译者 xiangyugan1992

Between Truth and Lies, An Unprintable Ubiquity

事实和谎言之间,不宜出版,却普遍存在

Published: February 14, 2005

出版于2005年3月14日

Harry G. Frankfurt, 76, is a moral philosopher of international reputation and a professor emeritus at Princeton. He is also the author of a book recently published by the Princeton University Press that is the first in the publishing house’s distinguished history to carry a title most newspapers, including this one, would find unfit to print. The work is called “On Bull – – – – .”

76岁的哈里·G.法兰克福是一位有着国际声誉的道德哲学家和普林斯顿大学的名誉教授。他也是普林斯顿大学出版社最近发行的一本新书的作者,这家出版社历史上第一次给新书定下会让报社同行包括这家报纸难以接受的名字。新书命名为“论扯淡”。

The opening paragraph of the 67-page essay is a model of reason and composition, repeatedly disrupted by that single obscenity:

这份67页的论文首段以典型的说理和写作模式开篇,多次出现那个猥亵词汇:

“One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much [bull]. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize [bull] and to avoid being taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate concern, nor attracted much sustained inquiry.”

“我们的文化最显著的特色之一就是有太多的扯淡。每个人都知道,每个人也都在说。但我们都觉得这理所当然。大多数人甚至自信于他们识别和规避扯淡的能力。没有人主动思考过这个问题,也没有人发出持久的疑问。”

The essay goes on to lament that lack of inquiry, despite the universality of the phenomenon. “Even the most basic and preliminary questions about [bull] remain, after all,” Mr. Frankfurt writes, “not only unanswered but unasked.”

文章接下来在这种现象的普遍性背景下继续为疑问的缺失“哀悼”。“然而,有关扯淡的甚至最基本和最初始的问题一直都存在,”法兰克福先生写道,“不仅没有人回答,而且没有人问。”

The balance of the work tries, with the help of Wittgenstein, Pound, St. Augustine and the spy novelist Eric Ambler, among others, to ask some of the preliminary questions – to define the nature of a thing recognized by all but understood by none.

论文的中心努力的,借助Wittgenstein, Pound, St. Augustine 和间谍小说作家 Eric Ambler,来提出那些最初始的问题——来定义一个为人所知却不为人理解的事物的本质。

What is [bull], after all? Mr. Frankfurt points out it is neither fish nor fowl. Those who produce it certainly aren’t honest, but neither are they liars, given that the liar and the honest man are linked in their common, if not identical, regard for the truth.

到底什么是扯淡?法兰克福先生指出它其实有点三不像。扯淡的人当然不诚实,但他们也不是骗子,因为骗子和诚实的人——尽管不同——有共同点相联系,那就是对事实的尊重。

“It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth,” Mr. Frankfurt writes. “A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it.”

“除非一个人认为他知道事实,否则他就不可能说出假话,”法兰克福先生写道。“说谎者在此对事实有所回应,在这个层面上他也尊重着事实。”

The bull artist, on the other hand, cares nothing for truth or falsehood. The only thing that matters to him is “getting away with what he says,” Mr. Frankfurt writes. An advertiser or a politician or talk show host given to [bull] “does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it,” he writes. “He pays no attention to it at all.”

扯淡艺术家,另一方面,丝毫不关心真实或谎言。他唯一在乎的是“和他说出的话脱离干系,”法兰克福先生写到。惯于扯淡的广告商,政客还有脱口秀主持人“并不会排斥事实的权威,说谎者常常这样做,去站到它的对立面,”他写道。“他根本不会注意它。”

And this makes him, Mr. Frankfurt says, potentially more harmful than any liar, because any culture and he means this culture rife with [bull] is one in danger of rejecting “the possibility of knowing how things truly are.” It follows that any form of political argument or intellectual analysis or commercial appeal is only as legitimate, and true, as it is persuasive. There is no other court of appeal.

这一点让他,法兰克福说,潜在里比其他说谎者都要更危险,因为任何文化,他指我们的文化,一旦充满了[扯淡],就是一种处于排斥“知道事情的真实面的可能性”的危险之中的文化。这样一来任何形式的政治言论,理性分析或者商业宣传都只会变得合情,而且真实,在它仍具有游说性质的同时。不存在其他的可供申诉的法庭了。

The reader is left to imagine a culture in which institutions, leaders, events, ethics feel improvised and lacking in substance. “All that is solid,” as Marx once wrote, “melts into air.”

读者被留下来去想象一种文化,在其中机构,领导者,重大事件,伦理感觉像是即兴创作之物而在实质上有所缺乏。“所有那些固态的东西,”像马克思曾经写过的那样,“融在了空气里。”

Mr. Frankfurt is an unlikely slinger of barnyard expletives. He is a courtly man, with a broad smile and a philosophic beard, and he lives in apparently decorous retirement with his wife, Joan Gilbert, in a lovely old house near the university.

法兰克福先生是一位不太标准的仓储空地投石者。他是个谦和而又威严的人,有着爽朗的微笑和哲学家的胡子,他明显生活在优雅的退休中,和他的妻子Joan Gilbert一起,在靠近这所大学一处可爱又古老的房子里。

On a visit there earlier this month, there was Heifetz was on the stereo, good food and wine on the table.

在这个月早些时候的一次访问中,当时音响里播着海菲兹的音乐,丰盛的食物和啤酒在桌子上摆放着。

But appearances, in this case, are somewhat misleading. Mr. Frankfurt spent much of his childhood in Brooklyn, and still sees himself as a disputatious Brooklynite – one who still speaks of the Dodgers as “having betrayed us.” And, in any event, Mr. Frankfurt is not particularly academic in the way he views his calling.

但是表象在这时有着误导性。法兰克福先生讲了很多有关于他在布鲁克林的童年,并且仍然认为自己是一个好辩的布鲁克林人——那种仍然会将欺骗者说成是背叛者的人。在任何情况下,法兰克福先生在看待对于他的称呼上并没有形式上的拘泥。

“I got interested in philosophy because of two things,” he said. “One is that I was never satisfied with the answers that were given to questions, and it seemed to me that philosophy was an attempt to get down to the bottom of things.”

“我对哲学发生了兴趣因为两个问题,”他说。“一个是我对人们对于问题的回答从来不会感到满足,哲学对我来讲似乎是一种趋近事物底层的的企图。”

“The other thing,” he added, “was that I could never make up my mind what I was interested in, and philosophy enabled you to be interested in anything.”

“另一个问题,”他补充道,“就是我从来不能完全确信我的兴趣在哪里,而哲学能让你对任何事物产生兴趣。”

Those interests found expression in a small and scrupulous body of work that tries to make sense of free will, desire and love in closely reasoned but jargon-free prose, illustrated by examples of behavior (philosophers speak of the “Frankfurt example”) that anyone would recognize.

那些兴趣体现在努力地要澄清自由意志,欲望和爱的短小精悍的正文中,在严密论证而又通俗易懂的散文论述中,由那些任何人都能看出来的生活范例(哲学学者们口中的“法兰克福范例”)显示出来。

“He’s dealing with very abstract matters,” said Sarah Buss, who teaches philosophy at the University of Iowa, “but trying not to lose touch with the human condition. His work keeps faith with that condition.”

“他在同抽象的问题打交道,”Sarah Buss说,她在爱荷华大学哲学任教,“但有努力不与人类环境失去联系。他的思辨对人类环境抱有信任。”

Mr. Frankfurt’s teaching shares with his prose a spirit Ms. Buss, who was once his graduate student, defines as, “Come in and let’s struggle with something.”

法兰克福先生的教学在他的散文化语言中分享了一种精神,Buss女士,她曾经在法兰克福先生手下做过毕业生,解释为“参与进来,一起同一些问题斗争。”

“He was very willing,” she added, “to say, ‘I just don’t understand this.’ “

“他意志很坚决,”她补充到,“他会说,‘我就是没办法理解这些。’ ”

The essay on [bull] arose from that kind of struggle. In 1986, Mr. Frankfurt was teaching at Yale, where he took part in a weekly seminar. The idea was to get people of various disciplines to listen to a paper written by one of their number, after which everyone would talk about it over lunch.

这份关于扯淡的论文就源于那种斗争。1986年,法兰克福先生当时在耶鲁大学任教,在那里他参加了一个每周一次的研讨会。研讨会的想法是聚集多种学科中的人一起听由小组中一名成员写的文稿,在那之后大家会在午餐期间讨论和发表意见。

Mr. Frankfurt decided his contribution would be a paper on [bull]. “I had always been concerned about the importance of truth,” he recalled, “the way in which truth is foundational to civilization and the various deformities of it that were current.”

法兰克福先生当时确定他的分享会是一份探讨扯淡的文稿。“我一直在关心事实的重要性,”他回忆说,“事实如何对社会文明起到关键性作用,事实的那些已经流行起来的花样层出的畸形变体又是如何(对社会施加影响)。”

“I’d been concerned about the prevalence” of [bull], he continued, “and the lack of concern for truth and respect for truth that it represented.”

“我一直在担心这种流行”中的扯淡,他接着说,“还有人们对事实的关心以及对事实所代表的真实的尊重的缺乏。”

“I used the title I did,” he added, “because I wanted to talk about [bull] without any [bull], so I didn’t use ‘humbug’ or ‘bunkum.’ “

“我坚持用了这个标题,”他补充道,“因为我想不带任何扯淡的谈论扯淡,所以我没用‘欺骗’或者‘废话’。 ”

Research was a problem. The closest analogue came from Socrates.

研究是一个问题。苏格拉底有过这样最贴切的类比。

“He called it rhetoric or sophistry,” Mr. Frankfurt said, “and regarded philosophy as the great enemy of rhetoric and sophistry.”

“他称之为花言巧语或者诡辩术,”法兰克福先生说,“并且视哲学为花言巧语和诡辩术的最大的敌人。”

“These were opposite, incompatible ways of persuading people,” he added. “You could persuade them with rhetoric” – or [bull] – “with sophistic arguments that weren’t really sound but that you could put over on people, or you could persuade them by philosophical arguments which were dedicated to rigor and clarity of thought.”

“有相反的,不相一致的说服大众的方式,”他补充说,“你可以那花言巧语去说服他们”——其实是扯淡——“用那些没有实质内容却能欺骗于人的诡辩言论,或者你可以通过由严密和清晰的思辨形成的哲学见解来让人们信服。”

Mr. Frankfurt recalled that it took him about a month to write the essay, after which he delivered it to the humanities group. “I guess I should say it was received enthusiastically,” he said, “but they didn’t know whether to laugh or to take it seriously.”

法兰克福先生回忆到将近用了一个月时间去写这份论文,之后他将论文提交给了人文团体。“我想我应该说它受到了热情对待,”他说,“但他们不知道是要大笑还是严肃起来。”

Some months after the reading, the essay, title intact, was published by The Raritan Review, a journal then edited by Richard Poirier, a distinguished literary critic. In 1988, Mr. Frankfurt included it in “The Importance of What We Care About,” a collection of his essays.

在被读到几个月之后,这份论文,标题完好的,由《力登书评》(The Raritan Review)出版,这份杂志后来由著名的文学批评家Richard Poirier主编。1988年,法兰克福先生在“我们关心之物的重要所在”论文集中将它收录。

The audience for academic journals and collections of philosophical essays is limited, however, and so the essay tended to be passed along, samizdat style, from one aficionado to another.

学术期刊和哲学文集的读者有限,然而,就是这样这份论文传阅开来,以地下出版物的形式,从一个狂热爱好者到另一个。

“In the 20 years since it was published,” Mr. Frankfurt said, “I don’t think a year has passed in which I haven’t gotten one or two letters or e-mails from people about it.”

“在它出版后的二十年里,”法兰克福先生先生说,“我不认为有哪一年里我没有收到一两封谈论它的书信或者邮件。”

One man from Wales set some of the text to music; another who worked in the financial industry wanted to create an annual award for the worst piece of analysis published in his field (an idea apparently rejected by his superiors). G. A. Cohen, the Chichele professor of social and political theory at All Souls College, Oxford University, has written two papers on the subject.

一个威尔士人将一些章节放到了音乐里;还有个在金融公司工作的人想在他的领域里设个年度最差分析作品奖(很明显这个设想被他的上司否决了)。G.A.科恩,牛津大学万灵学院的奇切里社会和政治理论教授,曾就这个话题写过两篇文章。

“Harry has a unique capacity to take a simple truth and draw from it very consequential implications,” Mr. Cohen said. “He is very good at identifying the potent elementary fact.”

”举出简单的事实,得出其中相应的内涵,亨利在这方面有出色的才能,”科恩先生曾说。“他很擅长识别那些有力然而也是很基本的事实。”

It was Ian Malcolm, the Princeton University Press editor responsible for philosophy, who approached Mr. Frankfurt about publishing the essay as a stand-alone volume. “The only way the essay would get the audience it deserved was to publish it as a small book,” he said. “I had a feeling it would sell, but we weren’t quite prepared for the interest it got.”

Ian Malcolm是普林斯顿大学出版社的哲学理论编辑,是他找到法兰克福先生谈到要将论文独立出版。“让这份论文走向它应得的读者的唯一方式就是把它出版成一本小书,”他说。“我有种感觉他能卖起来,但我们对它将带来的利益还没想那么多。”

For Mr. Frankfurt, who says it has always been his ambition to move philosophy “back to what most people think of as philosophy, which is a concern with the problems of life and with understanding the world,” the book might be considered a successful achievement. But he finds he is still trying to get to the bottom of things, and hasn’t arrived.

对法兰克福先生而言,他曾说过让哲学“从回到大多数人认为的哲学,重新关注生活中的问题和对世界的理解是他一直以来的追求,”这本书算是一份成功的功绩,但他认为自己仍在努力趋近事物的底层,并且还没达到。

“When I reread it recently,” he said at home, “I was sort of disappointed. It wasn’t as good as I’d thought it was. It was a fairly superficial and incomplete treatment of the subject.”

“我最近重读了那篇论文,”他在家说,“我有些失望,它并不像我想象的那么好。更像是对那个话题的一种相当肤浅而且不完整的处理。”

“Why,” he wondered, “do we respond to [bull] in such a different way than we respond to lies? When we find somebody lying, we get angry, we feel we’ve been betrayed or violated or insulted in some way, and the liar is regarded as deceptive, deficient, morally at fault.”

“为何,”他问道,“我们要以那样一种于回应谎言不同的方式去回应扯淡?当我们发现有人说谎,我们会生气,我们会感到在某种层面上被人背叛,亵渎,或者侮辱了,同时说谎者也被认为是虚伪的,有缺陷的,道德错误的。”

Why we are more tolerant of [bull] than lying is something Mr. Frankfurt believes would be worth considering.

我们对扯淡相比于说谎有更多的宽容,这是法兰克福先生认为值得考虑的问题。

“Why is lying regarded almost as a criminal act?” he asked, while bull “is sort of cuddly and warm? It’s outside the realm of serious moral criticism. Why is that?”

“为什么说谎几乎被当做犯罪行为?”他问道,而扯淡“竟有点可爱和暖人?它处在严格的道德审判体系之外。为什么会是这样?”

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