作为纪念: 罗蒂

June 11, 2007

作为纪念: 罗蒂

The Humanistic Intellectual: Eleven Theses | Richard Rorty

译/评罗蒂:

陆兴华

    这篇短文里,罗蒂讲了文科知识分子是干什么的,他们现在做着什么,他们应该做什么,将来该做什么.文科知识分子这个说法还可进一步讲究.巴尔特我觉得有更周到的说法:我们文科知识分子总是同时做着作家/知识分子和教师,身上是三种角色在切换着,我们常用一种角色来躲避另一种角色. 我们自称学者教授的人扛着 "研究"这一借口, 把它当画皮,好潇洒地呆在大学里, 应付社会对我们的工作的质疑;其实我们时时都只是在替社会和历史吃不了兜着走的“知识分子”,而且不管我们多么吹嘘自己和为自己找借口,我们只不过是“作者”,是文学青年那样的一族. " ‘研究’只不过是迫于某些社会条件的制约, 我们给自己的写作这种劳动所取的一个审慎的名头; 它其实是能指的冒险, 交换的过度(总弄到收支不能平衡!)(La ’recherche’est alors le nom prudent que, sous la contraintes de certaines conditions sociales, nous donnons au travail d’écriture, c’est une aventure du signifant, un excès de l’échanges. , 2002:III, 893 ).剥除了 "研究"这一画皮和借口,我们大学人就成了 "(人)文(科)知识分子".

    我在文中加上了一些象译又象评那样的东西,是希望有兴趣的哥们认真领教一下罗蒂的英文功夫.

8. The Humanistic Intellectual: Eleven Theses(1989) (原见Philosophy and Social Hope, 企鹅, 1999年)

i. We should not try to define `the humanities’ by asking what the humanities departments share which distinguishes them from the rest of the university(我们不应使劲去定义文科内有哪些共用的原则是不同于大学内其余的系科的). The interesting dividing line is, instead, one that cuts across departments and disciplinary matrices (其实这条分界线穿越大学内所有的系科和学科准则). It divides people busy conforming to well-understood criteria for making contributions to knowledge(大学内只分为两种人:那些为知识作贡献的人) from people trying to expand their own moral imaginations(和那些努力想(通过研究,哪怕是数学或天文学研究)来扩展道德想象的人). These latter people read books in order to enlarge their sense of what is possible and important either for themselves as individuals or for their society(这是本文的文科知识分子的定义). Call these people the `humanistic intellectuals’. One often finds more such people in the anthropology department than in the classics department, and sometimes more in the law school than in the philosophy department (罗蒂纳闷:为什么研究哲学的人反而不如人类学家古典文学家来得开明和开放,反而比后更容易僵化?罗蒂在另外的地方说到,那些分析哲学家中的实在论者和本质主义者和伦理政治上的斯特劳斯分子,动不动要说“内在优异性”要“客观”, 把真值和实际当评价标准,这与动不动把人称作“现行反革命”/“资产阶级自由化分子”/“反党反人民”而送进牢里或毒气室有什么区别?不把人当人, 而是当成“右派”和“反革命”,所以杀人时就不象是在杀人,而是在杀名称了. 塞族人对阿族人/ 毛泽东对刘少奇/攻台者和守台者,就成了这样不眨眼的杀,理直气壮的杀;正因此,我们可以问:为什么文科内的僵化顽固者常比油滑的政客还对社会有害和危险?为什么物理学家和人类学家常比常学家开明?为什么一个披上学者和教授这张画皮就容易对普通人的道德生活指手划脚,要去改造国民性要去救国救民要去启蒙要替大众来代办民主?罗蒂在这方面问出了许多好问题.).

2. If one asks what good these people do(如果问这些文科人会对社会做出什么好处), what social function they perform neither `teaching’ nor `research’ is a very good answer (这些文科人远远不光只是教和研). Their idea of teaching or at least of the sort of teaching they hope to do is not exactly the communication of knowledge, but more like stirring the kids up(更多地是去促/发/鼓动孩子们). When they apply for a leave or a grant(申请学术假和基金时), they may have to fill out forms about the aims and methods of their so called research projects(申请表上得填上所谓的研究计划的宗旨和方法), but all they really want to do is read a lot more books in the hope of becoming a different sort of person (申请资助的报告上写的和他们心里真想做的是两回事;怎敢把这种实话(鼓动年青人与社会较劲)填上去?).

3. So the real social function of the humanistic intellectuals is to instil doubts (向孩子们灌输怀疑)in the students about the students’ own self-images, and about the society to which they belong(教他们怀疑他们所属的社会). These people are the teachers who help ensure that the moral consciousness of each new generation is slightly different from that of the previous generation (确保新一代的道德觉悟与上一代稍有不同).

4. But when it comes to the rhetoric of public support for higher education(涉及到要公众来支持高等教育这种说辞时), we do not talk (我们对这种(会使顽固派听了惊慌的文科人的社会功能)不好说得太多;我们自己认为想激进想政治化都很困难,想做也做不到,那些学院顽固派和管理当局和当权派却一听见一两个说法就害怕得马上来镇压)much about this social function. We cannot tell boards of trustees(信托机构/校董会), government commissions, and the like, that our function is to stir things up(不好径自对他们说我们文科人的功能是去生事,鼓动), to make our society feel guilty(去使我们的社会负疚), to keep it off balance(去让社会失去平衡). We cannot say that the taxpayers employ us to make sure that their children will think differently than they do(也不好对纳税人说,我们收钱是为了使他们的孩子思考得与他们现在不一样). Somewhere a deep down, everybody - even the average taxpayer - knows that that is one of the things colleges and universities are for(其实,内心深处/隐隐地他们也是知道大学就是这个的干活,只是不想来多管罢了). But nobody can afford to make this fully explicit and public(谁都不敢把这当众明说出来,谁也耽待不起那后果).

5. We humanistic intellectuals find ourselves in a position analogous to that of the `social-gospel’ or `liberation theology’ clergy(我们文科人与’社会福音派’或"解放神学"的神职人员有些类似), the priests and ministers who think of themselves as working to build the kingdom of God on earth(我们也有点象教士和牧师那样有点忘乎所以,竟想在这地上建个上帝之国). Their opponents describe their activity as leftist political action (反对我们这么做的人,就称我们的所作所为是左派政治行动). The clergy, they say, are being paid to relay God’s word, but are instead meddling in politics(神职人员,反对我们的人会说,是拿了钱去传达上帝的话的,临了竟毛手毛脚到政治里去了). We are accused of being paid to contribute to and communicate knowledge, while instead `politicizing the humanities’(而我们文科人则被谴责拿了钱不去传达知识,却去搞"文科的政治化"了). Yet we cannot take the idea of unpoli-ticized humanities (但我们文科其实也不对政治化的文科很当真)any more seriously than our opposite numbers in the clergy can take seriously the idea of a depoliticized church(正如与我们文科人有些类似的那些神职人员们对政治化的教会其实也不是真的很当真).

6. We are still expected to make the ritual noises(我们仍被指望弄出些仪式性的噪音来, 没有不行,太刺耳了也不行, 批评和批判得刚好中听,所有的执权者都打着这样的如意算盘,我们文科人的一切愤怒和呐喊,最终都不得不调谐到这样的频道) to which the trustees and the funding agencies are accustomed(但不许过分,要刚好使信托机构和基金管理部门习惯听它,不会听了恼怒) - noises about `objective criteria of excellence’(这些权力部门只爱听:什么客观的创优指标),`fundamental moral and spiritual values’(什么根本的道德和精神价值), `the enduring questions posed by the human condition(什么人类状况向我们提出的历久的问题)’, and so on, just as the liberal clergy is supposed to mumble its way through creeds written in an earlier and simpler age(就象神职人员也得说一些老早的单纯时代写下的那些信条来作讨好过去,应付当前一样). But those of us who have been impressed (我们中那些被下面的说法打动的人)by the anti-Platonic(反柏拉图), antiessentialist(反本质主义), historicizing(历史化),naturalizing writers of the last few centuries (people like Hegel, Darwin, Freud, Weber, Dewey and Foucault) must either become cynical(必须不是变得玩世) or else put our own tortured private constructions on these ritual phrases(就是落到用这些仪式性的话来说出我们自己的受折磨的私下里的想法构成: 正是这些权力部门使我们这样低头屋檐(?)yan下,只作着一些驯顺的抗议和抵抗!!).

7. This tension between public rhetoric and private sense of mission (公共修辞与私底下的使命感之间的紧张/闹僵)leaves the academy in general, and the humanistic intellectuals in particular, vulnerable to heresy hunters(使文科知识分子很容易被看成异端,落进捉巫者手中). Ambitious politicians like William Bennett- or cynical journalists like the young William Buckley (author of God and Man at Yale) or Charles Sykes (author of Profscam) can always point out gaps between official rhetoric and actual practice(官方修辞与实际做法之间是有缺口的). Usually, however, such heresy hunts peter out quickly in the face of faculty solidarity(系科一团结,捉巫者也就神气不了一会儿). The professors of physics and law, people whom nobody wants to mess with, can be relied upon to rally around fellow members of the American Association of University Professors who teach anthropology or French, even if they neither know nor care what the latter do(教授委员会总可以让教物理和法律的教授出面来挡一下这种捉巫(一会儿反右一会儿反左一会整新左一会儿整新自,谁说这种整只发生在共产党内的权力争抢中?)运动,这些教授(教的东西可不含糊,物理法律,谁敢去说三道四它?)可不是好欺负的,虽并不知道教法语和人类学到底是咋回事儿,毕竟可用来保护 (人)文(科)知识分子;你说现状叫人泄气不泄气?).

8. In the current flap about the humanities, however, the heresy
hunters have a more vulnerable target than usual(捉巫者和整人者现在有了个更好欺负的软肋或软柿). This target is what Allan Bloom (捉巫积极分子Bloom老兄称这批人是 “尼采化的左派”–照甘阳说法,Bloom与罗蒂同算斯特劳斯弟子,其也为福山(昨天翻了一下此人最近的新书,里面赫然将西方国家称作是坚持着 univerally liberal principles的国家!)的老师) calls `the Nietzscheanized left’(这只软柿子叫"尼采化的左派"). This left is an anomaly(是在美国的变种)in America. In the past the American left has asked our country to be true to its ideals(咱美国过去出的左派是要我们美国忠实于自己的理想), to go still further along the path of expanding human feedom which our forefathers mapped(推进我们的先辈划出的那一应不断扩展的自由): the path which led us from the abolition of slavery through women’s suffrage, the Wagner Act and the Civil Rights Movement, to contemporary feminism and gay liberation(lin着我们cong废奴到…同性恋解放运动这条深化的道不断往下走). But the Nietzscheanized left tells the country it is rotten to the core(可现在,尼采化的左派却告诉我们说, 这个国家它已烂到了心) - that it is a racist, sexist, imperialist society, one which can’t be trusted an inch(我们千万不能再信任它, 一丁点都不), one whose every utterance must be ruthlessly deconstructed(对它的所有的说词都必须无情解构).

9. Another reason this left is a vulnerable target is that it is extraordi-narily self-obsessed and ingrown(这路左派容易吃亏,是因为它自执得离奇,太朝内/内生), as well as absurdly over-philosophized(过分哲学化到了荒唐地步). It takes seriously Paul de Man’s weird suggestion(把德曼下面的异怪的建议当了真) that`one can approach the problems of ideology and by extension the problems of politics only on the basis of critical-linguistic analysis(德曼竟然书呆子/不懂世故到说出下面这样的话:只有用批判性语言分析才能去碰意识形态和由它延伸出来的政治这一烫手问题)’. It seems to accept Hillis Miller’s fantastic claim(这路左派似乎也接受了米勒的有点梦幻的说法) that `the millennium [of universal peace and justice among men(普遍和平和正义的新千年只有当)] would come if all men and women became good readers in de Man’s sense’(男女老小能象德曼说的那样去解读, 才会到来). When asked for a utopian sketch of our country’s future, the new leftists reply along the lines of one of Foucault’s most fatuous remarks. When asked why he never sketched a utopia(为什么福柯你从不描给我们一个乌托邦呢?), Foucault said, `I think that to imagine another system is to extend our participation in the present system(福柯回说: 君不见:想象出另一个系统,也只是在继续加入到当前的系统(只是在加固原有的那一系统, 怎么跳得出 “那一”系统的如来手掌?巴尔特:鸣呼!我们只不过是在用一种新的意识形态来批判另一些被我们看旧的意识形态;各种意识形态象万花筒一样夹裹着我们的生活世界,我们称它们为图像隧道(image是:那种半物半念半字半身半人的inter-world的东西;意识形态就由这些莫须有的image 构成);我们决无能力裸眼地去看:伟大画家好不容易将女人剥光,我们好奇的眼又急忙将她什么都穿上,还现代主义后现代地闹了半天的深刻.)).’ De Man and Foucault were (and Miller is) a lot better than these unfortunate remarks would suggest(德曼和福柯的人本身比这些不幸的话听上去要好得多), but some of their followers are a lot worse(但他们的有些追随者的为人则比这几句话听上去的还要糟得多).

    This over-philosophized and self-obsessed left is the mirror image of the over-philosophized and self-obsessed Straussians(这种左派与那些过于哲学化/过于自执的斯特劳斯分子构成鲜明对照:大家想一下:为什么美国的斯特劳斯分子与文科激左的这幕对立假戏,这种肥皂剧竟也原封不动搬到了可怜中华大地, 只是,在我们可怜学界,连左和右的石灰线都划错,一天一划,划了也没有理睬,大家照样乱踩, 可怜伟大的汪晖于是连自己到底是站在右边还是左边也搞不清,既是新左对内主持道统做本土学术和中国特色 “思想”,又要闹新革命,说89年搞错了是因为没有照他的办法去搞,既反西方话语霸权却又照了西方大学里的汉学权威话语的腔调和西方人的思想史历史观念的老套去替世界大学系统书写西式模板下的 “中国现代性思想”和 “中国现代思想的兴起”,对内为民请民比共产党还革命对外对西方或美国又反对共产党的改革开放政策和社会主义市场经济在西方人面前把自己打扮成了不同政见者, 嫖子和老X都做,门票和赞助两占.Richard兄这次来中国讲学, 一定会领教到中国学术场里这种受爱滋病传染一样的中国“本土思想”/“汉语思想”/中国特色的学术政治中的西方流行病,虽然它在西方叫感冒,在中国称伤风.他象萨斯其间的呼吸道专科医师,会理会不过来,忙累中千万别自己被传染上.). The contempt of both groups for contemporary American society is so great(这两路人那么地鄙夷当代美国社会) that both have rendered- themselves impotent when it comes to national,state or local politics(反而在涉及民族/国家和本地政治时变得无能). This means that they get to spend all their energy on academic politics(光忙于去搞学术政治去了)

10. The two groups are currently staging a sham battle(为了怎么开书单而打假仗) about how to construct reading lists. The Straussians say that the criterion for what books to assign is intrinsic excellence(斯特劳斯分子们说让学生去读什么书是取决于书的内在优异), and the Nietzscheanized left says that it is fairness(尼采化左派则说是取决于对人公平) - e.g., fairness to females, blacks and Third Worlders(比如说必须对妇女/黑人和第三世界人士公平; Third Worlder: 我喜欢这个词). They are both wrong(这两路人都错了). Reading lists should be constructed so as to preserve a delicate balance between two needs(开书单是要在下面两种需要之间保持脆弱的平衡). The first is the need of the students to have common reference points with people in previous generations and in other social classes(第一种需要是,学生读了书后就与上代人与别的阶级里的人有了共同参照点)-so that grandparents and grandchildren, people who went to the University of Wisconsin at Whitewater and people who went to Stanford, will have read a lot of the same books(这样,祖父母与孙儿孙女,上好大学和上不好的大学的人总会读过一些一样的书). The second is the need of the teachers to be able to teach the books which have moved them, excited them, changed their lives(第二个需要是,教师总想去教那些曾打动/激动/改变过他们的人生的那些"书") - rather than having to teach a syllabus handed down by a committee(而不是去教由某个委员会下达的教学大纲).

11 . Philosophers of education, well-intended committees and govern-
mental agencies have attempted to understand, define and manage
the humanities(教育哲学/好心的委员会和政府有关部门都想来理解/定义和管理文科). The point, however, is to keep the humanities changing fast enough(重要的却是使文科变化得尽量地快) so that they remain indefinable and unmanageable(好让文科永远都无法被定义无法被管理). All we need to keep them changing that fast is good old-fashioned academic freedom(使它改/变得快, 要诀仍是那个老方子:学术自由). Given freedom to shrug off the heresy hunters and their cries of `politicization!’(应给文科人自由,不把捉巫者和他们"政治化"惊叫当回事儿), as well as freedom for each new batch of assistant professors to despise and repudiate the departmental Old Guard to whom they owe their jobs, the humanities will continue to be in good shape(也应给新一茬助教自由,使他们虽然是靠了系里的老顽固才找到了饭碗,但仍能鄙视和痛斥他们). If you don’t like the ideological weather in the local English department these days(如果你不感冒本地英语系里的这些时的意识形态天气), wait a generation(那么就等它十年或一代). Watch what happens to the Nietzscheanized left when it tries to replace itself(看看尼采化的左派在2010年左右努力去新陈代谢时它自己时,会发生什么:这种左派里也分顽固的激进,后生会反抗前辈), around about the year 2010. I’m willing to bet that the brightest new Ph.D.s in English that year will be people who never want to hear the terms
`binary opposition’ or `hegemonic discourse’ again as long as they live
(我敢打赌,到了2010年, 那年新调来英语系工作的博士毕业生一定是永生不再想听什么"二元对立"/"霸权话语"这样的说法的了:激进派本身也是象有顽固派的学术斗争域里那样地代谢着的).