【作文素材】牛津通识读本《The Meaning of Life》摘抄Chapter4
第四章 人生是你创造的吗？
人生是一缕烟尘、一个娼妓、一场歌舞、一溪泪水或一床玫瑰。这些在商店里陈列已久的旧标签不足以支撑我们的立论。
Life is a gas, a bitch, a cabaret, a vale of tears, a bed of roses. This bunch of shop-soiled tags may hardly seem much on which to build a case.
也许，我们不可能高明地概括出人生的意义，因为我们必须跳出人生之外才能看清它。这就像我们无法跳出自己的皮囊审视自己。只有完全超脱人类的存在，比如上帝，才能以全局的眼光考察人生，看它是否说的通？
Perhaps it is impossible to generalize intelligently about human life, because in order to do so we would have to step outside it. And this would be like trying to leap out of our skins. Surely only someone outside human existence altogether, like God, would be able to survey it as a whole and see whether it added up?
可是，我们可以依照自己熟知的现实部分做出合理的推论，来判断那些我们不熟悉的部分。这不是要观察全貌，而是要观察到足够多的部分，能够辨析其典型特征便可。
But we can make reasonable inferences from the bits of reality that we are familiar with to the bits that we aren’t. it is not a matter of seeing it all, just a matter of seeing enough to sort out what seems typical from what does not.
幸福有时被看作一种心理状态。但亚里士多德并不这么想。我们通常用“福祉”（well-being）来翻译他对幸福的叫法，而福祉是一种我们所说的灵魂的状态，对亚里士多德而言，福祉不仅包括存在者的内在状态，还包括人的行为倾向。正如维特根斯坦所说，心灵的最佳形象是身体。如果你想观察一个人的“精神”，就去看他的做事方式。在亚里士多德看来，幸福是通过美德实现的，美德首先是一种社会实践，而不是一种心灵态度。幸福是实际的生活方式的一部分，不是某种私密的内在满足。按照这种理论，虽然你无法用二元论的模式观察人类，但你可以观察某人的行为一段时间，然后宣布“他是幸福的！”并且，那个人不必非得满面笑容或手舞足蹈。
Happiness sometimes seen as a state of mind. But this is not how Aristotle regard it, ‘Well-being’, as we usually translate his term for happiness, is what we might call a state of soul, which for him involves not just an interior condition of being, but a disposition to behave in certain ways. As Ludwig Wittgenstein once remarked, the best image of the soul is the body. If you want to observe someone’s ‘spirit’, look at what they do. Happiness for Aristotle is attained by virtue, and virtue is above all a social practice rather than an attitude of mind. Happiness is part of a practical way of life, not some private inner contentment. On this theory, you could look at someone’s conduct over a period of time and exclaim ‘He’s happy!’, as you could not have to be beaming or cavorting about either.
巴吉尼与亚里士多德相悖的幸福观还体现在他借自哲学家罗伯特·诺齐克的一个场景中。假设你被塞进一个机器，类似电影《黑客帝国》中的超级计算机，它可以让你模拟体验到完全的、连续不断的幸福。大多数人难道不会因其非现实性而拒绝这一颇具诱惑的至乐吗？我们难道不想诚实地过自己的生活，没有欺骗，意识到是自己在做主，是我们自己的努力而不是由某些精心营造的装置来满足我们的愿望？巴吉尼相信，大多数人真的会基于这些理由而拒绝这台幸福机器。
Baggini’s rather un-Aristotelian idea of happiness is also evident in a scenario he takes from the philosopher Robert Nozick. Suppose that you were plugged into a machine, one rather like the supercomputer in the film The Matrix, which allowed you a virtual experience of complete, uninterrupted happiness. Wouldn’t most reject this seductive bliss on account of its unreality? Don’t we want to live our lives truthfully, without deception, aware of ourselves as the authors of our own lives, conscious that it is our own strivings and not some manufactured contraption which is responsible for our sense of fulfilment? Baggini believes that most people would indeed reject the happiness machine on these grounds.
他的想法当然没错。但他提供给我们的幸福观念再一次与亚里士多德相悖。它是一种心绪或意识状态，而不是生活方式。实际上，它正是亚里士多德可能无法理解的，或至少会反对的那种现代的幸福观。在他看来，你不可能一辈子坐在一台机器里体验到幸福——这不单是因为你的体验是模拟的而非真实的，还因为福祉包含一种实践的、交往的生活形式。亚里士多德认为幸福不是可能实施某些行动的内在倾向，而是创造心理倾向的行为方式。
He is surely right. But the idea of happiness he offers us here is once again un-Aristotelian. It is a mood or state of consciousness rather than a way of life. It is, in fact, exactly the kind of modern concept of happiness which Aristotle might well have found unintelligible, or at least objectionable. For him, you could not be happy sitting in a machine all your life – not just because your experience would be a matter of stimulation rather than reality, but because well-being involves a practical, social form of life. Happiness for Aristotle is not an inward disposition that might then issue in certain actions, but a way of acting which creates certain dispositions.
如果人生的意义问题在这种境况下显得颇为急迫，首先是因为这整个的积累过程在根本上漫无目的，就像叔本华笔下的意志一样。资本和意志一样拥有自己的动力，主要为自己而存在，把人们当作实现自己盲目发展的工具。它还拥有意志的某些卑劣的诡计，向那些被它当作工具使唤的男男女女鼓吹说他们是珍贵的、独特的、自主的。如果叔本华把这种欺骗行为称作“意识”，马克思则称之为意识形态。
If the meaning-of-life question seems pressing in this situation, it is for one thing because this whole process of accumulation is ultimately as pointless and purposeless as the Schopenhaurian Will. Like the Will, capital has a momentum of its own, exists primarily for its own sake, and uses individuals as instruments of its own blind evolution. It also has something of the low cunning of the Will, persuading the men and women it employs as so many tools that they are precious, unique, and self-determining. If Schopenhauer names this deception ‘consciousness’, Marx calls it ideology.
当我们意识到人生的意义不可能成为某个在哲学上有意义的问题的答案时，我们便窥见了一丝人生意义。
We come to glimpse something of the meaning of life when we realize that it is not the kind of thing that could be an answer to a philosophically meaningful question.
人生的意义不是对某个问题的解答，而是关乎以某种方式生活。它不是形而上的，而是伦理性的。它并不脱离生活，相反，它使生命值得度过——也就是说，它使人生具有一种品质、深度、丰富性和强度。在这个意义上，从某种角度看人生的意义便是人生本身。执著于人生的意义的人们通常会对这种说法感到失望，因为它通常不够神秘和华丽。它看起来太老套、太通俗。
The meaning of life is not a solution to a problem, but a matter of living in a certain way. It is not metaphysical, but ethical. It is not something separate from life, but what makes it worth living – which is to say, a certain quality, depth, abundance, and intensity of life. In this sense, the meaning of life is life itself, seen in a certain way. Meaning-of-life merchants generally fell let down by such a claim, since it does not seem mysterious and majestic enough. It seems both too banal and too exoteric.
“一花一世界，一沙一天国。”——威廉·布莱克
’To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower.’
这种行为叫做“agapē”，即爱，它与情欲甚至是柔情无关。爱的律令完全是非个人的：这种爱的原型是对陌生人的爱，而不是去爱那些你欲求或欣赏的人。它是一种生活实践或生活方式，而不是心理状态。它无关温暖的热情或私密的温存。那么，人生的意义是爱吗？许多敏锐的观察家，尤其是艺术家，无疑认为这是最佳的答案。爱像幸福一样，是某种基础，可以充当自身的目的。爱和幸福大约都属于我们的本性。很难解释你为什么要费心把饮用水递给口渴的人，尤其是在你知道他们将在几分钟内死去的时候。
This kind of activity is known as agapē, or love, and has nothing to do with erotic or even affectionate feelings. The command to love is purely impersonal: the prototype of it is loving strangers, not those you desire or admire. It is a practice or way of life, not a state of mind. It has no connection with warm glows or personal intimacies. Is live, then, the meaning of life? It has certainly been the favourite candidate of a number of astute observers, not least of artists. Love resembles happiness in that it seems to be a baseline term, an and in itself. Like happiness, it seems to be of our nature. It is hard to say why you should bother giving water to the thirsty, not least if you know that they will die anyway in a few minutes’ time.
如果真的存在永恒的生命，它必然就在此地此时。作为永恒之化身的，正是此时此刻，而非这样的时刻无穷接续。（维特根斯坦）
If there is such a thing as eternal life, it must be here and now. it is the present moment which is an image of eternity, not an infinite succession of such moments.
那么，我们一劳永逸地解决这个问题了吗？现代性的一个特征是，几乎没有任何重大问题能一劳永逸地得到解决。正如我在前文所说，现代性是这样一个时代，身处其中的我们渐渐意识到即使是在最关键、最根本的问题上我们也无法取得共识。无疑，我们关于人生意义的持续争论将产生丰富的成果。但是，在这样一个危险无处不在的世界中，我们追寻共同意义的失败过程既鼓舞斗志，又令人忧虑。
Have we, then, wrapped up the question once and for all? It is a feature of modernity that scarcely any important question is ever wrapped up. Modernity, as I argued earlier, is the epoch in which we come to recognize that we are unable to agree even on the most vital, fundamental of issues. No doubt our continuing wrangles over the meaning of life will prove to be fertile and productive. But in a word where we live in overwhelming danger, our failure to find common meanings is as alarming as it is invigorating.
完
The end
