你一上政治课就想打瞌睡吗,或者一听见“哲学”两个字就会眼前发黑?其实哲学并不一定就是沉闷难懂的天书,思想道德课也可以引人入胜——法学教授迈克尔·桑德尔的“公正:该如何做是好?”(“Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?”)就是最受哈佛新生欢迎的公开课。他通过生动有趣的举例引发学生思考现实问题,其视频在各大网站创下超高点击率。本文节选自第一堂课的结语部分,词汇不难,语速和缓,但长句较多,句型复杂,在理解上有一定难度。建议大家掌握好生词后通读全文,先熟悉内容,再听原声进行跟读模仿。另外,这篇文章条理分明,论述环环相扣,学有余力的同学不妨背诵下来,学习其中的写作技巧。
If you look at the 1)syllabus, you’ll notice that we read a number of great and famous books – books by Aristotle, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, John Stuart Mill注1, and others. You’ll notice, too, from the syllabus that we don’t only read these books, we also take up contemporary, political, and legal 2)controversies that raise philosophical questions.
This may sound appealing enough, but here I have to issue a warning. And the warning is this: to read these books in this way as an exercise in self-knowledge, to read them in this way carries certain risks – risks that are both personal and political, risks that every student of political philosophy has known. These risks spring from the fact that philosophy teaches us and 3)unsettles us by confronting us with what we already know.
There’s an irony. The difficulty of this course consists in the fact that it teaches what you already know. It works by taking what we know from familiar, unquestioned settings, and making it strange. Philosophy 4)estranges us from the familiar, not by supplying new information, but by inviting and 5)provoking a new way of seeing. But – and here’s the risk – once the familiar turns strange, it’s never quite the same again. Self-knowledge is like lost innocence: however
unsettling you find it, it can never be un-thought or unknown.
What makes this 6)enterprise difficult, but also 7)riveting, is that moral and political philosophy is a story, and you don’t know where the story will lead, but what you do know is that the story is about you.
Those are the personal risks. Now what of the political risks?
One way of introducing a course like this would be to promise you that by reading these books and debating these issues, you will become a better, more responsible citizen; you will examine the 8)presuppositions of public policy, you will 9)hone your political judgment, you will become a more effective participant in public affairs.
But this would be a partial and misleading promise. Political philosophy, for the most part, hasn’t worked that way. You have to 10)allow for the possibility that political philosophy may make you a worse citizen rather than a better one, or at least a worse citizen before it makes you a better one. And that’s because philosophy is a distancing – even 11)debilitating – activity.
Those are the risks, personal and political. And in the face of these risks, there is a characteristic 12)evasion. The name of the evasion is 13)skepticism. It’s the idea…well, it goes something like this: we didn’t 14)resolve once and for all either the cases or the principles we were arguing when we began. And if Aristotle, and Locke, and Kant, and Mill haven’t solved these questions after all of these years, who are we to think that we – here in Sanders Theatre注2 over the course of a semester – can resolve them?
It’s true these questions have been debated for a very long time, but the very fact that they have 15)recurred and persisted may suggest that though they’re impossible in one sense, they’re unavoidable in another. And the reason they’re unavoidable, the reason they’re inescapable is that we live some answer to these questions every day. So skepticism – just throwing up your hands and giving up on moral 16)reflection – is no solution.
I’ve tried to suggest through these stories and these arguments some sense of the risks and 17)temptations, of the 18)perils and the possibilities. I would simply conclude by saying that the aim of this course is to awaken the 19)restlessness of reason, and to see where it might lead.
Thank you very much.
如果你查看课程纲要就会发现,我们将要阅读一些伟大的著作——包括亚里士多德、约翰·洛克、伊曼努尔·康德、约翰·斯图尔特·米尔等人的作品。你也会从教学大纲中发现,我们不仅要看这些书,还会研究一些引发哲学问题的当代政治和法律争议。
尽管这听起来似乎很吸引人,但我必须在此先提醒一句。你们要小心的是——以这种方式看这些书相当于一种认识自我的过程,而这样的阅读方式会带来一定风险,这风险包括个人风险和政治风险,这是每一个读政治哲学的学生都知道的风险。之所以有这些风险,是因为哲学以我们熟悉的事物挑战我们,从中教导我们道理,使我们不再安于现状。
讽刺的是,这门课程的困难之处正在于你们要学习那些早已知道的事情。它会将我们已知的事情从极其熟悉、毋庸置疑的背景中抽离出来,使其变得陌生奇怪。哲学让我们对熟悉的事物产生陌生感,不是通过提供新信息,而是引导和激发我们用一个新视角去看待问题。但是——风险也正在于此——熟悉一旦变成陌生,事情就再也回不到原来的样子了。认识自我就像失去纯真——无论你为此多么不安,(一旦思考过)你再也不能懵懂无知。
让你的探索既困难重重、又引人入胜的是,道德与政治哲学就好像一个故事,你不清楚它将如何发展,但你知道这个故事与你息息相关。
以上是个人风险,那么政治风险又是什么呢?
要介绍一门这样的课程,其中一个办法就是向你们承诺——通过看这些书、讨论这些话题,你会成为一个更好、更有责任感的公民;你们会审视公共政策的先决条件,磨练自己的政治判断力,更有效地参与到公共事务当中。
但这一承诺不但片面,而且有误导性。在大多数情况下,政治哲学并不会产生那样的效果。你必须考虑到政治哲学也许非但不能让你成为好公民,反而令你“变坏”,或者至少会在让你成为好公民之前,先将你“变坏”。因为哲学会让人产生距离感,甚至一蹶不振。
上述这些就是风险,包括个人风险以及政治风险。面对这些风险,我们有一种特别的回避方式。这种回避方式就是“怀疑论”。也就是说……噢,这种论调认为,无论是我们上课一开始探讨的案例或者原理,我们都无法一劳永逸地解决问题。倘若这么多年以来,
亚里士多德、洛克、康德或米尔都无法解答这些问题,我们又有什么能耐——就凭在桑德斯剧院里短短一个学期的课程——去解答这些问题?
没错,人们一直在讨论这些问题。正因为它们不断重演,阴魂不散,这也许意味着尽管它们一方面无法解决,但在另一方面,它们又是无法避免的。它们之所以不可避免,正是因为我们每天都生活在这些问题的答案之中。因此,只是让你撒手不管、放弃道德反思的怀疑论并非解决之道。
通过以上这些故事和讨论,我试图让你们明白到其中的风险和诱惑,让你们明白到其中的危险和机遇。简而言之,这门课程的目的是唤醒你们永不停歇的理性,看看理性思考会把你们带向何方。
谢谢大家。
