【英文翻译版50】苏珊娜·西格尔：利维坦

Why did Hobbes write Leviathan?

霍布斯为何写了《利维坦》？

Zachary Davis: Last year at Halloween, my son wanted to be the young adult book character Percy Jackson, so I dressed up as Percy’s father, the Greek god Poseidon. I even made a great trident. My wife was Athena, and my baby daughter was Cupid. We were all excited to walk around the neighborhood, see what everyone else was wearing and of course, collect that sweet, sweet candy.

扎卡里·戴维斯：去年万圣节，儿子想扮一次青少年小说里的角色珀西·杰克逊，于是我扮成了珀西的父亲希腊海神波塞冬，还做了一把很不错的三叉戟。我妻子扮成了雅典娜，小女儿扮成了丘比特。我们在家附近开心地走来走去，看看别人穿了些什么，当然还要收集些甜甜的糖果。

Zachary Davis: Since all of us were out trick or treating, there was no one home to hand out candy from our house. So before we left, I put a bowl out front full of candy with a sign that said “please take one.” We left the house, made the rounds, and then headed home. As we were nearing our house, I saw a teenaged Batman on our stoop pour the whole bowl of candy into his bag and run off.

扎卡里·戴维斯：我们一家人都去玩“不给糖就捣蛋”了，家里没人负责发糖，所以在出门前，我在门前放了一个装满糖果的碗，上面放了块牌子，写着“请拿一颗”。我们出去逛了一会儿，接着就准备回家了。快到家的时候，我看到门口一小蝙蝠侠把整碗糖都倒进了自己包里，然后跑了。

Zachary Davis: I yelled out an indignant “hey!” and thought about chasing him down and poking him with my trident, but reconsidered when I remembered my general lack of physical fitness. I was annoyed at this very unheroic batman, but I shouldn’t have really been surprised. There was, after all, no one there to enforce the rule to just take one piece of candy.

扎卡里·戴维斯：我愤愤不平地喊了声“嘿”，本想追上去用三叉戟戳他，但一想到自己体力实在差，就放弃了。这个极其没有英雄气概的蝙蝠侠让我十分恼火，但我实在不应该感到惊讶。毕竟没人在那里看着，确保大家遵守只吃一块糖的规矩。

Zachary Davis: And with no rules, it’s easy for humans to be tempted to be selfish. We are imperfect creatures. Sometimes we do things that are only in our best interest, without considering how our actions impact others. These are insights the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes was well aware of. In his 1651 text Leviathan, he explores the best ways to govern ourselves, taking into account our human imperfections, shortcomings, and natural tendencies.

扎卡里·戴维斯：在没有规则的情况下，人类很容易因诱惑变得自私。我们是不完美的生物，有时我们只做对自己最有利的事，而不考虑对他人的影响。英国哲学家托马斯·霍布斯对此颇有洞见。在1651年出版的《利维坦》一书中，他思考了人类的缺陷和天性，探讨了何为人类自我管理的最佳方式。

Susanna Siegel: This book is not purporting to say anything specific to any time or place. It is aiming at supposedly universal human truths about psychology and about the types of political society we need given the way we are. My name is Susanna Siegel. I'm a professor of Philosophy at Harvard University where I've taught for about 20 years.

苏珊娜·西格尔：这本书并不是要针对某一具体的时间和地点做论述。它的目标是追寻普遍人类真理，既探讨心理学，也探讨怎样的政治社会最适合我们。我叫苏珊娜·西格尔，是哈佛大学的哲学教授，参加教学工作快20年了。

Zachary Davis: I'd love to hear a little bit about your relationship to this text. Why is it a text that you come back to again and again and find rewarding?

扎克里·戴维斯：我很想听听你对这本书的看法，为什么你读过一次又一次后，仍觉得从中有所收获？

Susanna Siegel: The first chunk of it is about psychology. You would never know that it's a work about politics if you only read the first part of it. And so the reason I like it so much and come back to it so much is because you could see this book as really being about the kind of emotional underside of politics. It brings into focus the fact that politics has an emotional underside.

苏珊娜·西格尔：书的第一部分与心理学有关。如果你只读这部分，你永远不会知道它其实是关于政治的。我喜欢它并反复读，因为它可以被看作一本真正涉及政治情感基础的书。它聚焦于一个事实，即政治有情感基础。

Susanna Siegel: So, for any political arrangement, you could ask what kinds of habits of mind, states of mind, activities, characteristics, personalities, what kinds of mental properties facilitate that political arrangement. And then vice versa you could ask what kinds of states of mind are afforded or facilitated by a political arrangement. And Hobbes was interested in both of these questions.

苏珊娜·西格尔：所以，对任何政治结构你都可以抛出疑问，什么样的思维习惯、意识状态、活动、特点、个性，或者说什么样的心理特征能促进政治结构的优化？反过来你可以问，什么样的意识状态是由政治结构造成或促成的？霍布斯感兴趣的正是这两个问题。

Zachary Davis: Welcome to Writ Large, a podcast about how books change the world. I’m Zachary Davis. In each episode, I talk with one of the world’s leading scholars about one book that changed the course of history. For this episode, I sat down with Professor Susanna Siegel to discuss Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan.

扎卡里·戴维斯：欢迎收听：100本改变你和世界的书，在这里我们为大家讲述改变世界的书籍。我是扎卡里·戴维斯。每一集，我都会和一位世界顶尖学者探讨一本影响历史进程的书。在本集，我和苏珊娜·西格尔教授一起讨托马斯·霍布斯的《利维坦》。

Zachary Davis: What do we know about where he was raised and how and how he was capable of writing such a, such a brilliant work?

扎卡里·戴维斯：他的成长环境是怎样的？他怎么能写出这样一部优秀的作品呢？

Susanna Siegel: He was born in the 16th century in 1588. He dies in 1679. He's born in England, and he therefore lives through the English Civil Wars, which were very troubling to him.

苏珊娜·西格尔：他出生于16世纪，具体年份是1588年，死于1679年。他在英国出生，经历了英国内战，这一事件不断困扰着他。

Zachary Davis: The English Civil Wars took place between 1642 and 1651. The Royalists and Parliamentarians were fighting over how England, Scotland, and Ireland should be governed. Their main disagreement was over who should have more power; the king or Parliament.

扎卡里·戴维斯：英国内战发生于1642年到1651年之间。保皇派和议会派因英格兰、苏格兰和爱尔兰该如何治理的问题爆发战争。他们的主要分歧在于谁应该拥有更多的权力——国王还是议会。

Susanna Siegel: So, it was very much about should you have, should you have sort of one person whose word is final or should you have some sort of collective? And if there's going to be both of these bodies, what will be the relationship between them?

苏珊娜·西格尔：所以这个问题的实质是：是应该让某一个人决定一切，还是通过集体做决策？如果二者并存，他们之间会是什么关系？

Zachary Davis: Hobbes was on the side of the Royalists. In fact, a few years earlier in 1640, he wrote a short treatise called The Elements of Law supporting the Royalist view. As the Parliamentarians gained more power, Hobbes feared his writings would get him into trouble.

扎卡里·戴维斯：霍布斯是站在保皇派一边的。早在几年前的1640年，他就写了一篇名为《法的要素》的短篇论文，支持保皇派的观点。随着议会派逐渐掌权，霍布斯担心他的作品会带来麻烦。

Susanna Siegel: And so Hobbes went into exile around 1640, to Paris, as many others did, and that's where he began to write Leviathan, which was published in 1651.

苏珊娜·西格尔：像许多人一样，霍布斯流亡到了巴黎，在那里他开始写《利维坦》。这本书最终于1651年出版。

Zachary Davis: In Leviathan, Hobbes proposes his theory of government. He believed that we need laws and political order to avoid chaos. The laws of society will help us interact with each other in a predictable, moral way, and they work in part because we don’t have to think about them.

扎卡里·戴维斯：在《利维坦》中，霍布斯提出了他的治理理论。他认为我们需要法律和政治秩序来避免混乱。法律将使我们以可预测、道德的方式交流，它发挥作用的方式是隐而不宣的。

Susanna Siegel: They fade into the background. That's why we like them. So, you don't think about driving on the right or waiting to cross the street because you don't have to. And that's the beauty of law. It allows you not to have to negotiate every single interaction afresh with somebody. It lets you know what you can expect from people.

苏珊娜·西格尔：我们喜欢法律，因为它融入了社会环境中。比如，你靠右行驶或过马路前等一下的时候不会加以思考，因为你早已习惯这么做了。这就是法律的魅力所在，你不必每次与他人互动前都重新协商一遍，它使你提前知道人们会怎么做。

Susanna Siegel: So, but when that's taken away and you have a situation where you don't know what to expect from other people or the laws aren't providing the mechanisms of coordination that we rely on them for, then all of a sudden the questions that could otherwise seem very abstract seem extraordinarily immediate. And so that was Hobbes's situation, and I think that's part of what enabled him to really begin from the beginning.

苏珊娜·西格尔：因此，在没有法律的情况下，你无法预见他人的行为，或者说法律没有提供我们可供依赖的协调机制，这时原本抽象的法律问题就变得非常现实而迫切。这就是霍布斯在内战中面临的情况，我想这就是他能够真正从零做起的部分原因。

Zachary Davis: Hobbes took human imperfection into consideration when exploring what types of government would be best.

扎卡里·戴维斯：在探讨什么样的政府最好时，霍布斯考虑到了人性的缺陷。

Susanna Siegel: The fact that he has a big section on what he considers to be deep, immutable truths about psychology shows that he thinks there's quite a bit of constraint from individual nature on what kinds of political societies will actually work.

苏珊娜·西格尔：霍布斯花了很大篇幅论述自己认为的深刻不变的心理学真相。这表明，他认为个人天性会极大地限制真正有效的政治社会的类型。

Zachary Davis: The English Civil Wars had a huge impact on Hobbes. He was especially struck by the difficulties that can arise from having more than one individual in charge.

扎卡里·戴维斯：英国内战对霍布斯产生了巨大影响，多个决策者带来的问题尤使他震惊。

Susanna Siegel: Anyone who's ever been on a committee has had, probably at moments probably thought, “Wouldn’t it just be easier if we just had one person just kind of do this all themselves?” And so, there's a deep truth in it. It certainly is simpler, and there are certainly political problems that are avoided if you just have one person deciding. Like, you know, you don't have to figure out how to weigh the advantages and drawbacks of different proposals. So, it certainly does avoid that.

苏珊娜·西格尔：在委员会中任过职的人都可能想过：“如果只有一个人做这件事，会使事情变得容易吗？”这问题有一定的道理。当然，一个人做决定肯定是更简单的，而且这肯定会避免一些政治问题。因为你不必费心权衡不同建议的优缺点。所以说，它确实可以避免一些问题。

Susanna Siegel: And in the midst of the English Civil Wars, to Hobbes, on his reflection, it seemed that those problems and difficulties were really not solvable, that there was no basis of reason in which you could ever choose one thing or the other, and that if you did try to choose, what would happen is you would have this residual political instability. And so the only, the only thing that would actually work—it's not that just this thing would be best, it's the only thing he thought would actually work—would be to have one authoritarian ruler who is the absolute sovereign.

苏珊娜·西格尔：在英国内战期间，从霍布斯的角度来看，集体决策带来的问题和困难确实无法解决，而且自由选择政体并无合理性，如果人们尝试做选择，就必须面对随之而来的政治动荡。因此，唯一能发挥作用的就是一个拥有绝对权力的独裁统治者，这虽然不是最好的，但却是唯一有效的。

Susanna Siegel: So the book is about a problem, and the problem arises from two familiar ideas that everyone I've ever taught accepts. And those are the ideas that first, there is no natural inequality between the ruler and the ruled, so that when you come to have political inequalities, that is, a structure of somebody who’s the ruler and other people who are the ruled, that's never a fact of nature. This is just a premise for him.

苏珊娜·西格尔：所以这本书涉及了一个问题，这个问题源自我的学生们都熟悉并接受的两个观念。一是，统治者与被统治者之间没有天生的不平等，因此，政治不平等并不是自然的事实，而是统治者与被统治者组成的一个结构，是统治者统治的前提。

Susanna Siegel: And the second idea he's starting from is that, similarly, there is no political, no natural inequalities of any kind, interestingly, between, among the ruled. So, you and I are equally vulnerable, he says, even if you're much bigger and stronger than me, we're equally vulnerable to one another and to other things.

苏珊娜·西格尔：第二个观念和第一个观念有些相似，即被统治者之间没有政治的、自然的任何形式的不平等。所以，我们都很脆弱，即使你比我强壮，我们在彼此和其他事物面前也一样无力。

Susanna Siegel: So, you have these two starting ideas: no natural political inequality either between the rulers and the ruled or among the people who are ruled. And those premises give you a problem. The book is about the problem. And the problem is, if there's no natural political inequality, then what are the grounds of government? So, how could there ever come to be any sort of justified political arrangement at all?

苏珊娜·西格尔：因此，这两个最基本的观念就是，统治者与被统治者之间、被统治者内部没有自然的政治不平等。这两大前提引出了一个问题，这本书就是关于这个问题的。即如果没有自然的政治不平等，那么统治的根据是什么？又怎么会产生所谓合理的政治结构呢？

What gives a sovereign the right to rule?

什么赋予了君主统治权？

Zachary Davis: If we’re all equal, how can any one person or group of people justify being in charge?

扎卡里·戴维斯：如果我们都平等，那么某个人或某一群人怎么证明自己的统治是合理的？

Susanna Siegel: Yeah, how, and what gives them the right to rule? And one of his lasting contributions to this question was really a way of answering it. We know that where he ends up is, “Oh, there's going to be some authoritarian, you know, absolute sovereign!” But how could anybody have the right to rule?

苏珊娜·西格尔：是的，是什么赋予了他们统治权？霍布斯对这个问题的重要贡献其实在于他回答这个问题的方法。我们知道他的答案是：“要有独裁，要有至高无上的权力！”但是，谁有权统治呢？

Susanna Siegel: His approach to answer this question is he’s asking, he's arguing that if everybody acted rationally, they would agree to be governed. And more specifically, he thinks they'd agree to be governed by an absolute sovereign, this absolute authoritarian leader. So, that approach kicked off what we call the social contract tradition and political philosophy, which lasts, it's lasted for centuries in Western political thought as a way of going about answering this question that the right to rule is grounded in what would be rational for people to select.

苏珊娜·西格尔：他回答的方法是提问。他提出，假如每个人都理性地行动，人们会同意被统治。更具体地说，他认为人们会同意被一个拥有绝对权力的领导人统治。这种方法开创了社会契约传统和政治哲学，在西方政治思想史上延续了数百年，解答了统治权建立在何种基础之上——答案便是人们的理性选择。

Zachary Davis: The social contract theory says that all individuals in a society surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the sovereign ruler. In exchange, the sovereign ruler protects the individuals’ remaining rights and maintains the social order. But why does he think that that is the rational choice for individuals?

扎卡里·戴维斯：社会契约论认为，社会中的所有个人都放弃了自己一部分自由，并服从于独裁统治者的权威。作为交换，独裁统治者保护个人的其他权利并维护社会秩序。但是，为什么他认为这是个人的合理选择呢？

Susanna Siegel: Well, the way he argues for this, the way he carries out his method, is by asking another question which has had an enormous amount of influence on political philosophy and political theory, which is, “Well, let's consider,” he says, “Let's consider what life would be like without political institutions.” And that's what he's calling “the state of nature.”

苏珊娜·西格尔：他为此辩护以及提出办法的方式，是提出了另一个对政治哲学和政治理论产生巨大影响的问题。他说：“让我们考虑一下，没有政治制度的生活会变成什么样？”这种“没有政治制度的生活”就是他说的“自然状态”。

Zachary Davis: The state of nature is a state without kings, government, or social order. In the state of nature, people behave how they want to behave. There are no laws saying what you can or cannot do.

扎卡里·戴维斯：自然状态下没有国王、政府以及社会秩序。在自然状态下，人们的行为完全取决于自身的意愿。没有法律规定什么可以做，什么不可以做。

Susanna Siegel: Nobody's saying, “Here's where the road has to be. Here's where the path has to be.” You know, there are no property rights. There is no community that says, “Here's what we're going to grow and here's where we're going to grow out and here is how we're going to divide it up.” There is no scheme of security. There's no scheme of distribution. There's no hospital or doctor or anything. It's just everybody's kind of interacting without any kind of regulation at all.

苏珊娜·西格尔：这种状态下没有人说：“这是必经之路，不走不行。”也没有财产权，没有一个有组织的群体会说：“我们要发展成这样，我们要在这里发展，我们要这样分配它。”没有保障安全的方案，没有分配方案，没有医院、医生之类。有的只是个体之间的多种互动，并且没有任何规则指引。

Susanna Siegel: And one of his first conclusion, his first answer to the question of “well, what would life be like under a state of nature?” is that it would be what he calls “a state of war”. And when he says it's a state of war, of course, you immediately think “people at war” and “isn't it usually countries that are at war?” and “wait, but there's no countries.” But what he means by a state of war is not necessarily an actual war, but rather a known disposition to uncertainty.

苏珊娜·西格尔：自然状态下的生活会是什么样？对于这个问题，他的第一个结论是“战争状态”。当他提到战争状态时，你会立刻想到交战的人们，并觉得一般只有国家才能交战，但自然状态下并没有国家。其实他说的“战争状态”不一定是真正的战争，而是一种通向不稳定性与不确定性的倾向。

Zachary Davis: Without political order, Hobbes says, we would spiral into chaos.

扎卡里·戴维斯：霍布斯说，如果没有政治秩序，我们将陷入混乱。

Susanna Siegel: And the long segments on human psychology are there in order to, for him to make the case that we have dispositions to treat each other with violence, with disrespect, with aggression. We also might have, it's important to note that he thinks this, we also might have dispositions to cooperate and to be in solidarity with one another. It's just that there isn't any way for us to act stably on those dispositions without a government to enforce things.

苏珊娜·西格尔：他在书中写了一段心理学方面的长篇论述，意在论证人类对待彼此有暴力、不敬、冒犯的倾向。同时必须指出，他认为人类也有合作、团结的倾向，但如果没有政治强制力保障，我们无法确保此类倾向的稳定性。

Zachary Davis: Without laws, you don’t know how someone is going to act toward you.

扎卡里·戴维斯：没有法律，你无法预料他人会如何对待你。

Susanna Siegel: You know, it's pretty terrifying if somebody does attack you, but it's also pretty unsettling to not know whether they're going to attack you. And one of the things he says people would do in the state of nature that makes it a state of war is, if I don't know how you're going to act toward me, he says, well, it's actually rational for me then to preemptively take some of the things you're considering your stuff. Of course, there's no property, but there's stuff that you are interacting with, and there's the pillow you're sleeping on. Maybe I want that pillow. Maybe you’re going to take my pillow. So, perhaps I should take your pillow first.

苏珊娜·西格尔：有人要攻击你，这确实非常可怕，但不确定他会不会攻击，同样令人不安。比如说，如果我无法预知你会如何对待我，我就会从自然状态变成战争状态。那我就有理由先发制人，夺走你的东西。虽然你没有财产权，但你与物品间产生了联系，比如你睡觉用的枕头。我可能要抢你的枕头，你也可能要抢我的枕头，那我不如先抢了你的。

Susanna Siegel: And Hobbes, despite not having any social psychology labs or doing any experiments, had some extremely lasting insights. My favorite one of which is, I think, most important one, which is that people are prone to think of themselves as better than other people or more worthy. It's very easy to be, come to consider yourself as, you know, superior in some way, not just fresh off the ground, but really the main predictor he thinks of when this happens is somebody else does it to you.

苏珊娜·西格尔：虽然霍布斯没有社会心理学实验室，也做不了实验，却有一些影响深远的洞见。有一个观点我个人最喜欢，即人们倾向于认为自己比其他人更好或更有价值，这一点我认为也是最重要的。人们很容易觉得自己在某些方面有优越性，不仅是崭露头角，而且实际上，他预测这种情况主要体现在别人对你做了些什么的时候。

Susanna Siegel: So, for example, if you think to middle school or something where you learn that, or high school or any time, when someone, you learn that someone thinks you're sort of not that great, that they're kind of better than you, and you might just react with, you know, incredulity. But usually your response to that is not to say, “Oh, no, we're all equal.” Usually your response is, “What do you mean?! She thinks she’s better than me? I’m better than her!” You know, you sort of react in the opposite way, and he thought this was an incredibly fecund emotion that would just lead to cycles in effect of vengeance.

苏珊娜·西格尔：比如说在读中学或高中时候，你听说有人觉得你不够好，这时你肯定会质疑这种看法。但你一般不会说：“不，我们是一样的，没什么好不好。”你更可能会说：“你什么意思？她以为她比我强？我比她强好不好！”你会以针锋相对的方式回应，霍布斯认为，这种情绪的作用极其强烈，冤冤相报的循环就是这么来的。

Susanna Siegel: And when it took a violent form, which he thought it would, both rationally and irrationally in the state of nature, you get the kind of narrative one finds in the so-called mafia movie, sort of, like “you kill my brother, I kill your cousin.” And there's no end to that. There's not any way for that to end. So, I think that was an incredibly deep insight, both about what could happen interpersonally, but also what could happen politically.

苏珊娜·西格尔：他认为，自然状态下理性或非理性的人们，一旦采取暴力形式解决问题，就会发生像黑手党电影中的情形，“你杀我兄弟，我杀你表亲”。这种复仇没有止境，没有任何方法可以结束它。在我看来，这一观点很有洞察力，解释了人际交往与政治中都有可能出现的情况。

Susanna Siegel: So, if you wanted purposefully to destabilize a society, there's probably no more effective way you could choose than to say, “You know, these people, they're celebrating your pain. You know, they think they're better than you.” And if you say that, then you will incite the people who are hearing this rumor, whether it’s true or not, to regard themselves as fit to celebrate their pain.

苏珊娜·西格尔：所以说，如果你有意要破坏社会稳定，最有效的方法就是对某人说：“你知道吗，有些人看见你受苦高兴坏了。”或者说：“他们都觉得自己比你强。”听到这种话的人一定会被刺激到，也不管你说的是真是假，他们都迫切地想报复。

Zachary Davis: That fear of death and the uncertainty that a violent state of nature creates is itself something that people want to remove as soon as they can because that uncertainty makes life unbearable.

扎卡里·戴维斯：人们都想尽力摆脱对死亡的恐惧以及人性中暴力倾向带来的不确定性，因为这种不确定性会使生活因惶恐而难以忍受。

Susanna Siegel: That's right. And that's the bridge from having any government to having authoritarian government，because he has very specific arguments of why you can't have a bunch of committees, for example. Because he said, “Well, suppose they disagree about who's going to decide between the disagreement.” You know, you need some sort of final say. And so that's, he thinks it will just end up in instability.

苏珊娜·西格尔：是的，这也促使政权产生后变成了独裁统治。他还专门论证了为什么一大堆委员会是不可行的。他说：“假如他们没有一致同意谁来在不同意见之间拍板，那该怎么办？”但肯定又得有人拍板。所以他觉得委员会制度只会带来混乱。

Susanna Siegel: And in a way, the problem he's putting his finger on, though he didn't conceptualize it as a problem for democracy, really is a problem for democracy. If you instead try to have a democracy, a representative democracy where there's voting, sometimes my side will win, sometimes my side will lose.

苏珊娜·西格尔：从某种意义上说，尽管他没有将这个问题概念化为民主制度的问题，但他提出的问题确实是民主制度要面对的。如果不要独裁，而尝试建立一个有投票权的民主制，即代议制民主制，那么有时我方会占上风，有时则会占下风。

Susanna Siegel: Well, how can I think of myself as part of this polity when I lose? How, what's going to keep me invested in the game? And if it turns out that I always lose, I might have reason to say, “Okay, look, forget it. You know, there's no way for me to win.” Whereas if it's that my political opponent today could be my political ally tomorrow, I'm not going to treat my political opponent as somebody entirely illegitimate, for example. You know, opponents treated as illegitimate, that's a way to destroy democracy because you don't have a way of feeling yourself in the game.

苏珊娜·西格尔：那么，当我方输掉后，我该如何认同自己是这种政治的一分子？怎样才能支持我继续参与？如果我方总是输，那我只能说：“好吧，算了。我们就是赢不了。”但如果今天的政治对手是明天的潜在盟友，那么我就可以容忍对手的存在。对对手零容忍会摧毁民主制度，因为这导致一部分人毫无参与感。

What happens when people give up their right to the sovereign?

当人们把权力让渡给君主时，会发生什么？

扎卡里·戴维斯: So, how do we escape the state of nature? How does Hobbes describe this moment when people decide, “Okay, I can't live like this. I can't live with the threat of violence or the uncertainty of safety. I'm willing to do pretty much anything to escape that state?”

扎卡里·戴维斯：那么，我们怎么摆脱自然状态呢？人们终会意识到：“好吧，我不能这么活着，我不能忍受暴力的威胁和对安全的忧虑，我要尽力摆脱这种状态。”霍布斯是如何描述这一时刻的？

Susanna Siegel: So, the genius of the idea is that you're supposed to ask, “Well, what would it be rational to agree to do?” And then if you can justify political arrangements on the basis of their being ones that would be rational arrangements to agree to，if the alternative was the state of nature, then you can justify those arrangements.

苏珊娜·西格尔：霍布斯观点的创见性在于，他提出了这样一个问题——理性思考后，人们会达成什么样的共识？如果政治体制来自于理性的共识，如果它可以替代自然状态，那么这种政治体制就是合理的。

Susanna Siegel: And that same method was used by Rousseau, was used by Rawls, was used by Locke, it was used by many subsequent philosophers, each of whom reached a different conclusion from one another and also from Hobbes. So, no, there isn't a moment when you do it, though, it’s, it's almost hard not to think that way because his description of it evokes a narrative of like, first, it was awful and then you’re like, “oh, come on.” And in fact, that's a very implausible narrative.

苏珊娜·西格尔：卢梭、罗尔斯、洛克以及后来的许多哲学家也使用了相同的方法，他们得出了各不相同的结论，与霍布斯的结论也不同。所以，刚才说的那一时刻是不存在的，但是很难不那么想，因为一来他描述的情形令人生厌，然后你就会想：“不会吧?”实际上他的描述确实不够可信。

Susanna Siegel: I mean, if it really got to the point where people were distrustful of one another and had just been through this violence where they stole your pillow and shot your cousin, you know, you need a little bit of transition of some sort in order to be able to say, “okay, come on, let's, game's over. You know, let's just do a different thing.”

苏珊娜·西格尔：如果真的到了人们彼此不信任的地步，并且刚经历了“枕头被偷、表亲被杀”这种暴力情况，这时就需要改变现状，好告诉大家：“游戏结束了，我们需要不同的东西了。”

Susanna Siegel: So it's, it would be very implausible as history or for that matter, as psychology. And maybe this is a good place to mention the fact that not every political problem, in fact, some would argue most political problems, but I would just say many can't be solved by this method of asking what would be, in the abstract, rational to agree to. You can get up to a point.

苏珊娜·西格尔：因此，从历史和心理的角度看，这是很不可信的。也许这是一个提及以下事实的好地方：用这种抽象的方法思考，询问理性的人会有什么共识，实际上无法解决许多问题。有人甚至会说，这没法解决大多数政治问题。您充其量可以想到一些片面的观点。

Susanna Siegel: But if you have, for example, you know, as we have in Colombia, as we have in South Africa, as maybe we have in the United States, Germany, you know, places where, you know, there is a history of such systematic and long term violence, you know, that target very specific groups that stays in historical memory, it doesn't seem to completely speak to the situation to just say, “Well, what would you do if you were starting from scratch?” Because we're never starting from scratch.

苏珊娜·西格尔：但是，如你所知，历史上在哥伦比亚、南非，甚至在美国、德国的一些地方，曾长期存在过针对特定群体的、有组织的暴力活动。就算问“假如能从头开始该怎么应对”也是没用的，因为有历史存在，我们根本无法从零开始。

Zachary Davis: So the moment individuals decide to come together and empower a sovereign, what happens?

扎卡里·戴维斯：当人们一致决定要把权力赋予一个君主时，发生了什么呢？

Susanna Siegel: So, it isn't exactly a moment. But what he says is “if your options were the state of nature,” which he thinks is the kind of default option, “and if that was the alternative, then what it would be rational to do is it would be rational to agree to give up your right to a sovereign on the condition that everybody else agrees to give up their right.”

苏珊娜·西格尔：这不是瞬间发生的。他说的是，自然状态如果是唯一选择，那是没得选的，而如果可以二选一，那么在其他人都同意放弃权力的前提下，把自己的权力让渡给君主就是合理的。

Susanna Siegel: So, the thing that you're agreeing to is not, in that moment, in that theoretical moment, individualistic. It's a conditional, it's a conditional giving up of a right. It's only rational for me to do it if everybody else does it. If I do, and they don't do it, then I'm at two people's mercy.

苏珊娜·西格尔：因此，在理论上的那一时刻，你放弃权力的决定并不是独自做出的。这是有条件的，是有条件的放弃权力。只有他人都这样做，我才会这么做。如果我这样做了，而其他人却不这样做，那我的命运就不止在一个人手中了。

Zachary Davis: When all members of a society give up certain freedoms and submit to the authority of a sovereign ruler, they enter into a social contract that blurs the line between the will of the people and the will of the ruler. This is represented in the cover art of Leviathan,which shows one large man with a crown made up of many smaller men.

扎卡里·戴维斯：当一个社会的所有成员放弃一定的自由并臣服于独裁君主的权威时，他们就签订了社会契约，使人民意志与统治者意志之间的界限变得模糊。这也体现在了《利维坦》封面的插画上——一个头戴王冠的巨人，他的身体由许多小人组成。

Susanna Siegel: When I give up my right to the sovereign, I am the author of the sovereign's actions. So, I can't have any complaint against the sovereign because I'm actually doing it. So, the image of, you know, the reason the man is made up of men instead of the image being “here is all the, here's the mob and here's the leader” is because on his strange metaphysics of authorization, I am the author of the sovereign's actions.

苏珊娜·西格尔：当我把权力让渡给君主时，君主的行为就体现了我的意志。所以我没有理由抱怨他，因为实际上是我在这样做。君主的形象是全体臣民的集合，而不是“一边是平民，另一边是领袖”，因为霍布斯对君权来源的玄奥描述要表达的是——君权人授。

Susanna Siegel: So actually, it wasn't somebody else harming me, I'm harming me because I'm becoming this whole. So, an important point that I, I think should be included is that for Hobbes, there is no political unity or community before the state. There's no nation, for example, before the state. There is only, but there's only political unity after the state, downstream from the state.

苏珊娜·西格尔：从这个角度来说，没有其他人伤害我，是我伤害了自己，因为我是全体的一部分。因此，有一个重要观点需要提及，对于霍布斯来说，在国家出现之前没有政治统一体或共同体。比如，国家之前没有民族的概念。仅在国家之后，才有了政治统一体，这种概念是发源于国家的。

Zachary Davis: This social contract is the key. This is how people get out of the state of nature and achieve political unity. So, for those who oppose the divine right of kings, like Hobbes, what gave him that audacity to question that?

扎卡里·戴维斯：社会契约是关键。这就是人们摆脱自然状态并实现政治统一的方式。那么，对于霍布斯这种反对君权神授的人来说，他凭什么敢质疑这种观点呢？

Susanna Siegel: The arguments that he's giving about why there's no natural political inequality, you know, they’re arguments for, that people are equal in all the respects that would matter for political life. So, equal, equally vulnerable to one another. We can all be, we can all be tricked. We would all not like to be tricked. We are all prone to feel ourselves to be more worthy and prone to react others who feel that way about us with more of the same. The emotions that he thought mattered for politics, people were equal with respect to those. And I guess another way of putting the point is that what mattered for politics really was handling its emotional underside.

苏珊娜·西格尔：霍布斯提出，不存在自然的政治不平等，这其实是说，人们在政治生活中的方方面面都是平等的，是同样脆弱的。我们都会被愚弄，我们都不想被愚弄。我们都觉得自己更优越，我们都觉得那些自以为比我们优越的人也不如我们。他认为，从与政治相关的情感来看，人们是平等的。我想，换另一种方式来说就是，对政治而言真正重要的是处理它的情感基础。

Susanna Siegel: So, part of the reason that, another reason that there, that there has to be an absolute sovereign as opposed to a democracy or an oligarchy is that that's most terrifying. So Hobbes is pitting one emotion against another emotion in this picture. He's thinking that there's the emotion of pride, which is operative in the state of nature and will unleash these endless cycles of violence and aggression and the only way to hold that in check is to be afraid of something bigger. And the terrible leader is supposed to scare you into, maybe not into not feeling superior to other people, but not acting on it because it's when you act on it that you'll incite reactions from the others, as our propaganda websites show.

苏珊娜·西格尔：必须有一个绝对君权而不是民主或寡头集团统治，部分原因是，这是最可怕的。因此，霍布斯在这框架下用一种情感抵抗另一种情感。他认为，存在一种傲慢，这种情感在自然状态下会释放出无休止的暴力和争斗，而唯一可以控制它的就是恐惧，对更强大者的恐惧。令人畏惧的君主，不会胁迫你抛弃优越感，而是使你不敢放任优越感做事，如果你执意如此，就会受到他人的反制。我们政治宣传的网页表现了类似的情况。

Susanna Siegel: And it's also more scary because in a way, you're importing the unpredictability and uncertainty from the state of nature and stuffing it into the will of the sovereign. So, you can't predict what they're going to do. You know, you hope they're going to do something that doesn't hurt too much, but you can't predict what they're going to do using the principles that are constraining them because there are no principles that are constraining them.

苏珊娜·西格尔：君主令人畏惧，还因为在某种程度上，人们把自然状态里的不可预测性和不确定性转移到了君主的意志中。所以人们无法预测君主要怎么做，只能希望他们做的事不会带来太多伤害，而且无法根据规则约束君主，因为这种规则是不存在的。

Zachary Davis: His project was to develop a science of morality. And that one really very, very modern feeling argument he makes is that there is no objective, good or evil. It's sort of just, it's just convention or it's, it’s will, and, you know, in his case, what really matters is the sovereign’s will. What is he doing with this science of morality? And how does he think about, I guess, morality, good and evil?

扎卡里·戴维斯：霍布斯的计划是发展一门道德科学。他提出了一个非常具有现代感的观点，世界上不存在客观的善与恶。存在的是合理、惯例、意志，对他来说重要的是君主的意志。他用这种道德科学做什么？他是如何看待道德、善与恶的？

Susanna Siegel: So, take the case of promising. You might think, well, the fool has said in his heart, you know, wouldn't it just be better if I went off and did my own thing even if I told you I'd do something else? And  Hobbes's point is that actually if you're in the state of nature, it would be. But he recognizes that that's some sort of, something wrong with that result. And so his picture is that you need political arrangements in order to have morality. So, you need political arrangements in order for us to be able to make promises to one another and behave in ways that are, you know, morally right.

苏珊娜·西格尔：以承诺为例。愚蠢的人会在心里想，就算我承诺过其他事情，我不管它去，做自己的事情会不会更好？霍布斯的观点是，如果处在自然状态下，这样确实可以。但是他知道这么做造成的结果是不好的。他认为需要先有政治制度道德才能产生。因此，需要先有政治制度，我们对彼此做出的承诺才有效，我们才能做出所谓道德正确的事。

Zachary Davis: In the state of nature, there is nothing to hold any individual accountable for their actions. But their actions still impact others. Hobbes argues that we need political order to hold us accountable for our actions. This helps to define good vs. evil, right vs. wrong, and it provides a framework for how to behave in a way that is morally right.

扎卡里·戴维斯：在自然状态下，没有什么可以使个人对自己的行为负责。但是他们的行为仍然会影响他人。霍布斯认为，我们需要政治秩序使我们对自己的行为负责。这有助于定义善恶、对错，并为如何以道德正确的方式行事搭建了框架。

Susanna Siegel: He thinks that without political arrangements, there won't be any chance for morality actually to be operative or for us to even have the right motivations. So, that's the way in which, that's where he's, that's, it seems a little odd. I mean, you might think first comes morality and then hopefully you make laws that are, you know, connected enough to morality to not be immoral. But for Hobbes it goes the other way around.

苏珊娜·西格尔：他认为，没有政治制度，道德就不会有机会发挥作用，我们甚至没有遵守道德的动机。他这种看法也许有些奇怪，因为，你可能会觉得，先要有道德出现才能有法律，法律与道德紧密相关，并需遵守道德规则。但对霍布斯来说，情况恰恰相反。

What’s Hobbes’ influence?

霍布斯有何影响？

Zachary Davis: What do we know about how its ideas slowly filter into the political institutions and, and state-making processes that, that happen over the next few hundred years?

扎卡里·戴维斯：他的思想是如何渗透到之后几百年的政治体制和国家决策过程中的？

Susanna Siegel: It had an enormous influence on political philosophy, just in the questions that were asked and the ways of answering them. That's w­here I see, I mean, you know, he had so many modes because he you know, he wrote as an historian, he wrote as a sort of religious, anti-religious thinker. He wrote as a philosopher. And it was common to write in all of those modes. And now from our vantage point where we separate those strands, you know, we trace the string, we trace the strands separately. But he had an enormous impact on, you know, on really centuries. I mean, I can't think of another thinker who's had more impact on modern political philosophy, you know, for longer because, you know, he kicked off the social contract tradition. That's pretty amazing.

苏珊娜·西格尔：它对政治哲学产生了巨大影响，体现在提出的问题和回答方法上。我是这么认为的。霍布斯有很多写作模式，有时像历史学家，有时像宗教思想家，又时又反宗教，还有的时候像哲学家，所有模式在他的著作中都很常见。现在我们以后人的视角看，我们不同的学科分开来了，但我们还可以循着各个不同的线索理解他。他对后世几百年影响巨大，我想不出另一个对现代政治哲学影响更大的思想家，因为他开启了社会契约传统，令人称奇。

Zachary Davis: So, what is the afterlife of the social contract theory? How does it continue to inform the way that we think about our political lives?

扎卡里·戴维斯：那么，社会契约理论有怎样的发展？它如何继续影响我们思考政治生活的方式？

Susanna Siegel: Well, it's, it's taken up by Locke and by Rousseau and by Rawls, all of whom are asking about what kinds of political arrangements would it be reasonable to consent to, or to agree to, to agree to be governed by. And that's, that is the tradition of what they call “ideal theory.”

苏珊娜·西格尔：洛克、卢梭和罗尔斯继承了这一理论，他们思考的是同一个问题，什么样的政治制度是最合理的、应被认同的？这就是所谓“理想理论”的传统。

Susanna Siegel: There are other traditions in American political thought. African-American political thought is, is focused on, you know, questions that are, they’re focused more on what's happening at specific places and times. So, the abstraction that you see in Hobbes, you know, reaching up through Rawls, it had its strong points in that it showed what, it showed one way that you could approach the question of, “How should I think about what sorts of policies we should have actually? This isn't just what would be good for me personally, but if I, what is the frame of mind I'm supposed to be in when I ask whether this is a good law, whether this is a good policy or how should we arrange the education system?”

苏珊娜·西格尔：美国政治思想中还有其他传统。比如非裔美国人的政治思想，集中在特定时间和地点正发生的事情上。你在霍布斯作品中看到的抽象论述，也贯穿在罗尔斯的作品中，它的优点在于可以回答一些问题，如“该如何思考哪些政策是我们真正需要的？”我个人很喜欢这种方式，而且在思考“这是否是一部好法律，这是否是一项好政策，安排我们应该如何建立教育制度”这类问题时，它可以帮助我们搭建起一个思维结构。

Susanna Siegel: In African-American political thought, it's very different. You find pamphlets, you find responses to, you know, the terrifying and, you know, paradoxical situation of humans not treated as humans. And the terrific problem of “Is it ever gonna be able to work out here?” You know, just living for centuries with the contradiction of a country that says, avows itself a democracy and has, exactly as Hobbes would say, would have pointed out, you know, gosh, a lot of practices that are at odds with that, raising the question of, “Well, are these avowals real? Are they for real? Are they serious? Are… They certainly don’t seem to be operative. So, are they even aspirational?” And that question is just taken far more seriously.

苏珊娜·西格尔：非裔美国人的政治思想则非常具体。他们会写小册子，控诉着人不被当人看的悲惨案例。还会严厉质问：“在这里真的能解决吗？”黑人在美国生活了几个世纪，伴随着种种矛盾、纠纷，但这个国家始终宣称自己是一个民主国家，所以黑人们会指出各种与之向左的现实情况，就像霍布斯所说，他们会发问：“这个国家宣称的是事实吗？是严肃认真的吗？……但这些似乎并没有起作用。那么，他们是不是根本就无意实现那些理想呢？”这个问题将被更严肃地对待。

Zachary Davis: I think listeners who learn about Hobbes will think, “Well, he was wrong.” I mean, we don't all want absolute monarch, monarchies anymore. I mean, he basically lost the argument, and Western governments pretty much uniformly decided to go towards liberal constitutionalism.

扎卡里·戴维斯：我认为了解霍布斯的听众会想：“嗯，他错了。”我们都不想要绝对的君主制了。他的观点基本不被人采纳了，西方政府几乎都建立起了自由宪政。

Susanna Siegel: Well, I mean, I think in the long view, democracy, it didn't really carry the day, and it's extremely fragile. You know, maybe questioning the premise of the question, it didn't exactly cover the day. I mean, from the point of view of, you know, ruling classes in America and Europe, it can sure seem that way. But there's a, there's a kind of illusion of inevitability to that that we now see is an illusion.

苏珊娜·西格尔：我认为从长期来看，民主制度并没有真正胜出，而且它其实非常脆弱。这个问题的前提或许就存疑，因为民主制并没有一统天下。虽然从美国和欧洲的统治阶级的角度来看，也许是如此。但我们现在已经隐约可以看到，民主制的胜利其实是个幻觉。

Susanna Siegel: But, yeah, he was wrong. You know, what's the value of reading him even though he's wrong all along the way? He is, he is highlighting, perhaps accidentally, but he's certainly highlighting the main challenges with democracy. He's seeing very sensitive to those challenges, not under that mode of presentation, but he's sensitive to the challenges that are, in fact, challenges of democracy.

苏珊娜·西格尔：但是霍布斯确实错了。既然他根本就是错的，读他有什么价值呢？他其实有意无意地强调了民主制面临的主要问题。他非常敏锐地发现了这些问题，虽然不是直接表达出来的，但确实是发现了。

Susanna Siegel: You know, why is it so hard to have mass participation? Why is it so hard to have, you know, rational discussion and then actually reach a conclusion? You know, at the, at a certain point, you need to just decide? And what are the mechanisms for doing that? Will they really be stable? I mean, you could say he was right. It's very difficult, and it won't be stable. So, it takes a kind of ongoing participation to keep it shored up. And, you know, we need theorists of democracy that, and we have theorists of democracy, you know, that give us some ideas about how that might work.

苏珊娜·西格尔：为什么广泛的政治参与如此难实现？为什么理性讨论和得出结论都如此困难？在某个时候是需要当机立断的，什么样的机制可以做到？这种机制真的稳定吗？这一点看，你可以说霍布斯是对的。这种决策机制的实现非常困难，而且很不稳定。因此，需要持续的政治参与支撑它。而且，而且我们需要民主制度的理论家，告诉我们如何能使那种机制有效运行。

Zachary Davis: You’re at a cocktail party. A whipper-snapper grad student comes up and says “Professor Siegel, how did Leviathan change the world?”

扎卡里·戴维斯：假设您正在参加鸡尾酒派对，这时一个态度傲慢的毕业生过来问您：“西格尔教授，利维坦是如何改变世界的？”您会怎么回答呢？

Susanna Siegel: It changed the world by the questions it asked about political association. It changed the world by asking “what would the world be like without political institutions?”

苏珊娜·西格尔：这本书探讨了政治机构，谈论了如果没有政治机构，世界会是什么样。这就是它改变世界的方式。

Zachary Davis: We will always face challenges when trying to govern ourselves because there is no one right way. It is a process of constant striving. Hobbes introduced a new way of thinking about politics, which influenced political philosophers for centuries. He viewed politics through a psychological lens and invited readers to answer the central questions of governance by asking what life would be like without any government at all.

扎卡里·戴维斯：人类在尝试自我管理的过程中会一直遇到问题，因为不存在绝对正确的方法，但这是一个不断努力的过程。霍布斯开创了一种新的政治思维方式，数百年来一直影响着政治哲学家们。他从心理学的角度看待政治，并邀请读者思考一些核心的政治问题，如果完全没有权力机构，生活会变成什么样？

Zachary Davis: Writ Large is a production of Ximalaya. Writ Large is produced by Jack Pombriant, Liza French and me, Zachary Davis. Script editing is by Galen Beebe. We get help from Feiran Du, Ariel Liu, Wendy Wu, and Monica Zhang. Our theme song is by Ian Coss. Don’t miss an episode. Subscribe today in the Ximalaya app. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

扎卡里·戴维斯：本节目由喜马拉雅独家制作播出。感谢您的收听，我们下期再见！