又一篇好文来啦，请阁下细细品尝。我们尽力依赖于证据和逻辑推理让自己变得理性，尽力不让我们的情感左右我们的判断和决定。而休谟认为，无论我们追求什么，理性总是激情的奴隶，多数情况下，都是感性驱动着我们，而不是理性分析和逻辑。人们经常根据自己相信的东西推理、判断，而不是基于推理来选择自己所相信的东西。我们倾向在自己好恶的基础之上，判断一种想法的对错。今天，让我们走进休谟的哲学世界。The 18th century writer, David Hume, is one of the world's great philosophical voices because he hit upon a key fact about human nature - that we are more influenced by our feelings than by reason. This is, at one level, possibly a great insult to our self-image, but Hume thought that if we could learn to deal well with this surprising fact, we could be both individually and collectively a great deal calmer and happier than if we denied it.18世纪时的作家大卫·休谟，是世界上最伟大的哲学家之一，因为他有个关于人性的重要发现：感性对我们的影响比理性对我们的影响要大。在某种层面上，这可能是对我们自我形象的极大侮辱，但休谟认为，如果我们能学会接受这个事实，而不是拒绝接受，那么无论是个人还是集体意义上，我们都会更冷静，更快乐。Hume was born in Edinburgh in 1711 to a family that was long established but far from rich. He was the second son and it was clear early on that he would need to find a job eventually, but nothing seemed to suit him. He tried law, the vocation of his father and his older brother, but soon decided that it was "a laborious profession, requiring the drudgery of a whole life." He was considered for academic posts at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow, but he didn't land either job.1711年，休谟在爱丁堡出生，他生在一个历史悠久、却并不富裕的家庭里。他是家里的次子，很明显他早晚得找个工作养活自己，但似乎什么工作都不适合他。他父亲和兄长都从事法律行业，他也试了试从事法律，但很快就觉得法律是项“辛苦的工作”，“需要做一辈子枯燥乏味的差事”。爱丁堡大学和格拉斯哥大学都曾考虑聘用他担任学术职务，但最后，这两份工作都黄了。So, he set out to become a public intellectual, someone who would make his money selling books to the general public. It was pretty hard-going. His first book, 'A Treatise of Human Nature', for which he had the highest hopes, met with a dismal reception. "Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise," he wrote. "It fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction as to even excite a murmur among the zealots." But Hume kept at it, realizing that the blame largely lay with the way that he had expressed his ideas, and doggedly trained himself to write in a more accessible and popular manner. Eventually, he did find an audience.因此，他准备做一名公共知识分子，通过向大众出售自己写的书来赚钱。但这条道路并不容易。他对自己的第一本书《人性论》抱有很大希望，但这本书在当时却无人问津。他曾经写道：“我这本专著，是所有书面作品中最不幸的。”“它仿佛从出版社刚刚出世，就是个死胎，一直默默无闻，被世人冷落，甚至哲学狂热者也不屑一顾。”但是他并没有放弃，他意识到，这次失败是因为他的表达方式对大众来说太过晦涩，他顽强地训练自己让自己的作品更通俗、更易于理解。最后，他确实成功吸引了一批读者。His later works, popular history books and collections of elegant essays, were best-sellers of the day. As he would say, not without some pride: "The money given me by booksellers much exceeded anything formerly known in England; I was to become not only independent but opulent."他后来的作品，比如通俗历史书籍和文笔典雅的散文集，都是当时的畅销书。他不无骄傲地说：“我从书商那里赚了那么多钱，这在英格兰可是史无前例。我不仅经济独立了，还富起来了。”Hume's philosophy is built around a single powerful observation: that the key thing we need to get right in life is feeling rather than rationality. It sounds like an odd conclusion. Normally we assume that what we need to do is train our minds to be as rational as possible, to be devoted to evidence and logical reasoning, and committed to preventing our feelings from getting in the way. But Hume insisted that whatever we may aim for, reason is the slave of passion.休谟的哲学建立在这样一个简单却有力的观察基础上：我们生活中最关键的，是感性而不是理性。这可能听起来有点奇怪。通常，我们认为我们要尽力让自己变得理性，只依赖于证据和逻辑推理，尽力不让我们的情感左右我们的判断和决定。但是休谟坚持，无论我们追求什么，“理性总是激情的奴隶。”更多情况下，都是感性驱动着我们，而不是相对薄弱的理性分析和逻辑。We are more motivated by our feelings than by any of the comparatively feeble results of analysis and logic. Few of our leading convictions had driven by rational investigations of the facts. We decide whether someone is admirable, what to do with our spare time, what constitutes a successful career, or who to love on the basis of feeling above anything else. Reason helps a little, but the decisive factors are bound up with our emotional lives, with our passions, as Hume calls them.我们的主要信念很少来自对事实的理性探究。在我们判断某人是否值得敬佩之时，决定如何利用我们的业余时间之时，判断什么算是成功的事业之时，或者决定该爱哪个人之时，感性都主导了我们的决断。理性会起一点作用，但决定性因素还是我们的情感，或者用休谟的原话，我们的“激情”。Hume lived in a time known as the Age of Reason, when many claimed that the glory of human beings consists in their rationality, but for Hume a human is just another kind of animal. Hume was deeply attentive to the curious way that we very often reason from, not to our convictions. We find an idea nice or threatening and on that basis alone declare it true or false. Reason only comes in later to support the original attitude.休谟生活在所谓的“理性时代”，在那个时代，许多人认为人类的高贵之处在于理性。但休谟认为，人类不过是另一种动物。休谟留意到，我们经常根据自己的相信的东西推理、判断，而不是基于推理来选择自己所相信的东西。我们只是在自己好恶的基础之上判断一种想法的对错。而在这之后，为了支持自己上述的想法，我们才会运用理性。What Hume didn't believe, however, was that all feelings are acceptable and equal. That's why he firmly believed in the education of the passions. People have to learn to be more benevolent, more patient, more at ease with themselves, and less afraid of others. But to be taught these things, they need an education system that addresses feelings rather than reason.但休谟并不认为各类感性都是可以接受的、都是平等的。因此他坚持激情教育是有必要的。人们要学会更仁慈，更有耐心，更怡然自得，且对他人少些惧意。但是要学会这些，需要一种重视感性而不是理性的教育体系。This is why Hume so deeply believed in the role and significance of public intellectuals. Unlike university professors that Hume grew to dislike immensely, these were people who had to excite a passion-based attachment to ideas, wisdom, and insight. Only if they succeeded would they have the money to eat. It was for this reason that they had to write well, use colorful examples, and have recoursed wit and charm.正因如此，休谟深信，公共知识分子扮演着重要角色。和休谟逐渐厌恶的大学教授不同，他所说的公共知识分子必须激起人们在激情基础上对观点、智慧和洞察力的喜爱。因为只有这样，他们才能赚钱糊口。因此他们必须写得一手好文章，既要援引生动的事例，还要有智慧、有魅力。Hume's insight is that if you want to change people's beliefs, reasoning with them like a normal philosophy professor won't be the most effective strategy. He's pointing out that we have to try to adjust sentiments by sympathy, re-assurance, good example, encouragement, and what he called "art". And only later, for a few determined souls, should we ever try to make a case on the basis of facts and logic.休谟认识到，如果想要改变大众的思想观念，像一般的哲学教授那样同大众掉书袋、讲道理并不是最有效的办法。他指出，想要改变人们的观点，必须通过同理心、肯定的态度、正面事例、鼓励，以及他称作“艺术”的东西来实现。在这之后，对于那些不轻易改变观点的少数人，我们才会尝试用事实和逻辑说服他们。A key place where Hume made use of the idea of the priority of feeling over reason was in connection with religion. Hume didn't think it was rational to believe in god. That is, he didn't think there were compelling logical arguments in favor of the existence of a deity. He himself seems to have floated between mild agnosticism (there might be a god, I'm not sure) and mild theism (there is a god, but it doesn't make much difference to me that there is).在“宗教”这一方面，休谟也运用了他“感性高于理性”的观念。休谟认为，相信上帝的存在是非理性的。也就是说，他认为还不存在试图证明“神存在”的、且令人信服的逻辑论述。温和的不可知论者认为“可能有上帝，我不太确定”，温和的有神论者则是“上帝存在，但跟不存在没什么不同”，而休谟似乎处于两者之间。However, the idea of a vindictive god, someone ready to punish people in an afterlife for not believing in him in this one, he considered a cruel superstition. Hume's central point is that religious belief isn't the product of reason. So arguing for or against it on the basis of facts doesn't touch the core issue. To try to persuade someone to believe or not believe with well-honed arguments seemed particularly daft to Hume. This is why he was a foremost defender of the concept of religious toleration.然而有些人认为上帝是有报复心的，如果今生不信上帝，来世就会受上帝惩罚，休谟认为这是种残忍的迷信。休谟的中心思想是宗教信仰不是理性的产物。因此，基于事实来支持它或反对它都没有触及问题核心。对休谟来说，用严密的论证来劝说别人信教或不信教都是极其可笑的。正因如此，休谟是“宗教宽容”的首要捍卫者。We shouldn't treat those who disagree with us over religion as rational people who've made an error of reasoning and so need to be put right; rather as passionate emotion-driven creatures who should be left in peace so long as they do likewise with us. Trying to have a rational argument over religion was for Hume the height of folly and arrogance.我们不应该把那些在宗教问题上与我们意见不同的人视作犯了推理错误的、需要我们纠正的理性人，我们应该将他们看作富有激情、受情感驱动的人，只要双方相安无事，我们就没必要去找对方麻烦。对休谟来说，试图就宗教展开理性辩论是愚蠢而自大的。Hume was what is technically known as a skeptic, someone committed to doubting a lot of the common sense ideas of the day. One of the things he doubted was the concept of what is technically called "personal identity", the idea that we have that we can understand ourselves and have a more or less graspable and enduring identity that runs through life.用哲学术语来说，休谟还是个怀疑论者，作为怀疑论者，他致力于质疑所处时代的常识观念。“人格同一性”这个概念就是他所质疑的观念之一。人格同一性是指我们能够认识自我，而且拥有一个或多或少可以把握的、持续终生的“身份”。Hume pointed out that there is no such thing as a "Core Self". "When I enter most intimately into what I call 'myself'," he famously explained, "I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch 'myself' at any time without a perception and can never observe anything but the perception." He concluded that we aren't really the neat definable people reason tells us that we are; we seem to be when we look at ourselves in the mirror or casually use that grand and rather misleading word "I". "We are," he wrote, "nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity and are in a perpetual flux and movement."休谟指出，根本没有什么所谓的“核心自我”。他解释说：“当我进入深埋的所谓‘自我’时，我总是偶然发现某些特定的感受，比如，冷热、明暗、爱恨、痛苦和愉悦。我无法脱离感受而捕捉到‘自我’，而通过内省，我也只能观察到自己的感受。”他得出的结论是理性告诉我们，我们是可以明确定义的人，但事实恰恰相反，我们并不是可以明确定义的。只是我们在揽镜自照的时候，抑或随意用“我”这个带有误导性的宏大词汇的时候，好像变得能明确定义了而已。“我们只不过是一团多种感觉的集合体。这些不同种类的感觉以一种我们无法想象的速度交替着，这些感觉永远处在流动之中。”Yet, despite being skeptical, Hume was very happy for us to hold onto most of our common-sense beliefs because they are what help us make our way in the world. Trying to be rational about everything is a special kind of madness. Hume was making a sly dig at Descartes here. The French philosopher had died 60 years before Hume was born, but his intellectual influence was still very much alive. He had argued that we should throw out every fruit of the mind that wasn't perfectly rational. But Hume proposed that hardly anything we do is ever truly rational. And yet he ventured that most beliefs are justified simply because they work. They're useful to us. They help us to get on with what we want to do. A test of a belief isn't its provable truth but its utility. Hume was offering a corrective to our fascination with prestigious but not actually very important logical conundrums. In opposition to academic niceties, he was a skeptical philosopher who stood for common sense, championing the everyday and the wisdom of the unlearned and the ordinary.尽管休谟常持怀疑态度，但他仍乐于见到我们能坚持大多数常识性观念，因为这些常识观念帮助我们在这个世界立足。想要对所有事都保持理性是一种特殊的疯狂。休谟这是在偷偷挖苦笛卡尔呢。笛卡尔是位法国哲学家，在休谟出生60年之前就去世了，但他的思想影响力仍然很强。笛卡尔曾辩称，一切不理性的思想果实都该被抛弃掉。但休谟认为，我们几乎不做真正理性的事。但他仍谨慎地提出，大多数信念之所以合理，仅仅是因为它们管用。这些信念对我们有用，能让我们继续做自己想做的事情。信念合理不在于其能被论证，而在于实际效用。我们时常着迷于大名鼎鼎却并无实际作用的逻辑难题，而对此，休谟提供了一个我们急需的纠正方法。他不纠结于学术细节，他是一个常持怀疑态度的哲学家，却支持常识，拥护未受教育的人和普通人的日常生活和智慧。Hume took a great interest in the traditional philosophical topic of Ethics, a conundrum of how humans can be good. He argued that morality isn't about having moral ideas. It's about having been trained, from an early age, in the art of decency through the emotions. "Being good means getting into good habits of feeling." Hume was a great advocate of qualities like wit, good manners, and sympathy because these are the things that make people nice to be around outside of any rational plan to be good.此外，休谟还对伦理学这个传统哲学话题充满兴趣，伦理学有关人类如何变善的难题。休谟主张，道德并不是指“有道德观念”，而是从小就通过情感训练学习行为准则。“善”意味着于养成良好的情感习惯。休谟大力倡导像机智、礼貌和同情心这类品质，因为这些品质令人友善，让人脱离了理性的约束也能保持善良。He was hugely struck by the fact that a person - and here again, he was thinking of Descartes - could be ostensibly rational and yet, not that nice, because being able to follow complex argument or deduce trends from data doesn't make you sensitive to the sufferings of others or skilled at keeping your temper. These qualities are the work of our feelings. So, if we want people to behave well, what we need to do is to rethink education. We have to influence the development of feeling. We have to encourage benevolence, gentleness, pity, and shame through the seduction of the passionate sides of our nature, without delivering dry logical lectures.有件事让休谟很震惊：有些人在表面上看起来理性，但却并不善良。因为能够理解复杂的论证或者能从数据中推断趋势并不会让人对他人苦难感同身受，也不会让人学会控制情绪。同理心、控制情绪这些品质是由情感而生的。因此，如果我们希望人们表现良好，就得重新考虑我们的教育方式。我们必须影响情感的发展。我们必须鼓励仁慈、温柔、怜悯和羞耻心，这要通过唤起我们天性中“激情”的一面来实现，而不是枯燥的逻辑课程。Hume's philosophy always emerged as an attempt to answer a personal question: What is a good life? He wanted to know how his own character and that of those around him could be influenced for the best. And oddly, for a philosopher, he didn't feel the traditional practice of philosophy could really help. Though he was scholarly, he was in large part, a man of the world. For some years, he was an adviser to the British ambassador in Paris who welcomed his shrewd wisdom. He was much liked by those around him, known by the French as 'Le Bon David', a humane, kind and witty conversationalist, much in demand as a dinner companion. "Be a philosopher, but amidst all your philosophy, be still a man," he insisted. That's the way Hume lived - not in the intellectual seclusion of a monastery or ivory tower, but deeply embedded in the company of other humans - dining (he especially liked roast chicken), chatting about love and career, and playing Backgammon.休谟的哲学总是试图回答“什么是好的生活？”这一个人问题。他想知道怎样让自己和周围人的性格受到最好的影响。奇怪的是，他虽然是个哲学家，却感觉传统的哲学实践并没有什么作用。尽管休谟颇有学术造诣，但在很大程度上他是个普通人。有些年，他做英国驻巴黎大使的顾问，大使很欣赏他的精明智慧。他很受周围人的喜爱，法国人称他为“善人大卫”。他很健谈，有人情味、友善又机智，人人争相邀他共进晚餐。“做哲学家，但做学问的同时，还要做人。”他一直这样说。休谟就是这样生活的。他没有与世隔绝在思想的修道院或象牙塔中，相反，他让自己融入他人的陪伴之中，比如同他人用餐（他特别爱吃烤鸡），聊聊爱情、事业，一起下双陆棋等等。Hume died in Edinburgh in August 1776, at home, in his house in St. Andrew's Square. His doctor wrote about the last hours to Adam Smith, for many years, Hume's best friend. "He continued to the last perfectly sensible, and free from much pain or feelings of distress. He never dropped the smallest expression of impatience; but when he had occasion to speak to the people about him, always did it with affection and tenderness… He died in such a happy composure of mind, that nothing could exceed it." Hume remains a rather outstanding thing, a philosopher alive to how much philosophy has to learn from common-sense.他于1776年8月在爱丁堡圣安德鲁广场的家中去世。他的医生给休谟多年来最好的朋友亚当·斯密写信，讲述了休谟生命的最后几个小时。“直到生命最后，他仍然完全理智清醒，也没有太多痛苦和烦恼。他从来没有表露一丁点不耐烦。每当他有机会与周围人聊天时，他总是那么亲切，那么温和。他去得十分镇静安详，对他来说这是个完美的终曲。”休谟至今仍是一位杰出人物，他是一位意识到哲学可以在常识中汲取营养的伟大哲学家。By The School of Life译：良哥