文章提到的戈尔斯坦(Goldstein)与格芮弗德(Grunfeld)都很靠谱，下面这些书也都还不错。

by David Gill, SJ
Why the Iliad matters

When I read the Iliad in high school and college its chief allure for me lay in the game of turning as much of Homer’s Greek into English as I could, as fast as I could. In graduate school, the 16,000-plus lines of this 8th-century B.C. poem served me mainly as a source for early Greek history—my specialty at the time. In my early years teaching at Boston College it became a study in a distant, rather exotic, and (as I supposed) less “advanced” culture and worldview.

Now, I read the Iliad as a tragedy of violence and war, pity and compassion that strikes closer to my ­heart than almost any book I know. Three modern commentators have helped me to reach my present understanding. The late Bernard Williams, who passed his academic career educating the students of Cambridge, Berkeley, and Oxford, saw in the Iliad and in early Greek thought in general a kinship with our own postmodern sensibility. In an elegant and poignant statement at the end of his 1993 book Shame and Necessity, Williams wrote:

    We [late 20th-century Western intellectuals] . . . know that the world was not made for us, or we for the world, that our history tells no purposive story, and that there is no position outside the world or outside history from which we might hope to authenticate our activities. . . . In important ways, we are, in our ethical situation, more like human beings in antiquity than any Western people have been in the meantime.

By “human beings in antiquity” Williams meant primarily the characters whom we meet in Greek epic and tragedy, who live, struggle, and destroy one another and themselves—usually by their own mistakes—without being provided by their creators with an adequate cover story, divine or human, to help make sense of it all. According to Williams, Plato, writing some 400 years after Homer, was the first in a continuous series of Western thinkers to offer an overarching theory of life’s meaning. Hegel, in the early 19th century, was the last. Now we have no one.
What can we hope for in such a world? The Oxford classicist Colin MacLeod puzzled much over that question and over the moral relevance of ancient literature. In his brief but brilliant commentary on Book 24 of the Iliad, published in 1982, he concluded that

    the Iliad is great not least because it can speak authentically for pity or kindness or civilization without showing them victorious in life. Its humanity does not float on shallow optimism; it is firmly and deeply rooted in an awareness of human reality and suffering . . . . And so to enjoy or appreciate the Iliad is to understand and feel for human suffering . . . to feel whatever sorrows we have as part of a common lot, and so to endure them more bravely.

MacLeod himself did not endure. He committed suicide at Oxford in 1981 at the age of 38.

The French philosopher Simone Weil (1909–43) offered somewhat more comfort in her essay “Iliad: Poem of Force.” Written just after the fall of France in 1940, the essay looks beyond tragedy and mere endurance:

    For the sense of human misery is a pre-condition of justice and love. He who does not realize to what extent shifting fortune and necessity hold in subjection every human spirit, cannot regard as fellow creatures nor love as he loves himself those whom chance has separated from him by an abyss. . . . Only he who has measured the dominion of violence, and knows how not to respect it, is capable of love and justice.

Weil died in exile in England at the age of 34, of tuberculosis aggravated by her refusal to eat enough because she knew that people in France were starving. She saw a close kinship—closer than most critics would allow—between the Iliad and Greek tragedy on the one hand and the Gospel story on the other. Jesus did not exempt himself from the human condition at its most violent, she said, and it was precisely for this reason that he was able to redeem it.

Weil also thought that one must first seek truth and then Jesus. Faith and doctrine are no substitute for experience of the world as it is; they must somehow grow out of that experience. There is an opening to something better in the lived realization that violence does not exist apart from any one of us, that we are all implicated. And the more fully we are able to enter into this tragic view of the world, the more we can hope to transcend our personal, limited visions, to learn compassion and forgiveness and join with others for the sake of us all. Ironically, a tragic view of the world can become a step toward a clearer glimpse of the viewpoint of God, which is the only firm basis for the service of others.

This is quite a range of claims to make for one poem: postmodern anomie (Williams), deeply rooted humanism (MacLeod), and an opening to the Gospel (Weil). I have come to believe that the Iliad is equal to them all.
Artifacts recovered from the site of Troy, in Hisarlik, Turkey, during the 1870s. Photograph: The University Library of Heidelberg

Artifacts recovered from the site of Troy, in Hisarlik, Turkey, during the 1870s. Photograph: The University Library of Heidelberg

We can forget what a surprising story the Iliad is. Homer’s announced theme is that of Greek heroes at odds with one another (“our story starts with the strife that divided godlike Achilles and [Agamemnon] the son of Atreus, king of men”). There is also the larger war with the Trojans, of course, but what the poet cares most about is not the glory of mortal combat; it is the destructiveness of human passions—on all sides. No one is exempt from the toll of violence, including those who inflict it. “The War God is impartial. He kills the killer,” the poet says. In Homer’s tragic conception, it is this recognition—and only this one—that breeds pity and compassion.

There is no Valhalla in the Iliad. Death for heroes is without salvation, without consolation, “down into Hades.” The greatest of heroes meet their end confused, protesting, resentful of their fate. Their best hope is for an honorable death by combat, in a cause victorious or otherwise, and then a decent burial. Often enough they do not get even that. Nor does Homer claim (as Virgil later would in the Aeneid) that any of this serves a higher purpose.

Certainly the gods provide no cover story. The “plan of Zeus” that is fulfilled is simply that countless Greeks should die as a favor to Achilles’s mother, Thetis, to restore her son’s “honor” after Agamemnon has insulted him. In the larger story, Troy must fall. This outcome is necessary and just, for Paris, son of the Trojan king, Priam, broke Zeus’s law by stealing Helen, the wife of his host, Agamemnon’s brother, Menelaus.

At the same time, the destruction of a city, the symbol of civilization, is the greatest imaginable tragedy, as Homer shows by his elaborate descriptions of Troy, with its broad streets and well-built walls, its courtly customs and tender scenes of family life.

Why then do men fight? For the same reasons that they always have: They like to and they have to. Sarpedon, a Lycian noble fighting on the Trojan side, goes into battle “like a hungry lion.” He has a visceral need for combat, to kill or be killed. But first he pauses to ask his companion Glaucus about the meaning of it all:

    Glaucus, why is it that we are honored most of all men in Lycia, with the seats of honor, the best wines and the choicest cuts of meat? Why do they all look on us as gods and assign us the best lands? . . . They do, and so now we must take our stand in the first ranks of the Lycians and share in the fierce fight. Then any one of our well-armed countrymen who sees us will say: “Not without renown are the kings who rule in Lycia. They feed on fat flocks and drink sweet wine. But noble also is their strength, since they fight in the first ranks of the Lycians.” But my friend, what if we could escape this war and somehow be ageless and immortal? Then I would not fight in the first ranks myself, nor would I send you into glorious battle. But now, as it is, there are 10,000 fates of death standing near, and no mortal can flee or escape them. So let us go, to win glory or to yield it to others.

On one level, the nobles fight to justify their economic and social privileges. On a deeper level, they face death in battle precisely because they must die. In the end, there is no escaping death, but glory gained by killing others in combat can bestow a kind of immortality. It is a cruel paradox that the only way to resist death is to deal it out to others. This is the meaning of glory, and it both inspires Homer’s respect and moves him to grief. Death is sad; so too is the remedy.

As Troy’s champion, Hector fights not only for personal glory but also for his city and family. Both he and they are doomed. His role in the logic of the Iliad is to evoke in us the greatest possible pity for the defeated enemy, and his encounter with his wife and son in Book 6 is one of the pillars of the story. In the field, Hector is a killer like the rest, only better than most. At home he is a son, brother, husband, and father. When he meets his wife, Andromache, on the rampart of the city during a lull in the fighting, a nurse stands by holding Astyanax, their son, “beloved, tender, like a beautiful star.” Hector “smiles silently” when he sees him. Andromache pleads with her husband to stay lest his courage be the death of him. Her father and brothers have been killed in the war. Her mother is dead too. She has no homeland anymore. Hector and the boy are all she has left.

Hector understands fully about pity and love of family, but he is also a public man and cannot change course now.

    All this concerns me too, but I simply could not face the Trojans and their ladies with the flowing gowns, if I were to shrink like a coward from the war. Nor do I wish to do so, since I have been taught to be brave always and to fight among the front ranks of the Trojans, and thus to win great glory for my father and myself. For in my heart and spirit I know this well: The day will come when sacred Ilion [Troy] will fall and Priam with it and spearman Priam’s people too.

The ultimate outcome is not in doubt. And for that reason Hector must fight in a manner worthy of himself. He has no hope, but neither does he despair. There is no self-pity. Nor is it only fear of shame that drives him. Hector accepts and makes his own the expectations of his father and his countrymen. But he feels his private loss keenly. Similarly, the poet Homer affirms warrior virtues and pities the warrior, for he knows the cost. Hector answers his wife:

    But it is not so much the future woes of Troy that pain me or even the loss of Hecuba or of king Priam or of my brothers, so many and so valiant, who will fall in the dust at the hands of their foes. Rather it is the thought that some bronze-shirted Achaean [Greek] will drag you off in tears and make a slave of you.

Helpless to prevent his wife’s fate, Hector can only pray that he will die before he sees that day. He reaches for his son, and the child shrinks in fear at the sight of his father’s flashing helmet. The parents laugh. Hector lays aside the helmet, kisses the boy and prays that he will be a greater warrior than his father and make his mother proud when he returns from war bearing the bloody spoils of a dead enemy—a double pathos and a double irony, for Astyanax will be dashed to his death by the victorious Greeks from the walls that Hector is trying to protect. Sadder still is the truth that, even if the boy had been destined to grow to manhood, the best that his father can imagine for him—at this moment, in this context—is the bloody career that he chose for himself.

Hector returns the boy to his mother. “Smiling through her tears, she presses the child to her fragrant bosom.” Hector pities her and takes her hand.

    Dearest, do not be too much grieved on my behalf. No man will hurl me into Hades beyond what is fated. And I think that no man has ever escaped his fate—neither brave man nor coward—once he has been born. Go back to the house now and attend to your own work, the loom and the distaff. Bid the servants to do their work too. Let us men worry about the war—every man of Troy, but most of all myself.

The greatest heroes live under sentence of death and they know it. In Homer’s tale, pity and love lose out to destiny and honor. And all of these together make the poem what it is.

For much of the Iliad the godlike Achilles, principal champion of the Greeks, refuses to fight, because his honor has been offended. He rejoins the battle only in order to avenge his best friend, Patroclus, whom Hector has slain with the help of Apollo (a god partial to Troy) and Euphorbus, an inexperienced warrior who attacks like a coward from behind. Hector finishes off Patroclus (who wears Achilles’s helmet) and taunts him as he falls. Patroclus’s dreams of glory end in bitterness and confusion. He is a victim of the plans—or the whims—of the gods, the unfair attack by Euphorbus, and his own and Achilles’s mistakes.

As the violence intensifies, so too does Homer’s pitying voice. Euphorbus is the next to fall, and the description of his death is one of the most touching in the entire Iliad. Menelaus, brother of Agamemnon and himself a king, drives his spear point straight through the young man’s “soft” throat. Euphorbus falls in the dust.

    His locks, which were like those of the Graces and bound with gold and silver pins, grew wet with blood. Imagine the hearty shoot of an olive which a man cultivates in a lonely place and generously waters, and it blooms beautifully. And the breaths of all the winds cause it to tremble, and pale flowers burst forth from it. Then suddenly a storm comes up with mighty blasts and rips it from the ground and lays it flat. So it was with Euphorbus, the son of Panthus, when Menelaus killed him and stripped his armor off.

A veteran Greek fighter easily and brutally dispatches a young Trojan. And Homer’s simile evokes another, quieter world, by alluding not only to the youth and androgynous beauty of the victim but also to the long and tender care that went into his growth and the silent collaboration of nature in the process—all wasted at a stroke.

And now Achilles must fight and kill Hector and then die himself. This is foreordained and he knows it. Thetis, his sea-goddess mother, comes up from her underwater cave and, powerless to help, “she weeps and holds Achilles’s head in her hands.” Her son has gotten the recognition that he demanded from Agamemnon and his fellow Greeks. Now all he wants is to deal death and then to die.

    Now I shall go to meet Hector, the killer of my dear friend. And then I shall accept my own death at whatever time Zeus and the other gods may wish to bring it. Not even Heracles escaped death. . . . So I too, if a like fate awaits me, shall lie down and die. But for now I must win noble glory. And I shall cause some one of the deep-bosomed Trojan women to weep bitterly and wipe the tears from her soft cheeks with both her hands.

Achilles has achieved a kind of cold objectivity about the meaning of glory and the consequences for himself and for his victims, including the innocent ones. The contrast between the hero’s clarity and power on the one hand and his ultimate helplessness on the other fills the poem from now until its end. Achilles can neither bring back his friend nor save his own life. He lays his “murderous” hands on his comrade’s corpse, and weeps. He weeps for the promises he can never keep and he pledges to cut the throats of 12 innocent victims on the funeral pyre—Simone Weil imagined their bodies “like flowers on the grave”—and to see to it that Trojan women mourn for Patroclus.
Copper weaponry and helmet fragments unearthed at Hisarlik. Photograph: The University Library of Heidelberg

Copper weaponry and helmet fragments unearthed at Hisarlik. Photograph: The University Library of Heidelberg

Given over to violence and death, Achilles drives the panicked Trojans before him. Suddenly he comes face to face with Lykaon, an enemy whom earlier he had taken prisoner and sold into slavery. Lykaon had meanwhile been ransomed back and had returned home, where he enjoyed 11 days of freedom with his family. Now on the 12th day, exhausted and unarmed, he again falls into Achilles’s hands. Achilles is astonished and reflects: How many times do I have to kill these Trojans? Can it be that men return from the dead? He throws his spear and misses. Lykaon pleads for mercy: We have broken bread together. You can ransom me again for three times the price. Zeus hates me. My mother bore me to be short-lived. You have already killed my brother. I am not born of the same mother as Hector.

Though nearly berserk with rage, Achilles still can glimpse the humanity he shares with his victim—and their common mortality. He calls him “friend.”

    Die too, my friend. Why do you lament so? Patroclus died, and he was a much better man than you. Do you not see what a man I am, how big and handsome? I had a noble father and a goddess for a mother, but death and harsh destiny await me as well. A dawn will come or an afternoon or a noontime when someone will take away my life in war, whether with an arrow or a spear.

Achilles runs Lykaon through with his sword and with cruel taunts flings his body into the river to be food for the fish. The scene summarizes the tragic paradox of the poem, and of war in any age. Soon, Achilles meets Hector and savagely kills him. As he dies, Hector foretells Achilles’s death at the hands of Paris and Apollo.

    And as he spoke the end of death covered him over and his spirit flew from his limbs and went down to Hades, bemoaning his fate and leaving his young manhood behind.

These are the same words with which Homer had described the death of Patroclus. In the Iliad, all the deaths are linked. Fate and the gods, hatred and human error bind the actors together. None can escape. And glory is no answer.

Revenge brings Achilles no peace. He buries Patroclus and makes up with his fellow Greeks, but he remains tormented. Nights he spends wandering the beach; each dawn he drags Hector’s corpse three times around the funeral pyre. Violence and vengeance have run their course yet there is no satisfaction, no solution. Finally, the gods intervene, for even they are shocked: “See how he outrages the dumb earth in his fury.” They tell Achilles to return the body of Hector and they send Priam, Troy’s king and Hector’s father, to receive it. The final scene between the two great enemies all but defies commentary.

The king enters Achilles’s hut unnoticed, throws himself at his tormentor’s feet, and kisses the “terrible, murderous hands that had slain so many of his sons.” Achilles and his companions are stunned. They can only look at one another in silence as Priam makes his plea.

    Godlike Achilles, remember your own father, a man the same age as I, at the doorstep of hateful old age. . . . He at least hears news that you are alive. He can be glad and get through each day in the hope that he will see his dear son return from Troy. Fate has been less kind to me. I had noble sons in broad Troy. Now not one of them is left, though there were 50, when the sons of the Achaeans came. . . . There was one left and he protected us. Now you have killed him too. . . . Hector, I mean. I have come to get him and bring him home. I have abundant ransom with me. Respect the gods, Achilles, and have pity on him. Think of your own father. I am yet more wretched and I have endured what no other mortal man ever has: I have kissed the hand of the man who slew my son.

The utter humiliation of Priam and loving thoughts of his own father—who in fact will not see his son again—move Achilles to tears. He takes the old man’s hand and gently pushes him away.

    And the two of them remembered. Priam, curled up at the feet of Achilles, wept for man-slaying Hector, while Achilles shed tears for his own father and again for Patroclus. And their groaning filled the hut.

When Achilles has had his fill of mourning, he rises and lifts Priam to his feet, “pitying his grey head and beard.” He also admires Priam’s courage and consoles him as best he can:

    Come sit with me and we shall let our pain lie quiet in our hearts though we are sorely grieved. Nor is there any gain in these sad tears. This is what the gods decree for us poor mortals: to live in pain, while they themselves are free from cares. . . . To my father, Peleus, the gods granted brilliant gifts from birth. He excelled all other men in wealth. He prospered and was king of all the Myrmidons. He married a goddess. But heaven gave him evils too. . . . He had but one son, and that an ill-fated one. And I am no help to him in his old age, since I sit at Troy far from home, a source of sorrow for you and for your children.

The gods give and the gods take away, and there is no accounting for how or why they do so. Whatever we may think of this arrangement, we mortals “cannot afford to be cruel and indifferent among [ourselves],” as Colin MacLeod observed. There is, MacLeod said, a “morality which still can exist despite human violence and divine indifference.” Achilles understands this too, now that he sees himself and his father caught in the same tragic destiny as Hector and Priam.

But Achilles is still Achilles—still menacing as he struggles with his grief and guilt. When Priam asks to be given the body immediately, the warrior’s anger flares. He fears he might lose control and harm Priam and offend Zeus. He orders Hector’s body to be bathed and anointed. Then, still fearful of his own anger and with apologies to the dead Patroclus, he lifts the body “with his own hands and places it on a couch” in a place where Priam cannot see it.

And then Achilles invites Priam to dine with him. The king has not eaten or slept since Hector died. After they finish, they sit in silence for a moment.

    Priam gazed in wonder at Achilles, at his size and beauty and how like a god he seemed. And Achilles gazed at Priam, looking on his noble face, listening for his noble speech. And they took pleasure in this looking at one another.

Hector’s funeral is held the next day, and the poem ends with a single hanging line: “Thus they performed the funeral rites for horse-taming Hector.”

And so the Iliad’s last words are of pity for the slain enemy hero, his family, and his city. There is pity for Achilles too, but muted and implicit, and for all human beings. There is pity, but not the possibility of change. The war will go on.
Photograph: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY

Photograph: Erich Lessing/Art Resource, NY

It would be wrong to suppose that Homer was “antiwar” in anything like the modern sense. For the poet and his contemporaries, war was simply a fact of life; and it is unlikely that he or they could have imagined a world without it. The genius of Homer is that he saw war whole and so captured its tragic irony.

Simone Weil saw a link to the Gospel in the Iliad. Maybe. One does see it in the pity, in the acts of kindness amidst the slaughter, in the suggestions of an alternative world of peace and civilized pursuits, but most of all, I think, one sees it in the way Homer makes clear the complicity of all sides in the tragedy of violence. Weil is right in saying that we shall have grasped the Iliad when we “learn how to accept the fact that nothing is sheltered from fate, how never to admire violence, or hate the enemy, or to despise sufferers.” She is also right when she says, “It is doubtful if this will happen soon.”

The world of the Iliad is in many ways a strange and distant one. Those proud, violent warriors are trapped in a losing game. Honor, the gods, fate, passion, family, society, mortality hem them in, Greek and Trojan alike. This common vulnerability becomes the central fact about heroes—grounds for pity and grounds too for seeing a link between their struggles and our own.

      师大搬迁至蛮荒之地，尽管那附近的房价也已涨到8、9000左右，但是仍然不能改变作为“孤岛”的形象。四周环绕的是人丁稀少的新建小区与每天冒着浓烟的神秘化工厂，无论如何，那都不象是一个宜居之地，更遑论是有魅力的大学校园了。因此尽管每周都要搭几次让人烦闷的校车过去上课，但是还是准备买下丽娃河边的这套小房子，至少在这里，我还有可能和这座城市保持着联系，而那个象极工业园区的校园，能否让身处其中的大学生感受到精神的愉悦，和对知识的崇敬，这都是极为可疑的。
      为何突然发此牢骚，自然是有感而发。今日搭校车前往闵行校区，本想上课后顺便找到系主任签出国访问申请表的意见书，但过去才发现，下午主任却在中山北路校区，考虑到周五就要截止申请，于是就立刻往回赶，但此时下一班校车却是一个小时之后了，如此等待，肯定不行。冲出校门打的，但是等了半天都不见出租车踪影，此时却有一辆红色轿车缓缓开过来，停在跟前，问我是否需要搭车，前往东川路地铁站只需要5块，司机是个年轻小伙，颇为青春洋溢，而且轿车前排座位上还放有洋娃娃，丝毫不象传说中面目狰狞的黑车司机形象，想起前日新闻报道中，上海某黑车司机刺死交通暗访员，却与今日所遇此景此人，存在着巨大的差别。上车后经过短暂询问，他得知道我还需转1号线，便提出10块钱，将我送到幸庄，如此便宜价格，自然应允。一路无语，我也没有与那位青年攀谈，从开车技术来看，我怀疑这个小青年是学车不久的新手，估计在这附近练车兜风，看见我那么无助的等车，来行举车之劳，顺便赚点油钱而已。
     从1号线转3号线并不麻烦，回到中山北路找到主任，却得到一个让我欲哭无泪的消息，他虽然可以签字，但是印章却是在闵行校区办公室，我必须要回到闵行校区才能盖章完成。既然如此，便立下决断，重新搭3号线----1号线-----5号线，再转乘的士，终于在5点之前赶回到办公室，完成盖章。两趟下来，一共才3个小时不到，但是人已身心疲惫，此时还在这里写下BLOG，是痛感一校两区之非人道，如此“悲剧”，不知道有几人体会。
     两趟长途地铁/轻轨换乘，唯一的收获是沿路看了看闵行的发展状况，无论如何，5号线沿线作为新兴社区，实在荒凉和枯燥。身处如此环境，如同在一个个大型工业园区之中，灰暗、压抑，更遑论任何文化娱乐场所（当然，洗脚店、美容店早已进驻沿线），虽然上海房价之高，甚于猛虎，但是对于我而言，实在找不到一个理由在这附近购置房屋，毕竟，家是与生活有关的，而不是一个旅馆，我无法忍受每天花上数小时回到一个荒凉的家，这实在是城市化的误区。
    如此回想，从小到大所住的家，都是所在小城的中心地区，对中心/郊区之分别没有任何比较，而且由于父亲的关系，一直都分配着相当宽敞的住房居住，记得小学时家里所分的一套四室一厅140几平米的住房，由于家中当时根本没有什么家具，如此回想，里面空空荡荡，完全可以在里面溜冰打球。当时反而有点怀念过去一套90几平米的小房子，因为那可以和哥哥姐姐保持着密切的接触，不至于家中房间一大，他们都各自关门，构建自己的青春世界，而我，却只能在无数次的企求声中，请求他们出来和我一起玩耍，这种空间感带来的人际关系模式的变化，我一直都比较敏感，因此对大房子一直缺乏好感，反而常常喜欢拥挤的感觉，这种观点，可能许多人视为奇谈怪论，更不符合如今在上海连90平米都已被视作小户型的房产价值观，而我却认为，一个家，空间感大小的需求一定是和这个家庭的人际关系模式相关的，也和这个家庭的生活方式有关，小房间能够使家庭的成员有着更多的交流，也能让彼此在这种交流中更加透彻的理解对方，而拥挤的空间也让我的书架能够环绕四周，让我从清晨伊始，就可以与书为伴，这些都构成了一种生活方式。所以我少有空间需求的焦虑，决定买下这套小房子，也主要是对师大校园的心理依赖，尽管如今这一校园的人文气息逐渐凋零，但毕竟我生命中重要的一段求学经历都在此完成，安家于此，也是对自己的人生有了一个明确的定位。
    如今家中成员，基本都各自成家，有了自己住房，但是在我记忆中，仍然时常想念起当年一家人簇拥在一起的情景，围坐火炉，互相嬉闹。那种记忆并不只是童年的记忆，而是一个时代的记忆，它也标志着，那样一个年代所形成的某些人际关系，已随时代的发展而改变，这些改变有的是因为家庭的结构，有的则是因为居住空间的改变，有的则是与这个时代的主流价值观有关。

      终于将年前所欠的文债还清，心情大是放松，以后书评类估计要越写越少，这次为《社会学家茶座》写一篇关于科耶夫的书评，竟然耗费了2个月的时间，不仅将整个当代法国哲学史的背景梳理了一遍，连《精神现象学》的第四章也细读了一次，6000字的书评写完，竟有恍如隔世之感，脑力严重透支。
      书评而言，虽然评的是一本书，但是对于很多陌生领域而言，其实最后往往读成10几本书，这么大的工作量，本应是专业写作的要求，但是如今媒体催稿，大多都不顾书评的逻辑，往往都是轻便打发算了。如此写作，实难见人。
      养猫已近一年时间，家中两猫渐已长大，当中趣事当是无数，难以在BLOG上一一呈现。不过最近“虎皮”养成一习惯，每天早上打开阳台门，他必然要马上冲至床前瞄瞄直叫，然后得寸进尺，爬上床来，半躺在身边作撒娇状，为何如此，我也百思不得其解，因为这两只猫向来独立，唯一的答案是，最近虎皮眼睛发炎，是由我给他亲点眼药水，因此感恩图报，也学会柔情百转了。
      前天深夜，身体不适，半躺在沙发上看完《盲山》，电影手法上尽管有的不太尽如人意，但是当中的许多细节却让人印象深刻，比如电影的结尾方式，以及对三次逃跑过程中的那种既有戏剧性也十分冷静的镜头，无疑让人感到莫名的残酷之感，也让人顿生想象，假如我是那位女子，我又会以何等态度去面对那样一种状况呢？人生的残酷，在于让你的身份认同在一瞬间发生错乱，让你在不断的重新定位自身的过程中逐渐放弃了对人生意义的询问和对人性尊严的要求，最后剩下的就只有麻木与冷漠，而这样一种主题，在李杨和贾樟柯的电影结尾中都有同样的展现。

这部分是沃格林自传的节录内容，这本口述不厚，但却内容丰富，据说中文版很快就要出版。记得和RHODES教授当初通信时，他也提到了当年沃格林在奥地利与德国所遭遇到的意识形态攻击，这当中尤其是以极左翼与反犹主义为著，而这直接的后果是大学在战后以民主化的方式改造，大学教授权威开始丧失，只留下一群平庸者盘踞其中。不过当时读此书时，最感兴趣的还是他如何从传统政治观念史转到《新政治科学》的心路历程，颇让人受益。

沃格林：教师生涯

教师生涯


在尽己所能试图参与的实际科学工作之外，我充当教师已有五十年。我的教学经验从高中开始。既然我们是穷人，我就不得不通过辅导其他高中生，以此找点零花 钱。那些学生是更为富裕家庭的子女，但在智力和勤奋上并不与他们的物质富裕相称。这种工作一直持续到我高中毕业。当我开始在大学劳作，我非常幸运地在贸易 联合公司(Handelsvereinigung-Ost)找到一个自愿助理的工作，那是一家奥地利-乌克兰企业，是因第一次世界大战时中欧大国占领乌克 兰而诞生的一家公司。我辅导的一个学生是维也纳的商务部秘书长的儿子，是他注意到这份工作并让我去的。这份工报酬很低，但足以供我继续研究。就在我从研讨 班上认识了大学里的一些教授后，又开启了一份教职的可能性，那是在韦恩-弗克夏恩业余大学(Volkshochschule Wien-Volksheim)教书，报酬非常之低。这是一所由维也纳市社会主义者政府兴办的成人学校，那里的学生是来自工人环境的智力上较为敏锐又勤奋 的极端分子。我必须强调“知识上较为敏锐”，因为进入政治过程的更不敏锐的工人往往被工会的培训课程所照顾。业余大学有点像是工人和中低阶层的年轻人上大 学的地方。
在这一环境中，我学会了讨论和辩论。到我接受这份工作之际，我已经远远走出了1919年夏为期三个月的马克思主义境地，现在，我在面对这些相当激进的社会 主义者，其中大多数还是公开的共产主义者。既然我必须讲授的主题是政治科学和观念史，在立即接踵而来的狂热辩论中我是不会放弃的，或者，我不会丢失我的权 威。在这些年里，在那些年轻的激进人士和我之间还发展了永久性的良好关系，在我于1927年从美国和法国回来后，我继续此项工作，直到1938年被国家社 会主义者赶走。在年轻的马克思主义者和我当一名以科学为取向的学者的尝试之间，尽管冲突总是被强烈地表达出来，但个人的关系还是最佳的。在晚上九点之后， 即讲课时间过后，一群人总是会一起在附近的无数的咖啡馆中的某一家继续讨论。我依然记得1930年代的一个场景，那时候，在一场导致观点不一致的激烈辩论 之后，一个年轻伙伴，比我年轻不了多少，含着泪告诉我，“如果你掌权，我就非杀了你不可。”
这一小插曲也许是概括奥地利社会氛围的另一个故事的时机。在1934年社会民主党起义之后，某些社会民主党领袖被逮捕并被关押了一阵子。其中的一个领导人 是著名的阿德勒(Max Adler)，是他们的首席意识形态专家，却没有被抓。那一事件是对他自尊的极大打击，因为当时的政府已经表明每个人都知道的事情——他在政治上是全然不 重要的人物。阿德勒也是我在法学院的同事，他的朋友们有次要求我，是否能通过我与另一方的同样良好的关系做点什么，好让他也被拘留一会儿，那样的话，他也 就不至于[因自己没有被捕而]太过郁闷和低落。实际上，我还与我的一位同事谈过此事。这位同事在政府当高官，同时在大学教行政法，我问他，政府是否能在人 身保护条款允许的情况下，拘押阿德勒至少四十八小时，然后释放他。我们一起讨论了这事，他非常乐意帮忙并且彬彬有礼。他说，他完全理解阿德勒的处境，阿德 勒也是他在同一个学院的同事，自然愿意做能帮上忙的事情。但是，他很遗憾谁都不能做什么。如果阿德勒被逮捕，政府会让自身出丑，因为每个人都知道阿德勒不 重要。他实在不能帮上忙。
我与这些年轻极端分子的良好关系一直持续到纳粹时期。在1930年代，他们变得更为炽烈，因为每个人都知道，假如我不是一名共产主义者，那我就更不是一名 国家社会主义者。当占领风暴落下，我能够用推荐信帮助这些极端分子的一部分逃离到更安全的地区，比如瑞典。然而，在维也纳大学——我自1929年就作为讲 师讲课的地方，与学生的关系伴随着紧张，因为这些学生来自中等阶层家庭，他们不是工人，并且，其中智力上更为活跃的学生相当程度上还受到在那一阶层猖獗流 行的国家社会主义和反犹主义的影响。并没有公开的冲突，但关系也不温和。在1938年，国家社会主义者的占领来了，我观察到，相当数量在前一天还是我的行 政程序讨论班的学生，穿上了党卫队的黑色制服。
作为与年轻的工人-极端者相区别的中欧学生，我能说的与他们相处的真实经验只是在1958年至1969年之间的岁月，那时我在慕尼黑当教授。因为我被召去 慕尼黑组建一个那时候还不存在的政治科学研究所，我必须首先有一打助理人员，帮着建立图书馆，一起照料我的学生，因为相当数量的学生蜂拥而至我的讲座和讨 论班。从这些开始，伴随着相当数量的空房间装满书架和图书，那里发展出一个研究所，一直延续到我在1969年离开时。逐渐地，那里成长出一批学生，他们自 己也成为教育力量，吸引另外一些政治科学的学生。这十一年的结果必须被描述为相当的成功。首先，有作为可见建筑物的研究所，有一个一流的图书馆——藏书涵 盖历史科学的最新发展成果，不仅有德语的，而且首先有英语和法语的。特别的关注点是那些对于理解西方文化乃是基本的诸般领域——即，古典哲学，犹太教和基 督教；现代史和现代政治观念部分不得不尽可能迅速更新资料；在古代近东、中国、印度和非洲的史前史，以及最新考古发现，都必须予以关注。图书馆变得很著 名，被来自各个领域的年轻学者广为使用，因为它是有关人和社会的当代科学的发展方面最好的全方位的图书馆。
年轻人做得相当好，我们也开始出版代表研究所工作的专著。这些系列专著中，最重要的是在慕尼黑由利斯特(List)出版社出版的“政治与历史丛刊” (Schriftenreihe zur Politik und Geschichte)，现已出版十种。就涵盖的领域和问题而言，我关注到的有：韦伯-谢法(Peter Weber-Schaefer)论中国“人居领地”，奥匹兹(Peter J. Opitz)论老子，冯•西弗斯(Peter von Sivers)论伊本-赫勒顿(Ihn-Khaldum)政治理论；还有主要处理十八、十九世纪西方思想史的深入研究和一些专著：海宁森(Manfred Henningsen)论汤因比《历史研究》，瑙曼(Michael Maumann)论克劳斯(Karl Kraus)，科尔伯格(Eckard Kolberg)论拉沙勒(LaSalle)，海达•赫维希(Hedda Herwig)论弗洛伊德和荣格，夏伯特(Tilo Schabert)论法国十八世纪有关自然和革命的象征系，和达格玛•赫维希(Dagmar Herwig)论穆西尔(Robert Musil)。桑多兹(Ellis Sandoz)教授论陀斯妥耶夫斯基的工作也属于那些岁月，该研究最初是作为在慕尼黑的博士论文出版的。在这十年间，研究所的第一代人开始老了，也变得独 立，其中的三位——奥匹兹、海宁森和盖伯哈特(Jürgen Gebhart)——成为平装版《政治思想史》（Geschichte des politischen Denkens）活跃的主编，该学刊刊布至今已出版了十一卷。奥匹兹还主编了一本论述十九世纪直到共产主义运动的中国革命的论文集。后来从其他领域进入研 究所的人也出产了有趣的新研究成果。我愿意提及丰通(Klaus Vondung)和他的《魔术和操控》(Magie und Manipulation)一书。在开始与我一起工作的年轻人当中的年长者现在本身也处在教授职位或快要当教授了，这一集体及其工作的聚合已经成为德国知 识界的一支独特的力量——虽然难以说这一特殊集体及其力量为左或右的意识形态分子所喜爱。
人们经常问我有关欧洲学生和美国学生之间差异的经验。确有差异，但还不具有一种本质的差异，以至于我该说出一类比另一类更好之类的话。他们都各有特点。关 于德国的学生，我发现有很高程度的背景知识，足以触发他们长进，直到在科学中开展独立研究。被接收参加我的讨论班的人，特别是成为助教并开始他们自己的讨 论班的人，都至少掌握一门古典语言，当然，他们都能流利地阅读德语、法语和英语。有些在他们的特殊领域还掌握额外的语言知识。比如，根据大学的规定，伊斯 兰教专家必须能很好地掌握阿拉伯语和土耳其语；处理远东问题的学生则除了西方语言之外，还要懂得汉语和日语。这就造就了一个教养高、智力敏锐的年轻人团 队，他们在对问题的竞争性辩论的激烈竞赛中彼此帮助。当然，他们最喜欢的游戏之一是在一些技术性错误上把我抓出去，但不幸的是，我很少有机会能让他们满 意。
美国学生属于相当不同的类型。在路易斯安那，存在着由天主教堂区学校提供的相当好的文化背景。在我班上，有的学生懂拉丁语，并选择天主教神甫在路易斯安那 大学开设的托马斯哲学课程。普通学生，我得说，并不拥有你可以对欧洲学生期待的背景知识，但他们别有某种欧洲的特别是德国的学生常常缺乏的东西——常识文 化的传统。尤其在南方，年轻人当中的意识形态的腐败问题几乎可以忽略不计。学生心态开放，很少接触意识形态运动。但我在东部的经验则不太令人感到高兴。东 海岸的意识形态的腐败已经深刻地影响了学生的心灵，有时候，这些学生显露出极权主义的攻击性这样的行为特征。许多学生简直不能宽容与他们的意识形态偏见不 相一致的信息。我面对这类学生常常感到困难。不过，在总体上，即使是在所谓的极端派学生当中，也缺乏赤裸裸的好斗分子。他们可以得到对付，方法是：用如山 的信息击溃他们。他们依然具有足够的常识来意识到，他们自身的观念必须与围绕他们的环境承受某种关系；而一旦向他们活生生地揭示出他们的实在图景是极为错 误的，他们并不轻易改变立场，但至少也会开始思考。然而对德国学生中的极端分子，我难以说同样的话，假如你要做出严肃的尝试，把那些与他们的成见不相容的 事实引入到讨论中，他们只是开始嚎叫和闹事。
在路易斯安娜那些年期间，我妻子和我获得美国公民身份。这里有一个有趣的细节。负责移民事务的司法部发布了一个小册子，上面罗列可能被问的主要问题及其必 需的回答。我注意到，先不管罗斯福和战争，司法部依然是相当保守的——美国政治形式是共和制(republic)；如果你说它是民主制，你就错了。我相 信，这些问答小册子现在已经被改写了。
就我在路易斯安那的教师职位来说，从全职副教授升至教授，并最终和威廉姆斯(T. Harry Williams)教授一起成为首批博伊德教授称号的教授之一。这种教授席位的引入是大学为了向那些他们希望留住的学者支付更高的薪水。不过，当1950 年代后期，慕尼黑的教授席位向我招手时，我没有拒绝。有几个理由。首先，我可以组建我自己的研究所并且培养年轻学者以继续我所开创的工作。第二，当时的慕 尼黑薪水比路易斯安那的要高。第三，像史学家和哲学家戴姆普夫(Alois Dempf)这样的老朋友一直在一旁做工作，让我去慕尼黑，而我确实不反对进入这一非常意气相投的知识和精神环境。除此之外，让美国民主的精神在德国扎 根，或许是件好事。
在这最后一方面，起先有点困难，因为德国的学生还不习惯像美国学生那样自由说话。即使那些已经成为助教的人，你也不得不非常用力地推动他们进入个人独立的 态度，毕竟，这种独立态度与老式德国教授手下非常驯服性的助教职位的做派大相径庭。在我看来，研究所有一点是不讨人喜欢的，那就是我通过反复灌输而使得一 群年轻人在行为类型上显得如此与众不同，由此与在慕尼黑的其他研究所中受喜爱的行为类型构成很大反差。不过，总体来说，我相信，把一种国际意识的元素和民 主态度的元素注入到德国政治科学中去的想法，除了我能亲自教育的年轻人圈子之外，还没有取得成功。正如我后来在论述德国大学的讲座中分析的形势，国家社会 主义的损害一直是巨大的。一般所称的上层大学人，简直被消灭了，部分是通过实际的谋杀，因此，我1929年在海德堡遇见的教授类型单单消失了，却没有留下 由他们培养的年轻一代。然而，中低层的大学人则保存了力量；他们现在决定德国大学的一般氛围，而那个氛围是相当平庸和有限的。国家社会主义的余波经由从下 层来的暴民的侵入而在当代德国大学的毁灭中依然被感觉到，对此，大学的人事部门不能提供有效的抵抗，因为在大学，大学者的权威随着这些大学者的消失而失去 了。因此，一般前景我认为还是模糊不清。
当我说前景还模糊不清，我是指事实上，大学的积极运转，特别是在社会科学和人文学科，因着著名的民主化，尤其是通过参与式民主——事实上意味着没有人被允 许和平地做他的研究，已经被广为摧毁。比如，举个柏林的例子，极左学生简直不允许任何一个不是马克思主义者的人开口讲话；我听说在马堡某些地方也有类似情 况。慕尼黑还算不幸中的万幸，部分是因为我的研究所有一个非意识形态的科学的堡垒。我很愿意强调这一点，因为人们时常低估一个教授可以有的效应，不是通过 利用权势，而是通过在他的课堂和讨论班每年教出二三个班的学生，他们也就变成反对意识形态的有效传播力量。当然，这也将慢慢消失，如果没有保持积极的态 度，或者，因迅速增加人员编制也会变得无效，因为那样的话，研究机构会被那些无法在辩论中恰当抵制极端学生的庸人所主导。