如果你有留意教學(xué)大綱，就能發(fā)現(xiàn)教學(xué)大綱里列出了不少人的著作，包括亞里士多德，約翰·洛克，伊曼努爾·康德，約翰·斯圖爾特·穆勒及其他哲學(xué)家的著作。在教學(xué)大綱中還能看到我們不僅要讀這些著作，還會探討當代政治及法律爭議所引發(fā)的諸多哲學(xué)問題。我們將討論平等與不平等，平權(quán)行動，自由言論與攻擊性言論，同性婚姻，兵役制等一系列現(xiàn)實問題

If you look at the syllabus, you’ll notice that we read a number of great and famous books, books by Aristotle, John Locke, Immanuel Kant, John Stewart Mill, and others. You’ll notice too from the syllabus that we don’t only read these books; we also take up contemporary, political, and legal controversies that raise philosophical questions. We will debate equality and inequality, affirmative action, free speech versus hate speech, same-sex marriage, military conscription, a range of practical questions.

為什么呢？不僅是為了將這些深奧抽象的著作形象化還為了讓我們通過哲學(xué)辨明，日常生活 包括政治生活中什么才是最關(guān)鍵的。所以我們要讀這些著作，討論這些議題。并了解兩者是怎樣互相補充互相闡釋的。

Why? Not just to enliven these abstract and distant books but to make clear, to bring out what’s at stake in our everyday lives, including our political lives, for philosophy. And so we will read these books and we will debate these issues, and we’ll see how each informs and illuminates the other.

也許聽起來蠻動人，不過我要事先提個醒那就是，通過用這樣的方式閱讀這些著作來訓(xùn)練自我認知必然會帶來一些風(fēng)險，包括個人風(fēng)險和政治風(fēng)險，每位學(xué)政治哲學(xué)的學(xué)生都知道的風(fēng)險

This may sound appealing enough, but here I have to issue a warning. And the warning is this, to read these books in this way as an exercise in self-knowledge, to read them in this way carries certain risks, risks that are both personal and political, risks that every student of political philosophy has known.

這風(fēng)險源自于以下事實，即哲學(xué)就是讓我們面對自己熟知的事物，然后引導(dǎo)并動搖我們原有的認知

These risks spring from the fact that philosophy teaches us and unsettles us by confronting us with what we already know.

這真是諷刺

There’s an irony.

這門課程的難度，就在于傳授的都是你們已有的知識，它將我們所熟知的，毋庸置疑的事物變得陌生

The difficulty of this course consists in the fact that it teaches what you already know. It works by taking what we know from familiar unquestioned settings and making it strange.

正如我們剛舉的例子，那些嚴肅而又不乏趣味的假設(shè)性問題，這些哲學(xué)類著作亦然

That’s how those examples worked, the hypotheticals with which we began with their mix of playfulness and sobriety. It’s also how these philosophical books work.

哲學(xué)讓我們對熟知事物感到陌生，不是通過提供新的信息，而是通過引導(dǎo)并激發(fā)我們  用全新方式看問題，但這正是風(fēng)險所在.一旦所熟知的事物變得陌生,它將再也無法回復(fù)到從前,自我認知就像逝去的童真，不管你有多不安，你已經(jīng)無法不去想或是充耳不聞了。

Philosophy estranges us from the familiar, not by supplying new information but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing, but, and here’s the risk, once the familiar turns strange, it’s never quite the same again.

Self-knowledge is like lost innocence, however unsettling you find it, it can never be un-thought or un-known.

這一過程會充滿挑戰(zhàn)又引人入勝，因為道德與政治哲學(xué)就好比一個故事，你不知道故事將會如何發(fā)展，你只知道這個故事與你息息相關(guān)

What makes this enterprise difficult but also riveting is that moral and political philosophy is a story and you don’t know where the story will lead. But what you do know is that the story is about you.

以上為我提到的個人風(fēng)險

Those are the personal risks.

那么政治風(fēng)險是什么呢？介紹這門課程時，可以這樣許諾: 通過閱讀這些著作討論這些議題，你將成為更優(yōu)秀更有責(zé)任感的公民，你將重新審視公共政策的假定前提，你將擁有更加敏銳的政治判斷力，你將更有效地參與公共事務(wù)，但這一許諾也可能片面而具誤導(dǎo)性。因為絕大多數(shù)情況下，政治哲學(xué)并不是那樣的。你們必須承認政治哲學(xué)可能使你們成為更糟的公民，而不是更優(yōu)秀的，至少在讓你成為更優(yōu)秀公民前先讓你更糟

Now what of the political risks? One way of introducing a course like this would be to promise you that by reading these books and debating these issues, you will become a better, more responsible citizen; you will examine the presuppositions of public policy, you will hone your political judgment, you will become a more effective participant in public affairs.

But this would be a partial and misleading promise. Political philosophy, for the most part. Hasn’t worked that way. You have to allow for the possibility that political philosophy may make you a worse citizen rather than a better one or at least a worse citizen before it makes you a better one,

因為哲學(xué)使人疏離現(xiàn)實，甚至可能弱化行動力追溯到蘇格拉底時代，就有這樣一段對話：在《高爾吉亞篇》中蘇格拉底的一位朋友，卡里克利斯試圖說服蘇格拉底放棄哲學(xué)思考，他告訴蘇格拉底: 如果一個人在年輕時代有節(jié)制地享受哲學(xué)的樂趣那自然大有裨益，但倘若過分沉溺其中，那他必將走向毀滅。聽我勸吧，卡里克利斯說，收起你的辯論。學(xué)個謀生的一技之長，別學(xué)那些滿嘴謬論的人。要學(xué)那些生活富足，聲名顯赫及福澤深厚的人

and that’s because philosophy is a distancing, even debilitating, activity. And you see this, going back to Socrates, there’s a dialogue, the Gorgias, in which one of Socrates’ friends, Callicles, tries to talk him out of philosophizing.

Callicles tells Socrates “Philosophy is a pretty toy if one indulges in it with moderation at the right time of life. But if one pursues it further than one should, it is absolute ruin.”

“Take my advice,” Callicles says, “abandons argument. Learn the accomplishments of active life, take for your models not those people who spend their time on these petty quibbles but those who have a good livelihood and reputation and many other blessings.”

言外之意則是，放棄哲學(xué)，現(xiàn)實一點去讀商學(xué)院吧

So Callicles is really saying to Socrates “Quit philosophizing, get real, go to business school.”

卡里克利斯說得確有道理，因為哲學(xué)的確將我們與習(xí)俗，既定假設(shè)以及原有信條相疏離

And Callicles did have a point. He had a point because philosophy distances us from conventions, from established assumptions, and from settled beliefs.

以上就是我說的個人以及政治風(fēng)險，面對這些風(fēng)險，有一種典型的回避方式，這種方式就是懷疑論。大致的意思是剛才爭論過的案例或者原則沒有一勞永逸的解決方法

Those are the risks, personal and political. And in the face of these risks, there is a characteristic evasion. The name of the evasion is skepticism, it’s the idea…It goes something like this. We didn’t resolve once and for all either the cases or the principles we were arguing when we began.

如果亞里士多德，洛克，康德以及穆勒花了這么多年都沒能解決這些問題，那今天我們齊聚桑德斯劇院，僅憑一學(xué)期的課程學(xué)習(xí)就能解決了嗎？也許這本就是智者見智，仁者見仁的問題。多說無益，也無從論證。這就是懷疑論的回避方式。對此我給予如下回應(yīng)。誠然，這些問題爭論已久，但正因為這些問題反復(fù)出現(xiàn)，也許表明雖然在某種意義上它們無法解決，但另一種意義上卻又無可避免，它們之所以無可避免，無法回避，是因為在日常生活中，我們一次次地在回答這些問題。因此懷疑論讓你們舉起雙手，放棄道德反思，這絕非可行之策。

And if Aristotle and Locke and Kant and Mill haven’t solved these questions after all of these years, who are we to think that we, here in Sanders Theatre, over the course of a semester, can resolve them? And so, maybe it’s just a matter of each person having his or her own principles and there’s nothing more to be said about it, no way of reasoning. That’s the evasion, the evasion of skepticism, to which I would offer the following reply. It’s true; these questions have been debated for a very long time but the very fact that they have recurred and persisted may suggest that though they’re impossible in one sense, they’re unavoidable in another.

And the reason they’re unavoidable, the reason they’re inescapable is that we live some answer to these questions every day. So skepticism, just throwing up your hands and giving up on moral reflection is no solution.

康德曾很貼切地描述了懷疑論的不足，他寫道：懷疑論是人類理性暫時休憩的場所，是理性自省，以伺將來做出正確抉擇的地方，但絕非理性的永久定居地?？档抡J為：簡單地默許于懷疑論，永遠無法平息內(nèi)心渴望理性思考之不安

Immanuel Kant described very well the problem with skepticism when he wrote “Skepticism is a resting place for human reason, where it can reflect upon its dogmatic wanderings, but it is no dwelling place for permanent settlement.”

“Simply to acquiesce in skepticism,” Kant wrote,”can never suffice to overcome the restlessness of reason.”

以上我是想向大家說明，這些故事和爭論展示的風(fēng)險與誘惑，挑戰(zhàn)與機遇。簡而言之，這門課程旨在喚醒你們永不停息的理性思考，探索路在何方。

I’ve tried to suggest through these stories and these arguments some sense of the risks and temptations, of the perils and the possibilities. I would simply conclude by saying that the aim of this course is to awaken the restlessness of reason and to see where it might lead.

謝謝

Thank you very much.