There are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action. In France you get freedom of action: you can do what you like and nobody bothers, but you must think like everybody else. In Germany you must do what everybody else does, but you may think as you choose. They're both very good things. I personally prefer freedom of thought. But in england you get neither: you're ground down by convention. You can't think as you like and you can't act as you like. That's because it's a democratic nation. I expect America's worse.
-- Of Human Bondage, by W. Somerset Maugham
- Re: 读书摘抄posted on 04/21/2007
But how about China?---Can you give some words? Thanks. - Re: 读书摘抄posted on 04/21/2007
It will be great job.
And Hello to your baby, and welcome to our fazenda.
PS: 四类分子甲 is a VERY 温柔 gentile man. - posted on 07/10/2007
今天我终于“读”完 St. Augustine 的 Confessions。我用引号,是因为我读的很粗很粗。自04年我的 spiritual revelation 后,我听了 TTC 的 St Augustine 的讲座,就非常向往能读这本书的。我买了两个版本,一个是我在 Ann Arbor 的旧书店里买的 hard cover,Pusey 翻译的,另一个是网上买的 paperback,好象是标准译本 by Henry Chadwick。我翻到 Pusey copy 的时候,开头的段落特别吸引我,特别有气魄:
"Great art Thou, O Lord, and greatly to be prasied; great is Thy power, and Thy wisdom infinite. And Thee would man praise; man, but a particle of Thy creation; man, that bears about him his mortality, the witness of his sin, the witness, that Thou resistest the proud: yet would man praise Thee; he, but a particle of Thy creation. Thou awakest us to delight in Thy praise; for Thou madest us for Thyself, and our heart is restless, until it repose in Thee."
而 Chadwick 的开头段落很白话文:
"You are great, Lord, and highly to be praised: great is your power and your wisdom is immeasurable. Man, a little piece of your creation, desires to praise you, a human being 'bearing his mortality with him', carrying with him the witness of his sin and the witness that you 'resist the proud'. Nevertheless, to praise you is the desire of man, a little piece of your creation. You stir man to take pleasure in praising you, because you have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you."
看来我还是喜欢古文,英文也如此。我还是读了 Chadwick 的翻译。读的时候,宝宝经常打断我,加重了我的ADD,很多篇章都没好好读,就过去了。有时候奥古斯丁也很罗嗦,反反复复阐述一个道理,看了半天也不知哪句看了哪句没看,也就翻过去了。开始的自传的部分因为是讲故事,所以还挺好看。最后四章,Memory, Time and Eternity, Platonic and Christian Creation, Finding the Church in Genesis I, 都是些哲学和教义。因为引用了大量的圣经片段,又到处充满了赞美上帝,检讨自己的句子,真正的 thesis 反而被打散了,象我这样不专心的,根本没法看下去。真是可惜,这样一本好书,被我糟蹋了。
Graham Greene 引用过 Augustine 的一些话,给我特别深的印象:"St Augustine asked where time came from. He said it came out of the future which didn't exist yet, into the present that has no duration, and went into the past which had ceased to exist." 我在忏悔录里找到了。
七格写的奥古斯丁很好笑,也很到位:015天立星双枪将 奥古斯丁 Augustine (354~430年)
Augustine (after Constantine 280-337) is among the first Christian teachers. I believe that if other well-established religions were available to him back then, he might have convert to another. He probably did not believe in the Trinity doctrine, but using his inspiration from god he could explain everything well. He was using the language of the church to describe his own understanding of the Infinity.
他是那种小时候聪明得过分结果走上邪道的人物,老爸死了以后没人管,就在外面和女人野合,把孩子都养下来了(但他还是有责任心的,没翻脸就把人踹了,而是带了她十年多)。不过还算好,某天他在花园里踱步时,突然神经短路,发生了幻听,效果堪比外星人在给他开专场说山东快板。这一刺激,使他忽然对自己荒淫无耻的生活看了个清清楚楚,从此便义无反顾地信了基督教。
奥古斯丁到底是读书人呢,皈依了基督教后,没事就想着怎么把哲学给收编到神学队伍里去,后来他想出个鬼主意,认为有的哲学家是不好的,但他们的哲学是好的,基督教应该把好的哲学拿来,把不好的哲学家扔回去。这策略听起来,很有盗版咱鲁迅伯伯 “拿来主义” 的味道。
比如,他把柏拉图的理念,生生打造成一颗夺目的神学太阳,这太阳的光芒红艳艳地照进人们的心房,把真理像光盘刻录一般刻在我们心上(DVRW现在降价很厉害,刻录成本还是可以接受的),然后我们自己再把刻录的内容整理归类,最后作为人类的知识包装好,拿到市场上去兜售。
奥古斯丁提出的最耐人寻味的观点是:只有瞬间的现在是存在的,其他什么过去啊将来啊,全是心灵从现在延伸出去的印象,这种说法和佛教的刹那生灭实在是太接近了,要不是他的说法上头有个上帝老儿,下头有个自我意识,他是很容易滑到佛教阵营里去的。
Some quotes I noted down:For I did not know that the soul needs to be enlightened by light from outside itself, so that it can participate in truth, because it is not itself the nature of truth. IV.xv (25)
No doubt Augustine is very smart. He is a teacher of grammar and literature. From the footnotes, I notice that Augustine frequently used ideas from Plotinus. I have Enneads by Plotinus on by shelf for a few years. One day I will get around to read it.
By the proud you [God] are not found, not even if their curiosity and skill number the stars and the sand, measure the constellations, and trace the paths of the stars. V.iii (3)
Who can lay hold on the heart and give it fixity, so that for some little moment it may be stable, and for a fraction of time may grasp the splendour of a constant eternity? Then it may compare eternity with temporal successiveness which never has any constancy, and will see there is no comparison possible. It will see that a long time is long only because constituted of many successive moments which cannot be simultaneously extended. In the eternal, nothing is transient, but the whole is present. But no time is wholly present. It will see that all past time is driven backwards by the future, and all future time is the consequent of the past, and all past and future are created and set on their course by that which is always present. Who will lay hold on the human heart to make it still, so that it can see how eternity, in which there is neither future nor past, stands still and dictates future and past times? XI.xi (13)
He also agrees that many different interpretation of the same truth is possible. When he tries to explain the meaning of the Genesis (he spends a lot of time explaining the Genesis), he says,If I myself were to be writing something at this supreme level of authority [i.e. the Bible] I would choose to write so that my words would sound out with whatever diverse truth in these matters each reader was able to grasp, rather than to give a quite explicit statement of a single true view of this question in such a way as to exclude other views." XII.xxxi (42)
In another word, writings are merely signs that point to the truth, and we must try to understand what the writings mean to say, but not what they say.
I can only organize my thoughts this much for this book. Too bad, really. I am not sure if I will pick up this book again in a later year. I am always fascinated with Catholicism, because I know it can cure my ADD. But I think I have already missed my chance of conversion.
Hmm, I have an idea. Next time when I read Augustine, I will remove all the religious praises and the confessions, and all the bible quotations. I think it will make a very interesting story followed by several great thesis. Why not? I can re-write Laozi, surely I can re-write Augustine. - posted on 07/17/2007
Today I finished TTC course Italian Renaissance by Kenneth Bartlett, and Sphere by Michael Crichton.
I wanted to learn about Italian Renaissance after reading about Michelangelo. The course consists 36 lectures of 30 minutes each. All lectures are intellectual, but some are more interesting than others. The parts about Florence and the Popes are more memorable, because I am familiar with the events around Michelangelo's life, and he lived a long time, almost the whole span of the Italian Renaissance. I've learned about Petrarch, Venice, Savonarola, Machiavelli... a lot of familiar names now begin to have context. Before when I went to Italy, I only wanted to search for the ruins of ancient Roman empire. Now I want to see the Renaissance. I want to see Venice, Rome, and especially Florence. Next I will listen to Great Artists of the Italian Renaissance. I have got some art books in preparation for this course.
I must learn more about Pico della Mirandola. Why did he converted to Savonarola's religion before he died? Is he really my teacher's teacher?
Sphere is the first Michael Crichton book I've read, although I have listened to his Lost World on CD before. This book is almost the exact opposite of St Augustine's Confessions I just finished. Sphere is a sci-fi thriller, and it is exactly what it is. Although it is predictable in characters and narratives, the plots are still exciting and fresh. Next book on my list is another sci-fi: 2001 A Space Odyssey by Arthur C. Clarke. I've heard that it is very different from the movie. We will see.
Course Lecture Titles
1. The Study of the Italian Renaissance
2. The Renaissance—Changing Interpretations
3. Italy—The Cradle of the Renaissance
4. The Age of Dante—Guelfs and Ghibellines
5. Petrarch and the Foundations of Humanism
6. The Recovery of Antiquity
7. Florence—The Creation of the Republic
8. Florence and Civic Humanism
9. Florentine Culture and Society
10. Renaissance Education
11. The Medici Hegemony
12. The Florence of Lorenzo de’Medici
13. Venice—The Most Serene Republic
14. Renaissance Venice
15. The Signori—Renaissance Princes
16. Urbino
17. Castiglione and The Book of the Courtier
18. Women in Renaissance Italy
19. Neoplatonism
20. Milan Under the Visconti
21. Milan Under the Sforza
22. The Eternal City—Rome
23. The Rebuilding of Rome
24. The Renaissance Papacy
25. The Crisis—The French Invasion of 1494
26. Florence in Turmoil
27. Savonarola and the Republic
28. The Medici Restored
29. The Sack of Rome, 1527
30. Niccolò Machiavelli
31. Alessandro de’Medici
32. The Monarchy of Cosimo I
33. Guicciardini and The History of Italy
34. The Counter-Reformation
35. The End of the Renaissance in Italy
36. Echoes of the Renaissance
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