人人都将面临死亡，找到生命的意义能帮助我们吗？| aeon

Sooner or later we all face death. Will a sense of meaning help us?
人人都将面临死亡，找到生命的意义能帮助我们吗？

‘Despite all our medical advances,’ my friend Jason used to quip, ‘the mortality rate has remained constant – one per person.’

我的挚友杰森曾打趣道：“不管医学取得多大发展，死亡率永恒不变，每人一次。”

Jason and I studied medicine together back in the 1980s. Along with everyone else in our course, we spent six long years memorising everything that could go wrong with the human body. We diligently worked our way through a textbook called Pathologic Basis of Disease that described, in detail, every single ailment that could befall a human being. It’s no wonder medical students become hypochondriacal, attributing sinister causes to any lump, bump or rash they find on their own person.

20世纪80年代，我和杰森一起学医。和其他一起上课的同学一样，我们整整六年都在记忆人体可能出现的一切问题。我们努力研读《疾病的病理基础》（Pathologic Basis of Disease）这本教材，该书详细论述了人体可能出现的每种疾病。也难怪医学生也变得疑神疑鬼，一看到身上有任何疙瘩、肿块或皮疹，都觉得自己得了什么病。

Jason’s oft-repeated observation reminded me that death (and disease) are unavoidable aspects of life. It sometimes seems, though, that we’ve developed a delusional denial of this in the West. We pour billions into prolonging life with increasingly expensive medical and surgical interventions, most of them employed in our final, decrepit years. From a big-picture perspective, this seems a futile waste of our precious health-dollars.

杰森挂在嘴上的这句妙语提醒我，死亡（和疾病）是生命中不可避免的。不过在西方，我们有时已经形成了一种错觉：死亡（和疾病）并非不可避免。我们投入数十亿资金，通过日益昂贵的医疗干预和外科手术来延长生命，这些医疗手段大部分情况下都是在身体衰老、时日无多时才会使用。从宏观视角来看，这种方式也许是在白白浪费我们宝贵的医疗资金。

Don’t get me wrong. If I get struck down with cancer, heart disease or any of the myriad life-threatening ailments I learnt about in medicine, I want all the futile and expensive treatments I can get my hands on. I value my life. In fact, like most humans, I value staying alive above pretty much everything else. But also, like most, I tend to not really value my life unless I’m faced with the imminent possibility of it being taken away from me.

不要误会我的意思。如果我被癌症、心脏病或是我在医学中学到的任何一种危及生命的疾病所摧垮时，我会竭尽全力搜寻一切可以得到的治疗，不论它们是否有用，也不管它们价格高低。我珍惜自己的生命。事实上，像大多数人一样，我把活着看得比其他一切都重要得多。但也和大多数人一样，除非死亡可能迫在眉睫，否则我往往不会真正珍惜自己的生命。

注释：

strike down：摧垮；使病倒；使丧命 If someone is struck down, especially by an illness, they are killed or severely harmed by it.

The relationship between death-awareness and leading a fulfilling life was a central concern of the German philosopher Martin Heidegger, whose work inspired Jean-Paul Sartre and other existentialist thinkers.

死亡意识和过上充实生活之间的关系是德国哲学家马丁·海德格尔（Martin Heidegger）的核心关切，他的作品启发了让-保罗·萨特（Jean-Paul Sartre）以及其他存在主义的思想家。

注释：

1. Martin Heidegger：海德格尔是存在主义哲学的创始人和主要代表之一。他在《存在与时间》一书中曾引用柏拉图的这段话：“当你们用‘存在着’这个词的时候显然你们早就很熟悉这究竟是什么意思，不过我们也曾相信懂得它，但是我们现在却茫然失措了”。然后他说柏拉图当时指出人人都熟悉的“存在”的意思其实并没有人真正懂得。这个问题直到2000年后的今天还没有解决，而他就是要来重新提出并解决这个“在”的意义的问题。

2. Jean-Paul Sartre：萨特曾经给存在主义的价值做了这样的定义：“存在主义是人道主义的深化。”存在主义剥去了人道所谓“阶级性”或“社会性”，也撇开各种社会规范，他研究人的具体的生存处境，特别是人在某种特殊情况下他会如何行动，像萨特的《禁闭》、《死无葬身之地》等。

Heidegger pointed out that we who are asking questions about Being are qualitatively different to the rest of existence: the rocks, oceans, trees, birds and insects that we are asking about. He invented a special word for this Being that asks, looks and cares. He called it Dasein, which loosely translates as ‘being there’. He coined the term Dasein because he believed that we had become immune to words such as ‘person’, ‘human’ and ‘human being’, losing our sense of wonder about our own consciousness.

海德格尔指出，对“存在”（本身）发问的人与岩石、海洋、树木、鸟类、昆虫等其他的（物种）存在有着本质上的不同。他为能够询问、注视和关心的“生物”发明了一个特殊的词，即“Dasein”，大致可以翻译为“此在”。他创造这个词的原因是他认为我们已经对“个人”（person）、“人”（human）和“人类”（human being）之类的词免疫，也对自我意识的存在不再感到惊奇。

Heidegger’s philosophy remains attractive to many today who see how science struggles to explain the experience of being a moral, caring person aware that his precious, mysterious, beautiful life will, one day, come to an end. According to Heidegger, this awareness of our own inevitable demise makes us, unlike the rocks and trees, hunger to make our life worthwhile, to give it meaning, purpose and value.

时至今日，海德格尔的哲学思想仍有很多追随者。他们看到了科学的局限，一个有道德、有爱心的人意识到他那珍贵、神秘、美丽的人生终有一天会戛然而止，科学难以解释这种体验。海德格尔认为，恰恰是因为人能意识到死亡无法避免，所以渴望赋予生命以意义、目标和价值，不枉此生。这也将人和岩石、树木区别开来。

While Western medical science, which is based on Aristotelian thinking, sees the human body as a material thing that can be understood by examining it and breaking it down to its constituent parts like any other piece of matter, Heidegger’s ontology puts human experience at the centre of our understanding of the world.

基于亚里士多德的思想，西医认为人体是有形的物质存在，可以通过检查窥其全貌，也可以像对待任何一种物质一样，将人体拆解为各个组成部分。然而，海德格尔的本体论认为人的体验才是我们了解世界的中心。

Ten years ago, I was diagnosed with melanoma. As a doctor, I knew how aggressive and rapidly fatal this cancer could be. Fortunately for me, the surgery seemed to achieve a cure (touch wood). But I was also fortunate in another sense. I became aware, in a way I never had before, that I was going to die – if not from melanoma, then from something else, eventually. I have been much happier since then. For me, this realisation, this acceptance, this awareness that I am going to die is at least as important to my wellbeing as all the advances of medicine, because it reminds me to live my life to the full every day. I don’t want to experience the regret that Ware heard about more than any other, of not living ‘a life true to myself’.

十年前，我罹患黑色素瘤。作为医生，我深知这种癌症非常凶险，死亡与我近在咫尺。幸运的是，经过手术我痊愈了（愿好运常伴）。同时，在另一种意义上，我也是幸运的。一种从未有过的感觉油然而生，我真正意识到自己终将死去——即使不是因为黑色素瘤，也会因为其他原因。从那以后，我变得快乐许多。我终将死去，而我已经领会、接受并且意识到这一点，这对我的身心健康非常重要，丝毫不亚于医学的进步。因为它提醒我要充实地度过每一天。瓦雷（Ware）听到过最多的遗憾就是没能“过忠于自己的一生”，而我不愿如此。

注释：

Ware：指Bronnie Ware（布朗尼·瓦雷），一位澳大利亚作家。著有The Top Five Regrets of the Dying（《临终者的五大遗憾》），书中记录了她任姑息治疗护士期间听到的临终者此生最大的遗憾。

Most Eastern philosophical traditions appreciate the importance of death-awareness for a well-lived life. The Tibetan Book of the Dead, for example, is a central text of Tibetan culture. The Tibetans spend a lot of time living with death, if that isn’t an oxymoron.

大多数东方哲学传统都承认死亡意识对美好人生的重要性。例如，《西藏度亡经》是西藏文化的一个核心内容。藏族人会花很长时间“与死亡共存活”，这可不仅仅是一个“矛盾修饰语”。

注释：

1. An oxymoron is a figure of speech that combines two contradictory terms, such as "jumbo shrimp" or "bittersweet".

2. 《西藏度亡经》是一本广泛流传于藏民族及藏传佛教信仰群体中的密宗经典，目前已成为一本每日祷告书，其对藏族人的影响，尤其对藏人生死观念的影响，不容忽视。

The East’s greatest philosopher, Siddhartha Gautama, also known as the Buddha, realised the importance of keeping the end in sight. He saw desire as the cause of all suffering, and counselled us not to get too attached to worldly pleasures but, rather, to focus on more important things such as loving others, developing equanimity of mind, and staying in the present.

东方最伟大的哲学家，释迦牟尼（也被称为佛陀），意识到谨记死亡终将到来的重要性。他认为欲望是一切痛苦的根源，并告诫我们不要太执着于世俗的享乐，而是要专注于更重要的事情，比如关爱他人，拥有平和心态，以及活在当下。

The last thing the Buddha said to his followers was: ‘Decay is inherent in all component things! Work out your salvation with diligence!’ As a doctor, I am reminded every day of the fragility of the human body, how closely mortality lurks just around the corner. As a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, however, I am also reminded how empty life can be if we have no sense of meaning or purpose. An awareness of our mortality, of our precious finitude, can, paradoxically, move us to seek – and, if necessary, create – the meaning that we so desperately crave.

佛陀对追随者说的最后一句话是：“万物皆会消亡！勤加修持，方得救赎！”作为一名医生，我每天都在提醒自己，人的身体多么脆弱，死亡近在咫尺。然而，作为一名精神病学家和心理治疗师，我也提醒自己，如果我们没有意识到生活的意义或目的，生命就会变得无比空虚。矛盾的是，意识到我们终将死亡，意识到我们生命的宝贵与有限，反而可以促使我们寻求乃至创造我们如此渴望得到的意义。

翻译组：   

Lucian，灵魂在杰作中冒险

Devin，荣枯有数，得失难量

WH，Stay hungry, stay foolish.

zy，没啥新鲜的，想做一个好译员

校核组：

Very，男，电气民工，经济学人资浅爱好者

Harold，工作打牌读书足球不可兼得，我偏全要

Anne，女，爱读书爱Borges的小翻译，热爱文艺，经济学人爱好者

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