The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality

Original · #1

Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality by Bernard Williams (1973) … Those among previous lecturers who were philosophers tended, I think, to discuss the question whether we are immortal; that is not my subject, but rather what a good thing it is that we are not. Immortality, or a state without death, would be meaningless, I shall suggest; so, in a sense, death gives the meaning to life. That does not mean that we should not fear death … Indeed, there are several very different ways in which it could be true at once that death gave the meaning to life and that death was, other things being equal, something to be feared. … I shall rather pursue the idea that from facts about human desire and happiness and what a human life is, it follows both that immortality would be, where conceivable at all, intolerable, and that (other things being equal) death is reasonably regarded as an evil. … My title is that … of a play by Karel Capek which was made into an opera by Janacek and which tells of a woman called Elina Makropulos, alias Emilia Marty, alias Ellian Macgregor, alias a number of other things with the initials “EM,” on whom her father, the Court physician to a sixteenth-century emperor, tried out an elixir of life. At the time of the action she is aged 342. Her unending life has come to a state of boredom, indifference, and coldness. Everything is joyless: “In the end it is the same,” she says, “singing and silence.” She refuses to take the elixir again; she dies; and the formula is deliberately destroyed by a young woman among the protests of some older men.

Translation

伯纳德·威廉斯（Bernard Williams）《对不朽之沉闷的反思》（1973）……我想，此前担任这一讲座的学者中，那些哲学家往往讨论的是：我们是否不朽。这不是我的题目；我想谈的，毋宁是我们并非不朽这件事有多么可贵。我将提出，不朽，或者说一种没有死亡的状态，将是无意义的；因此，从某种意义上说，正是死亡赋予了生命意义。这并不意味着我们不应当害怕死亡……事实上，完全可能同时在几种非常不同的意义上说，死亡赋予了生命意义，而死亡本身在其他条件相同的情况下又是某种值得畏惧的东西。……我倒更想追究这样一种看法：从关于人的欲望、幸福以及何谓人的生活这些事实出发，可以同时得出两点：其一，不朽只要是可设想的，就会是不可忍受的；其二，（在其他条件相同的情况下）把死亡合理地看作一种恶，也是有道理的。……我的标题取自卡雷尔·恰佩克（Karel Čapek）的一部戏剧……这部戏后来被雅纳切克（Janáček）改编成歌剧，讲的是一个名叫埃莉娜·马科普洛斯（Elina Makropulos）的女人，她又叫艾米莉娅·马蒂（Emilia Marty），又叫艾利安·麦格雷戈（Ellian Macgregor），还有若干其他名字，姓名首字母都是“EM”。她的父亲是16世纪一位皇帝的宫廷医生，曾在她身上试验一种长生不老药。到戏剧情节发生时，她已经342岁了。她那无尽的生命已经陷入厌倦、冷漠和麻木之中。一切都失去了欢愉：“到头来都一样，”她说，“歌唱和沉默都一样。”她拒绝再次服下那种药剂；随后死去；而那份配方则在几个年长男子的抗议声中，被一位年轻女子故意销毁了。

Original · #2

EM’s state suggests at least this, that death is not necessarily an evil, and not just in the sense in which almost everybody would agree to that, where death provides an end to great suffering, but in the more intimate sense that it can be a good thing not to live too long. It suggests more than that, for it suggests that it was not a peculiarity of EM’s that an endless life was meaningless. That is something I shall follow out later. First, though, we should put together the suggestion of EM’s case, that death is not necessarily an evil, with the claim of some philosophies and religions that death is necessarily not an evil. Notoriously, there have been found two contrary bases on which that claim can be mounted: death is said by some not to be an evil because it is not the end, and by others, because it is. … Most famous, perhaps, among those who have found comfort in the second option, the prospect of annihilation, was Lucretius, who, in the steps of Epicurus, and probably from a personal fear of death that in some of his pages seems almost tangible, addresses himself to proving that death is never an evil. … That is to say, death is never an evil in the sense not merely that there is no one for whom dying is an evil, but that there is no time at which dying is an evil—sooner or later, it is all the same.

Translation

EM的处境至少揭示了这一点：死亡并不一定是恶。这不仅是几乎人人都会接受的那种意义上而言——死亡终止了剧烈痛苦——更是在一种更为切近的意义上：或许不要活得太久，未尝不是一件好事。EM的案例所揭示的不仅如此，因为它还表明，无尽的生命会陷入无意义之中，这一情况并非仅出现在EM的特例中。这一点我稍后会再进一步展开。但首先，我们需要将EM案例所提示的看法——即死亡并不必然是恶——与某些哲学和宗教所持的观点放在一起考察，后者主张死亡必然不是恶。众所周知，这一主张曾依据两种对立的理由：有人认为死亡并非恶是因为它并非终结；也有人认为死亡不是恶恰恰是因为它本身就是终结。……在那些从第二种立场——即湮灭的前景——中寻得慰藉的人中，或许最广为人知的是卢克莱修。他追随伊壁鸠鲁的步伐，很可能出于一种对死亡的个人恐惧——这种恐惧在他某些文字中几乎触手可及——而致力于证明死亡从不作恶。……换言之，死亡从不作恶不仅意味着：没有任何一个人对其而言死亡是一种恶，同时还意味着：没有任何一个时刻在彼时死亡是一种恶——无论早死晚死，本质上毫无差别。

Original · #3

The … argument seeks to interpret the fear of death as a confusion, based on the idea that we shall be there after death to repine our loss of the praemia vitae, the rewards and delights of life, and to be upset at the spectacle of our bodies burned, and so forth.

Translation

……这一论证试图将死亡恐惧视为一种迷误，其依据在于这样一种想法：我们死后依然会在场，为失去生之回报与乐趣（praemia vitae）而哀叹，或因目睹自己被焚化之类的景象而苦恼。

Original · #4

The fear of death, it is suggested, must necessarily be the fear of some experiences had when one is dead. But if death is annihilation, then there are no such experiences: in the Epicurean phrase, when death is there, we are not, and when we are there, death is not. So, death being annihilation, there is nothing to fear. … And … we can conclude nil igitur mors est ad nos, neque pertinet hilum—death is nothing to us, and does not matter at all. … But now if we consider two lives, one very short and cut off before the praemia have been acquired, the other fully provided with the praemia and containing their enjoyment to a ripe age, it is very difficult to see why the second life, by these standards alone, is not to be thought better than the first. …[I]f the praemia vitae are valuable … then surely getting to the point of possessing them is better than not getting to that point, longer enjoyment of them is better than shorter, and more of them, other things being equal, is better than less of them. … If I desire something, then, other things being equal, I prefer a state of affairs in which I get it from one in which I do not get it, and (again, other things being equal) plan for a future in which I get it rather than not. But one future, for sure, in which I would not get it would be one in which I was dead. To want something, we may also say, is to that extent to have reason for resisting what excludes having that thing: and death certainly does that, for a very large range of things that one wants. If that is right, then for any of those things, wanting something itself gives one a reason for avoiding death.

Translation

有人提出，对死亡的恐惧必定就是对人死后会经历的某些经验的恐惧。但如果死亡就是毁灭，那么根本不会有这样的经验：用伊壁鸠鲁的话说，“死亡在时，我们不在；我们在时，死亡不在。”因此，既然死亡是毁灭，也就没有什么可怕的。……而且……我们还可以得出结论：nil igitur mors est ad nos, neque pertinet hilum——死亡对我们来说算不了什么，根本无关紧要。…… 但现在，如果我们来比较两种人生：一种极其短暂，在尚未获得那些酬报（praemia）之前就被中途截断；另一种则充分拥有这些酬报（praemia），并且一直享受它们直到成熟之年，那么仅仅按照这些标准来看，就很难理解为什么后一种人生不应被认为比前一种更好。……如果生命中的这些酬报（praemia vitae）是有价值的……那么显然，达到拥有它们的地步，总比达不到更好；享有它们更久，总比更短更好；而且在其他条件相同的情况下，拥有得更多，也总比更少更好。…… 那么，如果我欲求某样东西，在其他条件相同的情况下，我就会偏好这样一种事态：我得到了它，而不是没有得到它；并且（同样在其他条件相同的情况下）会为一个自己得到它而非得不到它的未来作打算。但有一种未来，我肯定得不到它，那就是我已经死去的未来。我们也可以说，想要某样东西，也就在相应程度上有理由抵制任何会排除自己拥有该物的东西；而死亡当然正是如此——对于一个人想要的极大范围内的事物来说，都是这样。如果这一点是对的，那么，对于其中任何一种事物，仅仅因为你想要它这一点本身，就足以给你一个避免死亡的理由。

Original · #5

Even though if I do not succeed, I will not know that, nor what I am missing, from the perspective of the wanting agent it is rational to aim for states of affairs in which his want is satisfied, and hence to regard death as something to be avoided; that is, to regard it as an evil. … Nagel claims that what is wrong with Lucretius’s argument is that it rests on the assumption that nothing can be a misfortune for a man unless he knows about it, and that misfortunes must consist in something nasty for him. Against this assumption, Nagel cites a number of plausible counter-instances, of circumstances that would normally be thought to constitute a misfortune, though those to whom they happen are and remain ignorant of them (as, for instance, certain situations of betrayal). The difference between Nagel’s approach and mine does not, of course, lie in the mere point of whether one admits misfortunes that do not consist of or involve nasty experiences: anyone who rejects Lucretius’s argument must admit them. … For the present argument, it will do to leave it as a contingent fact that most people do … have a reason, and a perfectly coherent reason, to regard death as a misfortune, while it was Lucretius’s claim that no one could have a coherent reason for so regarding it.

Translation

即便如果我没有成功，我也不会知道这一点，更不会知道自己错过了什么；但从有所欲求的行动者的视角来看，以求自己的欲求得到满足的事态为目标，在理性上是合理的，因此也会把死亡视为应当避免之物；也就是说，把它视为一种恶。……纳格尔认为，卢克莱修论证的问题在于，它建立在这样一个假设之上：除非一个人知道某件事，否则那件事就不可能对他构成不幸；而且，不幸必定在于某种令他难受的东西。针对这一假设，纳格尔举出了一些看似颇有说服力的反例：有些情形通常会被视为构成不幸，尽管遭遇这些情形的人对此始终毫不知情（例如某些遭到背叛的情况）。当然，纳格尔的进路与我的进路之间的差异，并不在于是否承认那种既不在于、也不包含令人难受的经验的不幸；任何拒斥卢克莱修论证的人，都必须承认这种不幸。……就当前的论证而言，暂且将这一点视为一个偶然事实就足够了：大多数人确实……有理由，而且是完全融贯的理由，把死亡看作一种不幸；而卢克莱修的主张则是，任何人都不可能有融贯的理由如此看待死亡。

Original · #6

But now: if death, other things being equal, is a misfortune, and a longer life is better than a shorter life, and we reject the Lucretian argument that it does not matter when one dies, then it looks as though—other things always being equal—death is at any time an evil, and it is always better to live than die. Nagel indeed, from his point of view, does seem to permit that conclusion, even though he admits some remarks about the natural term of life and the greater misfortune of dying in one’s prime. But wider consequences follow. For if all that is true, then it looks as though it would be not only always better to live, but better to live always, that is, never to die. If Lucretius is wrong, we seem committed to wanting to be immortal. That would be, as has been repeatedly said, with other things equal. No one need deny that since, for instance, we grow old and our powers decline, much may happen to increase the reasons for thinking death a good thing. But these are contingencies. We might not age; perhaps, one day, it will be possible for some of us not to age. If that were so, would it not follow then that, more life being per se better than less life, we should have reason so far as that went (but not necessarily in terms of other inhabitants) to live forever?

Translation

然而现在：如果假定其他条件相同，死亡是一件不幸的事，而活得长比活得短更好，并且我们拒绝卢克莱修的论点——即人在何时死去并不重要——那么似乎就可以说，只要其他条件始终相同，死亡在任何时候都是恶，而活着总是比死去更好。纳格尔从他的立场出发，确实似乎容许这一结论，尽管他也承认一些关于生命自然终点以及盛年夭折更为不幸的说法。但更广泛的后果会随之而来。因为如果所有这些都为真，那么看起来就不仅是活着总是更好，而且是永远活着会更好，即永不死亡。如果卢克莱修错了，我们似乎就被迫要想要长生不死。正如反复强调的那样，这仍然是以其他条件相同为前提。没有人需要否认，例如，由于我们会衰老、能力会衰退，许多事态都可能发生，从而增加那些将死亡视作好事的理由。但这些只是可能性。我们可能不会衰老；也许有一天，我们中的一些人能够不再衰老。如果那样的话，岂不是可以推出：既然就其自身而言，更多的生命比更少的生命更好，那么至少就这一点而言（虽然未必涉及其他居住者），我们就有理由永远活下去？

Original · #7

EM indeed bears strong, if fictional, witness against the desirability of that … I am going to suggest … that an endless life would be a meaningless one, and that we could have no reason for living eternally a human life. There is no desirable or significant property that life would have more of, or have more unqualifiedly, if we lasted forever. [EM’s] problem lay in having been at it for too long. Her trouble was, it seems, boredom: a boredom connected with the fact that everything that could happen and make sense to one particular human being of 42 had already happened to her. Or, rather, all the sorts of things that could make sense to one woman of a certain character; for EM has a certain character, and indeed, except for her accumulating memories of earlier times, and no doubt some changes of style to suit the passing centuries, seems always to have been much the same sort of person.

Translation

EM 的确有力——尽管是虚构地——证明了那种人生并不可欲……我想提出的是，无尽的生命将毫无意义，而我们也没有任何理由永远过一种人类生活。即便我们永生不死，生命也不会因此在任何可欲或重要的性质上变得更多，或以更绝对的方式拥有这些性质。[EM] 的问题在于她活得太久了。她的麻烦似乎是无聊：这种无聊与一个事实有关——凡是可能发生、并且对一个特定个体（比如一个 42 岁的人）有意义的事情，都已经发生在她身上了。或者更准确地说，凡是可能对一个具有特定性格的女性有意义的那类事情，都已经发生了；因为 EM 拥有特定的性格，而且实际上，除了不断累积对早年时光的记忆，以及无疑为适应流逝的世纪而在风格上的一些变化之外，她似乎始终都是同一种人。

Original · #8

There are difficult questions, if one presses the issue, about this constancy of character.

Translation

如果进一步深究，性格的这种恒常性就会引出一些棘手的问题。

Original · #9

How is this accumulation of memories related to this character that she eternally has, and to the character of her existence? Are they much the same kind of events repeated?

Translation

这种记忆的累积，与她始终具有的这种性格，以及她的存在方式，究竟是什么关系？它们是否不过是同类事件的一再重复？

Original · #10

Then it is itself strange that she allows them to be repeated, accepting the same repetitions, the same limitations—indeed, accepting is what it later becomes, when earlier it would not, or even could not, have been that. The repeated patterns of personal relations, for instance, must take on a character of being inescapable. Or is the pattern of her experiences not repetitious in this way, but varied? Then the problem shifts, to the relation between these varied experiences, and the fixed character: how can it remain fixed, through an endless series of very various experiences? The experiences must surely happen to her without really affecting her; she must be, as EM is, detached and withdrawn.

Translation

那么，奇怪的恰恰在于，她竟会允许这些事情一再重演，接受同样的重复、同样的限制——确切来说，到了后来，她所做的就成了接受；而在更早的时候，她却并不接受，甚至根本不可能是那样。比如，那些反复出现的人际关系模式，必定会呈现出一种无法摆脱的特性。又或者，她的经验并非以这种方式重复，而是多种多样的？那么，问题就转移到了这种多样的经验与那种固定性格之间的关系上：在一连串无穷无尽而又彼此迥异的经验中，它怎么还能始终保持不变？这些经验当然发生在她身上，却并没有真正影响她；她必定像 EM 一样，疏离而退隐。

Original · #11

EM, of course, is in a world of people who do not share her condition, and that determines certain features of the life she has to lead, as that any personal relationship requires peculiar kinds of concealment. That, at least, is a form of isolation which would disappear if her condition were generalized. But to suppose more generally that boredom and inner death would be eliminated if everyone were similarly becalmed, is an empty hope: it would be a world of Bourbons, learning nothing and forgetting nothing, and it is unclear how much could even happen.

Translation

当然，EM 生活在一个其他人并不与她共享同样境况的世界中，而这一点决定了她不得不过的那种生活的某些特征，例如，任何个人关系都需要某种特殊的隐瞒。至少，这是一种孤立；如果她的境况普遍化，这种孤立就会消失。 不过，更一般地设想：如果每个人都同样陷于这种风平浪静的停滞之中，无聊和内在的死亡就会因此消除——这只是一种空洞的希望。那将是一个由“波旁式”人物构成的世界，既不学到任何东西，也不忘掉任何东西；而且，甚至究竟还能发生多少事情，都很难说。

Original · #12

The more one reflects to any realistic degree on the conditions of EM’s unending life, the less it seems a mere contingency that it froze up as it did. That it is not a contingency is suggested also by the fact that the reflections can sustain themselves independently of any question of the particular character that EM had; it is enough, almost, that she has a human character at all. … To meet the basic anti-Lucretian hope for continuing life that is grounded in categorical desire, EM’s unending life in this world is inadequate, and necessarily so relative to just those desires and conceptions of character which go into the hope. That is very important, since it is the most direct response, that which should have been adequate if the hope is both coherent and what it initially seemed to be. It also satisfied one of two important conditions that must be satisfied by anything that is to be adequate as a fulfillment of my anti-Lucretian hope, namely that it should clearly be me who lives forever. The second important condition is that the state in which I survive should be one that, to me looking forward, will be adequately related, in the life it presents, to those aims I now have in wanting to survive at all. That is a vague formula, and necessarily so, for what exactly that relation will be must depend to some extent on what kind of aims and (as one might say) prospects for myself I now have. What we can say is that since I am propelled forward into longer life by categorical desires, what is promised must hold out some hopes for those desires. The limiting case of this might be that the promised life held out some hope just to that desire mentioned before, that future desires of mine will be born and satisfied; but if that were the only categorical desire that carried me forward into it, at least this seems demanded, that any image I have of those future desires should make it comprehensible to me how in terms of my character they could be my desires.

Translation

一个人越是切合实际地反思 EM 那种无尽生命的条件，就越不会觉得它之所以会像那样僵住，不过是一种偶然。它并非偶然，这一点还可由另一事实表明：这些反思本身能够独立成立，而不必依赖 EM 有哪种具体的性格特征；几乎只要她具有人类的性格，这就足够了。……若要满足那种以范畴性欲求为根据、反卢克莱修式的持续生存希望，EM 在这个世界中的无尽生命是不充分的；而且，恰恰就构成这种希望的那些欲求和性格概念而言，这种不充分是必然的。这一点非常重要，因为这是最直接的回应；如果这种希望既是融贯的，也确如它起初显现的那样，那么这种回应本应是充分的。 它同时还满足了两个重要条件之一：任何东西若要充分实现我反卢克莱修式的希望，都必须满足这两个条件；其中第一个是，那个永远活下去的人，必须毫无疑问地就是我自己。第二个重要条件则是：我所存续于其中的那种状态，对于此刻正向前展望的我来说，在它所呈现的生活中，必须与我现在之所以想活下去所怀有的那些目标，保持一种足够紧密的关系。这是一个含糊的表述，并且必然如此，因为这种关系究竟会是什么，必定在某种程度上取决于我现在具有什么样的目标，以及——不妨说——我对自己怀有怎样的未来展望。我们所能说的是，既然推动我走向更长生命的是范畴性欲求，那么向我许诺的生活，就必须为这些欲求提供某些希望。 这类情况的极限或许是：所许诺的生活，仅仅为先前提到的那种欲求提供希望——即我未来的欲求将会产生并得到满足；但如果推动我进入这种生活的范畴性欲求只有这一个，那么，至少看来必须要求：我对那些未来欲求所形成的任何想象，都应当让我能够理解，从我的性格来看，它们何以能成为我的欲求。

Original · #13

This second condition the EM kind of survival failed, on reflection, to satisfy; but at least it is clear why, before reflection, it looked as though it might satisfy the condition—it consists, after all, in just going on in ways in which we are quite used to going on. If we turn away now from EM to more remote kinds of survival, the problems of those two conditions press more heavily right from the beginning. Since the major problems of the EM situation lay in the indefinite extension of one life, a tempting alternative is survival by means of an indefinite series of lives. Most, perhaps all, versions of this belief that have actually existed have immediately failed the first condition: they get nowhere near providing any consideration to mark the difference between rebirth and new birth. But let us suppose the problem, in some way or another, removed; some conditions of bodily continuity, minimally sufficient for personal identity, may be supposed satisfied. (Anyone who thinks that no such conditions could be sufficient, and requires, for instance, conditions of memory, may well find it correspondingly difficult to find an alternative for survival in this direction that both satisfies the first requirement, of identity, and also adequately avoids the difficulties of the EM alternative.) The problem remains of whether this series of psychologically disjoint lives could be an object of hope to one who did not want to die. That is, in my view, a different question from the question of whether it will be him—which is why I distinguished originally two different requirements to be satisfied. But it is a question; and even if the first requirement be supposed satisfied, it is exceedingly unclear that the second can be. This will be so, even if one were to accept the idea, itself problematical, that one could have reason to fear the future pain of someone who was merely bodily continuous with one as one now is.

Translation

经过反思，EM形式的生存未能满足这第二个条件；但至少可以清楚看到，为何在反思之前它看起来似乎可能满足这一条件——毕竟，这无非就是以我们早已习惯的方式继续生存下去而已。 现在，如果我们把目光从EM转向更为遥远的生存形式，那两个条件带来的问题从一开始就会更加沉重地压上来。既然EM情形中的主要问题在于单个生命被无限延长，那么一个颇具诱惑力的替代方案便是：通过一个无限延续的生命系列而生存。现实中实际存在过的大多数——或许全部——关于这种信念的版本，都立刻无法满足第一个条件：它们根本没有提出任何能够标示‘重生’与‘新生’之间差异的考量。不过，让我们设想，这一问题已经以某种方式被排除了；我们可以假设，某些身体连续性的条件——最低限度足以保证人格同一性的条件——得到了满足。（任何认为这类条件无论如何都不可能充分、并且还要求（例如）记忆条件的人，很可能也会相应地发现，很难沿着这个方向找到一种既能满足第一个要求（同一性），又能充分避免EM方案之困难的替代生存形式。） 剩下的问题是，这一系列在心理上彼此断裂的生命，是否能够成为某个不想死的人的希望对象。在我看来，这与“那会不会是他”这个问题并非同一个问题——这也正是我最初区分出两个不同要求的原因。但这本身就是一个问题；而且，即便我们假定第一个要求得到了满足，第二个要求能否得到满足也极其不明朗。这一点即便在以下情形下仍然成立：即使我们接受一种本身即成问题的想法——即一个人现在可能有理由去害怕某个未来之人的痛苦，仅仅因为那个人与他（现在这个人）保持着身体上的连续性。

Original · #14

There are in the first place certain difficulties about how much a man could consistently be allowed to know about the series of his lives, if we are to preserve the psychological disjointness that is the feature of this model. It might be that each would in fact have to seem to him as though it were his only life, and that he could not have grounds for being sure what, or even that, later lives were to come. If so, then no comfort or hope will be forthcoming in this model to those who want to go on living. More interesting questions, however, concern the man’s relation to a future life of which he did get some advance idea. If we could allow the idea that he could fear pain which was going to occur in that life, then we have at least provided him with one kind of reason that might move him to opt out of that life and destroy himself (being recurrent, under conditions of bodily continuity, would not make one indestructible). But physical pain and its nastiness are to the maximum degree independent of what one’s desires and character are, and the degree of identification needed with the later life to reject that aspect of it is absolutely minimal. Beyond that point, however, it is unclear how he is to bring this later character and its desires into a relation to his present ones, so as to be satisfied or the reverse with this marginal promise of continued existence. If he can regard this future life as an object of hope, then equally it must be possible for him to regard it with alarm, or depression, and—as in the simple pain case—opt out of it. If we cannot make sense of his entertaining that choice, then we have not made sense of this future life being adequately related to his present life, so that it could, alternatively, be something he might want in wanting not to die. But can we clearly make sense of that choice? For if we—or he—merely wipe out his present character and desires, there is nothing left by which he can judge it at all, at least as something for him; whereas if we leave them in, we—and he—apply something irrelevant to that future life, since (to adapt the Epicurean phrase), when they are there, it is not, and when it is there, they are not. We might imagine him considering the future prospects and agreeing to go on if he found them congenial. But that is a muddled picture. For whether they are congenial to him as he is now must be beside the point, and the idea that it is not beside the point depends on carrying over into the case features that do not belong to it, as (perhaps) that he will remember later what he wanted in the earlier life. And when we admit that it is beside the point whether the prospects are congenial, then the force of the idea that the future life could be something that he now wanted to go on to, fades.

Translation

首先存在一些困难：如果我们要保留这一模型的心理断裂特征，那么一个人究竟能一贯地被允许在多大程度上了解他一系列生命的情况？或许事实上，每一世对他来说都显得仿佛那是他唯一的一生，而且他并没有根据确信后续生命会是什么模样，甚至不能确信后续生命是否真会出现。倘若是这样，那么对于那些想要继续活下去的人来说，这个模型就提供不出任何安慰或希望。 然而，更有意思的问题涉及这个人与某个未来生命的关系：对于那一生命，他确实事先得到了一些认识。如果我们允许这样的观点——他能够害怕将在那一生命中发生的痛苦——那么我们至少就给了他一种可能促使他选择退出那一生命并毁灭自己的理由（在身体连续的条件下，即使生命会不断重现，也并不意味着他就不可毁灭）。不过，肉体痛苦及其令人厌恶之处，在最大程度上独立于一个人的欲望和性格；而若要拒绝那一后续生命的这一方面，所需要的认同程度也低到了最低限度。 然而，超过这一点之后，就不清楚他要如何将后续生命中的性格及其欲望同他当下的性格及欲望联系起来，从而为这种边际意义上的继续存在的许诺而感到满足，或者相反。如果他能把这个未来生命视为希望的对象，那么同样，他也必定能够带着惊惧或沮丧来看待它，并且——如同单纯痛苦的情形一样——选择退出它。如果我们无法理解他作出这一选择的合理性，那么我们也就不曾说明这个未来生命与他现在的生命存在足够的关联，以至它也能反过来成为某种他在不想死时可能想要的东西。 但我们真的能清晰地理解这种选择吗？因为如果我们——或他本人——只是抹去他现在的性格和欲望，那就什么都不剩了，他也根本无从据此作出评价，至少无法将其评价为某种对他而言的东西；而如果我们保留这些性格和欲望，那么我们——以及他——所用的便是某种与那个未来生命无关的东西，因为（改编伊壁鸠鲁的话来说）：当它们存在时，未来生命尚不存在；而当未来生命存在时，它们已不复存在。 我们或许可以设想他考量未来的前景，如果发现那些前景合意，便同意继续下去。但这是一种混乱的图景。因为那些前景是否合他现在这个样子的意，本就无关紧要；认为这并非无关紧要的想法，实际上依赖于引入了一些本不属于这一情形的特征，例如（或许）设想他在后来的生命中会记得自己在前一生命里想要什么。而一旦我们承认前景是否合意其实无关紧要，“未来生命可能是某种他现在就想继续走向的东西”这一想法的说服力也就消散了。

Original · #15

There are important and still obscure issues here, but perhaps enough has been said to cast doubt on this option as coherently satisfying the desire to stay alive. While few will be disposed to think that much can be made of it, I must confess that out of the alternatives it is the only one that for me would, if it made sense, have any attraction— no doubt because it is the only one which has the feature that what one is living at any given point is actually a life. It is singular that those systems of belief that get closest to actually accepting recurrence of this sort seem, almost without exception, to look forward to the point when one will be released from it. Such systems seem less interested in continuing one’s life than in earning one the right to a superior sort of death. … In general we can ask what it is about the imagined activities of an eternal life that would stave off the principal hazard to which EM succumbed, boredom. The Don Juan in Hell joke, that heaven’s prospects are tedious and the devil has the best tunes, though a tired fancy in itself, at least serves to show up a real and (I suspect) a profound difficulty, of providing any model of an unending, supposedly satisfying, state or activity that would not rightly prove boring to anyone who remained conscious of himself and who had acquired a character, interests, tastes, and impatiences in the course of living, already, a finite life. The point is not that for such a man boredom would be a tiresome consequence of the supposed states or activities, and that they would be objectionable just on the utilitarian or hedonistic ground that they had this disagreeable feature. If that were all there was to it, we could imagine the feature away, along no doubt with other disagreeable features of human life in its present imperfection. The point is rather that boredom, as sometimes in more ordinary circumstances, would be not just a tiresome effect, but a reaction almost perceptual in character to the poverty of one’s relation to the environment. Nothing less will do for eternity than something that makes boredom unthinkable. What could that be?

Translation

这里涉及一些重要且仍未澄清的问题，但前述讨论或许已足以让人怀疑：这一选项是否真能以内在一致的方式满足继续活下去的欲望。尽管鲜有人认为它能有多大意义，但我必须承认，在所有备选方案中，就我个人而言，只有它——倘若讲得通的话——还稍具吸引力。这无疑是因为它具备这样一个特点：人在任何给定时刻所活着的，实质上仍是一种生命。值得玩味的是，那些最接近真正接受此类轮回的信仰体系，似乎几乎无一例外地期盼着某个时刻的到来，届时人将从轮回中解脱。这类体系与其说关注延续生命，不如说旨在为个体赢得一种更高形式的死亡的资格……一般而言，我们可以追问：在设想的永恒生命活动中，究竟有什么东西能够抵御EM所屈服的主要危险——无聊。关于“地狱里的唐璜”的笑话，即天堂的前景乏味而魔鬼拥有最动听的曲调，虽然本身是个老套的幻想，但至少揭示了一个真实且（我怀疑是）深刻的难题：如何构建任何一种无尽的、据称令人满足的状态或活动模型，使得它对于任何一个保持自我意识、并已在度过一段有限生命的过程中形成了性格、兴趣、品味与不耐烦的人来说，不会正当地显得无聊。关键并不在于，对这样的人来说，无聊只是那些假定状态或活动带来的恼人后果，因而它们之所以遭人反对，仅仅是基于功利主义或快乐主义的理由，即它们具有这一令人不快的特征。若仅止于此，我们可以想象去除这一特征——无疑也连带去除人类生命在现有不完美状态下的其他不快特征。关键毋宁在于，无聊——正如它在更普通的情境中有时那样——将不仅仅是一种恼人的结果，而是一种近乎感知性的反应，针对的是个人与环境关系的贫瘠。对于永恒而言，唯有某种使无聊变得不可想象的东西才足够胜任。那会是什么呢？

Original · #16

Something that could be guaranteed to be at every moment utterly absorbing? But if a man has and retains a character, there is no reason to suppose that there is anything that could be that. If, lacking a conception of the guaranteedly absorbing activity, one tries merely to think away the reaction of boredom, one is no longer supposing an improvement in the circumstances, but merely an impoverishment in his consciousness of them. Just as being bored can be a sign of not noticing, understanding, or appreciating enough, so equally not being bored can be a sign of not noticing, or not reflecting, enough. One might make the immortal man content at every moment, by just stripping off from him consciousness that would have brought discontent by reminding him of other times, other interests, other possibilities. Perhaps, indeed, that is what we have already done, in a more tempting way, by picturing him just now as at every moment totally absorbed—but that is something we shall come back to. … Some philosophers have pictured an eternal existence as occupied in something like intense intellectual enquiry. Why that might seem to solve the problem, at least for them, is obvious. The activity is engrossing, self-justifying, affords, as it may appear, endless new perspectives, and by being engrossing enables one to lose oneself. It is that last feature that supposedly makes boredom unthinkable, by providing something that is, in that earlier phrase, at every moment totally absorbing. But if one is totally and perpetually absorbed in such an activity, and loses oneself in it, then as those words suggest, we come back to the problem of satisfying the conditions that it should be me who lives forever, and that the eternal life should be in prospect of some interest. … I shall end by returning to a point from which we set out, the sheer desire to go on living … Suppose, then, that categorical desire does sustain the desire to live. So long as it remains so, I shall want not to die. Yet I also know, if what has gone before is right, that an eternal life would be unliveable. In part, as EM’s case originally suggested, that is because categorical desire will go away from it: in those versions, such as hers, in which I am recognizably myself, I would eventually have had altogether too much of myself. There are good reasons, surely, for dying before that happens. But equally, at times earlier than that moment, there is reason for not dying. Necessarily, it tends to be either too early or too late. EM reminds us that it can be too late, and many, as against Lucretius, need no reminding that it can be too early. If that is any sort of dilemma, it can, as things still are and if one is exceptionally lucky, be resolved, not by doing anything, but just by dying shortly before the horrors of not doing so become evident.

Translation

某种能够保证在每一个时刻都让人完全沉浸其中的东西？但如果一个人拥有并保持着某种性格，就没有理由认为真有任何东西能够做到这一点。倘若在缺乏“有保证地令人沉浸的活动”这一概念的情况下，人们只是试图把无聊这种反应从设想中抹去，那么他所设想的就不再是处境的改善，而只是他对这些处境之意识的贫乏。正如感到无聊可能表明一个人没有充分注意、理解或欣赏，同样，不感到无聊也可能表明一个人没有充分注意，或者没有充分反思。我们或许可以让那个不朽者在每一个时刻都感到满足，只要把那些会因提醒他别的时候、别的兴趣、别的可能性而带来不满足的意识从他身上剥离掉就行了。也许，事实上，我们刚才已经用一种更诱人的方式这样做了：把他设想成每时每刻都全然沉浸其中——不过，这一点我们还要再回来讨论。……有些哲学家把永恒的存在设想为从事某种类似强烈智性探究的活动。为什么这在他们看来似乎能够解决问题，至少对他们自己来说，是显而易见的。这种活动扣人心神，自足其理，似乎还能不断提供新的视角；而且正因为它如此引人入胜，人便得以忘我。据说，正是这最后一个特点使无聊变得不可想象，因为它提供了某种用前面的说法来说“在每一个时刻都完全令人沉浸”的东西。但是，如果一个人在这种活动中彻底而永久地沉浸，并在其中失去自我，那么，正如这些说法本身所暗示的，我们就又回到了那个问题：如何满足这样的条件——永远活下去的应当是“我”，而且这种永恒生命还必须以前景中某种兴趣为依托。……最后，我想回到我们最初出发的一个点，即那种单纯想继续活下去的欲望……那么，假定范畴性欲望确实支撑着活下去的欲望。只要情况仍然如此，我就会想要不死。然而，如果前面的论证是对的，我也知道，永恒的生命将是无法过下去的。在一定程度上，正如EM的例子最初所表明的，那是因为范畴性欲望会从这种生命中消失：在那些我仍然显然是我自己的版本中，例如她那一种，我最终会对我自己彻底厌倦。在事情发展到那一步之前就死去，当然有充分的理由；但同样地，在早于那个时刻的某些时候，也有理由不死。必然地，情形往往不是太早，就是太晚。EM提醒我们，可能会太晚；而许多人，与卢克莱修相反，并不需要别人提醒也知道，可能会太早。如果这算得上某种两难，那么，在事情仍如现在这般、并且一个人又格外幸运的情况下，它可以得到解决；解决的方式不是什么都不做，而只是在不这样做的可怕后果变得明显之前不久，恰好死去。

Original · #17

Technical progress may, in more than one direction, make that piece of luck rarer. But as things are, it is possible to be, in contrast to EM, felix opportunitate mortis—as it can be appropriately mistranslated, lucky in having the chance to die.

Translation

技术进步或许会在不止一个方向上，使那种幸运变得更稀有。但就眼下的情况而言，与EM相反，人仍有可能成为felix opportunitate mortis——若允许一种恰当的“误译”，那便是：有幸得到死亡的机会。