玛丽·沃诺克论萨特的存在主义

这里是《哲学点滴》，我是大卫·埃德蒙兹。还有我，奈杰尔·沃伯顿。《哲学点滴》可在www.philosophybites.com收听。让·保罗·萨特，这位二十世纪的法国小说家兼哲学家，是存在主义的奠基人之一。他拒绝了上帝和诺贝尔文学奖。

This is Philosophy Bites with me, David Edmunds. And me, Nigel Warburton. Philosophy Bites is available at www.philosophybites.com. Jean Paul Sartre, the twentieth century French novelist and philosopher, was one of the founders of existentialism. He rejected God and the Nobel Prize for literature.

他反对越南战争和法国介入阿尔及利亚事务。他曾信奉马克思主义思想，但后来改变了看法。或许他最持久的承诺是对终身伴侣西蒙娜·德·波伏娃的忠诚。他与她的关系通常被描述为非常规。玛丽·沃诺克是一位哲学家，现任上议院议员。

He opposed the Vietnam War and French involvement in Algeria. He embraced Marxist ideas, but later changed his mind. Perhaps his longest commitment was to his lifelong companion, Simone de Beauvoir. His relationship to her is usually described as unconventional. Mary Warnock is a philosopher who now sits in the House of Lords.

她还著有关于萨特的书籍。

She's also the author of a book on Sartre.

玛丽·沃诺克，欢迎来到《哲学点滴》。

Mary Warnock, welcome to Philosophy Bites.

非常荣幸能来到这里。我迫切想知道你们要问我什么。

Well, it's a great pleasure to be here. I'm longing to know what you're going to ask me.

我想聚焦的主题是让·保罗·萨特的存在主义。显然，萨特是二十世纪最著名的哲学家之一，不仅因为他的小说和戏剧，更因为他是存在主义的典型代表。首先想请问您如何理解存在主义？

Well, the topic I want to focus on is Jean Paul Sartre's existentialism. Obviously, Sartre is one of the best known philosophers of the twentieth century, not least because of his novels and plays, but he's also the quintessential existentialist. I wanted to start by just asking you what you understand by existentialism.

我认为存在主义如今已是哲学中几乎被完全遗忘的小分支，没人再关注了。它很大程度上是二战及其战后初期在巴黎兴起的思潮。作为现象很有趣，但已时过境迁。

Well, I understand why existentialism was sort of totally forgotten little sub branch of philosophy that I think nobody thinks about at all anymore. It was very much an outcome of the war, the Second World War, and the immediate aftermath of that, and largely in Paris, I think. I mean, it was very interesting as a phenomenon, but I think it's gone away.

萨特将存在主义描述为：对人类而言，存在先于本质的理念。

Sartre described existentialism as the the idea that for human beings, existence precedes essence.

无论这话什么意思。需要剖析他的本意。我认为他是指人类没有既定本性，我们通过选择塑造自己的人生。这个晦涩表述背后是重要洞见——他主张万物皆可选择。若你说被迫做某事，无论是道德约束还是童年影响所致，其实你本可另作选择。

Whatever that means. You need to unpick what he meant by that. And I rather think he meant that there's no given human nature, but we all make our own lives by the choices that we make. And I think that's what he meant by this obscure remark. But that was a very important thought because he argued that everything is a matter of choice, And that if you say that you're bound to do this or have to do that, whether you mean you are morally bound to do it or whether you mean your childhood influences determine you to do that, whichever you mean, you're wrong because actually you could do otherwise.

他有个著名案例：战时真有学生带着两难抉择求教——该留在家中陪伴母亲，还是加入自由法国抵抗纳粹？

And he used a famous example of a student who allegedly really came to see him in wartime with this dilemma. Should he stay at home with his mother or should he join the Free French and fight the Nazis?

是的。那个例子生动展现了学生确实拥有自主选择权，且无人能替他抉择。萨特带给英国哲学界——当他最终跨过英吉利海峡时——最伟大的贡献，就是他擅长用鲜活的实例阐述观点。而这正是当时英国哲学学派所严重欠缺的。

Yes. That was a wonderfully vivid example of that being a genuine choice for the student. And nobody could make it for him. I mean, the great thing that Sartre brought, certainly brought to British philosophy when eventually, as it were, he crossed the Channel, was that he was brilliant at producing real examples. That was something that the English school at that time, the English school of philosophy, was very bad at doing.

从三十年代起，有位如今鲜为人知的哲学家普里查德，他研究道德哲学，但举的例子全都荒诞不经、脱离现实。萨特则像一股清流。在其巨著《存在与虚无》中，他通过实例阐释'自欺'概念——比如有个侍者假装必须凌晨五点起床履行福音职责，实则这些'必须做'的义务都是他自己虚构的。但萨特指出，一旦创造这些义务，它们就会像鹧鸪般在他脚边不断涌现，让他处处受制。

I mean, starting from the nineteen thirties, really, there was a now very obscure philosopher called Pritchard, who wrote about moral philosophy, but whose examples were all absolutely preposterously unrealistic and uninteresting. And Sartre was like a breath of fresh air. And in his big book, Being and Nothingness, he had examples of what he referred to as bad faith, where a waiter, for example, pretended that he had to get up at 05:00 in the morning, he had to attend to his Gospel, and actually he'd created a situation in which these duties having to do this, must do that he'd actually created them. But once he'd created them, of course, as Sartre said, they sprang up like partridges all around his feet. He had duties all over the place.

但阅读时会突然意识到，许多人都陷于这种自欺——他们从不思考为何要早起赶八点半的班车，任由这些虚假的必需支配人生。

But then you suddenly recognise when you read it that there were lots of people who were in bad faith in that way, who wouldn't think beyond the fact that they got to get up in the morning and catch the 08:30 or whatever it was, and their life was dominated by these false necessities.

自欺概念显然是萨特《存在与虚无》的核心。能否请您再深入解释其内涵？

This notion of bad faith is obviously central for Sartre in being in nothingness. I wonder if you could just say a little bit more about what it is.

自欺就是自我欺骗——稍加思考就能识破的谎言。就像那个过度扮演尽责侍者角色的人，把自创的义务当作真实束缚。我读到这里时，突然认出了生活中许多类似的人：扮演牛津哲学家的，扮演五个孩子尽职母亲的...人们戴上人格面具不断表演，本质上都是演员。

Bad faith is pretending to yourself something which if you thought for five minutes you would realise was not true. It's acting or overacting a part. And his waiter, who pretended that he was really bound by duty, was acting the part and overacting the part of a conscientious waiter. I remember when I read this I suddenly recognised all kinds of people who I knew who seemed to me to be playing the part of an Oxford philosopher, or playing the part of a committed mother of five, or whatnot. And you took on this persona and you pursued it and you were an actress actually.

我觉得这现象令人着迷。

And I find this fascinating.

那么自欺究竟有何问题？或许这种自我欺骗正是社会互动所需，我们不得不给自己讲这类故事。

So what is actually wrong with being in bad faith? We're pretending to ourselves. Maybe that's just a condition of interacting socially that we have to tell ourselves stories like this.

确实需要人生叙事，但自欺若过度就会招致非议——当人怀疑自己或他人本质虚伪、没有真实自我、只是不断变换角色时。因此萨特打破这些桎梏、宣称人可随心所欲的观点令人振奋。

I think that it is true we have to tell ourselves stories, and we do have to have a narrative of our own life. But I think bad faith probably is objectionable only if it's carried too far, to the extent that you may suspect yourself or even other people, I mean more other people, of being actually insincere, having no real self, just being hollow, playing one part after another. And so it was wonderful to have all that blown away and to be told that you could do anything you like.

但萨特说我们完全自由、可任意选择显然有误。存在诸多强大影响因素，或许他自己有时也承认这点。

But surely Sartre was wrong when he said that we're completely free. We're free to choose whatever we want. There are influences which are very strong, and maybe he even acknowledged that at times.

我认为他错在两方面：一是低估童年经历与基因构成的影响；更重要的是他否认客观道德对错的存在，主张'思维决定善恶'。这种道德相对主义流毒甚广，实属谬误。

Well, think he was wrong in two ways. I think first of all, was wrong to discount all the influence from one's childhood or past, and equally from one's doubtless, from one's genetic make up. But I think he was more importantly wrong, actually, in saying there's no such thing as actual moral right and wrong. Only thinking makes it so. I think this relativism in moral philosophy was a rarely pernicious influence and is actually wrong.

这非常有趣，因为在《存在主义与人道主义》中，萨特确实说过当你为自己做选择时，你也在为所有人做选择。所以他具有这种可普遍化的特质。萨特认为，当我做出一个选择，比如选择结婚，那不仅仅是个人的独特行为。我是在宣称，我们这个时代的人类应该结婚，或许应该建立某种特定的家庭关系。我必须选择最佳选项，否则在某种程度上就是不真诚的。

That's really interesting because in existentialism and humanism, he did say that when you choose for yourself, you choose for everyone. So he had this universalizable aspect. Sartre was saying that when I make a choice, say I choose to marry, that's not just an idiosyncratic personal thing. I'm saying that human beings in my epoch should marry, maybe have a certain kind of family relationship. I must be choosing the best choice, otherwise I'm being insincere in some way.

因此我的行为就像是在引领所有人的选择方向。

And so I'm acting as if everybody's following me in what I do.

当然需要区分选择的性质——如果你午餐选择煮鸡蛋而非炒鸡蛋，这对整个人类没有普遍意义。但当你做出看似道德的选择，比如这次要信守承诺（尽管这对你自己不利），那你就是在为全人类做选择。这就是他在那篇论文和演讲中表达的，但他此前此后都再未提及。我认为这可能是迫于压力产生的观点，为了不让自己的道德观显得过于相对主义和自我中心——虽然他当时确实常有这种倾向。但后来，当他进入人生第二阶段，试图调和马克思主义与存在主义时，他就不得不为全人类做选择了。

Of course one has to distinguish between choice and if you choose to have a boiled egg rather than a scrambled egg for lunch, that has no general implications for humanity as a whole. But if you make what may seem like a moral choice, that you're going to keep your promise on this occasion, although it's your own hindrance, then you are choosing for humanity as a whole. Now that is what he said in that essay, in that lecture, but he never said it either before or since. So I think it was probably produced out of some kind of pressure not to be so relativistic, egocentric in his view of morality, as he rarely was at that time inclined to be. But of course later on, in the second phase of his life, when he was struggling to reconcile Marxism with existentialism, then he had to be making choices for the whole of humanity.

他在职业生涯中期彻底改变了立场。所以他第二部巨著与早期存在主义时期的观点几乎毫无关联。

And he changed Geyer completely in the middle of his career. And so his second enormous book really had well, very little relation to his original existentialist days.

但在他后期作品中...是的。对我来说，萨特变得难以理解。他很多后期作品都是在服用兴奋剂期间写的。这似乎严重影响了他的文风，而且我觉得他可能已经不像年轻时那样接受严格的编辑了。不知道他对自己后期的写作风格是否有过反思。

But in his later work Yes. Sartre, for me, became incomprehensible. A lot of his later work was written while he was taking speed. It seems to have had quite a bad effect on his writing, and I think he'd reached a stage where he perhaps wasn't edited in the way he might have been as a younger philosopher. I wonder if he had any thoughts about the style in which he came to write.

简直糟糕透顶。我的意思是，虽然我欣赏《存在与虚无》中的轶事部分，也喜欢它构建的庞大形而上学体系，但初次阅读时确实让我震惊。

It was appalling. It was absolutely ghastly. I mean, I didn't like the style of being in nothingness, though I enjoyed the anecdotal part of it. And I enjoyed the sort of huge metaphysical structure that it was all built around. But it appalled me when I first read it.

但正如你所说，比起《辩证理性批判》那种晦涩又粗劣的文风，这根本不算什么。不过那本书出版时，我们还没见识到德里达等法国哲学家更晦涩、刻意让人看不懂的文风——他们那些几乎无法卒读的作品本就是故意为之。

But it was nothing, as you say, to the incomprehensible and rather shoddy way that the critique was written. But when that book came out, we hadn't yet had the benefit of yet more incomprehensible and deliberately incomprehensible French philosophers like Delida and so on, who rarely are unreadable and meant to be so.

故意为之？他们为什么要追求不可理解性？

Meant to be so. Why would they want to be incompatible?

因为他们想显得深奥。我认为他们过度受到海德格尔影响——后者认为哲学必须拥有特殊词汇和常人无法理解的表达方式。说实话，自黑格尔以来，哲学确实有支流派以晦涩为荣。但我认为这完全误解了哲学应有的面貌。

Because they wanted to be profound. And I think they were unduly influenced by Heidegger, who thought that philosophy had to have a whole special vocabulary and way of going about things that nobody could possibly understand. I think, rarely, from Hegel onwards, one branch of philosophy did delight in obscurity. And I think that is a totally mistaken view of what philosophy should be about.

回到萨特，你认为他留给我们最持久的遗产是什么？你开场时说他已经基本被遗忘了。

Going back to Sartre, what would you say is his enduring legacy for us? You began by saying that he's more or less been forgotten.

他已被遗忘，或许这是理所应当的。但从历史角度看，我认为他的贡献在于让我们意识到道德哲学可以成为一门激动人心且极具现实意义的学科，不仅涉及智力问题，也关乎情感议题。我最钦佩的是他接纳了胡塞尔及德国现象学家的哲学思想——这些先驱者认为理智与情感不可分割，并在维特根斯坦之前真正打破了内外世界的界限。你脑海中的活动与外部世界并非完全割裂。萨特年轻时曾前往德国探寻现象学家的思想动向。

He has been forgotten, and probably rightly so. But what he did, historically, I think, was to open our eyes to the fact that moral philosophy could be an exciting and totally relevant subject, involved not only in intellectual questions but in emotional questions as well. I admire him most for his having embraced the philosophy of Husserl and the German phenomenologists who thought you couldn't separate the intellect from the emotions, and who preceded Wittgenstein in really breaking down the distinction between the inner and the outer. What's going on in your head is not completely separate from what is going on in the outside world. And Sartre went, when he was very young, to Germany to discover what was going on with the phenomenologists.

他将胡塞尔引入法国，并撰写了一篇精彩却过度亢奋的文章，宣称我们终于摆脱了机器中的幽灵，从笛卡尔的桎梏中解放出来。他洞察并理解这一点，在情感上接纳了现象学家这一重大突破。

And he introduced Husserl to France and he wrote a wonderful, terribly over excited article saying that now at last we are free from the ghosts in the machine, we're free from Descartes. And he saw that, he understood that, and he emotionally adopted this huge step, I think, that the phenomenologist took.

玛丽·沃纳，非常感谢你。

Mary Warner, thank you very much.

谢谢。

Thank you.

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