評論
打印
What good is a house? No one needs privacy; natural acts are not shameful; we all do the same things, and need not hide them. No one needs beds and chairs and such furniture: the animals live healthy lives and sleep on the ground. All we require, since nature did not dress us properly, is one garment to keep us warm, and some shelter from rain and wind. So he had one blanket—to dress him in the daytime and cover him at night—and he slept in a cask. His name was Diogenes. He was the founder of the creed called Cynicism (doggishness); he spent much of his life in the rich, lazy, corrupt Greek city of Corinth, mocking and satirizing its people, and occasionally converting one of them.
房子有什么用？沒有人需要私人空間，自然的行為并不可恥；我們都干著同樣的事，不需要把它們隱藏起來。沒人需要床、椅子之類的家具：動物睡在地上也過著健康的生活。因為大自然沒有給我們配備合適的衣服，因此我們只需要一件衣服來抵御嚴寒，以及一個借以遮風避雨的住處。所以他只有一張毯子——白天披在身上，晚上蓋在身上——而他就睡在一個桶里。他叫第歐根尼，是被稱之為“犬儒主義哲學”的奠基人。他把自己一生的大多數時間花在了希臘科林斯這座富裕、懶惰和腐敗的城市中，嘲笑和譏諷那里的人，偶爾也改造一兩個，使他們改變原來的信仰。
His home was not a barrel made of wood; too expensive. It was a storage jar made of earthenware, no doubt discarded because a break had made it useless. He was not the first to inhabit such a thing. But he was the first who ever did so by choice, out of principle.
他的家還不是一個木桶，那太貴了，那是一個泥土做的儲物缸。這是一個破桶，顯然是人們棄之不用的。住這樣的地方他并不是第一個，但他確實是第一個自愿這么做的人，這是出于他自己做人的原則而已。
Diogenes was not a lunatic. He was a philosopher who wrote plays and poems and essays expounding his doctrine; he talked to those who cared to listen; he had pupils who admired him. But he taught chiefly by example. All should live naturally, he said, for what is natural is normal and cannot possibly be evil or shameful.
第歐根尼并不是瘋子。他是一個哲學家，寫過很多的劇本、詩歌和散文來闡述自己的主張，誰愿意聽他的主張，他就講給誰聽。他有敬仰他的弟子。但他主要以自己的行為來教育學生。他說，所有人都應當活得自然些，因為自然的東西才是正常的，而且不可能變得邪惡或可恥。
