《爱情笔记》Essays in love - 12

12

Scepticism and Faith

怀疑和信念

1. By contrast with the history of love, the history of philosophy shows a relentless concern with the discrepancy between appearance and reality. 'I think I see a tree outside,' the philosopher mutters, 'but is it not possible that this is just an optical illusion behind my own retina?''I think I see my wife,' mutters the philosopher, adding hopefully, 'but is it not possible that she too is just an optical illusion?'相对于人类爱情史而言，哲学史一直以来都不懈地关注着表象和真实之间的差异。“我想我看到了屋外有棵树，”哲学家喃喃低语，“但这难道不会是我视力的错觉？”“我想我看到了我妻子，”哲学家嘟囔着，却又满怀希望地加上一句，“难道不可能她也是一种错觉？”

2. Philosophers tend to limit epistemological doubt to the existence of tables, chairs, the courtyards of Cambridge colleges, and the occasional unwanted wife. But to extend these questions to things that matter to us, to love, for instance, is to raise the frightening possibility that the loved one is but an inner fantasy, with little connection to any objective reality.哲学家往往把认识论方面的疑虑局限在桌子、椅子、剑桥大学的各个学院和偶尔令人生厌的妻子这些具体有形的事物上，而当他们把这些疑虑进一步扩展到那些对我们来说意义非同小可的事物上时，比如说爱情，那么就会出现一种令人恐惧的可能性，就是说心爱之人与客观现实几无联系，不过是我们内心的幻想而已。

3. Doubt is easy when it is not a matter of survival: we are as sceptical as we can afford to be, and it is easiest to be sceptical about things that do not fundamentally sustain us. It is easy to doubt the existence of a table, it is hell to doubt the legitimacy of love.当面对的不是生死攸关的问题时，怀疑对我们来说无关痛痒，我们尽可以去怀疑一切。对于那些不是我们生活中最根本的事物来说，怀疑是毫发无损的。怀疑一张桌子的真实性无关紧要，然而怀疑一个人的爱情是否合理却令人痛苦不堪。

4. At the start of Western philosophical thinking, the progress from ignorance to knowledge finds itself likened by Plato to a glorious journey from a dark cave into bright sunlight. Men are born unable to perceive reality, Plato tells us, much like cave dwellers who mistake shadows of objects thrown up on the walls for the objects themselves. Only with much effort may illusions be thrown off, and the journey made from the shadowy world into bright sunlight, where things can at last be seen for what they truly are. As with all allegories, this is a tale with a moral: that truth is always superior to illusion.在西方哲学思想发展的初期，柏拉图把人类从蒙昧到文明的进程比做是从黑洞到光明的辉煌旅程。在柏拉图看来，人类生来并没有对真实性进行思考的能力，就如穴居者误认为物体投射到墙上的阴影就是物体本身一样。只有付出非凡的努力，才能抛却错觉。从洞穴中的阴暗世界走到灿烂的阳光中来，才能最终看清事物和本来面目。这个寓意深刻的事例还具有一种道德蕴涵，即对真理的追求就是人生的意义所在。

5. It takes another twenty-three centuries or so until the Socratic assumption about the benefits of pursuing truth is challenged from a practical rather than simply a moral or epistemological standpoint. Everyone from Aristotle to Kant had criticized Plato on the way to reach the truth, but no one had seriously questioned the value of the undertaking. But in his _Beyond Good and Evil_ (1886), Friedrich Nietzsche finally took the bull by the horns and asked: 又过了二十三个世纪左右，苏格拉底式的从错觉到认识发展过程会为人类带来利益的论断才遭到一个道德上的，而不仅仅是一个认识论观点上的挑战。当然，在追求真理的道路上，从亚里士多德的每一个人都批判过柏拉图，但没有谁去真正质问追求真理的价值何在。不过弗里德里希·尼采在其著作《善与恶的彼岸》（1886）中，终于无畏地提出这样的疑问：

What in us really wants 'truth'?... We ask the value of this... Why not rather untruth? and uncertainty? even ignorance?... The falseness of a judgement is not necessarily an objection to it... the question is to what extent it is life-advancing; and our fundamental tendency is to assert that the falsest judgements... are the most indispensable to us... that to renounce false judgements would be to renounce life, would be to deny life.*在我们的内心深处，到底是什么真正需要真理？……我们质疑这种需要的价值。假如我们需要真理，为什么不要非真理或不确定的事物？甚至不要一无所知？……错误的判断不一定就妨碍判断……问题是错误的判断在人类进步、生命延续、特种保存，也许甚至是人类繁衍中产生了多大的影响。我们基本的倾向是，坚定地认为最错误的判断……是我们最不可缺少的东西；拒绝承认错误的判断就是拒绝承认生命，就是拒绝生命。

6. From a religious point of view, the value of truth had of course been placed into question many centuries before. The philosopher Pascal (1623-62, hunchback Jansenist and author of the Pens閑s) had talked of a choice facing every Christian in a world unevenly divided between the horror of a universe without God and the blissful ?but infinitely more remote - alternative that God did exist. Even though the odds were in favour of God not existing, Pascal argued that religious faith could still be justified because the joys of the slimmer probability so far outweighed the abomination of the larger one. And so it should perhaps be with love. Lovers cannot remain philosophers for long; they should give way to the religious impulse, which is to believe and have faith, as opposed to the philosophic impulse, which is to doubt and enquire. They should prefer the risk of being wrong and in love to being in doubt and without love.从宗教的观点来看，真理的价值当然在许多世纪以前就已受到质疑。哲学家帕斯卡就曾说过，面对世界分裂为不均衡的两部分，即宇宙中不存在上帝的恐惧和上帝真实存在的喜悦——这无疑虚无飘渺，每一个基督徒都要做出抉择。尽管有很多事实说明，上帝并不存在，帕斯卡认为人们的信仰仍然是正当的，因为即使是小而又小的可能性带给我们的喜悦，也会远远超过更大的上帝不存在的可能性带给我们的恐惧。也许爱情也同样如此。心上人不可能永远是哲学家，他们终究会产生宗教般的冲动情怀，他们终究会产生信仰和信念。与哲学家对真理的怀疑和探求不同，他们宁愿错误而爱着，也不愿怀疑而无爱。

7. Such thoughts were running through my mind one evening, sitting on Chloe's bed playing with her toy elephant Guppy. She'd told me that when she was a child, Guppy had played an enormous role in her life. He was a character as real as members of her family, and a lot more sympathetic. He had his own routines, his favourite foods, his own way of sleeping and talking ?and yet, from a more dispassionate position, it was evident that Guppy was entirely her creation and had no existence outside her imagination. But if there was one thing that would have been ruinous to Chloe's relationship with the elephant, it would have been to ask her whether or not the creature really existed: Does this furry thing actually live independently of you, or did you not simply invent him? And it occurred to me then that perhaps a similar discretion should be applied to lovers and their beloveds, that one should never ask a lover, Does this love-stuffed person actually exist or are you simply imagining them? 一天晚上，当我坐在克洛艾的床上玩着她的玩具象格皮时，这些想法浮现在我的脑海里。克洛艾告诉我说，她还小的时候，格皮对她而言意义非凡。它就像她的家人一样，是一个具有生命的真实人物。而且和家人相比，更富有同情心，更体谅人。它有自己的习惯，在自己爱吃的食物，有自己睡觉、谈话的方式，然而，从一个更冷静的角度看，格皮显然只是克洛艾自己创造出来的，只存在 于她的想象之中。但是如果说有一件事会破坏克洛艾和玩具象之间的关系的话，那就是质问她这只动物是否真实存在：这只毛茸茸的动物是独立于你而存在，还只是你自己的想象？于是我不禁想到，也许对于恋爱中的人也同样应该慎重，永远不要去问一个坠入爱河的人：“你倾心的人是真的存在，还只是你自己的想象？”

8. Medical history tells us of the case of a man living under the peculiar delusion that he was a fried egg. Quite how or when this idea had entered his head, no one knew, but he now refused to sit down anywhere for fear that he would 'break himself and spill the yolk'. His doctors tried sedatives and other drugs to appease his fears, but nothing seemed to work. Finally, one of them made the effort to enter the mind of the deluded patient and suggested that he should carry a piece of toast with him at all times, which he could place on any chair he wished to sit on, and thereby protect himself from breaking his yolk. From then on, the deluded man was never seen without a piece of toast handy, and was able to continue a more or less normal existence.医学史上曾有过这样的病例：一个人生活在怪诞的妄想之中，他觉得自己是一只煎蛋。没有人知道他什么时候怎么会有了这样的念头。他拒绝坐下来，因为担心会“把自己弄碎”，“蛋黄会溅出来”。医生试着用镇静剂的药物平息他的恐惧，但无济于事。最后，一位医生从认可他的妄想出发，建议他随身带片面包，想坐下时就把面包垫在下面，这样他就不会摔破溢出。从此，这位不明就里的病人手中就从没少过一片面包，能够多少正常地生活下去了。

9. What is the point of this story? It merely shows that though one may be living under a delusion (love, the belief that one is an egg), if one finds the complementary part of it (another lover like Chloe under a similar delusion, a piece of toast) then all may be well. Delusions are not harmful in themselves, they only hurt when one is alone in believing in them, when one cannot create an environment in which they can be sustained. So long as both Chloe and I could preserve the yolk of love intact, what did it matter quite what the truth was? 这个故事的意义在于什么？它不过表明虽然一个人可以生活在妄想之中（陷入爱河，认为自己是一只鸡蛋），如果他能够找到这种妄想的补充物（与克洛艾相似的另一位心上人，一片面包），那么一切又可以平安无事了。妄想本身于人无害，只有当一个人唯妄想是从，当一个人不能为自身创造一种可以生存下去的环境时，妄想才有害于人。只要克洛艾和我坚信永远飘忽不定的肥皂泡就是爱情，那么汽车是否真是红色与我们又有什么相干呢？