【每日斯多葛】2026年7月7日

July 7th

OUR DUTY TO LEARN

"This is what you should teach me, how to be like Odysseus—how to love my country, wife and father, and how, even after suffering shipwreck, I might keep sailing on course to those honorable ends."—SENECA, MORAL LETTERS, 88.7b

Many schoolteachers teach The Odyssey all wrong. They teach the dates, they debate whether Homer was really the author or not, whether he was blind, they explain the oral tradition, they tell students what a Cyclops is or how the Trojan Horse worked.

Seneca's advice to someone studying the classics is to forget all that. The dates, the names, the places—they hardly matter. What matters is the moral. If you got everything else wrong from The Odyssey, but you left understanding the importance of perseverance, the dangers of hubris, the risks of temptation and distraction? Then you really learned something.

We're not trying to ace tests or impress teachers. We are reading and studying to live, to be good human beings—always and forever.

7月7日

我们学习的职责

“这才是你应该教我的：如何像奥德修斯一样——如何热爱我的国家、妻子和父亲，以及如何即便遭遇船难，仍能继续沿着航线，驶向那些光荣的目标。”——塞内卡，《道德书信》，88.7b

许多学校老师完全错误地教授《奥德赛》。他们讲年代，他们争论荷马是否真的是作者、他是否是盲人，他们解释口头传统，告诉学生独眼巨人是什么，或者特洛伊木马是如何发挥作用的。

塞内卡给研读经典之人的建议是：忘掉这一切。日期、名字、地点——这些几乎都不重要。重要的是其中的道德教益。如果你把《奥德赛》中的其他一切都弄错了，但最后明白了坚持的重要性、傲慢的危险、诱惑和分心的风险，那么你就真正学到了一些东西。

我们并不是为了考高分或给老师留下深刻印象而学习。我们阅读和学习，是为了生活，为了成为好的人——永远如此。