黑暗奴隶拍卖会第八集:人生的意义

The philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre thought that, without God, our lives are bereft of meaning.  He tells us in his essay “Existentialism,” “if God does not exist, we find no values or commands to turn to which legitimize our conduct.  So, in the bright realm of values, we have no excuse behind us, nor justification before us.”  On this view, God gives our lives the values upon which meaning rests. And if  God does not exist, as Sartre claims, our lives can have only the meaning we confer upon them.

哲学家萨特认为，如果上帝缺席，人生就会失去意义。他在文章《存在主义》中写道，“如果上帝不存在，我们会找不到任何价值或依托，来肯定我们的种种行为。所以在敞亮的价值领域中，人们身后没有借口，面前没有理由。”从这个观点来看，是上帝赋予了人生的价值，而人生的意义即依赖于此价值。像萨特所说，如果上帝不存在，人生就只剩下我们自己赋予的意义。

This seems wrong on two counts. First, why would the existence of God guarantee the meaningfulness of each of our lives?  Is a life of unremitting drudgery or unrequited struggle really redeemed if there’s a larger plan, one to which we have no access, into which it fits?  That would be small compensation for a life that would otherwise feel like a waste — a point not lost on thinkers like Karl Marx, who called religion the “opium of the people.”  Moreover, does God actually ground the values by which we live?  Do we not, as Plato recognized 2500 years ago, already have to think of those values as good in order to ascribe them to God?

这个结论似乎有两点谬误。第一点，为何上帝的存在即保证了每个人的人生之意义？不懈地做着单调沉闷的工作，或坚持没有任何回报的奋斗，这样的人生真的就能得到救赎么，如果有更广阔也更契合的蓝图，而我们不得其入呢？除非有微小的补偿，否则会感觉生活浪费了——此想法没有被马克思这样的思想家遗漏，他称宗教是“人类的鸦片”。而且，上帝确为我们种下了赖以生存的价值基石么？其实正如柏拉图在2500年前所说，人们已经自发把那些价值看成是好的，目的就为了把它们归为上帝的功劳。

Second, and more pointedly, must the meaningfulness of our lives depend on the existence of God?  Must meaning rely upon articles of faith? Basing life’s meaningfulness on the existence of a deity not only leaves all atheists out of the picture; it leaves different believers out of one another’s picture.   What seems called for is an approach to thinking about meaning that can draw us together, one that exists alongside or instead of religious views.

第二点，同时也是更尖锐的一点，人生的意义必须有赖于上帝的存在么？意义必须仰仗于宗教信仰么？如果说人生的意义基于神灵的存在，那么所有的无神论者被排除在外了，不同信仰的人们也被排除出彼此的宗教之外了。我们需要的似乎是其意义能海纳百川的东西。

A promising and more inclusive approach  is offered by Susan Wolf in her recent and compelling book, “Meaning in Life and Why It Matters.”   A meaningful life, she claims, is distinct from a happy life or a morally good one. In her view, “meaning arises when subjective attraction meets objective attractiveness.” A meaningful life must, in some sense then, feel worthwhile.  The person living the life must be engaged by it.  A life of commitment to causes that are generally defined as worthy — like feeding and clothing the poor or ministering to the ill — but that do not move the person participating in them will lack meaningfulness in this sense. However, for a life to be meaningful, it must also be worthwhile. Engagement in a life of tiddlywinks does not rise to the level of a meaningful life, no matter how gripped one might be by the game.

在苏珊·沃尔夫受人瞩目的新书《人生的意义及其重要性》中，给出了颇有建树并更加宽泛的态度。苏珊提出有意义的人生不同于快乐的人生，也不同于道德高尚的人生。她的看法是，“当主观吸引力与客观吸引力契合时，意义由此产生。”从某种程度上来说，有意义的人生必须让人感觉是值得的。度过人生历程的个体须全情投入。把一生奉献给事业通常被看作是值得的——比如给穷人提供温饱，或者医治病患——可这并不会对参与其中的其他个体产生影响，所以从这方面来说，意义缺失掉了。值得的人生不一定是有意义的，而有意义的人生必须同样是值得的。流连于下等酒吧的一生成不了有意义的人生，不管他有多么沉迷其中。

Often one defends an idea by giving reasons for it.  However, sometimes the best defense is not to give reasons at the outset but instead to pursue the idea in order to see where it leads.  Does it capture something important if we utilize it to understand ourselves? It’s this latter tack that I would like to try here.  The pursuit of this core idea — that a meaningful life is both valued and valuable — allows us to understand several important aspects of our attitudes toward ourselves and others.

一个人要维护一个想法，常常通过加诸若干理由来支撑。不过有时候，最好的维护不是一开始就摆理由，而是追逐这个想法，看它导向何方。如果借由这个想法来认识自己，它会捕捉到什么重要的讯息吗？我想在这儿试试这个法子。要追逐的核心思想即是：有意义的人生既被赋予价值，同时又富于价值。这能让我们理解一些重要信息，关于如何看待自己，以及如何看待他人。

In this pursuit, the first step we might take beyond what Wolf tells us is to recognize that lives unfold over time.  A life is not an unrelated series of actions or projects or states of being.  A life has, we might say, a trajectory. It is lived in a temporal thickness.  Even if my life’s trajectory seems disjointed or to lack continuity, it is my life that is disconnected in its unfolding, not elements of several different lives.

在追逐此想法的过程中，首先我们要做的是抛开苏珊的讲述，认识到生命的画卷跟随时间的流逝而展露。人生不是由一串无关联的行为、规划或情境拼凑的。我们不妨这么说，人生就是轨迹线，密度由时间构成。即使轨迹看上去杂乱，缺乏连贯性，那也只是我这个人的人生图景不够紧凑，而非若干不同生命体的拼凑。

If a life has a trajectory, then it can be conceived narratively.  A human life can be seen as a story, or as a series of stories that are more or less related.  This does not mean that the person whose life it is must conceive it or live it narratively.  I needn’t say to myself, “Here’s the story I want construct,” or, “This is the story so far.” What it means rather is that, if one reflected on one’s life, one could reasonably see it in terms of various story lines, whether parallel or intersecting or distinct.  This idea can be traced back to Aristotle’s “Ethics,” but has made a reappearance with some recent narrative conceptions of what a self is.

假设人生有轨迹可寻，那就可以把它设想成故事一样。人的一生可以看成是故事，或多少相关联的一系列故事。这并不是说人们必须把人生想得故事化或过得故事化。我无需对自己说：“这是我想构建的故事，”或者“这是故事发展到现在的样子。”把人生比成故事其实是指，人们回看人生就像看到若干的故事线一般，平行也好，交叉也罢，或全无关联。此想法可追溯至亚里斯多德的《伦理学》，只是我们这里换用故事化的观念来描绘“自我”罢了。

What makes a trajectory a meaningful one?  If Wolf is right, it has to feel worthwhile and, beyond that, has to be engaged in projects that are objectively worthwhile.  There is not much difficulty in knowing what feels worthwhile.  Most of us are good at sensing when we’re onto something and when we’re not.  Objective worthiness is more elusive.  We don’t want to reduce it simply to a morally good life, as though a meaningful life were simply an unalienated moral life. Meaningful lives are not so limited and, as we shall see, are sometimes more vexed.  So we must ask what lends objective worthiness to a life outside the moral realm.  Here is where the narrative character of a life comes into play.

是什么东西让轨迹成为有意义的轨迹呢？如果苏珊是正确的，除了需感觉值得外，还要客观上也是值得的项目。要主观感觉值得，不是一件难事。我们大多数的人皆擅长于感觉，不管熟不熟悉面前的事物。客观的值得更难捉摸些。我们不愿把它简单降解为道德高尚的人生，好像有意义的人生即简单等于完善的道德人生。有意义的人生并非如此狭隘，有时是更为繁复的。所以在道德范畴之外，我们必须设问，是什么东西带给人生客观性的值得。这一点是演绎人生故事的切入点。

There are values we associate with a good narrative and its characters that are distinct from those we associate with good morals.  A fictional character can be intense, adventurous, steadfast or subtle.  Think here of the adventurousness of Ishmael in “Moby-Dick,” the quiet intensity of Kip in “The English Patient,” the steadfastness of Dilsey in “The Sound and the Fury” or the subtlety of Marco Polo in “Invisible Cities.”  As with these fictional characters, so with our lives.   When a life embodies one or more of these values (or others), and feels engaging to the one who lives it, it is to that extent meaningful.  There are narrative values expressed by human lives that are not reducible to moral values.  Nor are they reducible to happiness; they are not simply matters of subjective feeling.  Narrative values are not felt, they are lived.  And they constitute their own arena of value, one that has not been generally recognized by philosophers who reflect on life’s meaningfulness.

这里所说的价值与道德无关，而是指具备很强的故事性。故事中的人物可以是热切的、爱冒险的、坚毅的，或敏锐的都行。设想《白鲸记》中伊希梅尔的冒险精神，《英国病人》中基普那静默的激情，《喧哗与骚动》中迪尔西的坚毅，《看不见的城市》中马可波罗的敏锐。我们的人生与这些虚构人物是一样的。每当有生命体现出这些价值中的一项或几项（或者体现出另外的价值），并感觉具备这些价值的人很有魅力时，这便是有意义。由生活演绎出的故事性价值并不比道德性价值低浅，也不比幸福低浅；它们不单是主观感受这么简单。故事性价值不是靠感觉的，而是从经历中生出的。它们搭建了自己的价值舞台，却常常被思考人生之意义的哲学家们忽视。

An intense life, for instance, can be lived with abandon.  One might move from engagement to engagement, or stick with a single engagement, but always (well, often) by diving into it, holding nothing back.  One throws oneself into swimming or poetry or community organizing or fundraising, or perhaps all of them at one time or another.  Such a life is likely a meaningful one.  And this is true even where it might not be an entirely moral one.

We know of people like this, people whose intensity leads them to behavior that we might call morally compromised.  Intense lovers can leave bodies in their wake when the embers of love begin to cool. Intense athletes may not be the best of teammates.  Our attitudes toward people like this are conflicted.  There is a sense in which we might admire them and another sense in which we don’t.  This is because meaningful lives don’t always coincide with good ones.  Meaningful lives can be morally compromised, just as morally good lives can feel meaningless to those who live them.

We should not take this to imply that there is no relationship between meaningfulness and morality.  They meet at certain moral limits.  An evil life, no matter how intense or steadfast, is not one we would want to call meaningful.  But within the parameters of those moral limits, the relationship between a meaningful life and a moral one is complicated.  They do not map directly onto each other.

Why might all this matter?  What is the point of understanding what makes lives meaningful?  Why not just live them?  On one level, the answer is obvious.  If we want to live meaningful lives, we might want to know something about what makes a life so.  Otherwise, we’re just taking stabs in the dark.  And in any event, for most of us it’s just part of who we are.  It’s one of the causes of our lying awake at night.

There is another reason as well.  This one is more bound to the time in which we live.  In an earlier column for The Stone, I wrote that we are currently encouraged to think of ourselves either as consumers or as entrepreneurs.  We are told to be shoppers for goods or investors for return.  Neither of these types of lives, if they are the dominant character of those lives, strike me as particularly meaningful.  This is because their narrative themes — buying, investing — are rarely the stuff of which a compelling life narrative is made.  (I say “rarely” because there may be, for example, cases of intensely lived but morally compromised lives of investment that do not cross any moral limit to meaningfulness.) They usually lack what Wolf calls “objective attractiveness.”  To be sure, we must buy things, and may even enjoy shopping.  And we should not be entirely unconcerned with where we place our limited energies or monies.  But are these the themes of a meaningful life?  Are we likely to say of someone that he or she was a great networker or shopper, and so really knew how to live?

In what I have called an age of economics, it is even more urgent to ask the question of a meaningful life:  what it consists in, how we might live one.  Philosophy cannot prescribe the particular character of meaning that each of us should embrace.  It cannot tell each of us individually how we might trace the trajectory that is allotted to us.  But it can, and ought to, reflect upon the framework within which we consider these questions, and in doing so perhaps offer a lucidity we might otherwise lack.  This is as it should be.  Philosophy can assist us in understanding how we might think about our lives, while remaining modest enough to leave the living of them to us.