第四章?????? 人生是你創(chuàng)造的嗎？

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人生是一縷煙塵、一個娼妓、一場歌舞、一溪淚水或一床玫瑰。這些在商店里陳列已久的舊標簽不足以支撐我們的立論。

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.

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也許，我們不可能高明地概括出人生的意義，因為我們必須跳出人生之外才能看清它。這就像我們無法跳出自己的皮囊審視自己。只有完全超脫人類的存在，比如上帝，才能以全局的眼光考察人生，看它是否說的通？

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?

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可是，我們可以依照自己熟知的現實部分做出合理的推論，來判斷那些我們不熟悉的部分。這不是要觀察全貌，而是要觀察到足夠多的部分，能夠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.?

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幸福有時被看作一種心理狀態(tài)。但亞里士多德并不這么想。我們通常用“福祉”（well-being）來翻譯他對幸福的叫法，而福祉是一種我們所說的靈魂的狀態(tài)，對亞里士多德而言，福祉不僅包括存在者的內在狀態(tài)，還包括人的行為傾向。正如維特根斯坦所說，心靈的最佳形象是身體。如果你想觀察一個人的“精神”，就去看他的做事方式。在亞里士多德看來，幸福是通過美德實現的，美德首先是一種社會實踐，而不是一種心靈態(tài)度。幸福是實際的生活方式的一部分，不是某種私密的內在滿足。按照這種理論，雖然你無法用二元論的模式觀察人類，但你可以觀察某人的行為一段時間，然后宣布“他是幸福的！”并且，那個人不必非得滿面笑容或手舞足蹈。

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.

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巴吉尼與亞里士多德相悖的幸福觀還體現在他借自哲學家羅伯特·諾齊克的一個場景中。假設你被塞進一個機器，類似電影《黑客帝國》中的超級計算機，它可以讓你模擬體驗到完全的、連續(xù)不斷的幸福。大多數人難道不會因其非現實性而拒絕這一頗具誘惑的至樂嗎？我們難道不想誠實地過自己的生活，沒有欺騙，意識到是自己在做主，是我們自己的努力而不是由某些精心營造的裝置來滿足我們的愿望？巴吉尼相信，大多數人真的會基于這些理由而拒絕這臺幸福機器。

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.

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他的想法當然沒錯。但他提供給我們的幸福觀念再一次與亞里士多德相悖。它是一種心緒或意識狀態(tài)，而不是生活方式。實際上，它正是亞里士多德可能無法理解的，或至少會反對的那種現代的幸福觀。在他看來，你不可能一輩子坐在一臺機器里體驗到幸?！@不單是因為你的體驗是模擬的而非真實的，還因為福祉包含一種實踐的、交往的生活形式。亞里士多德認為幸福不是可能實施某些行動的內在傾向，而是創(chuàng)造心理傾向的行為方式。

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.

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如果人生的意義問題在這種境況下顯得頗為急迫，首先是因為這整個的積累過程在根本上漫無目的，就像叔本華筆下的意志一樣。資本和意志一樣擁有自己的動力，主要為自己而存在，把人們當作實現自己盲目發(fā)展的工具。它還擁有意志的某些卑劣的詭計，向那些被它當作工具使喚的男男女女鼓吹說他們是珍貴的、獨特的、自主的。如果叔本華把這種欺騙行為稱作“意識”，馬克思則稱之為意識形態(tài)。

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. ??

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當我們意識到人生的意義不可能成為某個在哲學上有意義的問題的答案時，我們便窺見了一絲人生意義。

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.

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人生的意義不是對某個問題的解答，而是關乎以某種方式生活。它不是形而上的，而是倫理性的。它并不脫離生活，相反，它使生命值得度過——也就是說，它使人生具有一種品質、深度、豐富性和強度。在這個意義上，從某種角度看人生的意義便是人生本身。執(zhí)著于人生的意義的人們通常會對這種說法感到失望，因為它通常不夠神秘和華麗。它看起來太老套、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.

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“一花一世界，一沙一天國?！薄げ既R克

’To see a world in a grain of sand, and a heaven in a wild flower.’

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這種行為叫做“agapē”，即愛，它與情欲甚至是柔情無關。愛的律令完全是非個人的：這種愛的原型是對陌生人的愛，而不是去愛那些你欲求或欣賞的人。它是一種生活實踐或生活方式，而不是心理狀態(tài)。它無關溫暖的熱情或私密的溫存。那么，人生的意義是愛嗎？許多敏銳的觀察家，尤其是藝術家，無疑認為這是最佳的答案。愛像幸福一樣，是某種基礎，可以充當自身的目的。愛和幸福大約都屬于我們的本性。很難解釋你為什么要費心把飲用水遞給口渴的人，尤其是在你知道他們將在幾分鐘內死去的時候。

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. ??

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如果真的存在永恒的生命，它必然就在此地此時。作為永恒之化身的，正是此時此刻，而非這樣的時刻無窮接續(xù)。（維特根斯坦）

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.

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那么，我們一勞永逸地解決這個問題了嗎？現代性的一個特征是，幾乎沒有任何重大問題能一勞永逸地得到解決。正如我在前文所說，現代性是這樣一個時代，身處其中的我們漸漸意識到即使是在最關鍵、最根本的問題上我們也無法取得共識。無疑，我們關于人生意義的持續(xù)爭論將產生豐富的成果。但是，在這樣一個危險無處不在的世界中，我們追尋共同意義的失敗過程既鼓舞斗志，又令人憂慮。

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.

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完

The end