【作文素材】牛津通识读本《The Meaning of Life》摘抄Chapter3

第三章       意义的没落

深度看似消失并不表明人生肤浅，因为你必须先有深度才能衬托出肤浅。

The fact that they seem to have vanished does not mean that life is superficial, since you can only have surfaces if you have depths to contrast with them.

不依靠那些意义的保证而生活，这才是自由的生活。你可以说，过去确曾有过一些宏大叙事（例如马克思主义），它们回应了某些真实的东西，但现在我们已经完全摆脱了；或者你可以坚持认为，这些叙事话语从一开始便是妄想，也就无所谓失不失去。要么这个世界不再由故事来塑造，要么这个世界从未被故事塑造过。

To live without the need for such guarantees is to be free. You can argue that there were indeed once grand narratives (Marxism, for example) which corresponded to something real, but that we are well rid of them; or you can insist that these narratives were nothing but a chimera all along, so that there was never anything to be lost. Either the world is no longer story-shaped, or it never was in the first place.

对于那些相信上帝的人，或相信宇宙背后的其他智能力量的人来说，人生之所以具有内在的意义和目的，乃是因为它自身便是一件人工制品。

For those who believe in God, or some other intelligent force behind the universe, life has built-in meanings and purposes because it is itself an artefact.

在黑格尔看来，历史理性只有通过个人真正自由地行动才能在历史进程中实现；实际上，个人越自由，历史理性就越真实。所有这些宏大叙事都消解了自由与必然性之间的区别，也即铸造自己的意义和愿意接受预先置入世界的意义之间的区别。

For Hegel, Reason realizes itself in history only through the genuinely free actions of individuals; indeed, it is at its most real when they are at their most free. All of these grand narratives dismantle the distinction between freedom and necessity – between forging your own meanings and being receptive to one already installed in the world.

因为，无论身处何方，我们都已经深陷于意义之中。我们被编织进他人的意义网络——我们不曾选择过那些意义，但它们却提供了一个母体，我们可以在其中理解自我与世界。在这个意义上，即使不是在所有意义上，“我们能决定自己的人生意义”这种观念乃是一种错觉。

For we are already plunged deep in the midst of meaning, wherever it is we happen to find  ourselves. We are woven through by the meanings of others – meanings which we never got to choose, yet which provide the matrix within which we come to make sense of ourselves and the world. In this sense, if not in every sense, the idea that I can determine the meaning of my own life is an illusion.