第二章?????? 意義的問題

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人生的意義也許只有在時間的盡頭才能得到揭示，化身為彌賽亞，款款而至?；蛘?，全宇宙不過是某個超級巨人的拇指指甲中的一個原子。

The meaning of life may only be revealed to us at the end of time, in the form of Messiah who seems to be taking his time arriving. Or the universe might be an atom in the thumbnail of some cosmic giant.

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我們可以談及某人時說：“他說的一個個字我都理解，但連起來我就不理解了?！蔽沂煜に玫哪切┰~的含義，但我搞不懂他對這些詞的用法——他想指稱什么，他暗含的態(tài)度是什么，他希望我明白什么，他為什么要我明白，諸如此類。

It would be possible to say of someone: ’I understood his words; but I didn’t understand his words. ’ I was familiar enough with the significations he was using, but I didn’t grasp how he was using them – what he was referring to, what kind of attitude he was implying towards it, what he wanted me to understand to by his words, why he wanted me to understand it, and so on.

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發(fā)覺人生無意義的人，并不是在抱怨他們不知道自己身體的構造，或者抱怨自己是陷入了黑洞或是墜入了海洋。

People who find life meaningless are not complaining that they cannot tell what kind of stuff their body is made out of, or that they do not know weather they are in a black hole or under the ocean.

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他們所要表達的是，自己的生活缺乏深意（significance）。所謂缺乏深意，就是說缺乏核心、實質、目的、質量、價值和方向。這些人不是在說他們不能理解人生，而是他們沒有什么東西值得為之生活。不是說他們的存在不可理解，而是空洞無物。

They mean, rather, that their lives lack significance. And to lack significance means to lack point, substances, purpose, quality value, and direction. Such people mean not that they cannot comprehend life, but they have nothing to live for. It is not that their existence is unintelligible, merely empty.

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… …熄滅了吧，熄滅了吧。短促的燭光！

人生只不過是一個行走的影子，

一個在舞臺上指手畫腳的拙劣的演員，

登場片刻，就在無聲無息中悄然退下；

它是一個愚人所講的故事，充滿喧嘩和騷動，

卻沒有一點意義。

… Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard on more; it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.

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《麥克白》這段臺詞至少體現(xiàn)了兩種關于“無意義”的概念。其中一個概念是存在主義的：人的存在是一片虛無，或一場空洞的鬧劇。確實有許多意義存在著，但都是糊弄人的。另一個概念是所謂語義學的，暗指人生沒有意義，就像一段瘋子的話沒有意義。這是一個白癡講述的故事，不表達任何意思。

At least two notions of meaninglessness are at work in the passage. One of them is existential: human existence is a void or empty farce. There are meanings in plenty, but they are specious. The other notion we might call semantic, implying as it does that life is senseless in the way that a piece of gibberish is. This is the tale tole by an idiot, signifying nothing.

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有些事物的出現(xiàn)純屬意外，比如生命看起來就是如此，但仍然可以展現(xiàn)出某種構思。 “意外”不等于“不可理解”。交通意外并非不可理解。它們并非完全毫無來由的反常事件，而是一系列具體原因所導致的后果。只不過這個后果并非當事人有意為之罷了… …我們經(jīng)歷的時候可能覺得毫無意義，但對于黑格爾而言，比方說，當時代精神越過自己的肩頭回望，對自己所創(chuàng)造的一切投去贊賞的一瞥時，一切都有了意義。在黑格爾眼中，甚至歷史的愚蠢錯誤和盲目小道最終都是這宏大構思的一部分。與之相反的另一種觀點，體現(xiàn)在一個老玩笑中：“我的人生充滿光彩奪目的角色，但我不知道該怎么安排情節(jié)?！睆囊粋€時刻到另一個時刻看起來都有意義，但全部歸在一起則出了毛病。

Something which comes about accidentally, as life seems to have done, can still exhibit a design. ‘Accidental’ does not mean ‘unintelligible’. Car accidents are not unintelligible. They are not freakish events entirely without rhyme or reason, but the consequence of specific causes. It is just that this consequence was not intended by those involved… … It may seem pretty meaningless while we are living it, but for Hegel it all makes prefect sense when, so to speak, the Zeitgeist looks back over its shoulder and casts an admiring eye upon what it has created. In Hegel’s eyes, even the blunders and blind alleyways of history contribute in the end to this grand design. The opposite view is the one implicit in the old joke ‘My life is full of fascinating characters, but I don’t seem to be able to work out the plot ’. That seems meaningful from one moment to the next, but it doesn’t appear to stack up.

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由于意志純粹由自己決定，它的目的完全內(nèi)在于自己，仿佛是對上帝的惡意模仿。這意味著，它不過是在利用我們?nèi)祟惡褪澜缟系钠渌?，來實現(xiàn)自己的神秘目的。我們也許自認為，我們的生命擁有價值和意義；但真相卻是，我們的存在只是在無助地充當意志的工具，為其盲目而無意義的自我再生產(chǎn)服務。

Because the Will is purely self-determing, it has its end entirely in itself, like a malevolent caricature of Almighty. And this means that it simply uses us and the rest of Creation for its own inscrutable purpose. We may believe that our lives have value and meaning; but the truth is that we exist simply as the helpless instruments of the Will’s blind, futile self-reproduction.

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它的做法是，在我們腦海中培育一種自我欺騙的拙劣機制，即“意識”，我們由此而獲得一種幻象，覺得自己的人生有目的、有價值。它讓我們誤以為，它的渴望即我們的渴望。在這個意義上，叔本華眼中的一切意識都是虛假意識。就像老話說的那樣，語言是我們掩飾思想的工具，同樣，意識也是蒙蔽我們，讓我們無法看到自身存在之徒勞本質的工具。

The will must fool us into supposing that our lives indeed have meaning; and it does so by evolving in us a clumsy mechanism of self-deception known as consciousness, which permits us the illusion of having ends and values of our own. It dupes us into believing that its own appetites are ours too. In this sense, all consciousness in Schopenhauer’s eyes is false consciousness. Just as it was once said of language that it exists so that we can conceal our thoughts from others, so consciousness exists to conceal from us the utter futility of our existence.??

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如此說來，叔本華屬于哲學家中的以下譜系：這些哲學家認為虛假意識遠不是需要用理性之光驅散的迷霧，而是絕對內(nèi)在于我們的存在中的。早期著作受到叔本華影響的尼采，也屬于這類哲學家?！罢胬硎浅舐??！彼凇稒嗔σ庵尽分袑懙溃拔覀儞碛兴囆g，是為了防止被真理摧毀?！蔽鞲衩傻隆じヂ逡恋率橇硪晃簧钍芩俏槐^的德國同胞影響的人。弗洛伊德將叔本華稱為“意志”的那個東西重新命名為“欲望”。對弗洛伊德來說，幻象、誤解和對真實（the Real）的壓抑都是自我的構成要素，而非附屬部分。一旦失去這些補救性的遺忘，我們將無法度日。會不會事實是這樣：人生確實有其意義，但這個意義我們還是不知道比較好？我們傾向于假設發(fā)現(xiàn)人生的意義是自然而然值得努力的事，但如果我們這個想法是錯的呢？如果真實是一只會把我們變成石頭的怪獸呢？

Schopenhauer, then, belongs to a lineage of thinkers for whom false consciousness, far from being a mist to be dispelled by the clear light of reason, is absolutely integral to our existence. Nietzsche, whose early writing were influenced by Schopenhauer, was another such thinker. ‘Truth is ugly ’, he writes in The Will to Power. ’We possess art lest we perish of the truth.’ Sigmund Freud was yet another who was profoundly shaped by his pessimistic compatriot. What Schopenhauer names the Will, Freud re-baptizes as Desire. For Freud, fantasy, misperception, and a repression of the Real are constitutive of the self, not accidental to it. Without such saving oblivion, we would never get by. What, then, if there was indeed a meaning to life, but that it was preferable for us not to know it? We tend to assume that discovering the meaning of life would naturally be a worthwhile thing to do, but what if this is a mistake? What if the Real was a monstrosity that would turn us to stone?

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啟蒙運動時期的思想家們則不會這么想問題，他們認為，應該勇敢地分清是非對錯。然而18和19世紀之交，“救贖的謊言”或者說“有益的虛構”這種觀念，逐漸流行開來?；蛟S，人類將被真理摧毀，倒在它無情的目光之下。興許虛構和神話不只是需要清除的謬誤，更是能讓我們存活下去的有效幻象。生命也許不過是一次生物學上的意外事件，甚至不是受到盼望的意外；但它在我們體內(nèi)培育了一種隨機現(xiàn)象，即心靈，我們可以依靠心靈來抵御由于知曉自己的偶然性而產(chǎn)生的恐懼。

This is not the kind of thought which would readily have occurred to the thinkers of the Enlightenment, for whom error was to be courageously combated by truth. As the eighteenth century turns into the nineteenth, however, the notion of the redemptive lie or salutary fiction swims gradually into view. Perhaps human beings would simply perish of the truth, withering beneath its remorseless glare. Maybe fictions and myths are not just errors to be dispelled, but productive illusions which allows us to thrive. Life may be no more than a biological accident, and not even an accident that was waiting to happen; but it has developed in us a random phenomenon known as the mind, which we can use to shield ourselves from the frightful knowledge of our own contingency.

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仿佛在為我們施行順勢療法，大自然既給了我們毒藥，也好心地給了解藥，而毒藥和解藥是同一種東西——人的意識。我們可以轉而去徒勞地猜測，大自然關心作為整體的人類卻對個體生命如此冷漠的原因。或者，我們可以把思緒轉向建構那些賦予生命的神話——宗教、人文關懷等——它們也許可以在這個不友善的宇宙給我們一些地位和意義。這些神話從科學的角度來看也許是不正確的。但我們在科學真理上或許過于自負，以至于認為它是唯一真理。

It is as though a homeopathic Nature has kindly furnished us with the cure along with the poison, and both are known as consciousness. We can turn our minds to bleak speculations on the way that Nature seems so indifferent to individual lives in its ruthless concern for the species as a whole. Or we can divert our thoughts to the business of building life-giving mythologies-religion, humanism, and the like-which might assign us some status and significance in this inhospitable universe. Such mythologies may not be true from a scientific viewpoint. But perhaps we have made too much of a fuss of scientific truth, assuming that it is the only brand of truth around. ?

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就像總體上的人文學科一樣，這些神話可以說含有自己的真理——不在于它們提出的命題多么雄辯，而在于它們所產(chǎn)生的實效。如果這些神話能讓我們懷著價值感和目的感去行動，那么，它們就足夠真實，值得繼續(xù)。

Like the humanities in general, such myths can be said to contain their own kind of truth, one which lies more in the consequences they produce than in the propositions they advance. If they allow us to act with a sense of value and purpose, then perhaps they are true enough to be going on with.

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我們?nèi)绻タ?0世紀馬克思主義理論家路易·阿爾都塞的著作，就會發(fā)現(xiàn)，這種思維方式甚至滲入了馬克思主義，帶著其對意識形態(tài)所帶來的虛假意義的堅決抵制。但如果意識形態(tài)是極其必要的呢？如果我們需要用意識形態(tài)來說服自己，讓我們相信自己是能夠自主行動的政治主體呢？馬克思主義理論也許覺得，個體沒有很大程度的聯(lián)合性和自主性，甚至沒有現(xiàn)實性，但每個個體自身必須相信他們有，如果他們想有效行動的話。在阿爾都塞看來，保衛(wèi)這種補救性的幻象是社會主義意識形態(tài)的任務。對弗洛伊德而言，心理學意義上的“自我”亦是如此，自我不過是無意識所衍生出來的，而它卻把自己當作世界的中心。自我覺得自己是一個完整的、獨立的實體，而精神分析學知道這不過是幻象；但不管怎么說，是有益的幻象，我們根本離不開它。

By the time we arrive at the work of the twentieth-century Marxist theorist Louise Althusser, this way of thinking has even infiltrated Marxism, with its stern opposition to the false consciousness of ideology. What if ideology, after all, were vitally necessary? What if we need it to persuade ourselves that we are political agents capable of acting autonomously? Marxist theory may be aware that the individual has no great degree of unity or autonomy, or even of reality; but individuals themselves must come to trust that they have, if they are to act effectively. For Althusser, it is the task of socialist ideology to secure this saving illusion. For Freud, much the same is true of the ego, which is so organized as to regard the whole world as centered on itself. The ego treats itself as a coherent, independent entity, which psychoanalysis know to be an illusion; but it is a salutary illusion all the same, without which we would be unable to operate.

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看起來，我們無法談論人生的意義了，也許還面對著人生與意義之間的選擇。如果真理將摧毀人類的存在呢？如果它如年輕時的尼采所想，是一種毀滅性的酒神力量；如叔本華陰郁地沉思的，是一種貪婪的意志；或如弗洛伊德所設想，是一種吞噬一切、冷酷無情、超越于個人之上的欲望呢？對精神分析學家雅克·拉康而言，人的主體要么“意指”，要么“存在”，不可能兩者兼具。一旦我們進入語言，進而步入人性所謂的“主體的真理”，即存在本身，就被分割在沒有盡頭的局部意義的鎖鏈之中。我們只能放棄存在以追求意義。

It seems, then, that far from speaking of the meaning of life, we might be faced with a choice between meaning and life. What if the truth were destructive of human existence? What if it were an annihilating Dionysian force, as the early Nietzsche considered; a rapacious Will, as in Schopenhauer’s sombre speculations; or a devouring, ruthlessly impersonal desire, as for Freud? For the psychoanalytical thinker Jacques Lacan, the human subject can either ‘mean’ or ‘be’, but it cannot do both together. Once we enter into language, and thus into our humanity, what one might call the ‘truth of the subject’, its being-as-such, is divided up into an unending chain of partial meanings. We attain meaning only at the price of a loss of being.

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即便如此，還是有各種道德和政治上的緊迫理由要求我們假裝相信這些概念、價值和理念有堅實的基礎。如果我們不這么做，一個人們不愿意看到的結果將是社會的無政府狀態(tài)。甚至可以說，我們懷有信念的這個事實比我們相信的具體內(nèi)容更加重要。這種形式主義接著就進入到存在主義，對后者而言，介入的狀態(tài)本身，而不是介入的實質內(nèi)容，才是本真性存在的關鍵。

Even so, there are pressing moral and political reasons why we should behave as if they were firmly grounded. If we do not, social anarchy might well be one unwelcome consequence. There is even a sense in which what we believe is less important than the sheer fact of our faith. This brandof formalism than passes on into existentialism, for which it is the fact of being committed, rather than the exact content of our commitments, which is the key to an authentic existence.

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“所有意志的行為”，叔本華寫道，“都來自匱乏、缺陷，因而都來自痛苦?！庇怯篮愕模臐M足則是罕見而不連續(xù)的。只要自我持續(xù)存在，被我們稱作“欲望”的致命傳染病就不會消失。只有無我的審美沉思，以及一種佛教史的自我克制，才能治愈我們因匱乏而產(chǎn)生的散光病，重新看清這世界的本來面目。

‘All willing’, Schopenhauer writes, ‘springs from lack, from deficiency, and thus from suffering.’ Desiring is eternal, whereas fulfilment is scanty and sporadic. There can be no end to the fatal infection we know as desire as long as the self endures. Only the selflessness of aesthetic contemplation, along with a kind of Buddhist self-abnegation, can purge us of the astigmatism of wanting, and allow us to see the world for what it is.

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無需多言，事情還有另一面。然而，如果叔本華仍然值得閱讀，那不只是因為他比幾乎任何哲學家都要更坦誠、更嚴酷地直面了人生的某種可能性，即人的存在在最卑劣、最可笑的層面上都毫無意義。還因為，他講的大部分內(nèi)容都是對的?？偟膩碚f，實際的人類歷史更多地是以匱乏、苦難和剝削，而不是以文明和教化為主要內(nèi)容。那些想當然地認為人生必定有意義，并且是令人振奮的意義的人，必須直面叔本華的陰郁挑戰(zhàn)。他的著作讓這些人不得不盡力避免自己的觀點淪為安慰性的止痛劑。

There is, needless to say, another story to tell. Yet if Schopenhauer is still well worth reading, it is not only because he confronts the possibility, more candidly and brutally than almost any other philosopher, that human existence may be pointless in the most squalid and farcical of ways. It also because much of what he has to say is surely true. On the whole, human history has indeed been more a tale of scarcity, misery, and exploitation than it has been a fable of civility and enlightenment. Those who assume that there must indeed be a meaning to life, and an uplifting one at that, have to confront the cheerless challenge of a Schopenhauer. His work forces them to struggle hard to make their vision seem anything more than anodyne consolation.