Ancient Philosophy

嗯，新知识：看古代哲学文献——西方古代哲学文献——的时候，遇到“幸福”，“美德”这些字眼的时候，不能拿现代人的眼睛看... ... 古人说的幸福、美德，跟今人说的这两个概念，完全是两码事。

HAPPINESS AND PLEASURE

Happiness in ancient ethical thought is not a matter of feeling good or being pleased; it is not a feeling or emotion at all. It is your life as a whole which is said to be happy or not, and so discussions of happiness are discussions of the happy life.

Happiness, 现代汉语翻译成“幸福”，在西方古代伦理思想中，与美好或愉悦的”感觉“（feeling good or being pleased）毫不相干。在他们的概念中，幸福根本不是感觉。 在那时，幸福关乎整个人生，或者全部的生活，而不是稍纵即逝、虚幻飘渺的那些瞬间。

似乎，二者不过是时间长短的区别，只有这些吗？

happiness is the only aim,

幸福，被古人定为人生唯一的目标。

We do other things in order to be happy, but it makes no sense to be happy for some further reason.

幸福是终极目标。人们做事情为了幸福，但不会再用幸福去做任何其他事情。幸福似乎是无用的。

once we are living happily we lack nothing further to be living well.

幸福到来之时，就是生活无忧无虑之时。

Pleasure, however, is more naturally taken to be something episodic, something you can feel now and not later.

Pleasure，大概可以理解为，一时的快感，而且这种快感不会持续，now, not later.

It is something you experience as we perform the activities which make up your life.

回忆，回忆不算快乐的延续吗？古人没考虑这些，他们似乎更物质，关注的永远不是内心的所得，而是给你带来快乐的那个东西那件事——一顿饭，一次谈心，这些东西留不住，所以快乐的价值也就跟着消失了。

but you cannot, in the ancient way of thinking, be happy one moment and not the next, since happiness applies to your life as a whole.

与pleasure相对照，happiness因是整个生活稳定的状态，所以，不存在pleasure那种一次性的快乐。

Pleasure fixes us on the here and now, the present desire which asks to be satisfied; and this gets in the way of the self-control and rational overall reflection which is required by a life devoted to things that are worth while.

Pleasure与Happiness不仅不是同路人，而且还有些敌对关系：pleasure 钳制了你，阻碍了你去追求有价值的东西，也就是幸福人生所需要的那些东西（是什么，究竟是什么）。

In fact hedonism, the view that pleasure is our ethical end, is always on the defensive in ancient ethics.

不同的声音永远存在，只不过是谁占主流而已。 尽管古代对幸福的理解是那样的，但是不要认定，所有古代人都那么想。下这种结论，太简单幼稚。

亚里斯提卜，昔勒尼学派

the present is all that matters, and our lives should be so shaped as to get present pleasure.

伊壁鸠鲁

the happy life is, in fact, a life of pleasure.

Static pleasure is the absence of bodily pain and mental trouble; it is the state where you are functioning without impediment or discomfort.

Epicurus boldly claims that this state is the highest pleasure that we can achieve – that is, you achieve happiness not by doing things that make you feel good, but by so ordering your life that you achieve this condition of painlessness and tranquillity.

The Epicurean happy life, then, far from being a wild pursuit of fun experience, turns out to be a cautious and risk-aversive strategy for maintaining tranquillity.

VIRTUE

In modern ethical thought, until quite recently, virtue had become something of a joke concept, one that could be understood only historically and could not be seriously used in ethical thinking.

这一理解，似乎还没在我们这个文化里形成主流，但也是暗流涌动，不，是汹涌。

In the last decade, however, ‘virtue ethics’ has had a spectacular comeback.

二十世纪以来，道德似有杀回马枪之势

the virtuous person has to do a lot more than that. She has to develop a disposition, a firm state, of doing the morally right thing. And to get to that point she has to have developed two things, a firm understanding of morality and the willingness to act on it.

古代，有德行的人，是需要修炼的。不仅内修，而且还要理解并愿意遵循外部的社会行为规范。

The modern conception of virtue is in many ways weaker than this. A virtue is often thought of as a kind of habit of acting in a certain way; this makes the virtues look like separate habits which grow up in locally isolated ways, since it certainly seems that you can develop a habit of generous giving without having a habit of acting bravely.

古今“virtue"理解的区别，大概相当于“修养、人品”与“习惯、行为”的区别。同时，修养和人品的背后，有一整套的道德规范，而后者没有。

Ancient philosophy is sometimes taught as a procession of Great Figures, whose ideas the student is supposed to take in and admire. Nothing could be further from its spirit. When we open most works of ancient philosophy, we find that an argument is going on - and that we are being challenged to join in.