S03E02 司马谈和六家之墨、名、法、道

Ssu-ma T'an and the Six Schools

The third school is that of the Mo chia or Mohist school. This school had a close-knit organization and strict discipline under the leadership of Mo Tzu. Its followers actually called themselves the Mohists. Thus the title of this school is not an invention of Ssu-ma T'an, as were some of the other schools.

第三个学派是墨家。这一学派在墨子领导下，内部有严格的纪律和组织。这一派已经自称是“墨者”，所以，它的名称不像其他某些学派的名称，是司马谈的发明；“墨者”的名称是原来就有的。

The fourth school is the Ming chia or School of Names. The followers of this school were interested in the distinction between, and relation of, what they called "names" and "actualities".

第四个学派是名家。这一派的兴趣是分辨名实，究明它们之间的关系。

The fifth school is the Fa chia or Legalist school. The Chinese word fa means pattern or law. The school derived from a group of statesmen who maintained that good government must be one based on a fixed code of law instead of on the moral institutions which the literati stressed for government.第五个学派是法家。在中文里，“法”的含义是规范或法律。这一学派源自一些政治家不赞成当时一些儒生强调政府要以德治国，他们认为，一个好的政府必须建立在一个成文法典的基础之上。

The sixth school is the Tao-Te chia or School of the Way and its Power. The followers of this school centered their metaphysics and social philosophy around the concept of Non-being, which is the Tao or Way, and its concentration in the individual as the natural virtue of man, which is Te, translated as "virtue" but better rendered as the "power" that inheres in any individual thing. This group, called by Ssu-ma T'an the Tao-Te school, was later known simply as the Tao chia, and is referred to in Western literature as the Taoist school. As pointed out in the first chapter, it should be kept carefully distinct from the Taoist religion.

第六个学派是道德家或称道家。这一派人的形而上学和社会思想都尚“无”，“无”也就是“道”，并认为它是人天生的本性，也就是“德”。“德”是“道”在任何事物内的具体化，成为事物内含的能力，如果把它译成英文，或许译作“能力”较妥。司马谈把这一派称为道德家，后来简称为道家。在第一章里，我曾指出，道家和道教必须加以区别。