2019-03-29
CHAPTER ONE: Plato II. Socrates
They must have liked his company, for he gave every indication of physiological prosperity.
He was not so welcome at home, for he neglected his wife and children; and from Xanthippe's（苏格拉底的老婆） point of view he was a good-for-nothing（一无是处） idler who brought to his family more notoriety（臭名昭著） than bread.
Xanthippe liked to talk almost as much as Socrates did; and they seem to have had some dialogues which Plato failed to record.
Yet she, too, loved him, and could not contentedly see him die even after three-score years and ten（70岁：苏格拉底70岁去世）.
*score：二十
Why did his pupils reverence（v. 尊敬） him so?
Perhaps because he was a man as well as a philosopher: he had at great risk saved the life of Alcibiades in battle; and he could drink like a gentleman（酒品好）—without fear and without excess（别人敬酒他就喝，但不过超过自己能喝的限度）.
But no doubt they liked best in him the modesty of his wisdom: he did not claim to have wisdom, but only to seek it lovingly; he was wisdom's amateur（业余：不应该是贬义词，我在自己的主业之外还有一个自己喜欢的副业，我因为爱来做这个事情，所以可以翻译为“初心”）, not its professional.
It was said that the oracle（神谕） at Delphi, with unusual good sense（言之凿凿的神谕，神谕很多时候是晦暗不明的，所以前面用unusual来修饰）, had pronounced him the wisest of the Greeks; and he had interpreted this as an approval of the agnosticism（不可知论，怀疑论，疑神论） which was the starting-point of his philosophy—"One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing."
*Philosophy begins when one learns to doubt—particularly to doubt one's cherished beliefs, one's dogmas and one's axioms. 哲学启航于怀疑。
Who knows how these cherished beliefs became certainties with us, and whether some secret wish did not furtively beget them, clothing desire in the dress of thought?
