孟德斯鸠、卢梭、叔本华、穆勒、尼采、罗尔斯、库恩、阿伦特、施特劳斯、沃格林等：如何阅读文本（持续更新）

编者按：本文由“政治哲学与思想史”编辑部整理，持续更新，欢迎补充！

孟德斯鸠

When one reads a book, it is necessary to be in a disposition to believe that theauthor has seen the contradictions that one imagines, at the first glance,one is meeting. Thus it is necessary to begin by distrusting one’s own promptjudgments, to look again at the passages one claims are contradictory, tocompare them one with another, then to compare them again with thosepassages that precede and those that follow to see if they follow the samehypothesis, to see if the contradiction is in the things or only in one’s ownmanner of conceiving. When one has done all that, one can pronounce as amaster, “there is a contradiction.”

This is, however, not always enough. When a work is systematic, onemust also be sure that one understands the whole system. You see a greatmachine made in order to produce an effect. You see wheels that turn inopposite directions; you would think, at first glance, that the machine wasgoing to destroy itself, that all the turning was going to arrest itself ...Itkeeps going: these pieces, which seem at first to destroy one another unitetogether for the proposed object.

cited inThomas Pangle,Montesquieu's Philosophy of Liberalism: A Commentary on the Spirit of the Laws,Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1973, pp.13.

卢梭

我起先看一些哲学书籍，如波尔—洛雅勒出版的《逻辑学》，洛克的论文，马勒伯朗士、莱布尼茨、笛卡尔的著作等等。不久我就发现这些作者的学说差不多总是互相冲突的，于是我就拟定了一个要把它们统一起来的空想的计划，我耗费了不少精力，浪费了不少时间，弄得头昏脑胀，结果毫无所获。最后，我放弃了这种方法，采取了另一种比这好得多的方法，我的能力虽然很差，但我之所以还能有些进步，应当完全归功于这个方法。因为毫无疑问，我的能力在研究学问上一向是很有限的。我每读一个作者的著作时，就拿定主意，完全接受并遵从作者本人的思想，既不掺入我自己的或他人的见解，也不和作者争论。我这样想：“先在我的头脑中储存一些思想，不管是正确的还是错误的，只要论点明确就行，等我的头脑里已经装得相当满以后，再加以比较和选择。”我知道这种方法并不是没有缺点的，但拿灌输知识的目的来说，这个方法倒是很成功的。有几年功夫，我只是作者怎样想自己就怎样想，可以说从不进行思考，也几乎一点不进行推理。几年过后我就有了相当丰富的知识，足以使我独立思考而无须求助于他人了。在我旅行或办事而不能阅读书籍的时候,我就在脑子里复习和比较我所读过的东西，用理智的天平来判断每一个问题，有时也对我的老师们的见解做一些批判。虽然我开始运用自己的判断力未免晚了一些，但我并没有感到它已失去了那股强劲的力量，因此，在我发表自己的见解时，别人并未说我是一个盲从的门徒，也没说我只会附和先辈的言论。

卢梭：《忏悔录》（第一部），黎星译，商务印书馆1986年版，第295页。

叔本华

When we read, someone else thinks for us; we repeat merely his mental process. It is like the pupil who, when learning to write, goes over with his pen the strokes made in pencil by the teacher. Accordingly, when we read, the work of thinking is for the most part. taken away from us. Hence the noticeable relief when from preoccupation with our thoughts we pass to reading. But while we are reading our mind is really only the playground of other people's ideas; and when these finally depart, what remains? The result is that, whoever reads very much and almost the entire day but at intervals amuses himself with thoughtless pastime, gradually loses the ability to think for himself; just as a man who always rides ultimately forgets how to walk. But such is the case with very many scholars; they have read themselves stupid. For constant reading, which is at once resumed at every free moment, is even more paralysing to the mind than is manual work; for with the latter we can give free play to our own thoughts. Just as a spring finally loses its elasticity through the constant pressure of a foreign body, so does the mind through the continual pressure of other people's ideas. Just as we upset the stomach by too much food and there by do harm to thewhole body, so. can we cram and strangle the mind by too much mental pabulum. For the more we read, the fewer the traces that are left behind in the mind by whath as been read. It becomes like a blackboard where on many things have been written over one another. Hence we never come to ruminate; but only through this do we assimilate what we have read, just as food nourishes us not by being eaten but bybeing digested. On the other hand, if we are for ever reading without afterwards thinking further about what we have read, this does not take root and for the most part is lost. Generally speaking, it is much the same with mental nourishment as with bodily; scarcely a fiftieth part of what is taken is assimilated; the restpasses off through evaporation, respiration, or otherwise. In addition to all this, is the fact that thoughts reduced to paper are generally nothing more than the footprints of a man walking in the sand. It is true that we see the path he has taken; but to know what he saw on the way, we must use our own eyes.

ArthurSchopenhauer,Parerga and Paralipomena: Short Philosophical Essays Volume 2, trans. by E.F.K. Payne,Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp.554-555.

穆勒

当我回到英国，父亲的《政治经济学要义》的出版行将完成，他叫我在他的手稿上做一种练习，也就是做段落提要的工作，边沁先生在他自己所有的作品上都是这么做的；即在每一段边上摘出简短的要旨，使作者易于判断和改进思想层次和叙述大意。……在父亲的指导下，进入学习分析心理学那种较高级的课程。我读洛克的《论文》，根据它写出笔记，包括每一章的完整摘要，偶有所得，做一些评注；这些评议有时由父亲读，有时我读给父亲听，都要彻底讨论。我用同样方法学习爱尔维修的《精神论》，这册书是我选择的。在父亲监督下所做的这种摘要工作，对我好处极大，因为在作这项工作时我对于各种心理学说（不论作为真理而接受或仅仅是看作他人的见解）不得不考虑和表达得更加精确。

*《约翰·穆勒自传》，吴良健、吴衡康译，商务印书馆1987年版，第44，47页。

尼采

但是，最后：我们如此迫不及待和大张旗鼓地说明我们是什么人，我们想做什么，不想做什么，这又有什么必要呢？让我们还是从一个更伟大的高度俯视遥临冷眼静观吧；让我们还是以一种低低的声音在我们中间说出它，以至只有我们自己听得到它，而所有其他人都听不到它，听不到我们吧；但是，最重要的，让我们还是缓慢地说出它吧……这篇前言是一篇迟到的前言，但并没有迟到太多——毕竟，五年或六年又算什么？一本这样的书，一个这样的问题，是不能速成急就的；无论如何，我们二者——我以及我的书——都是lento之友。我过去是一个语文学家，也许现在还是一个语文学家，也就是说，一个慢读教师，这并不是没有意义的：结果我的写作也是缓慢的。每写下一行字都让“忙人”者流感到一次绝望，现在这不仅成了我的习惯，而且也成了我的爱好——也许一种恶毒的爱好？语文学是一门让人尊敬的艺术，要求其崇拜者最重要的：走到一边，闲下来，静下来和慢下来——它是词的金器制作术和金器鉴赏术，需要小心翼翼和一丝不苟地工作；如果不能缓慢地取得什么东西，它就不能取得任何东西。但也正因为如此，它在今天比在任何其他时候都更为不可或缺；在一个“工作”的时代，在一个匆忙、琐碎和让人喘不过气来的时代，在一个想要一下子“干掉一件事情”、干掉每一本新的和旧的著作的时代，这样一种艺术对我们来说不啻沙漠中的清泉，甘美异常。——这种艺术并不在任何事情上立竿见影，但它教我们以好的阅读，即缓慢地、深入地、有保留和小心地，带着各种敞开大门的隐秘思想，以灵敏的手指和眼睛，阅读——我耐心的朋友，本书需要的只是完美的读者和语文学家：跟我学习好的阅读！

尼采：《朝霞》，田立年译，华东师范大学出版社2007年版，第40-42页。

哈罗德·布鲁姆

人们读和写的动机大多不尽相同，这常常使最有自我意识的读者和作者都迷惑不已。也许，隐喻或读写形象语言的最终动机就是与众不同的欲望，就是置身他处的欲望。我的这一看法是继承尼采的，他警告我们，能用语言表达的都是心中已死的东西，所以他对言说行为总抱有一种轻蔑。哈姆莱特与尼采同样都把蔑视态度延伸到了写作行为上。但是我们的阅读并非为了打开心扉，所以阅读行为中并不存在轻蔑。传统告诉我们，自由和孤独的自我从事写作是为了克服死亡。我认为自我在寻找自由和孤独时最终只是为了一个目的去阅读：去面对伟大。这种面对难以遮蔽加入伟大行列的欲望，而这一欲望正是我们称为崇高的审美体验的基础，即超越极限的渴求。我们共同的命运是衰老、疾痛、死亡和销声匿迹。我们共同希望的就是某种形式的复活，这希望虽然渺茫却从未停息过。

哈罗德·布鲁姆：《西方正典：伟大作家和不朽作品》，江宁康译，译林出版社2011年版，第434页。

约翰·罗尔斯

Let me say that in looking at a text of this sort, which is so large, and with so many elements in it, if you are to get as much out of it as you can, you must try to interpret it in the best and most interesting way. There is no point in trying to defeat it, or to show the author was wrong in some way, or that his argument doesn’t follow. The thing is to make as much out of it as you can and to try to get a sense of how the overall view might go, if you put it in the best way. Otherwise, I think it is a waste of time to read it, or to read any of the important philosophers.

John Rawls,Lectures on the History of Political Philosophy, ed.Samuel Freeman (MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp.52.

托马斯·库恩

When reading the works of an important thinker, look first for the apparent absurdities in the text and ask yourself how a sensible person could have written them. When you find an answer, I continue, when those passages make sense, then you may find that more central passages, ones you previously thought you understood, have changed their meaning.

Thomas.S.Kuhn, The Essential Tension, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1977, pp. xii.

汉娜·阿伦特

Such fundamental and flagrant contradictions rarely occur in second-rate writers, in whom they can be discounted. In the work of great authors they lead into the very center of their work and are the most important clue to a true understanding of their problems and new insights.

Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future : Eight Exercises in Political Thought, (New York: The VikingPress, 1961), pp.25.

列奥·施特劳斯

Only such reading between the lines as starts from an exact consideration of the explicit statements of the author is legitimate.The context in which a statement occurs, and the literary character of the whole work as well as its plan, must be perfectly understood before an interpretation of the statement can reasonably claim to be adequate or evencorrect. One is not entitled to delete a passage, nor to emend its text, beforeone has fully considered all reasonable possibilities of understanding the passageas it stands-one of these possibilities being that the passage may be ironic. If a master of the art of writing commits such blunders as would shame an intelligent high school boy, it is reasonable to assume that they areintentional, especially if the author discusses, however incidentally, the possibility of intentional blunders in writing. ……exactness is not to be confused with refusal, orinability, to see the wood for the trees. The truly exact historian will reconcile himself to the fact that there is a difference between winning anargument, or proving to practically everyone that he is right, and understanding the thought of the great writers of the past.

Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988,pp.30.

埃里克·沃格林

人在政治社会中的存在是历史的存在；一套政治理论，若是深入到原理层面，就必须同时是一套历史理论。……穷究一个理论问题，深入政治原理与一套历史哲学的原理交汇之地，如今已不常见。尽管如此，这种做法却不能视为政治科学中的创新；而毋宁说更像是一种重建，如果人们还记得，今天被割裂开来耕耘的两块土地，柏拉图创立政治科学时，却是密不可分地结合在一起的。这种浑然一体的政治理论诞生于希腊社会的危机。在危急时刻，社会秩序摇摇欲坠，分崩离析，处于历史中的政治存在的许多根本性的问题，就会比在相对稳定的时代更易于进入人们的视野。此后，人们可以说，使政治科学局限于描述现存的制度以及解释它们背后的原理，亦即让政治科学沦为现存权力的婢女，是承平形势下的典型做法；而把政治科学扩而充之，使之成为关于社会历史中的人之存在的科学和关于一般的秩序原理的科学，是具有革命和关键性质的伟大纪元中的典型做法。……重建政治科学，或许并不是要回到某个前人之努力的具体内容，而是意味着回到对原理的意识。今天，人们不可能通过柏拉图、奥古斯丁或者黑格尔的思想来重建政治科学。当然，关于问题的范围，以及对问题的理论探讨，确实能从先贤那里获益良多；然而，正是人之存在的历史性，也就是说人的类本质是在充满意义的具象中展开的，阻止人们通过回到从前的具象来有效地重构原理。因此，政治科学不可能靠对过去的哲学成就的文献复活而重建成一门严格意义上的理论科学；诸原理必须通过一种时代的具体历史处境出发、把我们丰富的经验知识全部纳入考量的理论化努力来重新获得。

埃里克·沃格林：《新政治科学》，段保良译，商务印书馆2018年版，第8-9页。