimis: There is nevertheless the sense that you can be profoundly altered and provoked into curiosity and new thinking by a really good conversation that you have for hours with a bunch of difficult and funny and persuasive friends. And that's where it starts. That change starts in a conversation.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:尽管如此,一场有意思的交谈可以激励你发挥自己的好奇心与奇思妙想,这也很有意义。你可以和一群伶牙俐齿、幽默风趣、善于说服的朋友一起聊几个小时。这就是变革的开端——始于一场对话。

 

Zachary Davis: In his conversation with Glaucon and Adeimantus, Socrates begins to explain how this perfect city would be structured. He believes the founding principle of human society is specialization. Specialization is built on the idea that each person has a natural predisposition for a certain kind of work. For the society to function at its best, every citizen is required to perform their natural role, and no other. A farmer only farms. A weaver only weaves.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:在与格劳孔和阿德曼图斯的交谈中,苏格拉底开始解释这座美善之城的社会架构。他认为人类社会的基本准则就是专业分工,因为人们的天性决定着他们适合做哪类工作。为了让社会高效运转,每个人都需要依据天性各司其职。农夫要做的就是耕种,纺织工要做的就是纺织。

 

Zachary Davis: Socrates goes on to explain that this new city would need a class of people to produce the basic necessities for life, such as shelter, food, and clothing. A city made up of solely these producers would be a healthy city because it only makes what is absolutely necessary for life.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:苏格拉底继续解释说,这个新城邦需要一类人来生产生活必需品,比如住房、食物和衣服。城邦里如果只有这些生产者,那整个城邦就会运转良好,因为它可以满足人们生活的必要需求。

 

Zachary Davis: Glaucon says this city would never work because it would be too boring. The citizens would eventually desire luxuries such as art, decadent food, and beautiful landscapes. For the city to incorporate such luxuries, new positions would be created, such as actors, poets, architects, and vendors. Such a luxurious city, they conclude, would be very valuable and subject to attack from other nations and would therefore need protection.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:但是格劳孔说,这样的城邦不可能运转良好,因为太无聊了。人们最终会渴望享乐,想要欣赏艺术、品味美食、游览风景。若是要满足这些享乐的需求,城邦就需要新的职位,比如艺术家、诗人、建筑师、商贩。他们总结道,这样一个豪华的城市极具吸引力,容易遭受其他城邦的攻击,因而需要人来保卫城邦。

 

Zachary Davis: To protect the city, an additional class of people would be needed: the guardians. Socrates says that their natural predisposition to guarding the city is a good start, but not enough. These guardians would need to go through rigorous training both physically and mentally to ensure they remained strong, reliable defenders and not thuggish brutes. Their education would be highly controlled, and they would only be exposed to stories and arts that promoted a positive message.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:这时候便需要另外一类人,那就是护卫者。苏格拉底说,这些人虽然生来就有保卫城邦的素养,但这还不够。还要对他们进行严格的身心训练,确保他们能成为坚强可靠的守卫者,而不是嗜血的野蛮人。要严格控制对他们的教育,只让他们接触积极向上的故事与艺术。

 

Zachary Davis: For example, they are only told stories in which the gods are shown as good. The gods should never be depicted as murderous or immoral because the city does not want the future guardians to adopt this type of behavior. This highly censored education would begin while the guardians were young and impressionable.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:比如,在故事中告诉他们神灵永远是好的,不能把神灵描述成凶神恶煞、道德败坏的样子,因为城邦的人们可不希望未来的护卫者也会变成这样。在他们年轻、懵懂的时候,就要对他们进行这种选择性的教育。

 

Demetra Kasimis: Sort of heavy regulation of poetry and the arts. And a lot of that had to do with the sense that from a very young age, the way we learn is through the arts, through what we listen to, the stories that we hear, the paintings we look at, the way our landscape is constructed.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:也就是要严格限制他们接触的诗歌和艺术。这与我们小时候的学习途径有关,基本上都是通过品味艺术、聆听故事、欣赏绘画等方式形成对世界的认知。

 

Zachary Davis: During their education, the best of the guardians are selected and put into another class. They are to become the third and final class of the city; the philosophical rulers. These rulers receive their own specialized training and philosophical education to make sure they are fit to rule this new society.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:在受教育的过程中,最优秀的一批护卫者被挑选进入另一个阶层。这就是城邦的第三个、也是最后一个阶层——哲学家统治者。这些统治者会接受专门的培训和哲学教育,来确保自己适合统治这个新社会。

 

Demetra Kasimis: I think the Republic is very concerned with rulership that is concerned with the collective interests of its citizenry. And one of the reasons that the Republic can be read in so many different ways and are in the service of so many different political agendas, is because it tries to collapse the difference between individual on common interest.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:《理想国》非常关注统治权,因为这和公民的集体利益息息相关。《理想国》之所以有着各种各样的解读,被用于许多不同的政治议题中,是因为它试图打破个体差异,寻求人们的共同利益。

 

Demetra Kasimis: And so there is no sense and there are ideally in the Kallipolis, there would be no such thing as a kind of private interest, that what is in your interest as a worker is going to be in your interest as a philosopher whose ruling over the city. And like, think the greatest kind of analogy is the shepherd one, you know, the kind of the shepherd kind of caring for his flock or the weaver who's bringing different parts of society together.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:所以在美善之邦,没有个人利益这么一说,生产者的利益同样也是哲学家统治者的利益。一个最好的类比就是牧羊人,统治者就像牧羊人一样照看大众,或是像纺织工一样把社会的各个部分编织到一起。

 

What’s the myth of the metals?

什么是金属人的迷思

 

Zachary Davis: To ensure everyone stays in their respective roles and classes, Socrates shares a fictional story that will be told to the citizens. It is often known as the myth of the metals.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:为了确保人们各司其职,待在自己的阶层中,苏格拉底告诉了人们一个虚构的故事,这就是我们常说的“金属人的迷思”。

 

Demetra Kasimis: The myth of the metals is a kind of founding story that explains the origins of the Kallipolis residents who were born with metals inside them. There's a tripartite system and each class corresponds to a different metal.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:“金属人的迷思”是一个开创性的故事,解释了美善之邦公民的起源。他们的灵魂中都含有某类金属,三个阶层的人含有的金属各不相同。

 

Zachary Davis: Members of each class are kept separate from the other classes. They are only allowed to interact with their own class.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:每个阶层的人都与其他阶层的人隔绝开来,只和本阶层的人交流互动。

 

Demetra Kasimis: Another related aspect to that is the rigged marriage lottery. So people are going to think that they're copulating with people by choice. But there's a kind of very complicated system in place to keep people thinking that they are freely choosing. But ensuring that they are not mating with people from a different class. And so that's where there are some affinities between what is being proposed and a kind of eugenics model or a kind of social engineering model. I think it's really difficult to disagree with the idea that we're getting some picture of that in the Republic.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:另一个与此相关的就是受操纵的自由婚姻制度。人们以为自己可以自由选择和谁在一起的,但其实背后有一套复杂的系统,一方面让人们误以为这是出于自己的选择,另一方面又确保他们不会与不同阶层的人结合。这和优生学或社会工程学模式有些类似。我觉得很难否认,我们是从《理想国》中继承了这样的观点。

 

Zachary Davis: Two people of the same class would typically produce offspring with the same metal, but Socrates says that is not always the case. Sometimes a child is born with a different metal than that of their parents. If that happened, the child would be moved to the correct class.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:两个同阶层的人生下的孩子灵魂中大多会有同一种金属,但苏格拉底说并非所有时候都是如此,有时候孩子的金属和父母的会不同。这时候孩子就会被转移到适合他的阶层。

 

Zachary Davis: The young generation would be closely monitored to reveal the true class of their soul. This monitoring would be done by the community, because in this hypothetical society, children are collectively raised by the community.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:年轻人会受到密切的关注。在这种密切关注中,他们将会显露出自己真正所属的阶层的特质。这种关注会由一个群体来进行,因为在美善之邦中,孩子们都是交给这个群体来集中抚养。

 

Demetra Kasimis: That requires people not having an attachment to or even having knowledge of who their biological children are. And so he's really disentangling or untethering, we could say, kinship from biology. So the caring for, or tending of children is simply not the same thing as giving birth to them. Being a mother in one sense is not the same as being a mother in another sense.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:这就需要人们不留恋自己的亲生孩子,甚至都不用知道自己的亲生孩子是谁,完完全全不要有血缘方面的纠葛。所以生孩子不等于要抚养他们,你或许是孩子的亲生母亲,却不一定是抚养他们的人。

 

Demetra Kasimis: I mean, that's one of the most fascinating parts for me of the Republic, because Plato is interested in absolutely every aspect of how we live. There is no such thing as transforming politics if you're not going to think about what's happening in the home, because that's a space of power. Those are relations of power. And so you have to look really broadly at the different forms that hierarchy takes and rethink what kinship means. Who is kin?

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:这是《理想国》让我着迷的一点,因为柏拉图似乎对我们生活的方方面面都很感兴趣。要想进行政治变革,就需要考虑家庭中发生的事,因为家也是一个权力空间,也有着权力从属关系。所以你需要广泛看待等级的不同存在形式,重新思考什么是亲属关系,比如谁是亲属。

 

Zachary Davis: The logic behind the myth of the metals is that people wouldn’t go along with this class system unless they believed this class was pre-given. Some people interpret this to mean that Plato thought there was a natural order to classes, but Professor Kasimis says this is not the case.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:金属人这一概念背后的逻辑是,除非人们相信阶层是天生的,否则他们就不会甘于接受自己的阶层。有人认为这说明柏拉图认为阶层展现着自然秩序,但卡西米斯教授则认为并非如此。

 

Demetra Kasimis: He's showing us how important founding stories are.And how difficult they are actually to get out of people's minds once they're told over and over and over again. And so he's kind of pointing to the strategic benefits and maybe even the political necessity of these sort of founding lies that every polity, every society has them, has some story that makes it easier to believe that your place in the world is fixed. It's a, you know, often compared to a kind of racial hierarchy. Because of its invocation of natural difference. But what he's showing us is that natural difference is a kind of artifice.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:他向我们展示了讲故事是多么重要,一旦人们反复听说一个故事,就很难将它抛之脑后了。他似乎展现了杜撰这些故事的战略意义甚至政治必要性。几乎所有政体、所有社会都需要这样的故事,好让人们相信自己在世界上的地位是固定的。人们常常把它和种族等级制度相提并论,二者都强调人与人之间与生俱来的差异。而柏拉图向我们展现了,人类天性差异的说法不过是一种说服技巧。

 

Why should rulers selected from philosophers?

为什么要让哲学家统治城邦?

 

Zachary Davis: What do you think the Republic is saying about authority and governance and how that's decided and how it's received legitimacy?

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:您认为《理想国》如何探讨了权威与治理、如何确立统治并获得统治的合法性?

 

Demetra Kasimis: What gives you the authority to rule in the republic is wisdom, is your philosophical knowledge.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:是智慧赋予了你在美善之邦的统治权。这里的智慧便是哲学知识。

 

Zachary Davis: Socrates tells Glaucon and Adeimantus that only philosophers can have knowledge, so they know what is best for the city, and therefore they are in the best position to run it. Because the philosopher pursues truth above all else, their soul acts from a rational place and therefore, is just.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:苏格拉底告诉格劳孔和阿德曼图斯,只有哲学家才能拥有知识,所以只有他们知道什么最适合这座城邦,也只有他们最有资格统治城邦。哲学家将追求真理置于一切之上,他们的灵魂会遵循理性,因而会秉持公正。

 

Zachary Davis: The philosopher rulers receive the most rigorous training of the three classes. Up until the age of eighteen, the future philosopher rulers and guardians are in the same class and therefore have the same basic intellectual study and physical training. When they are recognized as potential philosophers, they are taken out of the guardian class and spend the next five years in philosophical training. The next ten years are spent training in math and then five years in dialectic training.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:在三个阶层当中,哲学家统治者接受的训练最为严格。十八岁之前,未来的哲学家统治者和护卫者都处于同一阶层,因而接受着同样的基础知识教育和体能训练。当他们被发现具有哲学家的潜质时,就会被带离护卫者阶层,在接下来的五年中接受哲学训练,之后的十年接受数学训练,再往后的五年接受辩证法训练。

 

Demetra Kasimis: You get the sense that this person is I mean, they're supposed to actually, as part of their training, spend a lot of time sort of on the ground, as were, you know, dealing with people, educating other people. And there's some sort of experiential knowledge that is part of being a philosopher. I think you actually have to be really good at judging human character. And that's not something you get from books. That's something you get from at the right time, being exposed to a wide range of people and having a sense of how they tick, what makes them operate, what gets them going.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:不过你会觉得,这些人应该花大量时间来学习实际经验,这也应该作为训练的一部分。他们要学习如何与人打交道、如何教育他人。成为哲学家也需要一些经验型知识,需要真正善于判断人的性格特征。这是没法从书中学到的,需要你在合适的时候与各种各样的人接触,了解他们做事情的方式和原因、以及他们前进的动力。

 

Zachary Davis: The final years of a philosopher’s training require them to educate others. Socrates describes these final stages in a well-known metaphor called the allegory of the cave.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:所以哲学家训练阶段的最后几年需要教育他人。苏格拉底用了一个很有名的比喻来描述这个阶段的情况,这就是“洞穴隐喻”。

 

Demetra Kasimis: So Socrates says, you know, imagine, that people were living underground, living inside a cave and you're shackled together, facing a wall, against which puppeteer are reflecting shadows, in other words, you can imagine a kind of like shadow puppets situation. And you can't turn to look at each other and so you don't even have the sense of being part of a collective. You can't turn your head. You can only look straight ahead at what is being put in front of you. And so there's this kind of curious sense in which the whole thing is rigged. And that there is a path that leads out of the cave to the sun.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:苏格拉底说,假设人们生活在地下,住在一个洞穴里,手脚被绑着,面朝着洞穴壁。身后有人拿着人偶在洞穴壁上映出影子,类似于皮影戏的样子。你也没有办法转头看到同伴,所以你甚至都不知道自己周围还有别人。你只能直愣愣地看着前面的墙壁。所有这一切都以一种离奇的方式被安排着。有一条小路通向洞穴口,外面可以看到阳光。

 

Zachary Davis: By luck, or chance, or maybe even divine intervention, one of these prisoners wriggles free and goes up the path, sees the sun and sees life for what it actually is.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:其中一个囚徒出于运气、偶然因素或是在圣灵的帮助下挣脱了桎梏,沿着小路走到了外面,看见了阳光,目睹了世界的真实面貌。

 

Demetra Kasimis: So you get the sense that it would be really unlikely, but it might happen that you would get up there and then you have to come back. You have a duty as this enlightened person, you know, is of kind of the philosopher who's seen the light to go back and try to convince other people to educate them and drag them out of the cave. And people aren't going to want to leave.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:你会生出这样的想法,虽然不太现实,但也有可能会这么想:你走出了洞穴,却觉得有必要回去。你可是启迪民智的哲学家,在看到光明之后,你有责任回去教育别人,说服他们一起走出洞穴。但是其他人并不想走。

 

Zachary Davis: The person who leaves the cave is the philosopher. They are able to see the truth beyond illusion. The last years of the philosopher-ruler’s training is spent trying to lead people from the cave. In other words, they are trying to enlighten the public through education.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:离开洞穴的是哲学家。他们能够摆脱假象,看清真相。哲学家统治者训练阶段的最后几年是要带领人们走出洞穴。换句话说,他们要努力通过教育启迪民众。

 

Zachary Davis: Plato is stressing that the importance of education is to lead people as far out of the cave as possible. Some people make it farther than others, which is why some end up as producers, some as guardians, and some as philosopher-rulers.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:柏拉图强调,教育的重要性在于带领人们尽可能远地走出洞穴。有些人比其他人走得更远,所以有些人最终成了生产者,而有些人成为护卫者,有些人成了哲学家统治者。

 

Demetra Kasimis: The allegory, the cave is, I think, most fundamentally about the difficulty of throwing off assumptions that have become so naturalized, so second nature that they seem true, and pre-given. We are all sort of chained, looking at shadows that we take to be real. And the disbelief that we experience when someone tries to tell us that what we think is wrong. It's not just about truth in some kind of philosophical sense, right? It's about getting our deepest presumptions about each other to just get a little bit unsettled. And that just that little bit of unsettling turns out to require a massive amount of effort and openness.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:在这个隐喻中,洞穴是指那些我们习以为常、难以抛却的预设,我们对它们太过习以为常,以至于它们都成为了我们的第二天性,让我们觉得那是真的、先天存在的。我们都被束缚着,把墙上的影子当作现实。有人告诉我们这些都是假象,我们却完全不相信。这不仅仅关乎于哲学意义上的真相,对吧。这还关乎于如何对那些根深蒂固的预设保留一丝丝怀疑。仅仅是一丝丝怀疑都需要我们付出很多努力,并保持开放的心态。

 

Zachary Davis: For this new society to work, the public would have to agree that philosophers should rule. This idea seemed difficult to put into practice because philosophers didn’t typically hold political office in ancient Athens. Philosophers weren’t even appreciated by all of society. Socrates himself was sentenced to death for philosophizing.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:为了让这个美善城邦运转,民众必须统一让哲学家来统治。这个想法似乎很难付诸实践,因为在古代雅典,哲学家往往不担任政治职务。哲学家甚至都没有收到全社会的广泛赞誉。苏格拉底便因为用哲学“蛊惑”青年而被判处死刑。

 

Demetra Kasimis: You know, the characters in the Republic talk about how preposterous this is, right? And how you get the sense that anybody listening to this would also think it was sort of ridiculous that you would be able to convince people that philosophers should rule over you. And the whole question, like in philosophy and philosophical works, conversations about the so-called realizability of the Kallipolis, like could this really ever work, really depends on people's ability to think a philosopher is valuable and to recognize that person as a ruler.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:《理想国》中的人物说,“哲学王”的想法简直太荒唐了,任何人听到这个都会觉得很荒唐,竟然会说服大家让哲学家来统治。这一整个哲学理念,也就是“美善之邦”的设想,其实现与否很大程度上都取决于人们能否相信哲学家的价值,是否觉得他有统治的能力。

 

Zachary Davis: What is the Republic's theory of social change or what are some of the themes about social change that Plato's text reveals?

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:《理想国》在社会变革方面提出了什么理论?柏拉图的书揭示了哪些有关社会变革的主题?

 

Demetra Kasimis: I think in the Republic’s angle, you can't have a people that can rule itself well, if it's not well informed, if it doesn't know how to discern truth from falsity. The problem getting people in a large group to listen to something that might be difficult for them to hear and not just make them feel good about themselves, but might actually require a kind of painful confrontation with themselves or with the truth of a situation.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:《理想国》中提出,如果人们消息不灵通,或是不知道如何辨别真伪,那他们就难以实现良好的自治。如果想要大众聆听他们不愿意接受的消息,而不仅仅是听到让自己感觉良好的消息,这可能需要他们与自我进行痛苦的抗争,或是鼓足勇气直面现实。

 

Demetra Kasimis: It's a difficult thing to convince people to do. It's difficult to reach them on that level. And so I think it’s related to the question about political change because, what you see in the Republic is that lasting political change requires a radical rethinking of society, which is to say the abolition of private property and the foundation of greed.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:说服人们很难,你很难让他们真正这样做。所以我觉得这涉及到政治变革的问题。在《理想国》中你会发现,要想进行持久的政治变革,就需要对整个社会彻底重新思考,在书里也就是废除私有制,打破贪婪的基础。

 

Why would the ideal city eventually fall

理想之邦最终为何会陷落?

 

Zachary Davis: In the process of imagining this ideal city, Socrates, Glaucon, and Adeimantus all begin to realize the improbability of creating this Kallipolis. Citizens would be unlikely to believe in such a rigid class system where philosophers ruled.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:在设想建立城邦的过程中,苏格拉底、格劳孔和阿德曼图斯都慢慢发现,建立这座美善之邦其实并不可行。人们不可能相信哲学家统治下的这种严格的阶层制度。

 

Zachary Davis: And even if the city was established, Socrates explains in Book Eight of the Republic  how it would inevitably decay, passing through several versions of government on its way to tyranny and the eventual fall of the city.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:即使这个城邦真的建立了,在第八卷中苏格拉底也解释了为何它终将衰败。政权会几度更迭,走向暴政,城邦最终会陷落。

 

Demetra Kasimis: And so there's a way in which he's showing us what this would look like. And then immediately doesn't suggest, really claims that this wouldn't work. And it wouldn't work because people would make mistakes about who belongs in what class. And they would not be as, let's say, mystified or brainwashed as they would need to be, to be a total sort of supplicants to this regime. And so I think there's something kind of hopeful in that, actually.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:他用这种方式来告诉我们,真实的情况会是什么样,然后直截了当地宣布,建立“美善之邦”行不通,原因是人们会错误地判断谁属于哪个阶层。他们不会被神乎其神的故事洗脑,不会恳求建立这样的制度。所以我觉得,对民众的分辨能力还是可以抱有希望的。

 

Zachary Davis: One could say many visions of utopia sound kind of boring in that once we've sort of solved it and living together, it drains the pregnant meaning of social life away because partly that's what keeps us animated. How do we learn to love? How did we learn to share? How do we learn to do all these things that we need to learn how to do?

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:有人可能会说,乌托邦的许多愿景听起来都很无聊,一旦我们真的那样生活在一起,可能也就失去了社会生活本身的意义,因为原来那些让我们生机勃勃的东西没了。我们要如何学会爱?如何学会分享?如何学着做这些需要学会做的事?

 

Demetra Kasimis: The Republic would be a really boring book if all it did was describe a roadmap to this stable, permanent society. And instead, it is a kind of unpredictable story. The plot, if you want to call it a plot, is exciting because as they keep trying to do this thing, kind of design this new city they're encountering, their own worries, their own presumptions, their own understanding of human nature, their sense that, you know, people probably wouldn't go along with this, or if they did, it would be short lived.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:如果《理想国》仅仅是描述这个稳固、长久的社会的蓝图,那就很无聊。不过好在它其实讲了一个难以预料的故事。如果可以把书里内容称作情节的话,那么这个情节可谓是激动人心,因为他们在不断尝试整个构想,在设想城邦建设的过程中融入自己的担忧与预设、以及对人性的理解。他们觉得,人们估计不会认同这样的城邦。即使他们认同了,那也只会是昙花一现。

 

Demetra Kasimis: And so there's something kind of exciting about finding out that it wouldn't really work and why.There's something about human nature that's simply resistant to this kind of oppressive and systematic regulation of human action.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:所以当发现美善之邦难以维系,以及为什么会这样后,反倒让人有点兴奋。人性之中的有些地方会抵制这种对人类行为的高压式、系统性规范。

 

Zachary Davis: So instead of being a perfect blueprint of a perfect society, it's an investigation of imperfect but fascinating human nature.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:所以这本书并没有勾画出一个完美的社会蓝图,但却探究了不完美却迷人的人性。

 

Demetra Kasimis: Yes, it's an investigation and that there's something really enlightening and gripping about undertaking such a serious thought experiment that you actually find something out about human nature when you seriously attempt to consider what a new political regime would look like and what would be required to keep it in place. It isn't a matter of using violence to take over a city and imposing a new set of rulers.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:没错,这是一场对人性的探究。进行这样一场认真的思想实验确实很有启发性和吸引力,以至于当你认真考虑新的政治体制是什么样、需要用什么去维系时,你会发现一些关于人性的东西。这并不是要用武力征服某个城邦,并给他们安排一些统治者。

 

Demetra Kasimis: You actually need to think very carefully about what human beings are like. That they have desires, that they need to be educated, that they're going to disagree. That they aren't going to be self-sustaining, that they're going to need to import goods from other cities and open the door to foreign influence, that they might end up being at war with their neighbors. All of those things come into the Republic. And really complicate our understanding of what a utopia is.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:实际上,你需要认真考虑人类是什么样的。我们有欲望,需要被教育,会反驳你的意见。我们不会自给自足,而是需要从外邦进口商品,接受着外邦的影响,也会和邻邦开战。这些都在《理想国》中有所展现。我们对乌托邦的理解确实很复杂。

 

Zachary Davis: Some readers have interpreted it as a blueprint for society. Early 20th century German scholars and high school students read the Republic as advocating racial hierarchy. This idea was eventually adopted by Hitler and the Nazi Party.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:一些读者曾将《理想国》看作社会蓝图。20世纪初,德国学者和高等院校的学生认为《理想国》倡导了种族等级制度。这一想法最终被希特勒和纳粹党所采纳。

 

Demetra Kasimis: To read that as an endorsement, I mean, the Nazis aren't alone in that, right? but it means kind of attributing these ideas to Plato, which is we were saying before, is really difficult to do. And also missing the really crucial part, which is that the idea of nature, if you want to use the term race that comes out of this, is actually really artificial.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:纳粹党并不是唯一一个用《理想国》为种族主义背书的。但如果硬要把这些思想追溯到柏拉图头上,其实很难,我们之前也谈过这一点。而且这样做也缺失了真正重要的一环,那就是人的天性这个概念。要是把这个等同于种族的话,那就非常生搬硬套了。

 

Demetra Kasimis: There isn't a sense that this is like nature in the sense of biology. This is nature as in, kind of acculturation. And also, people in the Kallipolis are probably going to judge incorrectly from time to time and put someone, you know, with a different kind of aptitude or capacity, you know, in the wrong class. And then the whole system kind of falls apart.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:柏拉图所说的自然天性并不是指生物学上的概念,而是指对特定文化的适应程度。而且美善之邦的人们会时常将具有不同才能的人置于错误的阶层中,于是整个社会系统最后会崩溃。

 

What are the recent readings of the Republic?

近年来对《理想国》有哪些新的解读?

 

Zachary Davis: There have also been other readings of the Republic through the years.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:近年来,对《理想国》还有一些别的解读。

 

Demetra Kasimis: The attachment to natural difference, I think, stays with us through the kind of Cold War interpretation and the kind of even the anti-totalitarian efforts that readers of Plato were engaged in, just because they really are just engaged in the kind of, they're engaged in debunking what you get out of, let's say, a Nazi appropriation of Plato.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:我们运用人类天性差异这套说法来解读冷战,来反对极权主义。柏拉图的读者常常会反对极权主义,因为他们反对纳粹对柏拉图思想的歪曲利用。

 

Demetra Kasimis: You also get feminists reading Plato, right. You get communist readings of Plato. And then more recently, you get readings of Plato that read the Republic as a kind of, you know, in the service of a kind of democratic self-criticism.Like, what can he teach us about democracy, even if he's not a huge champion of democracy?

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:女权主义者和共产主义者也会阅读柏拉图。再往近代看,我们会将柏拉图的《理想国》解读为民主制度的自我批评,比如会认为尽管柏拉图并非民主制度的拥护者,但也可以通过他的著作中来反思民主。

 

Zachary Davis: So Plato lives through this dramatic, tumultuous overthrow of the government and then the reversal, you know, again, returning to democracy. How does sustainable change happen? And he seems to suggest that it isn't from heroic leaders or, you know, even tyrants or kind of these single savior figures, but that it's this slow process of changing hearts and minds, growing wisdom among each person, which you know again, is why he seems to place so much emphasis on excruciating slow process of communal education. That like any change is going to require, like cultivating those changes within new generations.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:柏拉图生前经历了雅典政权的巨大更迭,之后情况又出现了逆转,民主派重新掌权。这样一连串变革是如何发生的?他似乎暗示了这并非因为某个英雄领袖、暴君或某个救世主一般的人物,而是由于人们思想观念的缓慢转变、以及每个人智慧的不断增长。这也是为什么他如此注重推动公共教育的发展。所有变革都需要教育的发展,都需要年轻一代思想观念的转变。

 

Zachary Davis: And so, you know, once again, change is possible. But we should look within ourselves and then be willing to share whatever knowledge we have that we're pretty convinced will lead to a better social order, person by person, conversation by conversation.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:所以要知道,变革是可能的。但我们需要内观自省,愿意分享知道的任何可以改善社会秩序的知识。我们可以在交谈中与人们依次分享。

 

Demetra Kasimis: That's right. We should be willing, actually, to be honest about what we think rather than pay lip service to what we think the other person wants to hear or what we think is right, and that comes out in the Republic over and over again, because there's this sense that if someone is merely concerned with saying the right thing, but not doing the right thing. Then nothing will ever change.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:没错。我们应当坦诚地分享自己的观点,而不是仅仅耍耍嘴皮子,说些别人爱听的或是我们觉得准确无误的。《理想国》中反复谈到了这一点,因为如果某人只关注说正确的话,而不是做正确的事,那么变革将无从谈起。

 

Demetra Kasimis: I don't think there's any kind of permanent success, by the way, I think political life for Plato is the realm of the changing. It's always moving. It's always requires a kind of responsiveness to a new set of circumstances. People think different things and people are always changing and their needs are always shifting.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:我觉得不存在一劳永逸的成功。顺便说一句,我认为在柏拉图看来,政治生活应该是不断变化和调整的。它一直在变动,总是需要对新情况做出某种反应。人们所思所想不同,也会不停地变化,他们的需求也总是在变。

 

Zachary Davis:  Plato was actually right and a lot of ways that like, you can't reform some small piece of society when, like, contradictions remain in other huge ones. So, you know, if you want equality, well, you nuclear families will just inherently seek the welfare of their own children. And then that causes all sorts of, you know, inequalities in schooling, inequities and, you know, in meritocracy.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:柏拉图其实在很多方面都是对的,比如当社会仍然存在巨大矛盾时,你不可能变革社会中的一小部分。所以如果你想寻求社会平等,但你的核心家庭想要为自己的孩子谋福利,这就会导致各种不平等,如教育不平等以及精英化现象。

 

Zachary Davis: So if anything, Plato's seems to be right, but it's sort of once again, it's not clear that there's an answer. It's not clear that we would take, we would be willing to do what a total approach would take, which is, which is challenging for anyone interested. How do we move towards a better, more just society?

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:柏拉图似乎是对的,但他也不清楚是否有答案。我们也不清楚想要采取怎样的整体方案,这对任何有意推动公平的人来说都是个挑战。我们要如何让社会更美好、更公平呢?

 

Demetra Kasimis: The picture you get in the Republic is one of heavy, heavy regulation, heavy social engineering, lack of individuation, lack of social mobility, lack of the traditional nuclear family, intolerance of dissent, hierarchy. Now, these don't seem very appealing to us. The question is what the meaning of all of that is. Why is it that in a discussion so concerned with fending off instability and political change, you would come up with a society that seems so oppressive?

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:《理想国》为你勾画的是繁琐的法规与社会工程,忽视了个体性和社会流动性,也打破了传统的核心家庭制度,对异议不够包容,也存在着等级制度。如今这章蓝图对我们已经没有了太大的吸引力。不过问题在于所有这些有何意义。为什么在一场力求避免社会不稳定和政治变革的谈话中,他们会提出建立这样一个看起来如此高压的社会?

 

Demetra Kasimis: If you're kind of saying that stability and lack of conflict is a good thing, something that, you know, people should be invested in pursuing, then what are you doing providing this picture something that looks pretty terrible, and actually kind of impossible to pull off? It's kind of a fantasy, this political stability. What it would look like to get that would be, you know, even if we thought it was possible, it would be so at odds with what human nature demands and wants. So ill-fitting with that. Probably what we should all just admit is that there is no end to political change.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:如果你觉得稳定、没有冲突的状态很好,值得人们去努力实现,那你为何要设想一张如此可怕且难以实现的蓝图?然而所谓的稳定不过是一种幻想。假如真的能实现,那会是什么样?即使社会真的一成不变,那也会有违人性中的需求与渴望,两者差得太远了。或许所有人都应该承认,政治领域永远都会有变革。

 

Demetra Kasimis: Okay, so then the question is, what do you do? You aspire. You aspire to stability. You aspire to political change if that's what you want. You can have a goal of fixity. But I think to believe that fixity is desirable without realizing that it is just a kind of an aspiration is dangerous because I think in the name of stability, you get a lot of stuff that you actually don't want. You get oppression. You get hierarchy. So, there's a question at the end of the Republic about what we're supposed to take from this experiment that seems so difficult to pull off and so undesirable actually. Democracy starts to look not that bad.

 

德梅特拉·卡西米斯:那么问题来了,你会怎么办?你渴望稳定。如果变革才是你想要的,你会渴望政治变革。你会有一个固定的目标。但我认为若是仅仅相信可以一成不变,而没有意识到这仅仅是你的愿望,那就很危险。因为以稳定的名义,你会得到很多你其实并不想要的东西。你会受压迫,会处于社会等级之中。所以在《理想国》的结尾有一个问题,那就是我们应该从这场难以实现的思想实验中得出什么结论?这么看,民主似乎还不错。

 

Zachary Davis: The ideal city of Kallipolis wouldn’t work in practice. But the thought experiment is valuable anyway. Through this conversation, we get deeper insight into human nature and human behavior. Humans aren’t stuck in place. We’re constantly changing, and we need a government that can evolve with us.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:美善之邦在现实中难以实现,但无论如何,思想实验都是有价值的。通过书中的这场交谈,我们可以更深入地了解人性和人类的行为。人们并不会墨守成规,我们在不断变革,我们也需要一个与我们共同进步的政府。

 

Zachary Davis: Writ Large is a production of Ximalaya. Writ Large is produced by Galen Beebe, Jack Pombriant and me, Zachary Davis, with help from Feiran Du, Ariel Liu, Wendy Wu, and Monica Zhang. Our intern is Liza French. Our theme song is by Ian Coss. Don’t miss an episode. Subscribe today in the Ximalaya app. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

 

扎卡里·戴维斯:本节目由喜马拉雅独家制作播出。感谢您的收听,我们下期再见!


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用户评论
  • Huyndai

    这就是所谓的《理想国》?!

  • 可伶可俐巴巴变

    不现实,空想家