中英双语 What Use Is Philosophy.doc

Page 5What Use Is Philosophy?By J. B. S. HaldaneG. Alexandrov and four colleagues have just been awarded a Stalin prize of 200,000 roubles for a three-volume book on the history of philosophy. Most of the other prizes went to scientists. Many people will be inclined to say, Why rank with scientists men who have merely described the opinions, mostly false, held by a number of people in the past? No doubt this has some interest, like a history of fairy tales or astrology, but it isnt much use, particularly at the present grim moment.There are a great many reasons for studying what philosophers have said in the past. One is that we cannot separate the history of philosophy from that of science. Philosophy is largely discussion about matters on which few people are quite certain, and those few hold opposite opinions. As knowledge increases, philosophy buds off the sciences.For example, in the ancient world and the Middle Ages philosophers discussed motion. Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas taught that a moving body would slow down unless a force were constantly applied to it. They were wrong. It goes on moving unless something slows it down. But they had good arguments on their side, and if we study these, and the experiments which proved them wrong, this will help us to distinguish truth from falsehood in the scientific controversies of today.We also see how every philosopher reflects the social life of his day. Plato and Aristotle, in the slave-owning society of ancient Greece, thought mans highest state was contemplation rather than activity. In the Middle Ages St. Thomas believed in a regular feudal system of nine ranks of angels. Herbert Spencer, in the time of free competition between capitalists, found the key to progress in the survival of the fittest. Thus Marxism is seen to fit into its place as the philosophy for the workers, the only class with a future. But we can hardly guess what the world will look like to men and women with several generations of communism behind them, who take the brotherhood of man for granted, not as an ideal to be aimed at, but a fact of life, and yet know that this brotherhood was only achieved by ghastly struggles.The study of philosophies should make our own ideas flexible. We are all of us apt to take certain general ideas for granted, and call them common sense. We should learn that other people have held quite different ideas, and that our own have started as very original guesses of philosophers.If a dog could speak, it would probably not distinguish between motion and life. Some primitive men do not do so, and travellers interpret them as saying there are spirits everywhere. In our age of machines we are apt to look for mechanical explanations of everything, yet it is only three hundred years since machines had been developed so far that Descartes first suggested that animal and human bodies were machines.A scientist is apt to think that all the problems of philosophy will ultimately be solved by science. I think this is true for a great many of the questions on which philosophers still argue. For example Plato thought that when we saw something, one ray of light came to it from the sun, and another from our eyes, and that seeing was something like feeling with a stick. We now know that the light comes from the sun, and is reflected into our eyes. We dont know in much detail how the changes in our eyes give rise to sensation. But there is every reason to think that as we learn more about the physiology of the brain, we shall do so, and that the great philosophical problems about knowledge and will are going to be pretty fully cleared up.But if our descendants know the answers to these questions and others which perplex us today, there will still be one field of which they do not know, namely the future. However exact our science, we cannot know it as we know the past. Philosophy may be described as argument about things of which we are ignorant. And where science gives us a hope of knowledge it is often reasonable to suspend judgment. That is one reason why Marx and Engels quite rightly wrote so little on many philosophical problems which interested their contemporaries.But we have got to prepare for the future, and we cannot do so rationally without some philosophy. Some people say we have only got to do the duties revealed in the past, and laid down by religion, and God will look after the future. Others say that the world is a machine, and the course of future events is certain, whatever efforts we may make. Marxists say that the future depends on ourselves, even though we are part of the historical process. This philosophical view certainly does inspire people to very great achievements. Whether it is true or not (and I think it is true) it is a powerful guide to action.We need a philosophy, then, to help us -to tackle the future. Agnosticism easily becomes an excuse for laziness and conservatism. Whether we adopt Marxism or any other philosophy, we cannot understand it without knowing something of how it developed. That is why a knowledge of the history of philosophy is important to Marxists, even during the present critical days. From A Banned Broadcast and Other Essays哲学的用途JBS霍尔丹格亚历山大德洛夫和四位同事一起凭借三卷哲学史方面的著作获得了斯大林奖，奖金二十万卢布。其他奖项大多颁发给了科学研究人员。许多人都对此感到奇怪，他们想说：“这些人所研究的，不过是一些总在发表个人观点的古人而已，而且他们的观点大多数都是错误的。凭什么能够和科学相提并论呢？当然，哲学史也不是全然无趣，但就像对神话史和占星术方面的研究一样，没有太大作用，尤其是在当下，哲学研究的形势更为严峻。”其实，我们仍有充分的理由去研究过去哲学家们的一家之言。哲学史和科学史密不可分的关系就是其中之一。哲学的着眼之处在于只有少数人有所见解的问题，而且这些人的见解还截然不同。随着人们对知识的不断了解，科学就从哲学中脱颖而出。比如，生活在古代和中世纪的哲学家们就开始讨论物体的运动。亚里士多德和圣托马斯阿奎那曾教育他们的学徒，物体运动是因为他们不断受到某种力的作用，否则，它们将会停下来。他们错了，其实物体本身就是不断运动着的，它们停下来是因为受到了外力的作用。不过，他们也提出了有力的论据来支持自己的观点。只要我们对这些论据展开研究，并结合实验来证明它们是错误的，就能够从中得到帮助，以便在今后的科学探索中去伪存真。我们还能够看到，哲学家们是如何反映他们所处时代的社会生活的。柏拉图和亚里士多德都生活在古希腊的奴隶社会。他们认为，人的最高境界是冥想，而非活动。而生活在中世纪的圣托马斯则支持封建社会中的九级天使论。处于资本自由竞争环境中的赫伯特斯宾塞则从适者生存论中找到了社会发展的关键。这样看来，作为唯一能够在未来生存下去的工人阶级的哲学理论，马克思主义也是适时而存。然而，就算共产主义能够实现，在其后的年代里，世界会变成什么样子？那时，人人大同已是理所当然，不再是人们追求的理想与奋斗的目标，仅仅是日常生活的一部分。但与此同时，人们却仍然能够明白，这种大同是经过何等艰苦的奋斗才得以实现的。这样的世界真的令人难以想象。研究哲学还会使我们的思维更加灵活变通。我们总会把当下普遍的观点看作理所当然，并称其为常识。但我们要知道，过去人们的观点大不相同，而我们所谓的常识，都是出于哲学家们最原始的猜想。就算狗可以说话，它们大概无法阐明运动与生命的关系。许多原始人类也无法解释身边发生的一切，而吉普赛人会解释说，一切都是我们周围无处不在的精灵所为。在眼下这个机器时代，我们更倾向于从机器的角度来解释周围的事物。尽管机器发展到当今这个程度，只与笛卡尔提出人类和动物的身体就是机器这一个观点相差三百年而已。科学家总是认为，所有的哲学问题都会通过科学最终得以解决。我觉得，对于大多数哲学家仍在争论的问题，的确是这样。例