【英文原声版68】Dhananjay Jagannathan: Confessions

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Zachary Davis: Christianity is a kind of fusion of Jewish and Greek thought. And the person most responsible for that fusion is Augustine of Hippo. He lived from 354 to 430 AD, and what’s remarkable is how much we know about him. For someone who died almost 1600 years ago, we know a lot about his life story, his anxieties, his struggles, and his personal life. The reason we know so much about him is because when he was in his early 40s, he wrote one of the world’s earliest autobiographies—Confessions.

扎卡里·戴维斯：基督教是犹太思想和希腊思想融合的产物，而对这场融合贡献最大的人要数希波的奥古斯丁。奥古斯丁生活在公元354年至430年。对这个将近一千六千年前去世的人，我们竟然非常了解他的生平，知道他内心的焦虑与挣扎，还有他的个人生活。我们之所以这么了解，是因为他在四十多岁的时候写了世界上最早的自传之一——《忏悔录》。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: The Augustine that we know from history is an extremely influential figure in the history of the Catholic Church and in the history of Christianity generally. He was a bishop of Hippo in North Africa, where he was originally from. He's also a copious writer of all kinds of texts, theological texts, of course, philosophical dialogues in the mode of Plato and Cicero, and an enormous quantity of letters and sermons from which we actually can piece together a lot of the individual events in his tumultuous life.

达南加·贾甘纳森：我们从历史中了解到的奥古斯丁在天主教乃至整个基督教历史上都非常有影响力。他曾是北非希波的主教，也是个多产的作家，创作过各种类型的作品，包括神学作品、像柏拉图和西塞罗等人所写的哲学对话录、大量书信和布道词。从这些作品中，我们可以捕捉到他辉煌人生中的许多个人事迹。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: He was also, as a leader in the church in North Africa, a political figure, a very prominent person. And he wrote the Confessions in his 40s when he would just come into this position of power. I'm Dhananjay Jagannathan. I teach philosophy and classical studies at Columbia University, and my specialty is ancient Greek and Roman philosophy.

达南加·贾甘纳森：作为北非教会的领导人，他还是一位非常杰出的政治家。在四十多岁刚当上主教的时候，他写下了《忏悔录》。我是达南加·贾甘纳森，在哥伦比亚大学教授哲学和古典学，我的研究领域是古希腊、罗马哲学。

Zachary Davis: Augustine’s Confessions chronicle his life from infancy, through his rebellious youth, and culminating in his conversion to Christianity. Augustine’s life story is one of searching. He was constantly seeking answers to the big, hard questions of existence.

扎卡里·戴维斯：奥古斯丁的《忏悔录》记载了他从幼年起到他叛逆的青年时期的生活，以他皈依基督教这一高潮作结。奥古斯丁的人生是探索的一生。他一直探索着有关人类存在的宏大难题，想要找到答案。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: What he's after is self-knowledge, in a way. And one of the ways of doing that is looking over the events of your life and thinking about them. And another way of doing that is thinking, how do I relate to the world? You know, what's the truth of what God is? And he's trying to answer these questions, and he realizes that he's not going to find them by going outside himself. He's going to find them by reflecting in himself.

达南加·贾甘纳森：从某种程度上看，他探索的是对自我的认识。探索的方法一是观察并思考生活中的事情，二是思考自己与世界如何联系在一起、上帝所揭示的真理是什么。他试图回答这些问题，发现向外探求并不能找到问题的答案。他打算向内反思自我。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: So we get these, you know...the narrative part, the sort of abstract philosophical part, and then the kind of scriptural reflection, they all are connected by this theme of self-knowledge. And in a way, there's something wonderful about the intimacy that this creates, all these different modes of investigation.

达南加·贾甘纳森：于是书中就有了这些叙述、抽象的哲学观点和对于神学经文的反思。所有这些都和对自我的认识息息相关。从某种意义上说，所有这些不同的探索方式传递了一种亲密感，令人赞叹。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: And we get the same voice all the way through. It's really Augustine's voice. And I think if you read this book carefully and slowly, you feel like you really get to know this person. There's a kind of wonderful intimacy to it. That's one of the reasons I love it so much.

达南加·贾甘纳森：在整本书中，我们一直听到同一个声音，这是奥古斯丁的声音。我觉得，如果你慢慢品读这本书，你会觉得自己仿佛真的了解这个人。这种亲密感令人赞叹，这也是我很喜欢这本书的原因之一。

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 Dhananjay Jagannathan to discuss Augustine’s Confessions.

扎卡里·戴维斯：欢迎收听：改变你和世界的100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讨论一本影响历史进程的书。在本集，我和达南加·贾甘纳森教授一起讨论奥古斯丁的《忏悔录》。

Zachary Davis: Augustine was born in the year 354 AD in a small town in present-day Tunisia. At the time, this region of North Africa was part of the Roman Empire.

扎卡里·戴维斯：公元354年奥古斯丁出生在一个小城。这小城现在在突尼斯境内。当时，北非这一带隶属于罗马帝国。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: So, he's born in Thagaste in a little middle of nowhere town, but not too far from the metropole of Carthage, which is the leading city in this province. And he's growing up in this very tumultuous but also very exciting environment. It’s what we think of as the end of the Roman, of the western Roman Empire anyway, and, you know, the famous sack of Rome in 410, as one of the formative moments in Augustine's life. It hasn't yet happened when he writes the Confessions. But these are, these are the dwindling days of the Roman Empire, as it's trying to maintain its position against other sort of competing political forces.

达南加·贾甘纳森：奥古斯丁出生在塔加斯特城，这是一个相对偏远的小城，不过离大城市迦太基不远。他成长在一个动荡却又惊心动魄的历史时期——西罗马帝国正走向终结。纵观奥古斯丁的一生，其中一个最具标志性的事件便是公元410年西哥特人围攻罗马城。《忏悔录》写在此事发生之前，但当时的罗马也已经日薄西山，挣扎着抵挡其他政治势力，企图维持自己的地位。

Zachary Davis: Augustine was born roughly 400 years after the birth of the Roman Empire. In his day, the Empire encompassed the entire Mediterranean region, stretching as far as England to the west and Palestine to the east. Augustine was born a Roman citizen to a pagan father and a Christian mother, Monica. Monica taught Augustine how to pray and the basic beliefs of Christianity.

扎卡里·戴维斯：奥古斯丁出生时，罗马帝国已经诞生了约四百年。在那个时代，帝国疆域包括整个地中海地区，西至英格兰，东至巴勒斯坦。奥古斯丁出生于罗马帝国，父亲是异教徒，母亲名叫莫尼加，是一名基督教徒。莫尼加教会了奥古斯丁如何祷告，告诉他基督教的基本信仰。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: We could think of him as roughly middle class. He gets a good education, but his parents have to save up for it. He grew up with this great facility in Latin, and that linguistic facility, of course, affords him access to this further education.

达南加·贾甘纳森：我们可以把他看作中产阶级。他受过良好的教育，但父母还是需要存钱准备供他读书。他在很好的拉丁语教育环境中长大，这种语言环境让他有机会进一步接受教育。

Zachary Davis: Augustine’s formal studies began when he was 11 years old and despite his Christian upbringing, at school Augustine was more drawn to secular writings than scripture.

扎卡里·戴维斯：十一岁那年，奥古斯丁正式开始学习。尽管小时候受基督教的熏陶，但在学校里，奥古斯丁感兴趣的不是经文，而是世俗作品。

Zachary Davis: What was Christianity like in the 4th century? I mean, I think what's so distinctive, at least for me, is the way that there were these competing religious ideas that, you know, it's hard to picture Christianity as just one cult, among others.

扎卡里·戴维斯：公元四世纪的基督教是什么样的？至少在我看来，当时基督教与众不同的一点是，基督教本身与其他许多宗教教派在竞争。从现在的眼光看，我们很难想象基督教不过是众多种崇拜的其中一种。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: Specifically what Augustine calls “the Catholic faith”, fide catholica, that's one of a number of different ways of being a follower of Christ in this time alongside various competing movements, including, you know, what we now look back on and think of as heresy, like Donatism and Arianism and these things that, you know, both contentions within the church and also between the church and other branches of the broader Christian movement, and then at the widest extent, other kinds of religious traditions that also incorporated a special role for Jesus Christ. And so there are all these different options. You know, you could be a follower of the traditional Roman gods still.

达南加·贾甘纳森：奥古斯丁所说的“天主教”是当时众多基督教流派之一。同时存在、并与之相对立的教派多种多样，包括多纳徒派、阿里乌教派这样的异端。于是当时不仅教派内部有争论，基督教之下各个教派之间也有争论。甚至其他一些宗教也融入了耶稣这一角色，让他占有一特殊的地位。所以你有各种各样的信仰可以选择。除此之外，你仍然可以信仰罗马传统的众多神祇。

Zachary Davis: When he was 17, Augustine traveled to Carthage to study rhetoric, or the art of persuasion. This was one of the three ancient arts of discourse, along with grammar and logic. While in Carthage, one afternoon he and a couple friends decided to steal some pears from the local market. He later wrote about the event in Confessions. He said that they didn’t steal the pears because they were hungry, they did it for the thrill: “It was foul, and I loved it. I loved my own error—not that for which I erred, but the error itself."

扎卡里·戴维斯：十七岁时，奥古斯丁到迦太基学习修辞学，又称游说之术。它和语法学、逻辑学一起并称古典时期的三大语言之术。在迦太基的时候，一天下午，他和几个朋友决定去当地的市场偷梨。后来他在《忏悔录》中回忆了这件事。他说，他们偷梨不是觉得饿，而是纯粹为了刺激。他写道：“罪恶是丑陋的，我却爱它。我爱我的缺点，不是爱缺点的根源，而是爱缺点本身。”

Zachary Davis: This incident and how it made him feel changed something inside Augustine. He realized he was inclined to sin. But it wasn’t just him; he came to believe that all humans were imperfect and had a natural tendency to sin. He began to look for ways to live a virtuous life even as an imperfect human.

扎卡里·戴维斯：偷梨这件事和偷梨后的感受改变了奥古斯丁的内心。他意识到自己有想要犯下罪过的倾向。但并不只有他一个人是这样，他开始相信所有人都不完美，天生就想犯下罪过。他开始想办法，让自己即使不完美，也要做个有道德的人。

Zachary Davis: During this time, Augustine read Hortensius, a philosophical dialogue by the Roman statesman and philosopher Cicero. This sparked his interest in philosophy, and from here he began his lifelong journey to find the truth. This quest led him to become interested and involved with Manichaeism, which was a Persian religion based on the ongoing struggle of good and evil.

扎卡里·戴维斯：在这段时间里，奥古斯丁读了《霍腾修斯》。这是古罗马政治家和哲学家西塞罗的哲学对话录。它激发了奥古斯丁对哲学的兴趣，开启了他这一生追求真理的旅程。在追求真理的过程中，他对摩尼教产生了兴趣，成为了摩尼教的信徒。摩尼教是一种波斯宗教，其基本教义是善与恶在持续斗争。

Zachary Davis: Around this time, he began a relationship with a woman and had a son out of wedlock. He moved back to his hometown of Thagaste and then back to Carthage, where he lived and taught for nearly a decade. But his life changed again when he was selected to be a professor of rhetoric in Milan, a very prominent position. From the outside, Augustine seemed to be doing really well. But inside, he was struggling. He wasn’t happy with his life.

扎卡里·戴维斯：大概在这个时候，奥古斯丁和一个女子有了一段关系，生下一个私生子。他回到了家乡塔加斯特城，之后又回到了迦太基，在那儿生活了将近十年，从事教学。十年后，他的生活再次改变——他被任命为米兰的修辞学教授。这是个非常重要的职位。表面上看，奥古斯丁似乎过得很好。但其实他的内心非常煎熬，对自己的生活很不满意。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: The fact that success in the secular sense of, you know, being powerful, having money, having his career go well, having people regard him, none of these things brings him happiness. And eventually he sees that something has got to give, that, you know, his pursuit of the truth in these intellectual ways doesn't get him all the way to the answers that he wants. At the same time his personal life is kind of falling apart.

达南加·贾甘纳森：他获得了世俗意义上的成功：有权势、有钱，事业发展得不错，人们还很尊重他。可这些没法让他幸福。最终，他发现必须做点什么，因为靠修习知识来追求真理并不能让他完全获得想要的答案。与此同时，他的个人生活也有些支离破碎。

Zachary Davis: It was during this crisis that Augustine met Saint Ambrose, who was the bishop of Milan. In Confessions, Augustine says Ambrose gave him a more spiritual perspective on God and catalyzed his eventual conversion to Christianity.

扎卡里·戴维斯：在这场危机中，奥古斯丁遇到了米兰的主教圣安布罗斯。奥古斯丁在《忏悔录》中说，安布罗斯向他揭示了上帝在精神层面的意义，促使他最终皈依了基督教。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: And then we get the sort of culmination of this narrative of anxiety. In his conversion, in a garden in Milan, he hears this child's voice saying, “Pick up and read.” And, you know, what is he to read but scripture? And so he decides that he's going to convert, and eventually he's baptized in the following year by Ambrose, that Easter.

达南加·贾甘纳森：于是，我们看到这场焦虑叙事达到了高潮：在信仰转变的过程中，他来到了米兰的一个花园。这时他听见一个儿童的声音：“拿起来读吧。”他读的只有可能是经文。在那一刻，他决定要皈依基督教。第二年的复活节，安布罗斯为他施洗。

Zachary Davis: When Augustine heard the child’s voice say “pick up and read”, all he had around him was a book of St. Paul’s writings. He opened the book at random and read. “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying, but put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh to fulfill the lusts thereof.”

扎卡里·戴维斯：当奥古斯丁听到儿童的声音叫他“拿起来读”的时候，周围只有一本书，那就是圣保罗的作品。他随意翻开，读到：“不可荒宴醉酒；不可好色邪荡；不可争竞嫉妒。总要披戴主耶稣基督，不要为肉体安排，去放纵私欲。”

Zachary Davis: This was the truth Augustine had been seeking. If humans were innately flawed, naturally inclined to sin, then the only way to live a virtuous life was to do so with the guidance and grace of Christ.

扎卡里·戴维斯：这是奥古斯丁一直追求的真理。如果人类天生就有缺陷，天生就容易犯下罪过，那么要想做个有道德的人，唯一方法就是在上帝的指引和恩典下遵守道德。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: He decides he's going to form this, you know, deep intellectual community with some of his friends who were also alongside him for the journey who also opted for Christianity over these kinds of secular careers.

达南加·贾甘纳森：他决定和一些朋友组建一个修道会。这些朋友和他一起舍弃了世俗职业，投身到基督教之中。

Zachary Davis: At this point, Augustine and his friends gave up their careers and devoted their lives fully to Christ.

扎卡里·戴维斯：这时候，奥古斯丁和朋友们放弃了自己的职业，全心全意地敬奉上帝。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: Although his journey is so personal and individual, you know, his mother is there as part of this community, and he relates the kinds of conversations that he has with friends and his mother. And then the narrative kind of ends with this incredible vision that he and his mother share when they're in Ostia. And that's one of these other signature moments in the text.

达南加·贾甘纳森：他的皈依之路非常个人化。他的母亲也是修道会的一员。在书中，他叙述了和母亲还有朋友的各种谈话。叙述的结尾，他提到了和母亲在奥斯提亚看到的幻象。这是全书的几大标志性时刻之一。

Zachary Davis: Soon after they shared this vision, Augstine’s mother died.

扎卡里·戴维斯：在他们看到幻象后不久，奥古斯丁的母亲去世了。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: And then the narrative ends, and he begins again asking, you know, what am I, who am I, now in this sort of reflective philosophical mode. He's no longer telling the story of particular events, but he's still answering the same question, in a way, that he was asking all the way at the beginning.

达南加·贾甘纳森：叙述部分结束了，随后他开始了哲学反思，追问“我是什么”、“我是谁”。他不再叙述某个特定的事情，但他仍然在回答同一个问题，这也是他在开篇就一直探索的问题。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: The opening of the text is this plea, you know, this plea for help, and I think in a way to God, to help him grapple with the fact that he has, like all human beings, a restless heart that is longing to come to rest. And he understands now that that rest is only possible if he comes to rest in God in some way. And that really structures the whole text. I think that's a really central moment.

达南加·贾甘纳森：全书开篇便是祈求别人的帮助，我想这其实是在祈求上帝帮助他，因为他像所有人类一样，内心躁动不安，渴望获得安宁。如今他明白了，只有上帝可以让他真真正正的找到安宁，他从上帝之中可以获得内心的宁静。这样的追求串起了整部书，也是全书非常关键的部分。

Zachary Davis: Augustine’s struggle is that he wants to be virtuous but he’s dealing with the reality of sinful human nature. He turns to the Bible and the story of Adam and Eve. They were kicked out of Paradise for sinning. This was the original sin. And, according to Augustine, if we’re descendants of Adam and Eve, then sin is in our nature, and we need Christ to help us lead a virtuous life.

扎卡里·戴维斯：奥古斯丁之所以内心煎熬，是因为他想变成道德高尚的人，但现实是人生而有罪。他引用了《圣经》中亚当与夏娃的故事。他们因犯下罪过被逐出伊甸园，这便是人类的原罪。奥古斯丁认为，如果我们是亚当夏娃的后代，那么罪恶就藏在我们的本性中，我们需要上帝指引我们过上美好的生活。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: And one of the early shocking moments in the text is when he describes how sinful babies are. And this is one place that readers of the book just want to get off the boat. They're like, “Okay, this is...I can't handle this.” But if you persist a little bit, I think you see eventually what he's getting at.

达南加·贾甘纳森：书的前些部分有一处叫人非常震惊。他描述了婴儿是怎样身负罪过。读到这儿，读者只想弃书而去，会觉得“呃……这实在是很难让人接受”。但如果你坚持读下去，我想最终你会明白他的意思。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: You know, he's saying the restlessness of the heart is present even in the unsatisfied desires of children, which they make known to us, and that we are more like them than we care to admit because we wrap ourselves in the competencies of the world. You know, what is adulthood but learning to deal with the fact that your desires are sometimes frustrated, in fact, often, almost always frustrated? And yet—and yet! That frustration, you know, we can't just live with it. It still bugs us. We feel anxiety as a result. So, this opposition of anxiety and rest or peace is really central to the whole text. And we see it in every phase.

达南加·贾甘纳森：他的意思是，从小孩子难以满足的欲望上，我们也能看到人们的内心是多么躁动不安。小孩子把这一面袒露给我们，而我们则不太愿承认自己跟他们其实很相似。我们只是把自己表现得特别能干，把自己的不安伪装起来。什么是成年呢？成年不过是意识到自己的欲望有时会受挫——更现实的是，总会受挫。但是这种挫败感是我们难以忍受的，它啃噬着我们的内心，让我们感到焦虑。这种安宁与焦虑的对抗是全书的重要内容，我们在每个部分都能看到它。

Zachary Davis: Augustine felt this opposition of anxiety and peace at various times throughout his own life.

扎卡里·戴维斯：奥古斯丁在一生中的不同时阶段都感到了安宁与焦虑的对抗。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: That incident of stealing the pears is the one that most people remember where he and his band, his sort of gang of friends steal some pears for no particular reason. And Augustine is mystified at this idea. You know, they weren't hungry. They didn't really want them, but they did it because it felt like the thing to do. How do we understand that? And again, we get this really intense philosophical reflection. You know, what would the human being have to be like for things like this to happen?

达南加·贾甘纳森：偷梨事件便是其中之一，大多数人都记得这件事——他和那帮朋友无缘无故地偷了梨。奥古斯丁很困惑为什么会生出偷梨的念头。他们不饿，不是真的想要吃梨，但他们却偷了，仿佛这件事情就理应发生一般。我们要如何理解呢？书中再次出现了深度的哲学反思，追问对于这种事情的发生，人类必须要怎样。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: So, once he's narrating particular events from his life that he's perhaps very deeply ashamed of and asking for forgiveness from God, at the same time, he's inviting his readers to come with him on this journey of both personal and anthropological investigation, right? We're thinking about, what is it like to be this anxious creature, the human being?

达南加·贾甘纳森：一旦他叙述起过去某件深感羞耻的事，请求上帝宽恕，这时他会邀请读者和他一同开启个人本质和人类本质的探索之旅。我们会思考，身为人类这种焦虑不安的生物，到底是什么样。

Zachary Davis: You mentioned he's writing this in his forties. I'm a little bit curious. What do you think was motivating him? Who was he writing this for?

扎卡里·戴维斯：您刚刚说，他是四十多岁的时候写这《忏悔录》的。我有点好奇，您觉得什么激励了他写这本书？他是为谁写的？

Dhananjay Jagannathan: Right. So, you know, the question of motivation is particularly interesting because this text is unique. Formally speaking, if you just look at the formal structure of the text, the Confessions is a prayer. That's one of the meanings of “confessions”. It's a prayer to God. The first nine books is dominated by a narrative about his own life, and the last four books have these introspective, theological, and philosophical and scriptural reflections.

达南加·贾甘纳森：没错。探究他的写作动机特别有意思，因为这本书非常特别。从形式上讲，如果仅仅看书的形式结构，会觉得它是一本祷告词。向上帝告解、祷告，也是“忏悔”一词的其中一层涵义。前九卷主要叙述了他的过往生活，后四卷则兼有回忆、神学、哲学和祷告词式的反思。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: And we might think that he's got a range of different motivations. One of them is to just figure out what he thinks. But also, all the way through, he's figuring out what he's thinking about his own life. And he is also clearly out to defend himself because the facts about his life were a bit scandalous.

达南加·贾甘纳森：我们可能会发现他有各种各样的动机，其中之一便是厘清自己的想法。纵观全书，从头到尾他都在努力厘清自己对这一生的看法。他显然也在为自己辩护，因为他在个人生活方面确实有些劣迹。

Zachary Davis: Before he converted to Christianity and even Manichaeism, Augustine led more of a secular life. From a Christian perspective, he did some things that the Church disapproved of—he had a son at a young age out of wedlock, and he was, in his own eyes, a bit of party-loving frat-boy while studying in Carthage.

扎卡里·戴维斯：在皈依基督教乃至在信奉摩尼教之前，奥古斯丁都过着世俗的生活。从基督教的角度看，他做了一些教会不提倡的事情，比如年纪轻轻就生下私生子，在迦太基求学时是个纨绔子弟，总爱参加宴会。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: He's also writing this book in the aftermath of the death of his mother, which he relates in Book Nine. And his mother was the central influence on his life, and there's a strong commemorative aspect to the text. He devotes a part of the book to a biography of her, not just of himself. He's thinking about how to organize monastic sorts of communities in his own context. And, you know, Christian monasticism as we know is kind of getting going in various places in different ways, and Augustine is actually one of the people who is responsible for certain forms of it.

达南加·贾甘纳森：奥古斯丁的这本书也写在母亲去世的阴影中。在第九卷中，他叙述了母亲的离世。母亲是他一生中主要的影响来源，这本书有着很强的纪念意义。在书的部分章节，他不仅回忆了自己的生活，也回忆了母亲。他思考如何根据自身情况组建一个类似于修道会的团体。我们知道，当时各地都有各种类型的基督教修道会，奥古斯丁则参与负责了某些类型的修道会。

Zachary Davis: Christian monks live simple, regimented lives devoted to worshiping Christ. Augustine helped outline the rules for monastic life.

扎卡里·戴维斯：基督教修道者过着清修克己的生活，虔心敬拜上帝。奥古斯丁参与制定了修道生活的准则。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: So, a lot of the reflections from Book Six onward when he's talking about his friends, I think, you know, a lot of friends have joined him in these communities. We should think about that as him reflecting on what those communities are like and how we can balance the kind of intense desire for intellectual conversation that we also see in his philosophical dialogues. How do you balance that kind of intellectual life with a life that’s devoted to the worship of God, and indeed, a life devoted to things like manual labor that are going to keep the monastic community going?

达南加·贾甘纳森：从第六卷起，他的很多回忆都涉及到了朋友。很多朋友加入了这些修道会。我们可以把这些内容看作他在思考这些修道会的情况。从他的哲学对话录中，我们可以看到他对知识交流有强烈的渴望。而他常常在思考如何为这种渴望找到平衡。也就是说，究竟他要如何平衡自己对知识的探求，和经营修道院的生活？毕竟对上帝的敬拜还是需要许多体力劳动，来让修道会继续维持下去。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: So, all of this is in the air, and there's this incredible complexity. But what we don't actually get is the next ten years of his life or so. He's writing more than ten years after the end of the narrative portion. Even that narrative is very complicated and takes lots of twists and turns. So, I think we should see the complexity of that form of literary storytelling is side by side with just the complexity of his own motivations.

达南加·贾甘纳森：这种思考无处不在，而且还复杂得难以置信。不过对奥古斯丁后来十多年的生活，我们却无从知晓。在写完《忏悔录》之后的十多年里，他仍然继续写作。这些作品结构复杂、繁复曲折。我们应当看到，这种复杂的文学叙事结构和他自己的复杂动机息息相关。

Zachary Davis: So, he's bishop when he's writing this, and does he remain bishop until his death?

扎卡里·戴维斯：写《忏悔录》的时候，他在担任主教。直到去世时，他都在担任这个职位吗？

Dhananjay Jagannathan: Yes, so he—and this is a very tricky position to be in because he is responsible for the pastoral care of this community and for giving sermons all the time. He's trying to maintain the political position of his particular sect of Christianity against these other options in North Africa. He's dealing with these big theological controversies. You know, his life is dominated by his intellectual engagement with a handful of competing positions, especially Arianism and Pelagianism. And, you know, he's just writing constantly, in addition to talking constantly, and it's really remarkable to think about the energy that he exerted in his ministry. And he was a bishop for decades.

达南加·贾甘纳森：没错。这是一个非常棘手的职位，因为他不仅要为教友提供宗教关怀，还要一直布道。他试图维系自己所在的基督教教派的政治地位，免受北非其他教派的影响，同时还要参与重大的神学论战。他一生都在和一些对立教派，尤其是阿里乌教派和伯拉纠主义理论神学问题。除了公开讲话之外，他还一直不断写作。他在任职期间投入的努力着实令人钦佩。数十年里，他都一直担任着主教。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: And Augustine played a central role in organizing the doctrines of the Catholic Church. And so, again, you know, it was not fait accompli in his own lifetime that things would unfold in the way that they did. And so he's, you know, he's ended up with this kind of central status. But we had the world turned out a little bit differently, we might look back on him as the leader of this ambitious, minor religious sect that didn't go anywhere within the larger Christian movement.

达南加·贾甘纳森：奥古斯丁在整理天主教教义方面起到了核心作用。虽然在他的一生中，他所做的影响可能还没有完全体现出来。但结果确实是他起到了核心作用。假如这个世界的发展略有不同，我们可能会对他有很不一样的理解。回望历史，我们可能会把他看作一个雄心勃勃的、规模较小的教派的领袖，在整个基督教运动中没有发挥过太大作用。

Zachary Davis: What other what other books did he write, and, you know, what kind of influence did those texts have?

扎卡里·戴维斯：奥古斯丁还写了其他什么书？这些书有什么影响？

Dhananjay Jagannathan: Perhaps the other of his texts that is best known is The City of God, which is this enormous work of what we might call political theology, political philosophy, and also a reflection on what it means that Rome fell, even if briefly, in 410. So, he writes The City of God in the aftermath of that.

达南加·贾甘纳森：他另一本最著名的著作或许要数《上帝之城》。这本书可以被称为政治神学或政治哲学著作，是对公元410年罗马城短暂陷落的反思。这本书是写在那次沦陷的余波之中。

Zachary Davis: In The City of God, Augustine contrasts his own views with the views held by the rapidly declining Roman Empire. The Romans believed that humans had the ability to perfect themselves and live a just life. They saw outward success as a result of inner virtue. The more money, fame, or power you had, the more virtuous you were.

扎卡里·戴维斯：在《上帝之城》中，奥古斯丁对比了自己的观念与迅速衰落的罗马帝国流行的观念。罗马人相信人类有能力完善自我，做正直的人。他们把外在的成功视为内在美德的结果。你拥有的金钱、名望或权力越多，说明你的道德越高尚。

Zachary Davis: Augustine believed the opposite. He saw humans as inherently imperfect because of original sin. Unlike the Romans, he didn’t think humans were capable of creating a just society on their own. Because of their imperfections, humans required the help of God to create a perfect society.

扎卡里·戴维斯：奥古斯丁的观点则相反。他认为，由于原罪的存在，人类天生就是不完美的。与罗马人普遍认为的不同，他觉得人类无法仅仅依靠自己建立一个公正的社会。既然他们不完美，那么只能在上帝的帮助下才能建立一个完美的社会。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: So, we have these magisterial works of theology. And, you know, we can add to that list On The Trinity. And he also famously writes about free will and grace, and those are two concepts that are very closely associated with him. And those sort of form one class of really influential writings that, you know, really are a starting point for theological reflection and Christianity.

达南加·贾甘纳森：于是我们看到，奥古斯丁写下了这些富有洞察力的神学作品，《论三位一体》也是其中之一。此外他还写下了探讨自由意志和恩典的著作，这两个概念都和他息息相关。这一系列富有影响力的著作为神学思考和基督教的发展奠定了基础。

Zachary Davis: In addition to theological writings, Augustine also wrote philosophical dialogues.

扎卡里·戴维斯：除了神学著作之外，奥古斯丁还撰写了哲学对话录。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: He was modeling himself on Cicero especially, who also wrote a number of philosophical dialogues. And one of those stands out in particular is his dialogue On The Teacher, which is a report of a conversation between him and his son. And his son died at a young age, and so I think there's something very touching about memorializing his son in this way. But that text is an attempt to put Christian epistemology on a footing, on a par with the great ancient Greek philosophies.

达南加·贾甘纳森：他仿照西塞罗写了很多哲学对话录。其中最引人注目的是《论教师》。这篇记录了他和儿子的对话。他的儿子已经去世了，于是他便以这种方式纪念儿子，我觉得很感人。在这篇中，他尝试着让基督教认识论能够和古希腊伟大的哲学思想相提并论。

Zachary Davis: Ancient Greek philosophy dominated the ancient world. Augustine wanted to elevate Christian epistemology to a similar status.

扎卡里·戴维斯：古希腊哲学是古典世界的主流思想。奥古斯丁想将基督教认识论提升到类似的地位。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: And what's remarkable about this text, about On The Teacher, is that, you know, the answer to the question of where knowledge comes from—is Christ. Christ is the teacher of the title. And what's wonderful is that we have this father-son conversation, and we think here’s Augustine teaching his son about philosophy. And it turns out that they conclude that Augustine couldn't possibly teach his son anything because you can't transfer knowledge that way. Knowledge is something that you discover from within.

达南加·贾甘纳森：在《论教师》中，奥古斯丁指出知识来源于上帝，上帝就是篇名所指的“教师”。不过神奇的是，我们看到文章里父子二人进行了对话，觉得是奥古斯丁在教儿子哲学。可结果他们得出结论，奥古斯丁不可能教儿子任何东西，因为你无法以这种方式传递知识。知识是你从内心深处发掘的。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: And in, for Plato, you know, you discover it perhaps by a form of introspection, where you discover the forms. And for Augustine, this process of introspection and discovery for oneself essentially involves Christ.

达南加·贾甘纳森：柏拉图认为你会通过内省的方式发掘知识。而在奥古斯丁看来，个体内省并发掘知识的过程与上帝密不可分。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: The other text that’s really influential is Against the Academics, which is his rebuttal of skepticism, of academic skepticism specifically, which he was at one point very inclined to. And so, you know, in the Confessions, we see his journey through these different intellectual systems. You know, is he going to be a Platonist? For a little while...Platonism cures him of Manichaeism, but it’s not sufficient to solve his personal problems. Maybe academic skepticism is the answer? You know, and none of these things kind of work for him.

达南加·贾甘纳森：另一篇很有影响力的对话录是《驳学园派》。在这篇中，他驳斥了自己曾深深信奉过的怀疑论，尤其是学园怀疑论。在《忏悔录》中，我们看到他转向一个个不同的知识体系。他信奉柏拉图学派吗？有一小段时间是的。柏拉图学派将他从对摩尼教的信仰中拉了出来，但还是不足以解决他的个人问题。学园怀疑论可以解决他的问题吗？并没有。所有这些都对他不起作用。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: And then Christianity is what works for him. And so we get this very narrative story about a personal quest for truth. But then in these philosophical writings, we really see him grappling with the details of these views and showing himself to be, I think, one of the great ancient Greek and Roman philosophers, you know, part of that tradition as well.

达南加·贾甘纳森：对他起作用的是基督教。于是，我们看到了一个人如何追求真理。不过之后在这些哲学著作中，我们确实看到他正在努力阐明这些观点的细节，这也证明他是古希腊、罗马最伟大的哲学家之一。

Zachary Davis: Perhaps the most important legacy of Augustine was this synthesis of classical philosophy and Christian theology.

扎卡里·戴维斯：奥古斯丁最重要的贡献或许是将古典哲学和基督教神学融合了起来。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: Augustine tells us himself, he's seeking a single truth. And sometimes he thinks he finds pieces of the answer in the philosophical writers, especially the Platonists who’ve written of this kind of materialism that has confused how he understands the world and especially how he understands how there could be evil in the world, which is one of the kind of central intellectual ideas that concerns them. And he really feels like he finds the answer to that in the books of the Platonists, as he puts it in the Confessions.

达南加·贾甘纳森：奥古斯丁告诉我们，他在寻找一个单一的真理。有时他觉得在哲学著作中找到了答案，特别从是柏拉图学派的物质主义著作中。它们让他感到困惑，困惑于如何理解世界，特别是如何理解世界上存在着邪恶的东西。而这恰恰是柏拉图学派关注的核心之一。奥古斯丁在《忏悔录》中说，他真的觉得自己在柏拉图学派的书中找到了答案。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: And that same path of seeking the truth is what leads him to Christianity. It's not that those are two separate things, and, you know, that he had his studies on the one hand and his personal religious beliefs on the other. And I think just seeing him narrate that journey in the Confessions is really jarring to some of our sort of instinctive sensibilities on that topic.

达南加·贾甘纳森：正是在寻找真理的过程中，奥古斯丁渐渐相信了基督教。这两个过程并不是分开的，不是说探索学习是一回事，宗教信仰是另一回事。我觉得看他在《忏悔录》中讲述自己的心路历程确实多少影响了我们在这个问题上的本能感受。

Zachary Davis: Although Augustine was confident he had found the truth he was looking for when he converted to Christianity, it didn’t mean his search was over. For him, the search for the truth never ends.

扎卡里·戴维斯：尽管奥古斯丁相信，他皈依基督教的时候已经找到了所要探寻的真理，但这并不意味着他的探寻已经结束了。对他而言，探索真理是个永无止境的事情。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: He really feels like he's made progress by moving from his Manichaeism phase through Platonism to Catholic Christianity. And I think you can't have this tidy story of how he overcame his pagan, secular world and then became a Christian. And I think part of that is, you know, really grappling with the last four books of Confessions where he has all these questions still.

达南加·贾甘纳森：他觉得自己在从摩尼教转向柏拉图学派、再转向天主教的过程中取得了进步。他如何从一个异教徒、一个世俗人士变成了一个基督教徒，这过程其实并没有那么绝对。我觉得在《忏悔录》后四卷里，他仍然在努力探索，那时的他还是对所有这些问题带有一定的疑问。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: Christianity hasn't solved the problem of time and memory or the problem of how to read scripture correctly or what the creation of the world has to do with our everyday lives. All these things that he goes into in the last four books are questions that are not doctrinally settled for him, or even settled as matters of faith. And so he's still a seeker after truth, even post-conversion. And part of his seeking the truth that, you know, involve these sort of pagan philosophical views.

达南加·贾甘纳森：基督教还没有解决时间和记忆问题，也没有解答如何正确阅读经文、世间万物与我们日常生活有何关系。他在后四卷中探讨的这些问题是理论学说乃至宗教信仰都没能帮他解决的。所以在皈依了基督教之后，他仍然追寻着真理。而在追寻的过程中他还吸收了非基督教的哲学观点。

Zachary Davis: So, I'd like to move now to the influence of this text and the influence of Augustine, too. What's the legacy of Augustine the man and Confessions the text?

扎卡里·戴维斯：我们现在来谈谈《忏悔录》和奥古斯丁的影响吧。他们给后人带来了哪些贡献？

Dhananjay Jagannathan: In Confessions we get something that has tendrils of influence that reach in all kinds of places. So, you know, I'm most familiar with his influence in the history of philosophy, which is dramatic both for, you know, resolutely Christian authors like Aquinas who were also doing theology, but, you know, for someone like Descartes who is trying to inaugurate a new method of doing philosophy.

达南加·贾甘纳森：《忏悔录》在各个方面都有着很多影响。我最熟悉的是他在哲学史上的影响。它不仅深深地影响了阿奎那等同时从事哲学与神学研究的基督教学者，还影响了笛卡尔等试图开创哲学研究新方法的学者。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: Well, where does he get it? He gets it from Augustine in important ways. And so, you know, there's these narratives of modern philosophy that, you know, they begin with Descartes, but so, there's this incredible influence. You know, Wittgenstein begins The Philosophical Investigations with a quotation from Augustine that he, I think purposely misreads, interestingly.

达南加·贾甘纳森：他从哪儿找到了新方法？答案是从奥古斯丁那儿。可见奥古斯丁有多么不可思议的影响力。维特根斯坦在《哲学研究》的开篇引用了一段奥古斯丁的内容。不过有意思的是，他似乎有意曲解了这段话。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: So, there's this huge influence in philosophy, and especially in this tradition of looking for the truth within. I think we can see that as the essential insight of Confessions, that we can see that in philosophy with the introspective method, you know, in its different forms and guises, whether it's mystics or, you know, people, antiskeptics like Descartes who want to find, you know, a kind of secure space for truth within our minds, or people who are reflecting about the nature of mind and language like Wittgenstein.

达南加·贾甘纳森：所以说，这本书深刻地影响了哲学，让探寻真理成为了哲学的传统。我觉得我们可以把这看作《忏悔录》的基本观点，而这种自省的方法也以不同的形式出现在了哲学中，不论这种哲学是神秘主义，是笛卡尔那样在意识中寻找确定之物的怀疑论，还是维特根斯坦那样反思思维和语言本质的哲学。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: But then we can also think about the deep sort of significance of someone who's willing to marry sort of personal reflections with theology. So, you know, not just asking abstract questions—what does it mean to be a human being?—but describing his own anxieties. And I think this idea of the human being as an anxious creature, this is, you… In the modern world, you have Freud and other 20th century figures who were really concerned with this idea as well. I think we can find some of the roots of those ideas in Augustine.

达南加·贾甘纳森：它还把个人思考和神学结合起来，具有深远的意义。书里不仅探索了“身为人意味着什么”等抽象问题，还描述了自己的焦虑情绪。我觉得，这种认为人是焦虑不安的生物的观点和弗洛伊德等20世纪人物的观点不谋而合。我们可以从奥古斯丁那儿找到这些现代思想的一些来源。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: And then even if we just confine ourselves to the church, you know, there's always been a place for Augustinians in theology, and in different...you can think about the reformers or, you know, in different phases, people have gone back to Augustine to kind of recover a certain, you know, not just this idea of a human being as an anxious creature in need of God's grace, but, you know, very centrally these ideas about what freedom is for us as the kinds of peculiar mortal creatures that we are. I think the whole idea that we are free, that we have a free will, owes more to Augustine than maybe any other person.

达南加·贾甘纳森：即使仅仅看宗教方面的影响，奥古斯丁也总能影响到神学的各个领域。不同时期的改革者都会回顾奥古斯丁的著作，从他那儿再次相信，人类总是焦虑不安，需要上帝的恩典。此外非常重要的是，他们还会从他那儿认识到，身为世间特殊的生物，自由对我们人类来说意味着什么。我想我们之所以相信我们是自由的、我们有自由意志，多半还要归功于奥古斯丁而不是别人。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: I don't think he is the inventor of modern subjectivity, but he might be the inventor of modern freedom in some important ways because it's a way of recognizing that we are both free and bound at the same time. And that, I think that idea that, yes, there are these other forces that impinge upon us, but there is a kind of freedom that we retain nevertheless.

达南加·贾甘纳森：我不是说他发明了现代哲学中“主体性”这一概念，但从某些重要方面看，他或许开创了现代意义上的“自由”这一概念，因为他意识到我们既自由，又身受束缚。我们虽然身受许多因素的限制，但仍然具有某种自由。

Zachary Davis: Augustine’s notion of freedom extends beyond just a Christian interpretation of how our imperfections are a result of original sin.

扎卡里·戴维斯：基督教徒一般会用我们身负原罪来解释为什么我们不完美，奥古斯丁的自由观念却超越了这种理解。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: You know, freedom was thought of as a political concept, right? There’s this binary of “free” and “slave”, that you were free when you had a certain social and political status. And the transposition of that into psychology, moral philosophy, theology, and thinking of our freedom of choice as kind of where our status comes from or something like that, you know, it just informs so much of, I think, ways of thinking about about human beings. Again, even absent of all the theology.

达南加·贾甘纳森：自由还被视为一个政治概念。政治学上有“自由”和“奴隶”这两个二元对立的概念。当你有一定的社会和政治地位时，你便是自由的。“自由”这个概念还被纳入心理学、道德哲学和神学，自由选择被认为是人类之所以独特的原因。奥古斯丁的自由观念催生出了很多这样的观点，深深地影响了我们对人类的思考方式，即使在非神学领域也是如此。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: So, that might be the single most influential legacy of Augustine's thought in general, and I think what's wonderful about The Confessions is that we see that he didn't just speculate that view into existence, that he came to that view sort of through this process of trying to seek the truth in his own life and overcome his own personal struggles. And, you know, so if, for instance, we want to criticize that view of freedom, we can wrestle with Augustine as a person and not just as an originator of these abstract ideas. And I think that, again, is a powerful reason to go and read The Confessions.

达南加·贾甘纳森：这或许是奥古斯丁思想中最有影响力的遗产。我觉得《忏悔录》的奇妙之处在于，奥古斯丁不仅仅提出了自由观，还在身体力行地践行这一理念，终其一生都在寻求真理，克服内心的挣扎。如果我们想要批判这种自由观，我们对抗的不仅仅是这个抽象理念的提出者，更是这个理念的践行者。我认为这便是阅读《忏悔录》的重要理由。

Zachary Davis: So, from what you suggested, it sounds like at the time or previous, you know, sort of the previous ideas were you either were sort of a full, free citizen and, you know, could act in certain ways in a political community or you were in bondage in some way, either kind of a full slave or, you know, gradations, I'm sure, but that freedom essentially was something granted to you externally, something provided by the political body that you were part of. But that another, different way to think about freedom is that human beings are always free because within any given circumstance, there is a choice that can be made.

扎卡里·戴维斯：从您刚刚说的来看，似乎在那个时代，或是那个时代之前，人们觉得你要么是完全自由的公民，可以在某个政治团体里按某种方式行事，要么你就是个彻底的奴隶，完全处于束缚之中。但这种观念下的自由是外界给予你的，是你所在的政治团体赋予你的。而另一种自由观则认为，人类总是自由的，因为无论在何种情况下，我们都有选择的余地。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: I think what's really fascinating about Augustine's own view is that it makes space for the idea that there are...that there's also something essentially unfree about us, that, you know, the combination of that freedom and that unfreedom is the anxiety, the restlessness of the human heart. And that's because, you know…

达南加·贾甘纳森：我觉得奥古斯丁的观点之所以令人着迷，是因为它催生出了这样一种观点：人们本质上也有些地方是不自由的，而自由与不自由结合在一起，让人们内心焦虑不安。原因嘛，你知道的。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: Here's a modern framing of that idea. Right? You know, the feeling that people have that they’re overwhelmed when they walk into a supermarket. And you think, “What's bad about this? You have all the choices that you want. Right? All these options are available to you. You have the most freedom. Why aren't you happy about that?” And what people find is they don't like that.

达南加·贾甘纳森：这个观点呈现到现代场景下会是这样的画面：人们走进超市，会觉得不知所措。或许你会想：“这有什么不好？你有所有想要的东西可以选。你可以做出所有选择，有着最大限度的自由。”但人们发现他们不喜欢那样。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: You know, they might like to have fewer choices so they could make better choices or just spend less time worrying about it. And I think that that's the kind of insight that we really find in Augustine, that, you know, we find ourselves with our capacities inhibited or damaged in some way.

达南加·贾甘纳森：他们或许希望可以少点选择，这样他们可以做出更好的选择，也可以少花点时间纠结。我觉得这反映了奥古斯丁的观点，我们会发现我们的能力在某种程度上受到了损伤。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: And for him, you know, there's this really deep theological explanation that we get from scripture, from the idea of the fall in Genesis. But I don't think we need that whole idea to kind of grapple with what he's talking about. You know, we can just think about the ways in which… We might think of it in terms of social forces, that, you know, we're not free because we're not isolated, rational actors, and we're vulnerable to the people around us, to the social structures that define how much power we have, to ideology, to ways of thinking that we absorb without having the full ability to reflect on.

达南加·贾甘纳森：在他看来，我们从《圣经·创世纪》中亚当与夏娃的堕落故事得到了这种深刻的哲学解释。不过我觉得，我们不必完全采纳他的观点。我们可以仅仅采纳他对于不自由的理解，认识到我们并不是完全自由的，因为我们并非理性地独自生活在世界上，我们容易受周围人的影响，拥有的权力多寡也取决于社会结构。我们还会受到意识形态的影响，甚至无力辨别思维方式的对错，有时候会不假思索的吸纳别人的意见。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: And for that reason, even as we are able to make choices and go through life, you know, at least, even to some extent deciding what to do at what time—and, you know, as we know, some people have lots more of that kind of freedom than others do—but maybe we suppose all of us have even just a little bit of it.

达南加·贾甘纳森：由于这个原因，纵使我们能够做出选择、度过一生，或是至少在某种程度上可以决定什么时候做什么，纵使我们知道有些人拥有比别人更多的自由，但我们觉得所有人拥有的自由都是有限的。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: What's interesting about it is even when you feel like no one is pushing you around or restricting you in any way, you can't always make use of that freedom rightly. And that in itself is a kind of unfreedom. And I don't think we always endorse that idea, but I think it's one that's available to us to reflect on.

达南加·贾甘纳森：有意思的是，即使您觉得没有人在以任何方式向你施压或是施加限制，你也无法始终正确运用这种自由。这本身就是一种不自由。我觉得我们并不总是赞同这一点，但我认为这是我们可以反思的地方。

Zachary Davis: Throughout his life, Augustine intensely grappled with what it means to be a human being. He faced the difficult, eternal questions that plague all of us. He experienced firsthand the limitations of outward success on internal happiness and virtue. Augustine empowered his followers and the world by lifting the burden of striving towards human perfection. He boldly embraced our human imperfections and offered a way to live and work with them.

扎卡里·戴维斯：奥古斯丁一生都在努力追寻身而为人的意义。他直面了困扰着我们所有人的难题，亲身体会了外在成功难以带来内在的幸福与美德。奥古斯丁卸下了人类追求完美的担子，为追随者和整个世界的人们带去了力量。他大胆接纳了人类的不完美之处，指明了带着不完美去生活工作的方法。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: Why is it that we are so anxious? And, you know, Augustine has got a really interesting set of answers to that question. And, you know, Confessions is a sort of personal account of his own grappling with that. And in a way, what… The function of an autobiography is, of course, not just to find out a set of facts about a person's life in, like, a history. There's always some ideological purpose lurking there.

达南加·贾甘纳森：至于为什么我们如此焦虑，奥古斯丁有一套很有意思的答案。《忏悔录》很大程度上叙述了他如何应对这个问题。自传的意义显然不仅仅是发现有关个人生活的一系列事实，还总潜藏着一些意识形态上的目的。

Dhananjay Jagannathan: And I think Augustine's is really interesting, that he's revealing these things about himself because he wants to give us the tools to think about our own life and to see “Oh, yes, I too, you know, have that anxiety. Maybe I should go on the same journey of truth, of pursuit of the truth that Augustine is recommending.”

达南加·贾甘纳森：我觉得奥古斯丁的确很有意思。他展现自己的生活，因为他想为我们提供反思生活的办法，让我们阅读的时候觉得：“嗯，我也有这种焦虑，或许我也应该踏上奥古斯丁推荐的那条探求真理的路。”

Zachary Davis: Writ Large is a production of Ximalaya. Writ Large is produced by Jack Pombriant, Liza French, and me, Zachary Davis. Script editing is by Galen Beebe. We get help from Feiran Du, Ariel Liu, and Monica Zhang. 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！