钝感之爱

教授最后的那段话，其中有部分可以作为他的最新反思。先前用“大象”来比喻的人际交流，得到的回应是女学生展示用卷发棒烫伤自己以求得“专注”的痕迹，她一方面痛恨这个用devices来应对所有日常大小事的inhuman的时代，一方面又痛恨自己无法和这个时代的他人交流。achingly alone 因为并非无心交流，而是交流无能无力finally alone，因为科技扫荡先前的体系，便利的日常早就了交流的假象至于beautifully，他把它放在定语的第一位，这本身就让孤独的本质尽显无遗At the outset of a century that would constitute the bloodiest in human history. Along with scientific and technological advancements that would literally make us like Gods. Even as we began to dismantle the very meaning of God. They ask, what is a life? Does to live any longer have a how? Does it any longer have a why? Against a backdrop of industrialization, people will contend with alienation, dislocation, population on a mass scale, and murder on a mass scale. They'll consider the constraints of truth. Whether metaphor or paradigm, with many concluding actual truth has never existed. A nexus in the great human saga, when we dared to trade the organizing bliss, of good and evil, right and wrong, as determined by a creator for other opiates: communism, socialism, capitalism, psychology, technology, any learnable system to replace what had begun to evaporate: the 20th century. My own. But also the one into which each of you was born. For many, an era of hope liberation, possibility. For others of abandonment and despair. A most human century in which we begin really to understand that Nietzsche was right: we are beautifully, finally, achingly, alone. In this void, philosophy at its worst becomes self-reflective, linguistic, semantic, relativism having rendered any discussion of right and wrong, good and evil, to be the quaint concerns of another age. At its most provocative, it asks other questions. Those concerned with locating our stranded selves, when meaning seems to have died, nothing less, in short, then 'why do we live at all?' and 'what makes us who we are?' They ask, 'what now?' And we're still asking it. What will fortify us as another century, your century, commences? Do we abandon finally the search for truths that seem ever more elusive, even silly to some? The ethical? The moral? The good? Principles that by definition can never be prove when so much now can be proved? Or is all this finally and forever pointless? Are we done? We can destroy cities, alter the planet irreversibly, speak instantaneously face-to-face from across the globe, create life where there was to be none, even while intoxicating ourselves with it all. And yet, how do we still seek purpose? And where do we hope to find it if we're so busy convincing ourselves there needn't be any? And so we wander, eyes closed to the dark, while technology, science, medicine and godlessness blaze illusions around us, with less to guide us now than ever, seemingly omnipotent, but more human and just as afraid. These quandaries do not end with this course in a week from today. They begin. And I certainly haven't taught these writers for 30 years just so you can drop references to existential thinkers and their antecedents at dinner parties. The crowd is untruth. In an era darkened by the false shade of imperviousness, you and those who pause to question, carry the light. It's been a wonderful 34 years. Let's not be strangers, either to one another, or more importantly, to everything we've learned from one another. May your best years be yet to come. And so for us all.

看完这部有点沉重的电影，我更加确定来到世间为人的目的是理解我和这个世界后面的力量。这个理解最终会改变我以及我和世界的关系。 剧中的哲学教授是叔本华在现代的代言人，“叔本华的苦难”即是剧中索菲说的那句话 “this world is so inhuman”。Inhuman 是这个世界现在感觉起来的状态。面对这个状态，我的任务就非常清楚：不是进入受害者的角色， 而是成为改变它的人。是的，是我，不是别人。 如何获得成为改变的力量呢？答案不用去外面寻找，它就在我的生命中。 是什么力量让我们出现在这个世界上？是什么力量维持了我们的继续生存？是什么力量在最深的底层把生命连接在一起，使得我们能对他人的苦难感同身受并让我们付出行动？那最初的力量是爱，那持续维持的力量是爱，那连接的力量是爱，那解开一切捆绑生命活力的绳索的最终力量仍旧是那个创造了我们和一切世界现象的根本力量 —— 爱。 爱是生命的底脉，脊椎和永恒的背景，然而觉知和体验它的途径却是通过它的对立者 ——自我。自我制造了绳索，捆绑了体验永恒力量的触角，造出了这个感觉起来非人性的世界现状。改变这个现状的力量不是在集体中，也不是在心智中，它就在我的内在潜伏着，等待我去发现它，激活它，体验它，并使用它来改变我自己。我是世界的制造者，我做到的时候，这个世界就会开始转变，成为它现在的反面：human。 爱很少真正被有意识地激活和体验到，这是这个词感觉起来非常抽象和空洞的原因。尽管如此，能完整治愈叔本华的力量在他的内在早已存在。叔本华是爱的前花园，钝感之爱是敏锐之爱的使者。