第107集 ... 西蒙·德·波伏娃 第3部分 - 责任

感谢收听本期节目。若想获取新集更新通知以及偶尔推荐的哲学阅读好物，请在Instagram上关注本播客账号@philosophiesthispodcast（连写无空格）。即使你正在连续收听并刚听完上一集，为了清晰呈现脉络，我认为有必要快速回顾西蒙娜·德·波伏娃在《模糊伦理学》中迄今阐述的核心观点：当你诚实地审视人类本质时，会发现我们都存在于各种二元对立的奇妙交界处——主体与客体、事实性与超越性、个体与群体成员。成为人类就意味着同时具备所有这些特质。

Thanks for listening to this episode. If you want updates on when new episodes are released, as well as occasional philosophical recommendations of good stuff to read, follow the podcast on Instagram at philosophies this podcast, all one word. So even if you're binge listening to this and you just got done listening to last episode, in the interest of painting a clear picture here, I think it's important to do a quick recap of everything Simone de Beauvoir said so far in the ethics of ambiguity. When you take an honest look at what it is to be a human, what you realize is that we all exist in a strange place between various dualities, subject and object, facticity and transcendence, individual and member of a group. To be a human being is to be all of these things simultaneously.

认识到自己处于这种模糊状态有时会让人困惑。这种认知可能引发焦虑，因为我们本能地抗拒无法在任何时刻明确自我定位的状态。西蒙娜·德·波伏娃指出，纵观哲学与宗教史，你会发现长久以来人们都在试图简化人类本质以消解模糊性。比如宣称：你是某个主权仁爱国家的公民。

Now recognizing you're in this state of ambiguity can sometimes be a bit confusing to people. It can cause tension because fact is we don't like not being able to nail down exactly what we are at any given moment. And if you look back at the history of philosophy and religion, Simone de Beauvoir says that what you'll find is a long tradition of people in the business of trying to simplify what we are so that everything seems a little less ambiguous. For example, you. You are a citizen of a sovereign and benevolent nation.

你出生时就签署了社会契约记得吗？暂且搁置个人欲望，你此生首要义务是对国家尽责。换言之，通过削弱二元性中的某一方，寻找某种合理化解释，让我们在世界中的定位显得不那么模糊。

You've signed a social contract at birth. Remember? Forget whatever your own individual desires are. You have a duty to uphold to this state in this life, and that comes first. In other words, reducing one side of this duality, finding some rationalization, some way of looking at our place in the world that makes everything less ambiguous.

又或者宣称：你并非肉体，而是暂时栖居其中的意识流。你终究无法控制外部事件，唯一能做的就是选择如何应对降临的一切，学会接受现实。

Or you, you're not a body. You are a stream of consciousness temporarily inhabiting that body. You can't ultimately control anything that happens outside of you. Only thing you can really do is choose how you're gonna react to whatever happens to you. Learn to accept it.

这同样是削弱二元性、寻求降低模糊感的合理化解释。但真实人生并非如此，对吧？不，人类本质在于同时作为具有独特欲望的个体和国家成员而存在。

Again, reducing one side of this duality, finding some rationalization that makes everything less ambiguous. But this isn't really what life is. Right? No. To be a human being is to be both an individual with particular individual desires and a member of a state simultaneously.

做人的真谛是在这种模糊状态中寻找二元对立的平衡点——厘清个人欲望的忠诚止于何处，而对国家（或供职公司、保龄球队等）的义务始于何方。人类本质上就处于永恒的模糊状态，我们可以用历史上任何合理化故事自我安慰，但现实中永远无法真正逃脱这种模糊性。那么，为何我们总试图逃避？为何竭力编造故事来摆脱模糊状态？

Being a human being is finding a balance within this state of ambiguity, between this duality. It's coming to terms with where your allegiance to your individual desires ends, and your obligation to the state begins, or to the company you work for, or to your bowling team, whatever. Being a human being is to exist in a constant state of ambiguity, and we can tell ourselves any one of these rational stories from history, bury our heads in the sand, but we'll never actually escape that ambiguity in reality. Now why are we trying to escape it? Why are we trying so hard to come up with a story that gets us out of this state of ambiguity?

波伏娃认为这源于童年经历。我们降生于世时，父母为让我们无忧玩耍，刻意遮蔽生存的模糊性。同时不断灌输诸如'听着小子，要想成为我这样的大人，你对世界还知之甚少'的观念。仔细想想——

Well, to Simone de Beauvoir, it happened to us in childhood. We're born into a world, into a situation where we don't have to face the ambiguity of existence head on. Our parents shield us from it in the interest of letting us just play and be kids, all the while hammering into our heads things like, hey, mister, listen. You got a lot to learn about the world if you wanna be an adult like I am. I mean, think about it.

当你还是个孩子时遇到问题，你会找谁？父母。神奇的是，无论什么问题，他们总有解决办法。在孩子眼中，父母仿佛拥有神一般的智慧和无所不能的能力。我们开始将他们视若神明。

Whenever you have a problem as a kid, who do you go to? Your parents. And magically, no matter what problem you have, they always have a solution. To a kid, parents seem to have this godlike level of wisdom and industrious ability. We start to view them like they're gods.

我们开始将他们看作已参透宇宙终极真理的完整个体。但随后事情发生了变化。当我们站在童年终点与成年起点——若细想会发现这不过是人生中一个随意划定的分界线——这个十字路口真正标志的，是你直面世界本质模糊性的时刻：需要考虑全部自由选择带来的存在主义重压，无数待平衡的可能性，所有未解之谜、遗憾悔恨，以及每个抉择所肩负的责任。我们被这股海啸般的冲击淹没。谁又能责怪我们渴望重返童年安全的茧房呢？

We start to see them as these completed beings that have harnessed the ultimate values of the universe. But then something happens. As we reach the end of childhood and the beginning of adulthood, a pretty arbitrary place in life if you really think about it, but what that crossroads is marking really is the moment you face the true ambiguity of the world, the existential weight of considering all of your freedom, all the different choices you have, all the different plates you have to keep spinning, finding balance within these dualities, all the mystery, all the regret, all the responsibility you have for every single choice you make. We're hit by the tsunami of that. And who could blame us for wanting to go back to the safe cocoon of childhood?

谁又能责怪我们试图逃避思考这些沉重命题？她列出了一系列人们用来否认世界模糊性与真实自由状态的心理防御策略。这个量表从最不自由到最自由依次排列。首先是'次等人'，这类人要么拒绝承认自由，要么对一切极度冷漠，告诉自己'反正没什么值得追求的'。接下来是占据人口大多数的'严肃人'。

Who could blame us for wanting to find a way to not actually consider all this stuff? She lays out a scale of different strategies people use to deny this ambiguity of the world and their true state of freedom. The scale moves from least free to most free. First, we had the subman, who's a person that either rejects the fact they have this freedom, or they become super apathetic about everything, telling themselves like, well, nothing's worth pursuing anyway. Next, we had the serious man, which makes up most people.

这类人通过宣称找到某种终极事业或人生目标来消除不确定性。比他们稍自由的是虚无主义者，他们认识到存在的模糊性，却错误地认为既然永远无法成为他人追求的那种'完人'，那么一切努力都毫无意义。量表上下一位比虚无主义者更自由（虽未达完全自由，但已是未真正自由者所能达到的极限），被波伏娃称为'冒险家'。毫无疑问，尼采及其世界观正是这种类型的代表——不过波伏娃对尼采的这个观点并不认同。

This is any variation of removing the ambiguity by claiming to have found some ultimate cause or ultimate project that you're gonna be engaged in for the rest of your life. A little bit more free than that person was the nihilist who recognizes the ambiguity of existence, but then makes the mistake of thinking that because they're never gonna be one of these completed people everyone else is trying to be, that nothing's worth doing at all. The next entry on the scale, more free than the nihilist, still not totally free, but probably as free as you're gonna get without actually being free, is what Simon de Beauvoir calls the adventure. Now the adventure, without question, is Nietzsche and his whole way of looking at the world. Not a big fan of this part of Nietzsche, Simon de Beauvoir is not.

若记得《查拉图斯特拉如是说》中，尼采简要阐述了骆驼、狮子与孩童的三重境界：我们生来都是骆驼，被灌输各种文化期待的负重之兽；最终我们卸下重担成为狮子，能够对周遭行为方式说'不'，认清它们不过是当下人们的偶然选择；这让我们能区分文化中滋养与桎梏的部分，最终达到尼采称为'孩童'的第三重境界——如同 playground 上随心转换游戏的孩子，我们创造自身价值，为每个项目赋予意义，过着自我实现的生活。

If you remember in Thus Book Zarathustra, Nietzsche lays out the progression of the camel, the lion, and the child real briefly. We're all born camels, beasts of burden, told where to go, and loaded up with the baggage of all sorts of cultural expectations to adhere to. Eventually, we can shed that baggage to become a lion. We can say no to all the other ways people are doing things around us and recognize them for what they actually are. Not the right way to do things, but the way people happen to be doing things right now.

这完美描述了'冒险家'的特质：他们认清世界模糊性（非次等人），看透预制人生意义的文化陷阱（非严肃人），知晓创造价值的自由并付诸行动（非虚无主义者）。但对波伏娃而言，冒险家的问题在于尼采方案的利己本质——她认为作为冒险家生活，你永远无法获得真正的自由。

This allows us to separate for ourselves the aspects of our culture that are useful versus the ones that are crippling us. All of this leading to a third level of existence that Nietzsche calls the child, where we start to resemble a child at play again. The same way a child on a playground just moves from one game to the next, present, enjoying each game for its own sake. We, being in this new place where we're not being spoon fed what we should be doing with our lives by our culture, we create our own values, choose projects to work on that correspond with those values, and just move from one project to the next and join them for their own sake, living a very self fulfilling life. This is a really good description of the adventure.

在波伏娃看来，冒险家（即尼采推崇的生活方式）的根本问题在于其自私性。她认为即便达到这种境界，你依然不是完全自由的。

They recognize the ambiguity of the world, so they're not the subman. They recognize the cultural traps you can fall into of believing in a prepackaged meaning to your life, so they're not the serious man. And they recognize they're free to create their own values, they take action on them, so they're not the nihilist. The problem with the adventurer to Simone de Beauvoir, the problem with Nietzsche's prescription is that it's selfish. And ultimately, you're living as the adventure, Simone de Beauvoir thinks you're never totally free.

记住西蒙娜·德·波伏娃的话，真正自由的唯一途径不仅是追求自己的自由，还要追求他人的自由。冒险是一个容易陷入的陷阱，因为它与自由仅一步之遥。你意识到所有剥夺自由的方式，你在追求自己的自由。但当你根据‘这对我很有趣’的标准选择参与的项目时。

Remember to Simone de Beauvoir, the only way you can be truly free is not only by willing your own freedom, but also willing the freedom of others. The adventure is an easy trap to fall into because it's just so close to being free. You recognize all the ways of denying your freedom. You're willing your own freedom. But when you choose the projects you're engaging in based on the criteria, oh, this seems interesting to me.

那就去做吧。基于这个标准，你未必在追求他人的自由。事实上，她指出，正是这种只关注自身自由的封闭态度催生了大多数暴政。冒险的问题在于，他们最终否认了我们存在的二元性中的一面，这正是一个很好的起点，来说明为什么西蒙娜·德·波伏娃认为真正的自由需要他人的自由。永远不要忘记，你既是那个对个人项目感兴趣的个体，也是整个社会的一员。

Let's do it. Based on that criteria, you're not necessarily willing the freedom of others. In fact, she points out how it's within this sort of self contained only willing my own freedom sort of attitude that most tyrannies emerge. See, the problem with what the adventure is doing is that ultimately they're denying one side of one of these dualities that we exist between, and it is a good place to start making the case for why Simone de Beauvoir thinks true freedom requires the freedom of others. Never forget that you are simultaneously both that individual with those personal projects that may be interesting to you, but also a member of society at large.

这意味着，作为冒险者，你在一个更大的背景下执行你感兴趣的项目，而这个背景只有通过他人的自由才能实现。这样的例子数不胜数。首先，最根本的是，作为当今出生的人，你不可避免地站在巨人的肩膀上。我的意思是，冒险者之所以能在众多有趣的项目中挑选，是因为他们生活在一个前人追求自由的世界里。但这不仅仅关乎过去。

What that means is that as an adventurer, you carry out the projects that you're interested in within a larger context that's only made possible by the freedom of other people. Tons of examples of this. First, and most fundamentally, I guess, is that as a person born today, you can't help but be standing on the shoulders of giants at this point. What I mean is the only way the adventure is able to pick and choose between all those projects that are interesting to them is because they're doing so in a world where people in the past willed their freedom. But it's not only the past.

你今天拥有的许多选择，都是由无数其他人每天工作、追求你的自由所实现的。这甚至延伸到未来。看，冒险者常有的态度是将生活视为一个自我封闭的实体，认为‘我创造自己的意义，我从事这些对我有意义的项目’。

So many of the options you have at your disposal in the present day are only made possible by a countless number of other people going to work every day willing your freedom. It even goes into the future. Look. A common attitude to the adventurers to think of their life as this self contained thing where I create my own meaning. I work on these projects that are meaningful to me.

而当我死去，这些项目也随之消亡，因为最初设立时，它们只对我有意义。但事实并非如此。西蒙娜·德·波伏娃会指出，奇怪的是，你生命的终点并非死亡。正如伟大的马可·奥勒留所说，我们此生所做之事将在永恒中回响。你生前选择参与的项目的影响，将在你死后长久存在。

And when I die, these projects die alongside me because initially when I set them up, they were only meaningful to me. But that's not the case. Simone de Beauvoir would point out that in a strange way, the end of your life is not when you die. As the great Marcus Aurelius says, what we do in this life echoes into eternity. That the effects of the projects that you choose to engage in when you're alive live on long after your death.

西蒙娜·德·波伏娃谈到，当你像前人一样追求他人的自由，使你的选择成为可能时，这就像你有了孩子，你的一小部分在你死后依然存在。在这个意义上，你的自由将在你死后长久延续。你正在为一个能让下一代人自由行动的世界播下种子。这与我们上集讨论的内容紧密相关。

Simone de Beauvoir talks about how when you will the freedom of others, as many have done before you to make your choices possible. It's almost like when you have kids and and a a small piece of you lives on after you're dead. Well, your freedom lives on long after you're dead in this case. You're planting the seeds of a world that's gonna allow the next generation of people to act freely. This ties into what we talked about last episode.

同样，你一生中不会有某个终极项目，一旦完成就到达终点。与其将这些项目的完成视为终点本身，我们应将其视为下一个项目的起点；同样，我们应将他人视为自由的下一个体现的起点。最大化他们的自由应成为我们的首要任务。她提出的另一点关于为何他人的自由对你自身自由必要的理由是，我们生命的意义、我们渴望的许多东西，只能由其他自由的人给予。例如，假设你生命中最重要的是被视为一位伟大的父母和篮球教练。

In the same way, there's no ultimate project you're gonna do in your life where once you've completed it, you've reached the end. And that instead of viewing the completion of these projects as ends in themselves, we should view them as a launching point for our next project, so too we should see other people as launching points for this next instantiation of freedom that's going to exist. Maximizing their freedom should be a high priority for us. Another point she makes about why the freedom of others is necessary for your own freedom is that so much of the meaning of our lives, so much of what we want out of life can only be given to us by other people who are free. For example, let's say what mattered most to you in your life was to be considered a great parent and a great basketball coach.

如今若没有他人的帮助，你永远不可能成为这两者中的任何一个。不，你需要后座坐满需要你养育的人，以及一整支篮球队需要你指导的人。否则，整个任务都是不可能完成的。巴瓦尔所说的，是我们的生活以及随之而来的价值观与他人如此紧密相连，以至于正是通过与他人的关系，意义才向我们显现。

Now without the help of other people, it is impossible for you to ever be either of those things. No. You need a backseat full of other people to be a parent of and a whole basketball team of other people to be a coach of. Otherwise, the whole task is impossible. What Bavar says is that our lives and in turn our values are so close and connected to other people that it's through relationships with other people that meanings disclose to us at all.

而他们需要自由才能做到这一点。例如，如果你希望得到家人的爱与尊重，那么他们的爱与尊重究竟有何意义？难道不是他们能在不同选择间自由抉择的权利吗？就像你把家管得像朝鲜最高领导人一样，让家人别无选择只能爱你。

And they need to be free in order to do that. For example, if what you wanted was to be loved and respected by your family, what gives their love and respect any meaning at all? Is their freedom to choose between alternatives? Right? Like, you ran your house like you were the supreme leader of North Korea, and you gave your family no choice but to love you.

想象某天你失业了，而家人没有为此哭得足够伤心。于是你把他们锁在地下室三个月，或者你告诉他们你爱他们，而他们并未因对你汹涌的爱意激动得瘫倒在地。我的意思是，如果你强迫他们表现得爱你，你真的会感受到被爱吗？他们机械的表演对你而言有意义吗？换言之，要感受到被爱以及实现生活中其他许多目标，都需要尊重他人的自由意志。

You know, you you lose your job one day, and and they didn't cry hard enough when you lost your job. So you lock them in the basement for three months, or you tell them that you love them, and they didn't fall on the ground convulsing over the the overwhelming love they have for you back. I mean, you force them to act like they loved you, would you even feel loved there? Would them going through the motions mean anything to you? In other words, to feel loved and to bring about many other goals you may have in life requires willing the freedom of others.

即便你已深信尊重他人自由是道德行为的核心要素，困境仍未结束。在《模糊性的道德》第三部分第一节中，西蒙娜·德·波伏娃描述了一种错误的认知方式——即便是完全自由的人也难以避免。这种认知方式的名称，即第一节的标题，叫作'审美态度'。她的观点根源在于——

Now, once you're convinced to the point that willing the freedom of others is an essential part of what it is to be ethical, you're still not out of the woods yet. Section one of part three of the ethics of ambiguity, Simone de Beauvoir writes about a mistaken way of looking at the world that even people who are totally free are at risk of falling into. The name of this way of looking at the world, the title of section one, is the aesthetic attitude. The aesthetic attitude. Where she's coming from is this.

这与艺术史密切相关。哲学史上，许多人探讨过判定艺术品美丑的最佳方式。长久以来存在这样一种观念：要真正欣赏艺术品、准确评判作品，你需要摒弃一切偏见再去审视它。比如，如果你出于某种原因憎恶邦戈鼓——讨厌它的音色，讨厌每个演奏者看起来都比你快乐20%——按哲学史上许多人的说法，你就不该评论一张全是邦戈鼓音乐的专辑。因为你会带着大量偏见，无法客观评价。

It has to do with the history of art in the world. Throughout the history of philosophy, a lot of people have talked about what the best way is to determine whether a piece of artwork is beautiful or not. Throughout the history of philosophy, there's been this idea that to truly appreciate a work of art, to really judge the piece of artwork accurately, what you need to do is remove yourself of all biases and prejudices before you look at it. For example, if you're somebody that just hates bongo drums for some reason, you you you hate how they sound, hate how everyone playing them seems to be 20% happier than you are in your life, If you despised bongo drums for some reason, there's a lot of people throughout the history of philosophy that would say that you shouldn't be reviewing an album that's exclusively bongo drum music. Reason being, you're gonna bring tons of biases and prejudices to the table that are gonna make you not objective.

这样对邦戈鼓不公平。此时作为艺术评论者，你的任务是采取'审美态度'——一种将自我感受与艺术美丑判断割裂的态度。西蒙娜·德·波伏娃认为，这是思想家们延续千年的重大谬误。事实上，欣赏艺术品或世间万物，都必然带着特定视角——

You're not gonna be fair to the bongos. Now your job at this point as a critic of art is to adopt an aesthetic attitude. It's an attitude where you separate yourself and your own feelings away from the judgment you have to make about whether the piece of art is beautiful or not. Simone de Beauvoir would say that this is a massive error that thinkers have been making for a very long time, over a thousand years. And that in reality, what it is to view a piece of art or anything in the world for that matter is to view it from a particular perspective.

你无法不带着基于过往经历的偏见。那种妄想我们能以'审美态度'脱离躯壳，像新生儿般毫无价值判断地观赏艺术品的想法——不过是幻觉罢了。作为人类，我们根本做不到。

You can't help but bring those biases and prejudices to the table that are based on your prior experiences. This this whole delusion that that we're somehow gonna adopt this aesthetic attitude, we're gonna exit our bodies and look at this piece of artwork like we're a newborn baby, no value judgments. I mean, it's just that. It's a delusion. We just can't do that as people.

我们无法完全消除自身的偏见。这是我们理解一切事物的内在组成部分。相反，我们应专注于坦诚面对自身偏见，以便能就眼前这件艺术品展开真正富有成效的讨论。多年来，人们将这种审美态度的范式应用于观察世界的方式。这种我们生活中都听过的态度认为：要真正理解世界局势并进行有效评论。

We can't remove ourselves of bias completely. It's an integral part of how we make sense of anything at all. What we should be focusing on instead is being open and honest about the biases that we have so that we can have a real productive discussion about this piece of art that's in front of us. Now what follows from this is that over the years, people have taken this paradigm of the aesthetic attitude, and they've applied it to the way that they look at the world. This attitude that all of us have no doubt heard at some point in our lives is that to truly understand what's going on in the world and to commentate it on it effectively.

你不能深陷其中。不能过度参与地面发生的事，否则你会带入大量偏见，阻碍清晰认知。就像评判艺术品时，理论上你应该完全抽离所属文化背景；同理，在这里你被要求完全抽离历史脉络，假装从场边客观视角观察世界——但你并不客观。

You can't be in the thick of things. You can't be super involved in what's going on on the ground, or else you're gonna bring tons of biases to the table that are gonna inhibit your ability to see it clearly. In other words, in the same way when you're judging a piece of art, you're supposed to try to remove yourself as a part of that culture entirely. In this case, you're supposed to try to remove yourself from history entirely, and then supposedly look at the world from this objective vantage point from the sidelines. But you're not being objective.

西蒙娜·德·波伏娃认为，真正需要警惕的是那些不断标榜自己客观的人。'那边那群人？没错，他们报道新闻时带着议程。

And to Simone de Beauvoir, the people you should really be worried about are the people that are constantly telling you how objective they're being. Oh, those guys over there. Yeah. Yeah. They have an agenda when they bring you the news.

而我们这边呢？我们给你呈现故事的全貌。无需他处求证。不，事实是每个人都从特定视角接触世界，都透过充满偏见的镜片观察万物。

But us over here, we're giving you both sides of the story. No need to look anywhere else. No. The fact is all of us approach the world from a particular perspective. We all look at the world through a very biased lens.

我们更应该关注的是提高对自身偏见的觉察，从而理解它们如何影响着我们的观点。那些持审美态度、自视为历史旁观者的人，他们谈论世界就像在电影院嚼着酸味软糖：'我们生活的疯狂时代啊，这些正在发生的事，看着它们展开肯定很刺激。

And what we should be focusing on is being more self aware of what biases we have so that we can understand how they're shading the way we're viewing things. The people with this aesthetic attitude that think of themselves as just spectators to history, just watching it, they talk about the world like they're at a movie theater, they're eating a bag of Sour Patch Kids. Crazy times we're living in. All this stuff happening. It's gonna be insane to watch it unfold.

对吧？这些人（无论是否意识到）正在将自己与历史割裂，仿佛此刻没有积极参与历史塑造。人们常抽象化理解历史——认为历史只存在于教科书中，是我阅读的故事。殊不知每一天，历史都在我眼前自行展开。

Right? What they're doing, whether they realize it or not, is detaching themselves from history as though they aren't actively contributing to it right now. You know, it's it's so common for people to think of history in this abstract way. History is something that exists in history books. It's the story that I read, and and every day history is unfolding itself before my very eyes.

当人们说这类话时，波伏娃会指出：'五秒前他说历史在眼前展开时，那句话本身已成为历史。你的每个行动或非行动，都在积极贡献于终将被书写的历史叙事。某种意义上，你就是正在展开的历史，这使你至少对历史进程负有部分责任。你从未真正置身事外。'

People say things like this. Simone de Beauvoir would say, yeah, like, five seconds ago when he said that history is unfolding in front of you, that's history now. That with every action you take or don't take, you are actively contributing to that story of history that's eventually gonna be written down. I mean, in a sense, you are history unfolding, and that makes you at least partially responsible for whatever unfolds. You're never actually separate from the world out there on the sidelines.

那么让我们来谈谈现实世界中实际发生的事。重申一次，做一个有道德的人意味着追求自身自由与他人自由。但即使我们生活在一个所有人都认同这一理念的世界——实际上并非如此——现实是并非所有人都会成为有道德的人。世界并非乌托邦。总有人企图利用他人，否定他们的主体性，否认他们是自在自为的存在，只为达成某种自私目的。

So let's talk about what actually unfolds in the world. Again, to be an ethical person is to will your own freedom and the freedom of others. But even if we lived in a world where everybody agreed on that synopsis, which we don't, the the reality is that not everyone in this world is gonna be an ethical person. The world is not a utopia. There's just gonna be people out there that want to use other people denying their subjectivity, denying that they're a being for itself so that they can bring about some sort of selfish end that they have.

西蒙娜·德·波伏娃为这种恶劣行径命名——压迫。因为若你人生的主要追求是实现自身与他人的自由，那么在这种世界观下，你天然的敌人就是压迫。让我们探讨她所说的压迫含义。她首先分析了斯多葛学派及其犯下的错误。

Simone de Beauvoir has a name for this sort of tomfoolery. It's called oppression. Because if your main pursuit in life is to will your own freedom and the freedom of others, the natural enemy that emerges for you in that worldview is oppression. Let's talk about what she means by oppression. She starts by talking about stoicism and a mistake that she thinks they made.

要知道，斯多葛学派兴起于亚历山大大帝死后希腊化时代的政治动荡中。人们发现自己生活在极度不稳定的世界里——可能一周内被迫两次效忠不同统治者，可能被卖为奴隶，大地震可能摧毁城镇而政府无力救援。

You know, if you remember, stoicism emerged in the Hellenistic age following the death of Alexander the Great and all the political turmoil that came along with that. People found themselves living in a world of extreme volatility. I mean, they could have a different ruler that demanded allegiance to them twice in one week. They could be sold into slavery. A massive earthquake could level their town, not much of a government to help them.

斯多葛学派对此的回应是：你无法绝对控制外部事件，唯一能掌控的是自己的思想、认知框架和应对方式。他们提供了大量技巧来培养这种接纳外部世界不可控性的能力。波伏娃只部分认同此观点，她区分了摧毁城镇的地震与骑马进城强索效忠的暴君——我们不会对地震这样的自然灾害愤怒，对吧？

Stoicism responded to this by pointing out that you don't have absolute control over the things that happen external to you. All you really have control over is your mind, the way that you frame your experience, the way you react to things, and the Stoics lay out tons of great tactics to use if you wanna cultivate that ability to accept how out of your control the external world ultimately is. Simone de Beauvoir would agree with, like, half of that, but she'd mark a distinction between the earthquake that leveled the person's town and the guy riding into town on horseback demanding allegiance. You know, there's a reason we don't get mad at natural disasters like earthquakes. Right?

卡特里娜飓风造成约1800人遇难，1980年圣海伦火山爆发导致60人死亡。这些灾难固然可怕悲惨，人们极度关注，但不会感到愤慨。

I mean, hurricane Katrina killed something like eighteen hundred people. Mount Saint Helens, 1980, killed sixty people. And it's horrifying and tragic, and people care about these things tremendously. But there's no outrage. Right?

我们不会因自然之母的伤害而愤怒，这是必须接受的天然秩序。但当施害者是人时，情况就不同了。当某人将他人降格为实现私欲的工具时，这就从需要接受的客观障碍（如地震）转变为压迫——否定他人主体性的行为。此时人们才会愤怒并呼吁行动。

There's no outrage that we're being wronged by mother nature in some way. There's this acceptance we have to have about the natural order of things. But something changes when it's another person that's ruining people's lives. When a person reduces other human beings to just objects, to just fodder for whatever ends they wanna bring about, that's when things change from just an unfortunate obstacle in our way that we have to accept, like an earthquake, to a person or group oppressing another person or group, denying them of their subjectivity. And that tends to be when people get mad and feel emboldened to call for action.

她引用道：「人们不会像接受地震那样屈服于战争或占领，必须选择支持或反对，外来意志由此成为盟友或敌人。正是这种相互依存关系解释了压迫何以可能又何以可憎。如我们所见，我的自由要实现自身，必须向开放未来延伸，而正是他人为我打开了未来。」

She says, quote, one does not submit to a war or an occupation as he does to an earthquake. He must take sides for or against, and the foreign wills thereby become allied or hostile. It is this interdependence which explains why oppression is possible and why it is hateful. As we have seen, my freedom, in order to fulfill itself, requires that it emerge into an open future. It is other men who open the future to me.

正是那些构筑明日世界的人们，决定了我的未来。但如果他们不让我参与这一建设性运动，而是迫使我徒劳地消耗自己的超越性，将我禁锢在他们已征服的水平之下——那个即将诞生新征服的起点——那么他们就是在切断我与未来的联系。他们正将我物化，引用结束。恶人确实存在，压迫者总会压迫。

It is they who, setting up the world of tomorrow, define my future. But if instead of allowing me to participate in this constructive movement, they oblige me to consume my transcendence in vain, if they keep me below the level which they have conquered and on the basis of which new conquest will be achieved, then they are cutting me off from the future. They are changing me into a thing, end quote. Bad people exist. Oppressors gonna oppress.

这就是世界的运行法则。与我们对地震束手无策不同，若你正遭受压迫，你不该安于用稍加修饰的说辞自我安慰。你有道德义务去争取自由。若你作为旁观者目睹某个群体遭受压迫，你同样有道德义务为他人争取自由。但西蒙娜·德·波伏娃指出一个关键问题——

It's just the way of the world. And unlike the earthquake where we can't do anything about it, if you're being oppressed, you shouldn't sit around trying to frame it in a slightly different way that makes you feel better about it. You have an ethical obligation to will your freedom. If you're on the outside and you see a group of people that's actively being oppressed, you have an ethical obligation to will the freedom of others. But here's the thing Simone de Beauvoir points out.

实施压迫的人往往洞悉我们这种倾向：接受那些被包装成'自然规律'或'天经地义'的不幸。回望历史，许多重大压迫事件都伴随着对现状的辩护，声称其符合自然秩序。以波伏娃书中提及的真实案例为例——纳粹占领法国，更广义地说，希特勒征服世界的计划。看看他们的辩护词：哦，雅利安人和盎格鲁-撒克逊人是优等种族。

The people doing the oppressing often realize that we have this tendency to accept unfortunate things that are just nature or the natural order of things. And if you look back at history, many of the biggest instances of oppression have been people justifying whatever the status quo was, claiming that it's just the natural order of things. Take one of the actual examples of oppression that Simone de Beauvoir is referencing in this book, the Nazi occupation of France, and and I guess more generally, Hitler's whole plan to take over the world. Look at their justification for that. Oh, the Aryans and Anglo Saxons are the superior race.

换言之，很遗憾，我们天生就比你们优越，这是不得不接受的客观事实，就像卡特里娜飓风一样。殖民时期的美国人声称黑人天生劣于白人是自然法则。虽然不幸，但理应按此对待他们。

In other words, sorry. It's just the natural order of things that were better than you. It's unfortunate thing that all of us have to come to accept, not unlike a hurricane Katrina. Colonial Americans saying that the natural order of things is that blacks are inferior to whites. It it's unfortunate, but let's treat them accordingly.

或者以女性为例。多年来人们宣称她们天生就是较弱性别，所以很遗憾，她们只能待在家做汉堡帮手，而非外出实践她们的超越权。纵观历史，压迫者总是试图将被压迫群体与某种自然法则的解读绑定，使压迫不再被视为压迫，而成为必须接受的现实。波伏娃告诫我们应时刻警惕这种伎俩。

Or or women. For years, was said that naturally, they're just the weaker sex. So unfortunately, they're gonna have to stay home and cook hamburger helper rather than going out and exercising their right to transcendence. All throughout history, people who have been doing the oppressing have tried to sync up the group that they're looking to oppress with some interpretation of the natural world that makes it not oppression anymore, but just something we have to accept as a reality. Simone de Beauvoir would say that we should always be on the lookout for this kind of tactic being used.

现在所有这些讨论正引向一个悖论——想必很多人已预见。这个她称为'行动二律背反'的问题是：如果我们有道德义务为他人争取自由，而这项事业的天敌是那些为自身利益剥夺他人自由的压迫者，那么为了解放被压迫者，我们是否必须剥夺压迫者的自由？她的回答是肯定的。本质上，要消灭压迫者，你自己必须以某种方式成为压迫者。

Now all of this discussion is leading to a bit of a paradox. Sure many of you out there already see it coming. The the problem that's emerging here, what she calls the antinomy of action, is that if we have a moral obligation to will the freedom of others, and our natural enemy in that cause becomes these oppressive people out there that are denying other people's freedom for the sake of their own, in order to will the freedom of the oppressed, don't we need to deny the freedom of the person or group that's doing the oppressing? She says, yes. That fundamentally, in order to get rid of an oppressor, you yourself must in a way become an oppressor.

这意味着什么？因为现实世界中，压迫者很少因礼貌辩论而改变。'嘿，别搞压迫那套了。'——这行不通。

What follows from that? Is it because the reality of the world is that these oppressors aren't often swayed by having a respectful debate with them? Hey. Knock it off with all that oppression stuff. Okay.

很抱歉，事情从来不会这样简单。由此得出的推论是，在极少数情况下，西蒙娜·德·波伏娃认为，如果暴力是为了他人自由而发动的，那么它就是正当的。如果你最终阅读了《模糊伦理学》，就能找到她列出的所有关于暴力何时正当的标准。但这个悖论更广泛的含义在于，它立刻凸显了我们在此所应对的利害关系，以及我们应当以何等严肃的态度对待自身行为。

I'm sorry. Never works like that. And what follows from this is that sometimes in rare cases to Simone de Beauvoir, violence is justified if it wills the freedom of others. Now if you end up reading the ethics of ambiguity, you can find all the criteria she lays out for when violence is justified. But the bigger overall implication of this paradox is that it immediately underscores the stakes that we're dealing with here and just how seriously we should be taking our behavior.

想想你被要求做的事情：你必须观察世界，识别出某些正在遭受压迫的个人或群体，然后采取行动。如果特定情境极端到需要如此，你必须愿意仅凭自己对局势的判断，对压迫者实施暴力甚至杀戮。西蒙娜·德·波伏娃极其明确地指出，你面临的这项任务绝非儿戏。真正为他人自由而奋斗——而非仅仅自以为如此——需要具备彻底的自我认知，对所涉问题要有穷尽式的了解。

Think of what you're being asked to do here. You have to look at the world, identify some person or some group that are actively being oppressed, and then you have to take action. And if the particular circumstances are extreme enough to warrant it, you have to be willing to commit violence or even kill an oppressor based on nothing but your own personal read on the situation. Simone de Beauvoir makes it very, very clear that this task you have ahead of you is not one to be taken lightly. That part of truly willing the freedom of others rather than just feeling like you're willing the freedom of others is to have an exhaustive level of self awareness, an exhaustive education on these issues that you're dealing with.

要对自身行为的后果进行海量思考。需要极深层次的智慧才能真正预知后果。因为关键在于，西蒙娜·德·波伏娃说我们永远无法绝对确定自身行为的最终影响。你可能怀着为他人争取自由的意图草率行事，而该行为的后果可能是更多人遭受压迫。

Massive amounts of contemplation on the consequences of your actions. A deep, deep level of wisdom to really know what the consequences will be. Because that's the thing. Simone de Beauvoir says that we can never really know beyond a shadow of a doubt what the consequences of our actions will ultimately be. You may do something hasty with the intention of willing the freedom of others, and the consequences of that action may be that even more people are oppressed.

随之而来的是试图为他人争取自由者背负的沉重道德负担：持续保持谦卑，接纳世界本质的模糊性，明白自己曾无数次犯错，而这次很可能又是其中之一——无论你是错误地以为某位并未受压迫者需要自由，还是你实际上参与了压迫某个群体而需要采取行动。这里的要点在于，道德并非简单地参照某种道德演算就能在困境中得出完美答案。不，那是旧哲学的妄想。世界远非如此简单。

And what comes along with that is an extremely heavy moral burden to the person that's trying to will the freedom of others, a a constant humility, accepting how ambiguous the world truly is, knowing that you've been mistaken countless times before, and this very well may be another one of those times, whether you're mistakenly willing the freedom of someone who isn't actually oppressed or whether you're complicit in the oppression of a group and need to take action. The point here is that morality is not as simple as just having some sort of moral calculus you reference that gives you the perfectly moral thing to do whenever you have a dilemma. No. That's a delusion of old philosophy. The world is nowhere near that simple.

你或许会说，这是模糊不清的。对此西蒙娜·德·波伏娃说道：‘有人会说这些考量仍相当抽象。实践中究竟该怎么做？哪些行为是善的？哪些是恶的？’

It's ambiguous, you might say. Simone de Beauvoir says to this point, quote, it will be said that these considerations remain quite abstract. What must be done practically? Which action is good? Which is bad?

提出这样的问题同样陷入了天真的抽象。我们不会问物理学家哪些假设是真理，也不会要求艺术家保证作品美的创作流程。伦理学领域提供的不是现成配方，科学和艺术亦然。人们只能提出方法。（引文结束）真正为他人自由奋斗，仅靠阅读小册子、观看纪录片、收听广播节目或修读大学课程就以为掌握全部是远远不够的。

To ask such a question is also to fall into a naive abstraction. We don't ask the physicist which hypotheses are true, nor the artist, by what procedures does one produce a work whose beauty is guaranteed. The field of ethics does not furnish recipes any more than do science and art. One can merely propose methods, end quote. To truly be willing the freedom of others, it's not enough to just read a pamphlet or watch a documentary or listen to a radio program, take a college course, and and then you've got it all figured out.

西蒙娜·德·波伏娃警告，在追求他人自由的道路上要警惕陷入‘严肃之人’的谬误。你知道，人们太容易因某天听到的某些共鸣观点，就终其一生只阅读那些强化既有认知的相近思想家。不，我们必须保持警觉。我们必须明白，人类有如此强烈的动机逃避世界真实的模糊性——如果你突然觉得彻底掌握了某个真理，务必对此保持高度怀疑。

Simone de Beauvoir warns against falling into the fallacy of the serious man once you're on this quest to will the freedom of others. You know, it it's so easy to hear some points that somebody made one day that resonate with you, and then just spend the rest of your life reading thinkers that are in that immediate proximity that reinforce what you already think you know. No. We have to be vigilant. We we have to understand that we have such an incentive to retreat from the true ambiguity of the world that if you ever have something that you think you've totally figured out, be highly skeptical of that.

再仔细想想。真正愿意他人自由，需要我们具备这种彻底的自我觉察和诚实。它甚至要求我们审视自己为实现他人自由所采用的实际方法，然后思考我们是否能为这项事业付出比现在更多的努力。就像我们在第85集讨论过的，道德行为不仅在于避免‘不可为’之事，有时还需考虑某些‘应为’之事，比如愿意他人自由。

Take another look at it. Again, truly willing the freedom of others requires this radical self awareness and honesty with ourselves. It even requires us to examine the actual methods we're using to bring about the freedom of others, and then consider whether or not we could be doing more towards the cause than we are right now. Kinda like we talked about on episode 85, that part of acting morally is not just avoiding the thou shalt nots. Sometimes there are certain thou shalt that we need to consider, such as willing the freedom of others.

而实现这一点，部分在于检视我们的方法，并自问是否存在更有效的方式来实现他人自由。举例来说，如果你观察世界，尽了自己的责任，得出结论想要帮助那些在朝鲜正遭受压迫的人们获得自由。假设你在某个周六去了Joanne Fabrics，做了个标语牌，然后在街中央挥舞了五个小时，高唱自己编的关于朝鲜的打油诗。无论你的初衷多么良善，尽管你花了五个小时试图实现他人自由，但你的行为实际改变了多少人的想法？有多少人因为你的举动而受到鼓舞，采取行动去解放朝鲜人民？

And a part of doing that is examining our methods and asking ourselves if maybe there's a more effective way we could be willing the freedom of others. For example, if you looked out at the world, you did your due diligence, you came to the conclusion that you wanted to will the freedom of the people that are actively being oppressed in North Korea. Let's say you go to Joanne Fabrics on a Saturday, you make a sign, and for five hours you go into the middle of the street and wave it around and chant limericks about North Korea that you made up. Now, no matter how good your intentions were there, despite the fact that you just spent five hours trying to will the freedom of others, how many minds were actually changed by you doing that? How many people were emboldened to take action towards freeing the people of North Korea by virtue of you doing that?

对西蒙娜·德·波伏娃而言，仅仅感觉自己愿意他人自由是不够的。改变是艰难的。改变是一场对抗竞争利益的运动。它需要努力，需要真正的牺牲。

To Simone de Beauvoir, it's not enough to just feel like we're willing the freedom of others. Change is hard. Change is a campaign against competing interests. It takes work. It takes real sacrifice.

但最重要的是，它需要彻底接受那些伦理——当你意识到我们所处世界真正的模糊性时所浮现的伦理。感谢收听，下次再会。

But more than anything, it takes a radical acceptance of the ethics that emerge when you realize the true extent of the ambiguity of this world we live in. Thank you for listening. I'll talk to you next time.