《如何从敌人身上受益》译者导读
逐字对照

BRILL · MIRYANA DIMITROVA · “TAKING CENTRE STAGE” · P. 501

Plutarch’s moralistic view presents Antony’s relationship with Cleopatra as an illustration of how, despite his military talent and popularity, a man can lose his standing because of emotional obsession. Shakespeare introduces a reverse dynamic in the portrayal of Antony: he is first seen in a negative light through the eyes of the other characters, but is eventually elevated by the tragic denouement. However, while Plutarch’s Antony hardly regrets or assesses his relationship, Shakespeare makes Antony’s life a balancing act between mind and heart.

BRILL · MIRYANA DIMITROVA · “TAKING CENTRE STAGE” · P. 505

In his Life of Coriolanus, Plutarch describes Gaius Marcius as a successful soldier, but one who is prone to wrath and excessive pride […]. His unwavering senatorial bias and opposition to plebeian benefits cost him the supreme power and lead to his banishment. Possessed by desire for revenge, he becomes an ally of the enemy he has conquered before, a decision which brings his demise.

BRILL · MIRYANA DIMITROVA · “TAKING CENTRE STAGE” · P. 505

Shakespeare dramatises the theme of setting the individual against the state, intrinsic to Plutarch’s narrative, by elaborating on Coriolanus’ perilous emotional and social isolation caused by his wrathful and disdainful temperament. Therefore, he interprets Plutarch’s account of the political calamities in Rome as intrinsically related to the protagonist’s personality […].

BLACKWELL · JAN OPSOMER · “PLUTARCH AND THE STOICS” · P. 96

This view is not just mistaken, Plutarch argues, it is also harmful. For it seduces us into believing that once we have overcome a certain bad inclination, we no longer have to worry about it: we have left it behind. Nothing could be more dangerous! We should rather realize that the irrational is a constitutive part of our souls. Hence we can never get rid of it. A vicious inclination that we have overcome has merely become less strong, so that we no longer perceive it. But it lurks unseen in the background, just waiting for an opportunity to seize control over us again. It will see its chance when we become less attentive to the danger. […] That is why Plutarch in the works that provide concrete moral advice insists on the never-abating threat posed by the passions. The key to success is the awareness of the irrational in us. We should always watch out for its presence and tricks.

BLACKWELL · BERNARD BOULET · “THE PHILOSOPHER-KING” · P. 460

In Imperial Rome, even under Trajan, Plutarch could not directly insist on the rule of the philosopher-king as Plato had done in Athens. Plutarch mostly encouraged rulers to practice moderation and justice, according to good laws. A century later, Marcus Aurelius became emperor, bearing witness that some form of philosopher-king is possible, while extremely rare.

BLACKWELL · JAN OPSOMER · “PLUTARCH AND THE STOICS” · PP. 95–96

The account of the composition of the soul is of the utmost importance for Plutarch’s ethics and sets him apart sharply from the Stoics. In the human soul, there is nothing that is unmixed and pure: the two components are inextricably intertwined […] in such a way that you will never find either an emotion or passion (pathos) devoid of reason or an activity of the mind, untainted by desire or ambition […].

Since they have a monistic view of the soul, which they consider to be inherently rational and divine, they cannot help but consider the passions to be reason. […] Passion […] is nothing but a rational mistake. […] Plutarch condemns it without ambiguity: the truly twofold and composite nature of the soul eludes these philosophers.

The refutation of this error is the main goal of Plutarch’s theoretical treatise on moral virtue, De virtute morali. […] Stoics think that it is possible […] to reach a state of passionlessness or apatheia, and that this is what one should strive for. Instead, Plutarch believes, one should conceive of virtue as reason imposing the right mean between opposite passions: metriopatheia, that is. […] Since the (orthodox) Stoics have a wrong, monolithic conception of the soul, they think it should be possible […] to eradicate the passions completely. Once that is achieved, they claim, one has become wise and it has become impossible to err.

BLACKWELL · ELENI KECHAGIA-OVSEIKO · “PLUTARCH AND EPICUREANISM” · P. 118

Plutarch is also a knowledgeable scholar and a conscientious teacher who does not just set out to demolish the Epicurean ideas for the sake of polemic only. His three anti-Epicurean writings offer a wealth of information about Epicurus and his ideas, but, most importantly, provide insightful and philosophically justified criticisms of the main Epicurean tenets […]. As for the modern readers, Plutarch’s critiques of Epicureanism are valuable secondary literature for Epicurean philosophy […].

BLACKWELL · JAN OPSOMER · “PLUTARCH AND THE STOICS” · PP. 92–93

He objects above all to the Stoic idea of the divine logos as the single active cause pervading the entire universe. […] If there is only one causal power that determines everything, it is impossible to explain evil: either one has to deny that there is evil […] given the real existence of disease, war, human vice, and other bad things, or one has to make god responsible for evil, but that would be blasphemous. […] It is especially the second line that gets criticized by Plutarch, as it is inevitably impious.

If god is the author of all, so Plutarch claims, it is impossible for anything bad to happen […]. To the doctrine of a monistic divine causation of all things Plutarch opposes dualism […]. The source of evil is rather the irrational soul. […] The irrationality never completely disappears: evil, i.e. disorder, is ineradicable. The Stoics refuse to admit even a mitigated form of dualism, such as Plutarch’s, and hence have no explanation for the existence of evil […].

Whereas the Epicureans make god the cause of nothing – they deny divine providence and attribute the decline to blind natural causes – the Stoics again make him the cause of everything […]. Once more, the Platonic approach steers a middle course between both extremes.

BLACKWELL · ELENI KECHAGIA-OVSEIKO · “PLUTARCH AND EPICUREANISM” · PP. 114–115

The suggestion that there is nothing more to the idea of the Good than the absence of Evil […] is particularly objectionable for Plutarch: he […] expects the Good to have some positive, added value in itself […]. As such, the ultimate good cannot simply lie in the abolition of evil: relieving oneself from, say, the uncomfortable condition of itching is a good thing, but this does not make scratching the ultimate good […].

Plutarch’s criticism here is very much dependent upon Plato’s views on pleasure as found in the Republic. […] Plutarch […] concludes that by equating pleasure with painlessness the Epicureans fail to capture the true nature of pleasure and make “the final goal of wisdom a state with which the non-rational animals begin” […]. Painlessness […] is a condition toward which animals strive instinctively and to declare this to be the highest good and ultimate goal of all human beings’ rational endeavor is to reduce humanity to the level of non-rational animals.

THE ROUSSEAUIAN MIND · REBECCA KINGSTON · “ROUSSEAU’S DEBT TO PLUTARCH” · PP. 23–25

[…] he shares with Plutarch a central preoccupation concerning the manner in which education can best serve the goal of virtue. […] Plutarch may be said to have sowed the seeds for Rousseau to acknowledge that social and political questions can often be addressed through the lens of education and that education should be understood as primarily moral education for virtue.

Exemplarity can be understood as the focus on practical examples of moral action in the formation of a moral outlook (as opposed to the learning of abstract principles via deduction or otherwise). […] The second type of exemplarity is to use specific incidents in the lives and actions of various individuals as a means for drawing moral lessons (as opposed to discussing moral development in abstract theoretical terms). […] As stated here by Saint-Preux in a letter to Julie, examples of the highest ethical order (as opposed to rules and abstract systems of moral philosophy) appear as a central and necessary form of moral education.

It is significant to note that the first book to be read by Emile is not that of a classical hero, but of a literary one, namely Robinson Crusoe. The logic of exemplarity is operative here, but it is no longer taken from the annals of the history of classical citizenship, but from those heroes representing natural and civil independence. […] Rousseau subjects his student to the study of particular lives as a foundation for his understanding of moral psychology in the same manner that Plutarch may be said to have written the Lives.

BLACKWELL · ELENI KECHAGIA-OVSEIKO · “PLUTARCH AND EPICUREANISM” · PP. 104–105

After Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, Epicurus is the philosopher most frequently mentioned in the Plutarchan corpus. […] Even a cursory look through his extant work shows that Plutarch had a good knowledge of and significant interaction with Epicurean philosophy, its representatives, and its followers.

A closer look at his work quickly reveals that his attitude to Epicureanism was generally hostile and his take on the Epicurean theories was more often than not critical and dismissive. It is rather telling that the only treatises in Plutarch’s surviving corpus that are wholly dedicated to a discussion of Epicurean philosophy are polemical: the Adversus Colotem is a detailed refutation of an Epicurean book written by Colotes, a close friend and student of Epicurus; the Non posse suaviter vivi secundum Epicurum is a comprehensive critique of the main Epicurean ethical doctrine, namely that pleasure is the ultimate goal in human life; and the De latenter vivendo attacks the well-known Epicurean view that life in the limelight is to be avoided.

BLACKWELL · MARIANNE PADE · “FROM ANTIQUITY TO THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE” · PP. 535–536

In the ninth century Photius dedicated two entire volumes to Plutarch, the codices 161 and 245 of his encyclopedic work Bibliotheca […]. In his poem […], Theodosius Diaconus (tenth century) mentions Plutarch, together with Homer, as a writer able to confer eternal glory on his subject […]. In an epigram […] the metropolitan Johannes Mauropus (eleventh century) mentions Plato and Plutarch as the two pagans who may be saved from the wrath of Christ because they were by nature closest to divine law in doctrine and character […]. In the twelfth century the impoverished Johannes Tzetzes chose to keep a Plutarch as his only book […].

The most important figure in the history of Plutarchan studies in Byzantium was Maximus Planudes […], who collected everything by Plutarch that was still extant and organized the production of carefully edited and corrected copies, of which we now possess Biblioteca Ambrosina […] and Bibliothèque Nationale […].

BRILL · MIRYANA DIMITROVA · “TAKING CENTRE STAGE” · PP. 496–497

Timon of Athens is the non-Roman play most strongly associated with Plutarch’s Lives with the accounts of Timon in the Lives of Antony and Alcibiades furnishing the play with its key narrative points. Driven to misanthropy by his false friends, Timon rejects society as a whole and Shakespeare reinforces the bitterness of Plutarch’s character by emphasising his determination to spread vice and war. In this he cooperates with Alcibiades, who, also driven away from Athens and set on revenge, meets Timon in the wilderness, where the latter has retired, and does not hesitate to march against Athens to avenge him.

BRILL · MIRYANA DIMITROVA · “TAKING CENTRE STAGE” · PP. 494–495

[…] I consider Shakespeare’s creative relationship with Plutarch in Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra and Coriolanus with a specific focus on the two conflicts intrinsic to Shakespeare’s Roman protagonists: (1) their internal contradictions of character, including volatility of spirit or emotional excess; (2) their violent interaction with the dominant society, resulting in a tragic denouement.

BLACKWELL · BERNARD BOULET · “THE PHILOSOPHER-KING” · P. 450

To be sure, Plutarch was a Platonist. But did he renew, in Imperial Rome, the demand that Plato made in democratic Athens? Did he demand that kings and emperors become philosophers?

Plato crossed the seas to Sicily to train Dionysius as a philosopher-king, and Plutarch, close as he was to the emperor Trajan through his friend Sosius Senecio, dedicated to him his Sayings of Kings and Commanders.

Plato wrote in his Republic that philosophers, once freed from the Cave, should return to the darkness of the Cave to talk to the prisoners […], and “there is every reason to think that Plutarch saw his political essays and especially his Parallel Lives as his attempt as philosopher to enter the cave of politics” […].

Plutarch seems to distance himself from Plato’s idealism in his famous criticism of the Republic: “Plato wrote a book on the One Ideal Constitution, but because of its forbidding character he could not persuade anyone to adopt it” […]. Furthermore, the Roman Empire had achieved such a degree of good government by the end of the first century that, possibly, Plutarch’s “concern is no longer with how philosophers shall become kings, or kings philosophers, but rather merely with how the philosopher shall properly consort with the kings and consuls of his day without any thought of supplanting them” […].

BLACKWELL · JOSEPH GEIGER · “THE PROJECT OF THE PARALLEL LIVES” · PP. 298–299

Comparing the work to historiography one is aware of the well-known fact […] that so many of its best and most famous practitioners were men of affairs, often deeply involved in the events described by them. Plutarch is obviously closer to the breed of arm-chair historians of the kind of Livy […].

His contemporary, Tacitus, was still an historian and a person of some importance in the political life; such Greeks as the somewhat later Arrian and Appian managed to combine Imperial service with historical writing. Plutarch, modestly satisfied with his minor municipal functions, turned to a far away past […].