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Baruch Spinoza was a 17th century Dutch philosopher who tried to reinvent religion,
巴鲁赫·斯宾诺莎是17世纪荷兰哲学家，他试图重塑宗教，
moving it away from something based on superstition and ideas of direct divine intervention to being a discipline that was going to be far more impersonal, quasi scientific and yet also at times serenely consoling.
把它从迷信和直接的神性干预的观念中解放出来，变成一门更加客观、准科学的学科，同时也会给人以平静的慰藉。
Baruch - the word means blessed in Hebrew, was born in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam in 1632, a thriving central Jewish commerce in thought.
巴鲁赫这个词在希伯来语中的意思是“有福的”，他1632年出生在阿姆斯特丹的犹太区，那里是一个思想繁荣的犹太商业中心。
His ancestors were sephardic Jews who'd fled the Spanish Peninsula following the Catholic conspired expulsion of 1492.
他的祖先是塞法迪犹太人，1492年天主教密谋驱逐之后，就逃离了西班牙半岛。
Baruch, a studious, highly intelligent child, received an intensely traditional Jewish education.
巴鲁赫是一个勤奋好学、非常聪明的孩子，他接受了传统的犹太教育。
He went to the local Jewish school, the Yeshiva and followed all the Jewish High Holidays and rituals.
他去了当地的犹太学校耶希瓦，并遵循所有的犹太节日和仪式。
But gradually he began to distance himself from the faith of his ancestors.
但渐渐地，他开始远离祖先的信仰。
"Although I have been educated from boyhood in the accepted beliefs concerning Scripture", he later wrote with characteristic caution, "I have felt bound in the end to embrace other views".
“尽管我从小就接受了有关圣经的公认信仰的教育”，他后来以特有的谨慎写道，“但我最终还是感到必须接受其他观点”。
His fully fleshed-out views would to be expressed his great work 'The Ethics', written entirely in Latin and published in 1677.
他充分充实的观点将在他的伟大著作《伦理学》中表达出来，这部著作完全用拉丁文写成，出版于1677年。
In The Ethics Spinoza directly challenged the main tenets of Judaism in particular and organized religion in general.
在《伦理学》中，斯宾诺莎直接挑战了犹太教的主要教义，尤其是有组织的宗教。
God is not a person who stands outside of nature there is no one to hear our prayers or to create miracles or to punish us for misdeeds.
上帝不是一个站在自然之外的人，没有人聆听我们的祈祷、创造奇迹、惩罚我们的恶行。
There is no afterlife man is not God's chosen creature.
没有来世，人不是神所拣选的造物。
The Bible was only written by ordinary people.
圣经只是普通人写的。
God is not a craftsman or an architect, nor is he a King or military strategist who calls for believers to take up the Holy Sword.
上帝不是工匠或建筑师，也不是国王或号召信徒拿起圣剑的军事家。
God doesn't see anything, nor does he expect anything.
上帝看不到任何东西，也不期待任何东西。
He doesn't judge. He doesn't even reward the virtuous with the life after death.
他不判断，他甚至没有在贤惠的人死去后奖励他们。
Every representation of God as a person is a projection of the imagination and everything in the traditional liturgical calendar is pure superstition and mumbo-jumbo.
上帝作为一个人的每一种表现都是想象的投射，而在传统的教会年历中，一切都是纯粹的迷信和胡言乱语。
However, despite all this, remarkably, Spinoza did not declare himself an atheist.
然而，尽管如此，引人注目的是，斯宾诺莎并没有宣称自己是无神论者。
He insisted that he remained a staunch defender of God.
他坚持他仍然是上帝的坚定捍卫者。
God plays an absolutely central role in Spinoza's ethics.
上帝在斯宾诺莎的伦理学中扮演着绝对核心的角色。
But it isn't anything like the God who haunts the pages of the Old Testament.
但它并不像上帝那样萦绕在旧约的书页上。
Spinoza's God is wholly impersonal and indistinguishable from what we might variously called 'nature' or 'existence' or a 'world soul'.
斯宾诺莎的上帝是完全客观的，与我们所谓的“自然”或“存在”或“世界灵魂”没有区别。
God is the universe and its laws God is reason and truth.
上帝是宇宙和法则，上帝是理性和真理。
God is the animating force in everything that is and can be.
上帝是万物的生命力。
He is not in time and he cannot be individuated.
他不及时，不能个性化。
Spinoza writes: "Whatever is, is in God and nothing can exist or be conceived without God."
斯宾诺莎写道：“无论是什么，都在上帝里面，没有上帝，任何东西都不可能存在或孕育。”
Throughout his text, Spinoza was keen to undermine the idea of prayer.
斯宾诺莎在他的经文中热衷于破坏祈祷的思想。
In prayer, an individual appeals to God to change the way the universe works.
在祷告中，一个人祈求上帝改变宇宙运行的方式。
But Spinoza argues that this is entirely the wrong way around.
但斯宾诺莎认为这完全是错误的。
The task of human beings is to try to understand how and why the universe works the way it does and then accept it, rather than protest at the workings of existence by sending little messages up into the sky.
人类的任务是试图理解宇宙是如何和为什么以这样的方式运行的，然后接受它，而不是通过向天空发送微小的信息来抗议存在的运行方式。
As Spinoza put it beautifully but rather caustically: "Whoever loves God cannot strive that God should love him in return".
正如斯宾诺莎所说的那样：爱上帝的人不能要求上帝也应该爱他。
In other words only a deeply distorted and infantile narcissism would lead someone that wants to believe in God and then to imagine that this God would take an interest in bending the rules of existence to improve his or her life in some way.
换言之，只有极度扭曲和幼稚的自恋才会导致一个人想要相信上帝，然后想象这个上帝会有兴趣改变存在的规则，以某种方式改善他或她的生活。
Spinoza was deeply influenced by the philosophy of the Stoics of ancient Greece and Rome.
斯宾诺莎深受古希腊和罗马斯多葛学派哲学的影响。
They had argued the wisdom lies not in protest against how things are but in continuous attempts to understand the ways of the world and then bow down peacefully to necessity.
他们认为，智慧不在于抗议事物的现状，而在于不断尝试理解世界的方式，然后和平地屈从于需要。
Seneca, Spinoza's favorite philosopher, had compared human beings to dogs on a leash being led by the necessities of life in a range of directions.
斯宾诺莎最喜欢的哲学家塞涅卡曾把人比作被生活必需品牵着向各个方向走的狗。
The more one pulls against what's necessary, the more one is strangled.
一个人越是抗拒必要的东西，他就越是被勒死。
And therefore the wise must always endeavor, to try to understand ahead of time how things are.
因此，智者必须不断努力，试图提前了解事情的真相。
For example what love is like or how politics works.
比如爱是什么样的，政治是如何运作的。
And then change their direction accordingly so as not to be strangled unnecessarily.
然后相应地改变方向，以免被不必要的扼杀。
It is this kind of stoic attitude that constantly pervades Spinoza's philosophy.
斯宾诺莎哲学中不断渗透的就是这种斯多葛主义态度。
To understand God, traditionally means studying the Bible and other holy texts.
为了理解上帝，传统上意味着学习圣经和其他神圣的文本。
But Spinoza now introduces another idea.
但斯宾诺莎现在提出了另一个想法。
The best way to know God is to understand how life and the universe work.
认识上帝的最好方法就是了解生命和宇宙是如何运作的。
It's through a knowledge of psychology, philosophy and the natural sciences that one comes to understand God.
只有通过心理学、哲学和自然科学的知识，人们才能理解上帝。
In traditional religion believers ask special favors of God.
在传统宗教中，信徒要求上帝给予特别的恩惠。
Spinoza proposes instead that we should understand what God wants and we can do so in one way above all - by studying everything that is.
斯宾诺莎建议我们应该理解上帝想要什么，我们可以用一种方式来做到这一点——研究一切存在的东西。
By reasoning we can exceed to a divine eternal perspective.
通过推理，我们可以超越一个神圣的永恒的观点。
Spinoza made a famous distinction between two ways of looking at life.
斯宾诺莎对两种看待生活的方式做出了著名的区分。
We can either see it egoistically from our limited point of view.
我们要么从自己有限的角度看问题。
As he put it: sub specie durationis (under the aspect of time) or we can look at things globally and eternally: sub specie aeternitatis (under the aspect of eternity).
正如他所说：亚物种的持续时间（在时间方面）或者我们可以从全局和永恒的角度来看待事物：亚物种的持续时间（在永恒方面）。
Our nature means that we'll always be divided between the two.
我们的天性意味着我们总是被二者分开。
Sensual life pulls us towards a time-bound partial view.
感性生活把我们拉向有时间限制的局部观点。
But our reason and intelligence can give us unique access to another perspective.
但我们的理性和智慧可以让我们独特地进入另一个视角。
It can quite literally allow us - and here Spinoza becomes beautifully lyrical - to participate in eternal totality.
它完全可以让我们——在这里斯宾诺莎变得优美抒情——参与永恒的整体。
Normally we call bad, whatever is bad for us, and good whatever increases our power and advantage.
通常我们称之为坏的，任何对我们不利的，和好的，也就是任何增加我们的力量和优势。
But for Spinoza, to be truly ethical means rising above such local concerns.
但对斯宾诺莎来说，真正的道德意味着超越这种地方性的担忧。
It might all sound forbidding, but Spinoza envisaged his philosophy as a route to a life based on freedom from guilt, from sorrow, from pity or from shame.
这一切听起来可能令人望而生畏，但斯宾诺莎将他的哲学设想为一条通往免于内疚、悲伤、怜悯或羞耻的生活之路。
Happiness involves aligning our will with that of the universe.
幸福包括使我们的意志与宇宙的意志相一致。
The Universe God has its own projects and it's our task to understand rather than rail against these.
宇宙上帝有自己的计划，我们的任务是理解而不是反对这些计划。
The free person is one conscious of the necessities that compel us all.
自由的人是一个意识到迫使我们所有人的必要性的人。
Spinoza writes, the wise man, the person who understands how and why things are, possesses eternally true complacency of spirit.
斯宾诺莎写道，智者，理解事物的方式和原因的人，永远拥有真正的自满精神。
Needless to say these ideas got Spinoza into a very deep trouble.
不用说，这些想法让斯宾诺莎陷入了非常严重的麻烦。
He was excommunicated from the Jewish community of Amsterdam in 1656.
1656年，他被驱逐出阿姆斯特丹的犹太社区。
The rabbis issued a censure known as 'cherem' against the philosopher.
拉比们对这位哲学家发出了一种被称为“当灭之物”的谴责。
It went by the decree of the angels and by the commander of the holy man - we excommunicate, expel, curse and damn Brauch Spinoza with all the curses which are written in the book of law cursed he be by day and cursed be he by night.
这是根据天使的命令和圣人的统帅，我们开除教籍、驱逐、诅咒巴鲁赫·斯宾诺莎，我们将诅咒写在律法书上，他白天被诅咒，晚上被诅咒。
Cursed be he when he lies down and cursed be he when he rises up.
他躺下必受咒诅，起来必受咒诅。
Spinoza was forced to flee Amsterdam and eventually settled in The Hague, where he lived quietly and peacefully as a lens grinder, and private tutor till his death in 1677.
斯宾诺莎被迫逃离阿姆斯特丹，最终定居在海牙，在那里他当了一个镜片研磨工和私人家教，开始了安静而平静的生活，直到1677年去世。
Spinoza's work was largely forgotten down the ages.
斯宾诺莎的作品在很长一段时间内被人们遗忘了。
Hegel took an interest, as did Wittgenstein and several other twentieth century philosophers.
黑格尔和维特根斯坦以及其他几个二十世纪的哲学家都对此感兴趣。
But from many perspectives Spinoza's work constitutes a warning about failures of philosophy.
但从许多角度来看，斯宾诺莎的作品是对哲学失败的警告。
The ethics is one of the world's most beautiful books.
《伦理学》是世界上最美的书之一。
It contains a calming perspective for storing take on life.
它包含了一个平静的角度来看待生活。
It replaces the God of superstition with a wise and consoling pantheism.
它取代了迷信之神，用智慧和安慰泛神论来替代。
And yet Spinoza's work failed utterly to convince any but a few to abandon traditional religion and to move towards a rationalist, wise system of belief.
然而，斯宾诺莎的工作完全没有说服除少数人以外的任何人放弃传统宗教，走向理性主义、明智的信仰体系。
The reasons are in a way simple and banal.
原因简单而平庸。
Spinoza failed to understand, like so many philosophers before and since, that what leads people to religion isn't just reason, but far more importantly: emotion, belief, fear and tradition.
像以前和以后的许多哲学家一样，斯宾诺莎未能理解这一点：导致人们信仰宗教的不仅仅是理性，更重要的是情感、信仰、恐惧和传统。
People stick with their beliefs because they like the ritual, the communal meals, the yearly traditions, the beautiful architecture, the music and the lovely language read out in a sinagoge or church.
人们坚持自己的信仰，因为他们喜欢宗教仪式、集体聚餐、年度传统、美丽的建筑、音乐和在教堂或教堂里朗诵的可爱的语言。
Spinoza's Ethics arguably contains a whole lot more wisdom than the Bible.
斯宾诺莎的《伦理学》可以说比圣经包含了更多的智慧。
But because it comes without any of the Bible's supporting structure it remains a marginal work, studied here and there at universities in the West.
但由于它没有任何圣经的支撑结构，它仍然是一个边缘的工作，在西方大学研究一些东西。
What the traditional religion, that Spinoza thought outmoded in the 1670s, continues to thrive and convince people.
传统的宗教——斯宾诺莎在1670年代认为是过时的思想——继续蓬勃发展并说服人们。
If we're ever to replace traditional beliefs, we must remember just how much religion has helped along by ritual, tradition, art and a desire to belong.
如果我们要取代传统信仰，我们必须记住宗教在仪式、传统、艺术和归属感方面起了多大的作用。
All things that Spinoza, despite its great wisdom, ignored it as peril in his bold attempt to replace the Bible.
尽管斯宾诺莎有着巨大的智慧，但他在大胆地试图取代圣经的过程中却忽视了这一点。
