自我的科技 04

The Technologies 自我的科技 04

Michel Foucault 傅柯

Summary 結語

Seneca’s De Ira (book 3) contains some traces of the old tradition. He describes an examination of conscience. The same thing was recommended by the Epicureans, and the practice was rooted in the Pythagorean tradition. The goal was purification of the conscience using a mnemonic device. Do good things, have a good examination of the self, and a good sleep follows together with good dreams, which is contact with the gods.

西尼卡的冥想集包含古老傳統的一些痕跡他描述良心的省察。伊璧鳩魯學派也推薦相同的做法，此做法同樣根源於畢達哥拉斯的傳統。目標是要以使用記憶的方式，淨化良心。做好事，好好省查自我，睡好眠，做好夢，就能跟眾神接觸。

Seneca seems to use juridical language, and it seems that the self is both the judge and the accused. Seneca is the judge and prosecutes the self so that the examination is a kind of trial. But if you look closer, it’s rather different than a court. Seneca uses terms related not to juridical but to administrative practices, as when a comptroller looks at the books or when a building inspector examines a building. Self-examination is taking stock. Faults are simply good intentions left undone. The rule is a means of doing something correctly, not judging what has happened in the past. Later, Christian confession will look for bad intentions.

西尼卡似乎使用司法的語言，似乎自我既是法官又是被告。西尼卡是法官，起訴自我，使得省察像是在審判。但是假如你仔細看，它跟法庭又相當不同。西尼卡使用的術語不是跟司法而是跟行政的做法有關，如同一位審計長檢查帳冊，或建築督察檢視建築物。自我省察被記載下來，錯誤的地方只是一些有心要做卻沒有完成。常規是要正確地行為的方式，而不是判斷過去所發生的事。後來，基督教則是省察內心有所不軌意圖。

It is this administrative view of life much more than the juridical model that is important. Seneca isn’t a judge who has to punish but a stock-taking administrator. He is a permanent administrator of himself, not a judge of his past. He sees that everything has been done correctly following the rule but not he law. It is not real faults for which he reproaches himself but rather his lack of success. His errors are of strategy, not of moral character. He wants to make adjustments between what he wanted to do and what he had done and reactivate the rules of conduct, not excavate his guilt. In Christian confession, the penitent is obliged to memorize laws but does so in order to discover his sins.

重要的就是這個行政觀點看人生，而不是司法模式。西尼卡不是懲罰惡行的法官，而是記載過失的行政官。他自己就是一位終身職的行政官，不是審判過去的法官。他負責每件事都遵照常規，而非法律安排妥當。他譴責自己，不是因為犯了什麼大錯，而是功敗垂成。他的錯誤是策略方式，不是道德品行。他要調整他所要做的跟他所曾經做的，然後重新制定行為的常規，而不是挖掘罪惡感。在基督教的告解，懺悔者必須記著行為的法則，這樣才能發現自己的原罪。

For Seneca it isn’t a question of discovering truth in the subject but of remembering truth, recovering a truth which has been forgotten. Second, the subject doesn’t forget himself, his nature, origin, or his supernatural affinity, but the rules of conduct, what he ought to have done. Third, the recollection of errors committed in the day measures the distinction between what has been done and what should have been done. Fourth, the subject is not the operating ground for the process of deciphering but is the point where rules of conduct come together in memory. The subject constitutes the intersection between acts which have to be regulated and rules for what ought to be done. This is quite different from the Platonic conception and from the Christian conception of conscience.

對於西尼卡，問題不是要在當事人身上發現真理，而是要記住真理，曾經被遺忘的真理。其次，當事人並沒有忘記自己、自己的天性、出身、或神靈的感應，而是忘記行為常規，沒有為所當為。第三，回想當日所犯下的錯誤，可以區分曾經做過些什麼及什麼是該做而未為。第四、當事人並不是解說過程的運作場所，而是行為常規在記憶時的會合點。當事人組成行為必須被規範疇的交會點，以及應該如何行為的常規。這是相當不同於柏拉圖的觀念，也不同於基督教的良心觀念。

The Stoics spiritualized the notion of anachoresis, the retreat of an army, the hiding of an escaped slave from his master, or the retreat into the country away from the towns, as in Marcus Aurelius’s country retreat. A retreat into the country becomes a spiritual retreat into oneself. It is a general attitude and also a precise act every day; you retire into the self to discover – but not to discover faults and deep feelings, only to remember rules of action, the main laws of behavior. It is mnemotechnical formula.

禁欲學派將隱士的觀念，軍隊的撤退、奴隸逃離主人的隱藏、或遠離城鎮，隱退到鄉間，如卡苦士的鄉間隱居，全部予以化為精神。隱退到鄉間成為精神隱退到自我。這是一般的態度跟日常正確的行為，你隱退到自我是為了發現，不是要發現錯誤及深層感覺，而是要記著行為常規，行為的主要規範。這是藉記憶提醒的通則。

IV 第四章

I have spoken of three Stoic techniques of the self: letters to friends and disclosure of self; examination of self and conscience, including a review of what was done, of what should have been done, and comparison of the two. Now I want to consider the third Stoic technique, askesis, not a disclosure of the secret self but a remembering.

我曾經談到禁欲學派有三個技巧：寫信給朋友，展露自我，省察自我及良心，包含審視所作所為，應為而未為，及兩者相比較。現在我要談到禁欲學派的第三個技巧，自我修行，但不是洩露秘密的自我，而是記憶。

For Plato, one must discover the truth that is within one. For the Stoics, truth is not in oneself but in the logoi, the teaching of the teachers. One memorizes what one has heard, converting the statements one hears into rules of conduct. The subjectivization of truth is the aim of these techniques. During the imperial period , one couldn’t assimilate ethical principles without a theoretical framework such as science, as for example in Lucretius’s De Rerum Naturae. There are structural questions underlying the practice of the examination of the self every night. I want to underscore the fact that in Stoicism it’s not the deciphering of the self, not the means to disclose secrecy, which is important; it’s the memory of what you’ve done and what you’ve had to do.

對於柏拉圖，我們必須在人自身之內發現真理。對於禁欲學派，真理不是自我本身，而是在理性，師長的教導。我們記住我們所曾經聽過，將我們所聽到的陳述轉變成行為的常規。臣服於真理是這些技巧的目標。在帝國時期，假如沒有理論的架構，如科學，如馬苦士的自然頌，我們無法吸收到倫理的原則。每夜自我的省察的做法，會有一些作為依據的結構性的問題。

In Christianity asceticism always refers to a certain renunciation of the self and of reality because most of the time your self is a part of that reality you have to renounce in order to get access to another level of reality. This move to attain the renunciation of the self distinguishes Christian asceticism.

在基督教，禁欲總是提到某些自我及真理的摒棄，因為大部份時刻，你的自我是你必須捨棄的那個真理的一部份，為了要接近另一層面的真理。想要完成自我的捨棄這個舉動，是基督教的禁欲論引人注意的地方

In the philosophical tradition dominated by Stoicism, askesis means not renunciation but the progressive consideration of self, or mastery over oneself, obtained not through the renunciation of reality but through the acquisition and assimilation of truth. It has as its final aim not preparation for another reality but access to the reality of this world. The Greek word for this is paraskeuazõ (“to get prepared”). It is a set of practices by which one can acquire, assimilate, and transform truth into a permanent principle of action. Alethia becomes ethos. It is a process of becoming more subjective.

在禁欲學派佔優勢的哲學的傳統，自我修行並不是意味著自我的捨棄，而是不斷地省察自我，或駕馭自我，得到不是憑藉捨棄真理，而是憑藉獲得真理並融入真理。它最後的目標不是替另外一個真理做準備，而是要接近這個世界的真理。這個希臘字意思是「準備」。憑這一套做法，我們可以獲得、吸收、及轉換真理成為永久的行動原則。真理成為倫理。過程變得更主觀。

What are the principle features of askesis? They include exercises in which the subject puts himself into a situation in which he can verify whether he can confront events and use the discourse with which he is armed. It is a question of testing the preparation. Is this truth assimilated enough to become ethics so that we can behave as we must when an event presents itself?

自我修行主要的特色是什麼？它們包含一些做法，讓當事人將自己置放於一種情境，他可以驗證是否他能憑藉所被教導的理論，面對事件。這是考驗準備是否充份的問題。這個真理是否被吸收到足以成為倫理，讓我們能夠行為如我們所當為，當面臨考驗的事件？

The Greeks charcterized the two poles of those exercises by the terms melete and gymnasia. Melete means “meditation”, according to the Latin translation, meditatio. It has the same root as epimelesthai. It is a rather vague term, a technical term borrowed from rhetoric. Melete is the work one undertook in order to prepare a discourse or an improvisation by thinking over useful terms and arguments. You had to anticipate the real situation through dialogue in your thoughts. The philosophical meditation is this kind of meditation: It is composed of memorizing responses and reactivating those memories by placing oneself in a situation where one can imagine how one would react. One judges the reasoning one should use in an imaginary exercise (“Let us suppose…) in order to test an action or event (for example, “How would I react?”). Imagining the articulation of possible events to test how you would react – that’s meditation.

希臘人用冥思跟健身來表縣這兩種運動的特色。冥思意思是「沉思」，依照拉丁文的翻譯，它跟了解有相同字根，是個相當模糊的術語，從修辭學借用過來的術語。冥思是我們準備論述，或臨機思索有用詞語及論辯時，所從事的公作。你必須在你腦海裡先預期對話時的真實情境。哲學的沉思就是這種沉思。它包含記憶回應及重新提起這些回應，以將自己置放於一種情境，我們能夠想像要如何反應。我們在想像的練習中（讓我們假設），判斷我們應該使用的推理，為了要測驗一個行動或事件（例如，我該如何反應？）想像如何表述可能的事件，以測驗你將如何反應，這就是冥思。

The most famous exercise of meditation is the premeditatio mallorum as practiced by the Stoics. It is an ethical, imaginary experience. In appearance it’s a rather dark and pessimistic vision about eidetic reduction.

冥思最著名的練習是禁欲學派所實行的「消災冥思」。那是一種倫理的想像的經驗。外表看起來，對於心象推論，持暗淡而悲觀的觀照。

The Stoics developed three eidetic reductions of future misfortune. First, it is not a question of imagining the future as it is likely to turn out but to imagine the worst which can happen, even if there’s little chance that it will turn out that way – the worst as certainty, as actualizing what could happen, not as calculation of probability. Second, one shouldn’t envisage things as possibly taking place in the distant future but as already actual and in the process of taking place. For example, imagining not that one might be exiled but rather that one is already exiled, subjected to torture, and dying. Third, one does this not in order to experience inarticulate sufferings but in order to convince oneself that they are not real ills. The reduction of all that is possible, of all the duration and of all the misfortunes, reveals not something bad but what we have to accept. It consists of having at the same time the future and the present event. The Epicureans were hostile to it because they thought it was useless. They thought it better to recollect and memorize past pleasures in order to derive pleasure from present events.

禁欲學派對於預測災難發展三個心象的推論。第一、問題不是想像未來如可能發展的結果，而是想像可能會發生的最糟糕的狀況，即使那樣的結果機率不大。最糟糕的狀況終會降臨，可能會發生的狀況終會發生，不是當著是機率多少的計算。第二、我們不應該想像事情在遙遠的未來才可能發生，而是當著已經是事實，並且是在發生的過程中。例如，不是想像我們可能會被放逐，而是我們現在已經是被放逐，歷經折磨，奄奄一息。第三、我們如此行為，不是為了經驗那難於說出的痛苦，而是為了說服自己，痛苦都是虛幻。對於可能狀況、發生過程、及所有災難的推論，不是要顯示人生有悲慘，而是要我們逆來順受。這同時包含未來跟現在的事件。伊璧鳩魯學派對此觀點不予茍同，因為他們認為那是無用之舉。他們認為我們最好還是回想及記憶過去的歡樂，為了我們能夠從目前的事件得到歡樂。

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