正文翻译

Why our pursuit of happiness may be flawed？

为什么我们对幸福的追求可能是有缺陷的

(Image credit: Mike Kemp/Getty Images)

(图片来源:迈克·肯普/盖蒂图片社)

Modern society seems to be obsessed with finding happiness, but if some philosophers are to believed, this could be a fruitless pursuit (Credit: Mike Kemp/Getty Images)

By Nat Rutherford

作者：纳特·卢瑟福

It is an emotion lixed to improved health and well-being, but is our obsession with being happy a recipe for disappointment, asks Nat Rutherford.

纳特·卢瑟福问道，快乐是一种与改善健康和幸福有关的情绪，但我们对快乐的痴迷是失望的根源吗?

What do you want from life? You’ve probably had the opportunity and the cause to ask yourself that question recently. Perhaps you want to spend more time with your family, or get a more fulfilling and secure job, or improve your health. But why do you want those things?

你想从生活中得到什么?最近你可能有机会也有理由问自己这个问题。也许你想花更多的时间和家人在一起，或者想找一份更有成就感和安全感的工作，或者想改善你的健康状况。但你为什么想要那些东西?

Chances are that your answer will come down to one thing: happiness. Our culture’s fixation on happiness can seem almost religious. It is one of the only reasons for action that doesn’t stand in need of justification: happiness is good because being happy is good. But can we build our lives on that circular reasoning?

你的答案很可能会归结为一件事:幸福。我们的文化对幸福的执着几乎可以说是非常虔诚的。这是唯一一个不需要辩解的行动理由:幸福是好的，因为快乐就是好的。但是，我们能在这种循环推理的基础上建立我们的生活吗?

Considering the importance of the question, there’s remarkably little data on what people want from life. A survey in 2016 asked Americans whether they would rather "achieve great things or be happy" and 81% said that they would rather be happy, while only 13% opted for achieving great things (6% were daunted by the choice and weren’t sure). Despite the ubiquity of happiness as a goal, it’s hard to know how to define it or how to achieve it.

考虑到这个问题的重要性，关于人们想从生活中得到什么的数据却非常少。在2016年的一项调查中，美国人被问及他们是宁愿“取得伟大的成就还是获得快乐”，81%的人说他们宁愿快乐，而只有13%的人选择取得伟大的成就(6%的人被这个选择吓到了，不确定)。尽管幸福是无处不在的目标，但人们很难知道如何定义它或如何实现它。

Yet more and more aspects of life are judged in terms of their contribution to the phantom of happiness. Does your relationship, your job, your home, your body, your diet make you happy? If not, aren’t you doing something wrong? In our modern world, happiness is the closest thing we have to a summum bonum, the highest good from which all other goods flow. In this logic unhappiness becomes the summum malum, the greatest evil to be avoided. There is some evidence that the obsessive pursuit of happiness is associated with a greater risk of depression.

然而，越来越多的生活的方方面面都被用来衡量它们对幸福幻影的贡献。你的人际关系、工作、家庭、身体、饮食让你快乐吗?如果没有，你是不是做错了什么?在我们的现代世界，幸福是我们所拥有的最接近至善的东西，它是所有善的源头。在这个逻辑中，不快乐则成为了极恶，是人们要避免的最大的邪恶。有证据表明，对幸福的过分追求可能导致更大的抑郁风险。

Entire sections of book shop shelving are often dedicated to self-help books that promise to make us happier (Credit: Gerry Walden/Alamy)

书店的书架上常常摆满了自救类书籍，这些书承诺会让我们更快乐。(来源:格里.瓦尔登/阿拉米)

In his recent book, The Enlightenment: The Pursuit of Happiness, historian Ritchie Robertson argues that the Enlightenment should be understood not as the increase in value of reason itself, but instead as the quest for happiness through reason. The determining intellectual force of modernity was about happiness and we are still grappling with the limits of that project today.

历史学家里奇·罗伯逊在其新书《启蒙运动:对幸福的追求》中指出，启蒙运动不应被理解为理性本身价值的增加，而应被理解为通过理性寻找幸福的追求。现代决定性的智力力量是关于幸福的，而我们今天仍在努力解决这个项目的局限性。

It’s easy to assume that happiness has always been valued as the highest good, but human values and emotions are not permanently fixed. Some values which once were paramount, such as honour or piety, have faded in importance, while emotions like "acedia" (our feeling of apathy comes closest) have disappeared completely. Both the language we use to describe our values and emotions and even the feelings themselves are unstable.

人们很容易认为幸福一直事被视为最高的善，但人类的价值和情感并不是永久固定的。一些曾经是至高无上的价值，如荣誉或虔诚，其重要性已经消失了，而像“绝望”(我们的冷漠感最接近)这样的情绪已经完全消失了。我们用来描述我们的价值观和情感的语言，甚至是情感本身都是不稳定的。

A life with loving attachments has been shown to be lixed to happiness but it can also cause us great pain (Credit: Solstock/Getty Images)

有爱的生活被证明与幸福有关，但它也会给我们带来巨大的痛苦。

One answer would be a life spent doing things you enjoy and which bring you pleasure. A life spent experiencing pleasure would, in some ways, be a good life.

（关于什么是好的生活这问题，）一个答案是一辈子做自己喜欢并会带给自己快乐的事情。在某些方面来说，体验快乐的生活才是美好的生活。

But maximising pleasure isn’t the only option. Every human life, even the most fortunate, is filled with pain. Painful loss, painful disappointments, the physical pain of injury or sickness, and the mental pain of enduring boredom, loneliness, or sadness. Pain is an inevitable consequence of being alive.

但最大化快乐并不是唯一的选择。每个人的生命，即使是最幸运的人，也充满了痛苦。失去的痛苦，失望的痛苦，受伤或疾病带来的身体上的痛苦，以及忍受无聊、孤独或悲伤带来的精神上的痛苦。痛苦是活着必然的结果。

For the ancient Greek philosopher Epicurus (341-270 BCE), a good life was one in which pain is minimised. The sustained absence of pain grants us tranquillity of mind, or ataraxia. This notion has something in common with our modern understanding of happiness. To be "at peace with yourself" marks the happy person out from the unhappy one and no one would imagine that a life filled with pain could be a good life. But is the minimisation of pain really the essence of happiness?

对于古希腊哲学家伊壁鸠鲁(公元前341-270年)来说，美好的生活是将痛苦降到最低的生活。持续的无痛苦会给予我们心灵的平静，或者说是气定神闲。这个概念与我们现代对幸福的理解有一些共同点。他们都表明“与自己和平相处”与否可以将幸福的人与不幸福的人区分开来，没有人会想象充满痛苦的生活也会是美好的生活。但将痛苦最小化真的是幸福的本质吗?

The majority of Americans would choose happiness over achieving great things, according to one recent survey (Credit: Michael Wheatley/Alamy)

根据最近的一项调查显示，大多数美国人更愿意选择幸福而不是成就大事。(来源:迈克尔·惠特利/阿拉米)

Nozick says you wouldn’t because we want to actually do certain things and be certain people, not just have pleasurable experiences. This hypothetical situation might seem frivolous, but if we are willing to sacrifice limitless pleasure for real meaning, then happiness is not the highest good. But if Nozick is right, then the 81% of surveyed Americans who chose happiness over great achievements are wrong, and studies have shown that people would mostly choose not to enter the machine.

诺齐克说你不会因为自己想做特定的事而成为特定的人，因为人们在意的不仅仅是获得愉快的体验。这种假设的情形可能看起来很轻率，但如果我们愿意为了真正的意义而牺牲无限的快乐，那么幸福就不是最高的善。但如果诺齐克是对的，那么81%选择快乐而非伟大成就的受访美国人的数据就是错误的，研究表明，大多数人会选择不进入机器。

Mill could take no pleasure from life. This would be bad for most people, but for Mill it pointed to something even more worrying. He had been taught from birth that the ultimate end of life is to maximise humanity’s pleasure and minimise its pain. Mill’s father was a follower of the classical utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham, and had raised his son in accordance with Bentham’s views. Bentham went further than Epicurus by making happiness the ultimate appeal of an individual life and the ultimate appeal of morality. For Bentham, all moral, political, and personal questions can be settled by one simple principle – "the greatest happiness for the greatest number". But if that was the one principle to live by, how could Mill justify his own existence, devoid as it was of happiness?

密尔无法从生活中获得乐趣。这对大多数人来说都是坏事，但对密尔来说，它指向了更令人担忧的事情。他从出生起就被教导，生命的最终目的是最大化人类的快乐，最小化人类的痛苦。密尔的父亲是古典功利主义哲学家杰里米·边沁的追随者，并按照边沁的观点抚养他的儿子。边沁比伊壁鸠鲁走得更远，他把幸福作为个人生活的终极诉求和道德的终极诉求。对边沁来说，所有的道德、政治和个人问题都可以通过一个简单的原则来解决，即“为最大多数人带来最大的幸福”。但是，如果这是生活的唯一原则，那么密尔又如何为自己的存在辩护呢?

Through his depression, Mill realised that Bentham’s utilitarian viewpoint, which elevated pleasure to the supreme good, was a "swinish philosophy", suitable only for pigs. Dissatisfaction, unhappiness, and pain are part of the human condition and so "it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied", according to Mill. He continued to believe that happiness was deeply important, but came to see that aiming at happiness will rarely lead to it.

通过他的沮丧情绪，密尔意识到边沁的这种“把快乐提升到至上的善”的功利主义观点是一种“猪猡哲学”，只适合猪。不满、不快乐和痛苦是人类处境的一部分，因此，根据密尔的说法，“做一个不满意的人，好过做一只满意的猪”。他仍然相信幸福是极其重要的东西，但他逐渐发现，以幸福为目标反而很少会带来幸福。

Instead, Mill thought that you should aim for other goods, and happiness might be a felicitous by-product. But this also suggests that a good life can be an unhappy one. What Mill recognised was what Aristotle had argued two millennia earlier – the passing pleasure of happiness is secondary to living a good life, or of achieving what Aristotle called eudaimonia.

相反，密尔认为，你应该以其他东西为目标，而幸福可能只是一种恰当的副产品。但这也表明，美好的生活也可能是不快乐的生活。密尔所认识到的，正是亚里士多德在两千年前提出的观点，即相对于过上美好的生活，或者达到亚里士多德所谓的“eudaimonia”，短暂的快乐是次要的。

Eudaimonia is difficult to translate into our contemporary concepts. Some, like the philosopher Julia Annas, translate it directly as "happiness", while others scholars prefer "human flourishing". Whatever the translation, it marks a distinctive contrast to our modern conception of happiness.

eudaimonia很难转化为我们当代的概念。包括哲学家朱莉娅·安纳斯在内的一些学者直接将这个词翻译为“幸福”，而另一些学者更倾向于翻译为“人类繁荣”。无论翻译成什么，它都与我们现代对幸福的理解形成了鲜明的对比。

Aristotle’s view of flourishing is complex and complicated because it incorporates individual satisfaction, moral virtue, excellence, good fortune, and political engagement. Unlike Epicurus’s accounting view of pain or Bentham’s "swinish" view of pleasure, Aristotle’s idea of flourishing is as messy as the humans it describes.

亚里士多德关于繁荣的观点是复杂而难懂的，因为它包含了个人满足、道德美德、卓越、好运和政治参与。与伊壁鸠鲁对痛苦的会计观或边沁对快乐的“猪猡”观不同，亚里士多德对繁荣的看法就像它所描述的人类一样混乱。

Like our modern conception of happiness, eudaimonia is the ultimate purpose of life. But unlike happiness, eudaimonia is realised through habits and actions, not through mental states. Happiness is not something you experience or obtain, it’s something you do.

就像我们现代的幸福观念一样，eudaimonia是生活的最终目的。但与幸福不同的是，eudaimonia是通过习惯和行动实现的，而不是通过精神状态实现。幸福不是你经历或获得的东西，而是你做的事。

Rather than being a mental state, happiness may be something we obtain from doing things and our habits (Credit: Chris Gorman/Getty Images)

Rather than being a mental state, happiness may be something we obtain from doing things and our habits (Credit: Chris Gorman/Getty Images)

幸福可能不是一种精神状态，而是我们从做事和习惯中获得的东西。

In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle wrote: "As it is not one swallow or a fine day that makes a spring, so it is not one day or a short time that makes a man blessed and happy." In other words, to flourish is the undertaking of a lifetime because it’s something you must cultivate daily through your actions. Like the utilitarians, Aristotle argued that happiness and virtue were inextricably lixed.

亚里士多德在他的《尼各马可伦理学》中写道:“正如不是一只燕子或一个晴天造就了一个春天，也不是一天或短时间内就能使一个人幸运和幸福。”换句话说，繁荣是一生的事业，因为它是你必须每天通过行动来培养的东西。和功利主义者的观点一样，亚里士多德认为幸福和美德是密不可分的。

For Aristotle, virtue is a characteristic which achieves a mean or middle position between extremes. For example, between the extremes of cowardice and foolhardiness lies bravery, between the extremes of the miser and spendthrift lies generosity. Acting so to maintain a balance between extremes is virtuous action. But where the utilitarians reduced morality down to happiness, Aristotle held that virtue is necessary but not sufficient for eudaimonia. We cannot flourish unvirtuously, but nor is being virtuous a shortcut to eudaimonia. Rather, virtuous action is itself a part of eudaimonia.

在亚里士多德看来，美德是一种在两个极端之间达到中庸或中间地位的特性。例如，在懦弱和蛮勇这两个极端之间有勇敢，在守财奴和挥金如土这两个极端之间有慷慨。在两个极端之间保持平衡是一种美德。但当功利主义者将道德归结为幸福时，亚里士多德认为美德是幸福的必要条件，但不是充分条件。我们不能无德地繁荣，但有德也不是通往幸福的捷径。相反，道德行为本身就是幸福的一部分。

Aristotle argued that the questions of what makes someone happy and what makes someone a good person aren’t separate. The relationship between ethical goodness and living a good life was, Annas claims, the defining question of ancient philosophy. And it’s still our question today.

For Aristotle, we flourish by exercising our uniquely human capabilities to think and reason. But thinking and reasoning are as much social activities as they are individual: "men are not isolated individuals, and the human excellences cannot be practised by hermits". If flourishing requires others, then so does happiness. Happiness is not an emotional state so much as it is the excellence of the relations we cultivate with other people.

亚里士多德认为，关于什么让“一个人快乐”和“什么让一个人成为好人”这两个问题并不是分开的。亚纳斯认为，道德善与美好生活之间的关系是古代哲学的决定性问题。而且这仍然是我们今天的问题。在亚里士多德看来，我们之所以繁荣，是因为我们运用了人类特有的思考和推理能力。但思考和推理既是社会活动，也是个人活动。“人不是孤立的个体，隐士不能实践人类的优点”。如果繁荣需要别人来实现，那么幸福也需要别人来实现。幸福与其说是一种情绪状态，不如说是我们与他人建立的良好关系。

But even that cannot guarantee flourishing. Aristotle recognised that our happiness is hostage to fortune. Events beyond any individual’s control – war, unrequited love, poverty, and global pandemics – will often make flourishing (and happiness with it) impossible.

但即便有了良好关系，也不能保证繁荣。亚里士多德认为我们的幸福是命运的人质，是任何个人都无法控制的事件，战争、单相思、贫穷和全球流行病等东西往往会使繁荣(以及随之而来的幸福)成为不可能。

This idea of moral luck does not undermine the pursuit of eudaimonia even when it frustrates it. Happiness is not a mental state that can be permanently won, but instead it’s a practice which we hone, imperfectly, in circumstances only partly of our making.

这种道德运气的观念并不会破坏人们对幸福的追求，即使这种追求确实会让人们感到沮丧。幸福不是一种可以永久获得的精神状态，而是一种我们在不完美的环境中磨练出来的实践。

Recognising this will not secure a good life, but it will dispel the illusory hope of eternal contentment. By misunderstanding happiness, the modern conception increases the likelihood of disappointment. No life worth living should meet the standard set by Epicurean or utilitarian views of happiness, and so its modern adherents are destined to be disillusioned by the blemishes of human life. Instead, aim with Aristotle to embrace those blemishes and to flourish in spite of them.

认识到这一点并不能保证美好的生活，但它将驱散永恒满足的虚幻希望。由于误解了幸福，现代观念增加了失望的可能性。任何有价值的生活都不应该达到享乐主义或功利主义幸福观所设定的标准，因此现代的追随者注定会因人类生活的缺陷而幻灭。相反，与亚里士多德一样，拥抱这些缺陷，并在它们面前茁壮成长才是正解。

【龙腾网】为什么我们对幸福的追求可能是有缺陷的？