2019-03-24
CHAPTER ONE: Plato I. The Context of Plato
Traditions and dogmas rub one another down to a minimum in such centers of varied intercourse; where there are a thousand faiths we are apt to become sceptical of them all.（多了会让人怀疑，少了才能让人坚信）
Probably the traders were the first sceptics; they had seen too much to believe too much; and the general disposition（特性） of merchants to classify all men as either fools or knaves（不诚实的人） inclined（使他们倾向于） them to question every creed（信条）.
Gradually, too, they were developing science; mathematics grew with the increasing complexity of exchange, astronomy with the increasing audacity（n. 勇敢） of navigation.
The growth of wealth brought the leisure and security which are the prerequisite（前提） of research and speculation; men now asked the stars not only for guidance on the seas but as well for an answer to the riddles of the universe; the first Greek philosophers were astronomers.
" Proud of their achievements," says Aristotle, "men pushed farther afield after the Persian wars; they took all knowledge for their province, and sought ever wider studies."
Men grew bold enough to attempt natural explanations of processes and events before attributed to supernatural agencies and powers; magic and ritual slowly gave way to science and control; and philosophy began.（哲学本身源于生活）
At first this philosophy was physical（物质的，物理的）; it looked out upon the material world and asked what was the final and irreducible constituent of things.
The natural termination（决定论） of this line of thought was the materialism of Democritus 德谟克利特 (460–360 B.C.)—"in reality there is nothing but atoms and space." （德谟克利特-原子说）
This was one of the main streams of Greek speculation; it passed underground for a time in Plato's day, but emerged in Epicurus（类似于中国的老庄哲学，花园哲学家，反对动态的，肉身的快乐，因为有动态必有终止的一天。所以精神的，内在的快乐才是常在的） (342–270), and became a torrent of eloquence in Lucretius (98–55 B.C.). （如果要让一个人快乐，不需要给他财富，只需要削减他的欲望。）
But the most characteristic and fertile developments of Greek philosophy took form with the Sophists（智者学派）, travelling teachers of wisdom, who looked within upon their own thought and nature, rather than out upon the world of things.
They were all clever men (Gorgias and Hippias, for example), and many of them were profound (Protagoras, Prodicus); there is hardly a problem or a solution in our current philosophy of mind and conduct which they did not realize and discuss. （智者学派的成就：已经讨论了当代哲学涉及的所有问题。）
They asked questions about anything; they stood unafraid in the presence of religious or political taboos; and boldly subpoenaed（发传票，使其接受审判） every creed and institution to appear before the judgment-seat of reason.
In politics they divided into two schools.
One, like Rousseau（卢梭:《论人类起源的不平等》，号召人起来反抗）, argued that nature is good, and civilization bad; that by nature all men are equal, becoming unequal only by class-made institutions; and that law is an invention of the strong to chain and rule the weak.
Another school, like Nietzsche（尼采）, claimed that nature is beyond good and evil（人的本性没有好坏）; that by nature all men are unequal; that morality is an invention of the weak to limit and deter the strong; that power is the supreme virtue, and the supreme desire of man; and that of all forms of government the wisest and most natural is aristocracy.（法律是强者制定的，而道德法律是弱者制定来限制强者的）
