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Listen to part of a lecture in a philosophy class.
请听一段哲学课上的演讲。
The professor has been talking about ethics.
教授在讲伦理学。
OK. If we're going to discuss goodness and justice—
如果我们要讨论美德和正义——
what makes an individual good or a society just or virtuous—then we need to start with the ancient Greeks.
使个人善良或者使社会公正或纯良的品德——那么我们需要从古希腊开始讲。
So we'll start with Plato—Plato's philosophy.
我们从柏拉图开始——柏拉图的哲学思想。
Now, some of you may have studied Plato 's philosophy in some other course, so this might be easy.
你们有一些人也许已经在别的课程上学习过柏拉图的哲学思想了，所以这应该会很简单。
OK. At the risk of boring you, let me give you just an overview of Plato's ethical theory.
好了。冒着让你们觉得厌烦的风险，我给你们概括下柏拉图的伦理理论。
Plato says the soul has—and by “soul” he simply means that which animates the body, gives it life—
柏拉图认为灵魂——他仅仅指赋予身体生命，使它有生气的东西——
anyway, he says that the soul has three separate parts...called, um, “faculties,” which I'll come back to.
总之，他说灵魂有三个独立的部分，称为“能力”，我稍后会提到。
He believed that goodness in an individual was to be found when the three parts of the soul worked together,
他认为在灵魂的三个部分一起作用时，能发现个人的美德，
when they weren't in conflict, but existed in harmony.
当它们没有冲突，处于和平状态时。
A good or just person will have a soul in which the three faculties work well together.
一个善良或者正直的人，灵魂的这三个功能磨合得很好。
So, how does he arrive at that analysis?
那么，他是如何获得那个分析的呢？
Well, he starts out in his very famous work, The Republic, um,
他在他的著作《理想国》里开始分析，
he starts out by saying it's very difficult to get a grasp on what the individual's soul looks like.
他说很难掌握个人的灵魂是什么样子的。
So, to get some idea of what the individual human soul is like,
要想了解人类的灵魂，
he says we should study the structure of society—what kinds of people and activities every society has to have.
他说，我们应该研究社会的结构——每个社会都需要什么样的人和社会活动。
He argues that every society has to have three groups of people: workers, soldiers, and leaders.
他说，社会必须有三种人：工人，士兵和领导者。
And each has a sort of defining characteristic.
每种人有都有其特征。
Every society has to have workers like farmers or, um, people who work in factories,
社会里都需要有工人，比如农民或者是在工厂里工作的人，
producing all the things that we need for everyday life.
来生产我们日常生活所需要的东西。
And according to Plato, the key feature of workers is that they're focused on their own desires or appetites—
据柏拉图说，工人的主要特征是他们专注于自己的欲望或喜好——
interested in satisfying the needs of the body. So workers are associated with desire...OK?
乐于满足身体的需要。所以工人与欲望联系在一起。懂了吗？
Now, if you live in a society that has a good amount of wealth—
那么，如果你生活在一个拥有巨大财富的社会里，
um, good agriculture, good industry—other societies are probably going to try to take it.
多产的农业，精良的工业——其他的社会也许正觊觎着它。
So you need a class of soldiers, who are supposed to protect the state from external threats.
那么就会需要士兵来保护国家免于外来威胁。
Well, these soldiers, well, they're going to be in dangerous situations quite frequently,
这些士兵，他们会经常处于险境，
so you need people with, um, a...a lot of high spirit—uh, an emotional type of individual.
所以就需要有着饱满精神的人，感情强烈的个人。
Emotion is what characterizes this group.
所以这种人的特点是感情强烈。
