生而為人意味著什麼？

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生而為人意味著什麼？

The Question We Must Keep Asking

艾未未

2018年8月27日

JEENAH MOON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Many of the problems in the world today, when one reflects upon them, call for an answer to an ancient question: What is it to be human?

當人們反思當今世界上的許多問題時，都需要回答一個古老的問題：人何以為人？

I believe there is no single immutable answer. We humans are what we conceive ourselves to be, by which I mean two things: what we will ourselves to be and what we say we are. Our self-conceptions are, in turn, responses to conditions that we encounter in our environments, and those conditions constantly change with time and place. The only way to answer this question is to examine how a person sees himself or herself and others within the social, cultural, economic and political conditions of their times.

我相信沒有一個不變的答案。我們人類的自我認知是什麼，我們就是什麼，這有兩層意思：我們想成為什麼樣的人，以及我們認為自己是什麼樣的人。反過來，我們的自我認知，是對自己在環境中遭遇的狀況做出的反應，而這些狀況是不斷隨時間和地點而變的。回答這個問題的唯一方法，是考察一個人如何在其所處時代的社會、文化、經濟和政治情況之內看待他或她自己，以及他人。

There is no such thing as a human being in the abstract. Only when we see people as embedded in their experiences — their own social positions, their educations and memories, in pursuit of their own ideals — can the question 「What is a human being?」 fully make sense.

抽象意義上的人是不存在的。只有當我們把人置於他們的經歷之中——他們的社會地位、教育和記憶，對個人理想的追求——「什麼是人？」才成了一個可以理解的問題。

Everyone seems to agree that we live today in a completely distinctive time. We may use different labels for it — the era of globalization, of the internet, of late capitalism, of the collapse of Cold War ideology — but all such terms seek to describe the world』s new situation. The most striking feature of that situation is that we are much freer than ever before in our access to information, knowledge and the assistance of technology. At the same time, the forces that tend to constrict our personal freedoms — states, religions, ethnic identities, economic interest groups and others — are both dissolving and reorganizing. Some are dying while others are growing extraordinarily strong.

每個人似乎都同意，我們今天生活在一個全然獨特的時代。我們可能會給它貼上不同的標籤——全球化、互聯網、晚期資本主義、冷戰意識形態崩潰的時代——但是所有這些詞語都在試圖描述世界的新形勢。這種形勢最顯著的特點是，我們在獲取信息、知識和技術輔助方面，比以往任何時候都更加自由。與此同時，傾向於限制我們個人自由的力量——國家、宗教、種族身份、經濟利益集團以及其他——正在瓦解和重組。一些正在死亡，而另一些正變得無比強大。

Such changes can be mind-boggling. They can make it hard to remember where home is, to recognize language and customs that we once took for granted and to figure out where we now belong. The question 「What is a human being?」 or 「What does it mean to be human?」 gets an entirely new face. The answers today will have to be different from the answers of the past.

這種變化可能令人難以置信。它們會讓我們很難記住哪裡是我們的家園，很難認出我們曾經認為理所當然的語言和習俗，也很難弄清楚我們如今屬於哪裡。「什麼是人類？」或者「生而為人意味著什麼？」，這些問題有了全新的面貌。今天的答案勢必不同於過去的答案。

Our resources for seeking answers to this question also vary inevitably with our personal experiences. To me, for example, it is obvious that my passage through different social, political, cultural and economic backgrounds — as an artist in China, as a political prisoner and now as an expatriate — has obliged me several times to alter and adjust my understandings of what a human being is.

我們尋求這個問題的答案所需的資源，也不可避免地隨著我們個人的經歷而變化。例如，對我來說，很明顯，我在不同的社會、政治、文化和經濟背景中的經歷——作為一名在中國的藝術家、政治犯以及現在一個移居海外的人——迫使我多次改變和調整對人何以為人的理解。

JEENAH MOON FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Simply to avoid the question is a terrible mistake. We must ask it, and we must do so repeatedly. The debates and judgments that led to human wisdom in the past were responses, each in its time, to essentially the same question, asked in the political and social context of that time, and it is relevant at every social level: individual, community, family and nation. Many of the political and cultural disagreements that we see in the world today arise from a reluctance to face this key question squarely, and to arrive at clear definitions with regard to it.

簡單地迴避這個問題是一個可怕的錯誤。我們必須提出問題，我們必須反覆這樣做。過去催生了人類智慧的辯論和判斷，是對在當時的政治和社會背景下提出的基本相同的問題的回應，在每個社會層面都是相關的：個人、社區、家庭和國家。我們今天在世界上看到的許多政治和文化分歧，都是源於不願正視這個關鍵問題，也不願就這個問題達成明確的定義。

Humankind includes every single one of us. No matter how fearsome the political and cultural affronts that history produces might become, our last, irreducible possession, which would be plain to us if we were suddenly placed upon a barren desert, is respect for human dignity.

人類包括我們中的每一個人。不管歷史製造的政治和文化侮辱可能會變得多麼可怕，我們最後的、不可削減的財產——如果我們突然被置於貧瘠的沙漠上，這一點對我們就會很明顯了——是對人類尊嚴的尊重。

Everything hangs on how we define ourselves and how we treat those with whom we share our surroundings, which are teeming with different ethnicities, religions and cultures. We are doomed if we lose independent thinking, lose the ability to freely evaluate and define ourselves.

一切都取決於我們如何定義自己，以及我們如何對待與我們分享周圍環境的人，這些環境里充滿了不同的種族、宗教和文化。如果我們失去獨立思考，失去自由評價和定義自己的能力，我們註定不幸。

In my view, self-definition must be each individual』s final and most sturdy principle. It is the iron undergirding of morality, aesthetics and practical philosophy. If it slips away, even for a moment, then the answer to the question 「What does it mean to be human?」 will be: 「Nothing.」

在我看來，自我定義必須是每個人最終和最堅定的原則。這是道德、美學和實踐哲學的堅實基礎。如果沒有了它，哪怕只是短暫一瞬，「生而為人意味著什麼？」這個問題的答案都將變成：「毫無意義」。