【英文翻译版88】米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：《正义论》

英文文稿+中文翻译

Zachary Davis:How do you create a fair society? Who deserves to rule? What rights do citizens have? How are those rights protected? What does it mean to act morally within society?

扎卡里·戴维斯：如何构建一个公平的社会？谁应该成为社会的管理者？公民拥有哪些权利？如何保护公民的权利？社会中的道德行为有什么含义？

Zachary Davis:These are the kinds of questions political philosophers furrow their brows and scratch their chins trying to answer. And every few generations someone comes up with a new answer that is so memorable they get kind of famous. Thomas Hobbes, for example, advocated a strong sovereign ruler. Jean-Jacques Rousseau focused on the necessity of a social contract, and Karl Marx explored how communism could solve the problems of liberal capitalism. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：政治哲学家总是皱眉挠腮思考以上问题。每隔几十年，就会有人提出全新的假说，并借此成名。 例如，托马斯·霍布斯主张建立强大的主权统治， 让-雅克·卢梭关注社会契约的必要性，而卡尔·马克思主要探讨共产主义如何解决自由资本主义的困扰。

Zachary Davis:In 1971, an American philosopher named John Rawls introduced a new answer: justice as fairness. Rawls had studied the history of philosophy, and he was influenced by the thinkers like Immanuel Kant and David Hume. But his thinking was also shaped by his own experiences early in life.

扎卡里·戴维斯：1971年，美国哲学家约翰·罗尔斯提出了一个全新的观点：正义即公平。罗尔斯学习过哲学史，他深受伊曼纽尔·康德和大卫·休谟等思想家的影响。他的思想也受到自己早年经历的影响。

Michele Moody-Adams:He had a lot of illnesses as a child, actually one of his biographers, Thomas Pogge, reports on this, and two of his four brothers died from illnesses that they actually contracted from John Rawls himself. Apparently, this just devastated him. I think it was a lifelong sort of despair that he felt. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：约翰·罗尔斯年幼时体弱多病，托马斯·波格在为罗尔斯作的传记里也提到过这一点。罗尔斯有四个兄弟，其中两个死于疾病。致死的疾病是由约翰·罗尔斯传染给他的兄弟的。罗尔斯因为兄弟的离世彻底崩溃，兄弟的离世也成了他终生的遗憾。

Michele Moody-Adams:I'm Michele Moody-Adams, I teach philosophy at Columbia University, I'm also the holder of the Joseph L. Straus professorship in political philosophy and legal theory.

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：我是米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯，我在哥伦比亚大学教哲学。我也是约瑟夫 L. 施特劳斯政治哲学和法理学教授。

Zachary Davis:Rawls was struck by how unfairhis brothers’ deaths felt—it was random chance that made them die and not him. This idea stuck with Rawls, and he continued to think about fairness and equality for the rest of his life, eventually writing about it in his major work,A Theory of Justice.

扎卡里·戴维斯：罗尔斯因为兄弟的死亡大受打击，他认为两位兄弟突然的离世太不公平了。兄弟们因为他而感染疾病，但因为各种偶然因素，最终丧命的是他的兄弟们而非他自己。这个想法一直萦绕在罗尔斯的脑海中。自此之后，罗尔斯一直在思考公平和平等的命题，最终他将思考集结成书，出版了《正义论》。

Michele Moody-Adams:It was published, the first edition, in 1971 and it became an almost instant classic. It essentially revived systematic political thought in the Western tradition, and it did so in a way that spoke to citizens of contemporary, complex, multicultural democracies in ways that people needed to be spoken to, I think.

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：1971年，第一版《正义论》出版。这本书一经问世便成为经典。这部作品基本上重启了西方传统的系统性政治思想，但考虑到当时的人口更为复杂多元，《正义论》的文字语言更加通俗易懂。

Zachary Davis:Professor Moody-Adams read the book first on her own, and then studied with Rawls himself, when she was a graduate student at Harvard University.

扎卡里·戴维斯：穆迪-亚当斯教授自己阅读了这本著作，之后在哈佛大学研究生院学习期间，罗尔斯成为了她的老师。

Michele Moody-Adams:I have to say that having Rawls as a supervisor, as busy and sought after as he was, really just was an extraordinary experience for any graduate student. And it has shaped my intellectual life actually for the rest of my career. It's been an important influence.

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：对于任何研究生而言，能够师从罗尔斯这样一位如此忙碌又受欢迎的导师，实在是非同一般的经历。这段经历对我日后的职业发展，产生了深远的影响。

Michele Moody-Adams:He understands that in ordinary life, people do and don't deserve things based upon some decisions they make. But he thinks if you're looking in the broadest sense of how people are born, what kind of family you're born into, what sort of work ethic they have, how they view the importance of education, what material resources they have, Rawls says, “You cannot assume that you deserve the best of those outcomes.” It's tempting when you're thinking, “Oh, you know, I've worked hard and I'm here. I teach at university X and I wrote book Y, and gee I'm a hard worker.” He says, “Of course those things matter. As a society we want to celebrate them to a certain extent, but for shaping the fundamental institutions that govern distribution of benefits and burdens, we cannot assume that people who end up in place X deserve to be there more than people who ended up in place Y.” 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：在日常生活中，罗尔斯理解人们因为自己的选择得到或失去某些东西，但往往忽略了出生时的禀赋。你出生在怎样的家庭？你的家庭对于职业伦理的想法？你的父母如何是否重视教育？他们拥有哪些资源？罗尔斯认为 “你不能假设你理应获得最好的结果。”你可能会觉得“我勤勤恳恳，所以实现了某项成就。我在某某大学教书，出版了某某书，我是一个勤奋的人。”但罗尔斯认为 “个人的选择和努力固然重要，我们也应该为获得成功的人庆祝。但从社会福利和负担分配的角度看，我们不能认为实现甲成就的人就比实现乙成就的人更应该获得在甲方面的成就。”

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 Michele Moody-Adams to discuss John Rawls’sA Theory of Justice.

扎卡里·戴维斯：欢迎收听：改变你和世界的100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讨论一本影响历史进程的书。在本集，我将和米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯教授一起讨论约翰·罗尔斯的《正义论》。

Zachary Davis:John Rawls was born in Maryland in 1921. His father was an attorney, and his mother was a chapter-president of the League of Women Voters. Rawls received his early education at the Kent School, an Episcopalian prep school in Connecticut. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：1921 年，约翰·罗尔斯出生在马里兰州。他的父亲是一名律师，母亲是女性选民联盟的分会主席。 罗尔斯早年在肯特高中上学，这是一所位于康涅狄格州的圣公会预科学校。

Michele Moody-Adams:You know, growing up, he apparently was a very canny, smart young fellow. He went to Princeton to do his undergraduate degree. He took off some time to fight in World War Two, I think principally in the Asian theater in Japan in particular. Apparently, he saw evidence of the atom bomb, I think it was Hiroshima. And this just made him deeply suspicious of every kind of militaristic project human beings might have. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯无疑是一位非常聪明的年轻人。他进入普林斯顿大学攻读本科学位，中途离开学校，来到日本，在亚洲主战场参加第二次世界大战。他在广岛见证了原子弹的爆炸，这让他对军国主义行为产生了深深的怀疑。

Michele Moody-Adams:He eventually did go back to Princeton and finish the degree. And then he did a Ph.D. also at Princeton. And his first teaching jobs were Cornell, where I think he was first an assistant professor and then an associate professor, moved to MIT for a few years when that Department of Philosophy and Linguistics first got going. But then he spent the best part, I think, of his career at Harvard, teaching there for not quite forty years, I think. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：之后，罗尔斯回到普林斯顿完成了本科学习，又在普林斯顿获得博士学位。罗尔斯在康奈尔大学获得第一份教职，一路从助理教授晋升到副教授。罗尔斯随后加入了麻省理工刚刚成立的哲学和语言学系。不过我认为他职业生涯的黄金时期是在哈佛大学，他在哈佛大学任教了近四十年。

Michele Moody-Adams:And he has sent off into the world some of the most influential moral and political philosophers, I think, ever to take up the subject. So he had quite an impact in the world. And an impact that actually, writing wise, had two different lives, really. The first one being the life that centered around the preparation for and the writing ofA Theory of Justice published in ‘71. And then the writing of thePolitical Liberalism volume, which really changed the focus of the work. He was worried more about disagreement and about pluralism in democratic societies and how we could come to consensus, including on a conception of justice.

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯为世界培养了许多杰出的伦理学家和政治哲学家，他对全世界的影响是毋庸置疑的。罗尔斯的研究可以分为两个阶段。第一阶段主要围绕着准备和撰写《正义论》。1971年《正义论》出版之后，他开始着手准备《政治自由主义》，研究的重点也切换到民主社会中的分歧和多元化，社会共识如何形成，包括对正义的共识。

Zachary Davis:What was swirling around culturally in the 50s, 60s that, you know, may have encouraged him to think about the questions that he did?

扎卡里·戴维斯：二十世纪五、六十年代，社会文化层面发生了哪些转变，从而激发了罗尔斯对这些问题的思考？

Michele Moody-Adams:Right. So I think there are three or four things I'd want to stress. One of them is in the intellectual domain, the intellectual realm, and actually with great cultural influence as well, the doctrine of utilitarianism. In the roughest sense, you know, those actions are right, which promote the greatest happiness of the greatest number. That had kind of become the dominant political view as well. People didn't always explicitly articulate that they were utilitarians, but people that come to think, “Oh, it's just obvious that this is the right way to do things.” And that had led to a suspicion that there was nothing more to be said in political thought.

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：我认为有几点原因。首先是功利主义学说，这一学说不单单在知识领域影响深远，在文化领域也有重要影响。功利主义大致上是积极的，因为它主张最大化最多数人的福利。这也成为了当时主流的政治观点，人们不一定会明确说自己是功利主义者，但他们会表达，“很明显，这是正确的做事方法。” 这也引起了反思，政治理论是否还有发展空间。

Zachary Davis:By this point in the mid 20th century, utilitarianism had been a widely accepted theory for quite a while. Its origins can be traced back to the 18th and 19th century English philosophers Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. They believed that to act morally means to try to maximize the well being of the most people.

扎卡里·戴维斯：二十世纪中期，功利主义早已被广泛接受。功利主义的提出可以追溯到十八、十九世纪的英国哲学家杰里米·边沁和约翰·斯图亚特·穆勒。他们主张道德要以最大化最多数人的福利为目标。

Zachary Davis:At the societal level, utilitarians believed that a just political community organizes its laws, norms, and institutions around providing happiness for the greatest number of people.  

扎卡里·戴维斯：在社会层面，功利主义者认为，一个正义的政治系统，它所制定的法律、规范和制度，都应以提升最多人的福利为核心。

Zachary Davis:This theory quickly became hugely popular. It seemed common sense. Why not try to ensure the well being of the greatest number of people? It sounds good...in theory. But Rawls saw some issues when putting it into practice.  

扎卡里·戴维斯：这一理论很快大受欢迎，成为了普遍共识。有什么理由不保障最多人的福利呢？ 这个理论听起来不错，但罗尔斯在实践中发现了一些问题。

Michele Moody-Adams:Rawls worried that utilitarianism did not take seriously the importance of individual liberty, individual rights, and the separateness, in effect, of persons. That, you know, you can't just assume that if you're producing lots of happiness, that somehow it doesn't matter where it's going or who's experiencing it or who's producing it. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯认为功利主义没有认真考虑个体自由及权利的重要性以及每个人的独特性。不能为了提升社会整体福利，而对社会的进程或对参与其中的人全然不理。

Zachary Davis:For example, imagine you lived in a society where 10 percent of the population was enslaved. In this community, the labor of those 10 percent greatly improved the quality of life for the other 90 percent of the population. Through the eyes of utilitarianism, this wouldbe a just society because it achieves happiness for the greatest number of people. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：设想一下你所在的社会，有百分之十的人被奴役。这百分之十的奴隶人口大幅提升了其余百分之九十的人的生活质量。功利主义者会认为这是一个正义的社会，因为它实现了最多数人福利的最大化。

Zachary Davis:But what about the happiness of that enslaved 10 percent? For Rawls, this was the problem of utilitarianism—it didn’t account for individual liberty. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：但是那百分之十的奴隶人口呢？这就是罗尔斯对功利主义提出的质疑，功利主义完全没有考虑个体的自由。

Zachary Davis:Was there something going on kind of culturally, socially? Maybe like those horrifically ugly highway projects, like right in the middle of cities, where, you know, you could say, “Well, more people live in suburbs, they want to commute. And so we're going to build this massive thing and destroy the downtown because more total people are living out there.” Even if you just think about it as a numbers thing, you're willing to really make life easier for some or even a slight majority, while disregarding the needs of others.

扎卡里·戴维斯：是否有更多在文化层面或者社会层面的案例呢？ 比如在城市中心建起的丑陋的高速公路，有人会为此辩解道：“更多的人住在郊区，他们需要通勤。我们要在市区建造这个巨大的东西，因为更多的人住在郊区。” 从数字角度看，的确是为多数人的生活带来了便捷，但同时无视了其他人的需求。

Michele Moody-Adams:You're absolutely right. That is one instance. The challenge, of course, is that there were even great architects like Frank Lloyd Wright, who happens to be one of my actually favorite sort of cultural heroes, who thought this was a good thing. He thought maybe concentrating people in cities might not ultimately be good for them. So you can see why there could be an argument for the overall well-being of people. But when you look at how decisions made in keeping with that vision actually affected people who at the time lived in cities and didn't have options economically to move out of them very quickly. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：这个例子非常好，这是一种情况。在当时罗尔斯的观点并不被人接受，比如弗兰克·劳埃德·赖特，他是一位伟大的建筑师，也是我特别喜欢的文化领袖之一。弗兰克认为建设高架桥利大于弊，他认为将人口集中在城市并无益处。的确，高速公路的建成提升了社会的整体福利，但我们不应该忽视这个决定对那些生活在城市里，且不具备经济条件搬离城市的人，所造成的负面影响。

Zachary Davis:Rawls believed that each of us has individual rights that even the welfare of everyone else cannot override.

扎卡里·戴维斯：罗尔斯认为每一个人都应享有权利，集体福利的提升不应以牺牲个体权利为代价。

Michele Moody-Adams:So he wanted to reassert the importance of, you know, celebrating liberty, not at the expense of other goods that matter. So this leads, in fact, to the second important concern that’s swirling around. And that's the question whether if you take liberty seriously, you can also be serious enough about addressing inequalities. The worry is that liberty and equality might somehow be too much in tension with each other for you to take both values seriously in political life. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯非常看重个体的自由，也强调个体自由的实现不应以牺牲其他积极的价值观为代价。 这里引申出第二个需要讨论的问题，如何在保障个体自由的同时，解决不平等问题，因为在政治中自由和平等常常是对立的。

Zachary Davis:Liberty is the freedom of an individual to lead a life of one’s choosing. Equality, on the other hand, sometimes requires restriction to ensure equal distribution. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：自由，是指每一个人随心所欲生活的权利。而平等，有时会为了追求平均分配而限制自由。

Michele Moody-Adams:And Rawls spends a great deal of time, he didn't express this as clearly at the start of this project, but as he looks back in the late 70s and early 80s, he became willing to remind us that one of the things he did was show that liberty and inequality don't have to be permanently in tension.

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯花了大量时间思考这一命题，在撰写《正义论》初期，他对此并没有明确的观点。直到七十年代晚期、八十年代初期，罗尔斯才提出，自由和平等间的矛盾是可以调和的。

Michele Moody-Adams:And part of his project, inA Theory of Justice and beyond, was to refine each of the concepts, both liberty and equality, to try to show if you could get a substantive understanding of each, and yet you could also have a society that promoted them both in a substantive and genuinely humanly rewarding way. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯在《正义论》和其他著作中，不停完善自己对自由和平等的解释，保证读者可以透彻理解这两个概念；罗尔斯也一直鼓励全社会将自由和平的理念付诸实践，推动社会发展。

Michele Moody-Adams:He was also in his defense, you know, he was a philosopher and he was a philosopher drawn to a kind of abstraction, even as a kind of methodology that he thought would generate the best principles in the end. And it is very hard when your intellectual life, I think, is shaped by abstraction and the tendency to take a tradition like the social contract tradition and move it up to a level of abstraction never seen before. He wasn't someone who found it easy to then make his way back into the messiness of everyday world. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯也时常受到质疑，需要为自己辩解。罗尔斯是一位哲学家，尽管他相信他的理论是最优的，但他的理论过于抽象。他将传统的社会契约理论上升到抽象的哲学层面，演绎出全新的理论。罗尔斯并不擅长将他的理论应用到日常生活中。

Michele Moody-Adams:And he often thought that was the job of people who studied the theory and found it useful for them to see and even of citizens who might adopt it, say, in their own political communities. He thought it was the job of other scholars, maybe economists and sociologists and social psychologists to figure out the best way to adapt and apply and realize the theory in practice. So I offer that not as an excuse, but as an explanation of the fact that he may not have been as deeply engaged with ordinary social problems as some thinkers are.

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯经常认为这应该交给研究并认同他理论的人，或者是普通公民在日常政治生活中直接应用他的理论。罗尔斯始终认为，理论的改良和实践应该交给经济学家、社会学家、社会心理学家或其他学者。我并不是想为罗尔斯辩解，只是提供一个解释，为什么他不像其他思想家那样深入地参与日常生活中的社会问题。

Zachary Davis:So let's now discuss the book itself, What is the book saying and how does he make his argument?

扎卡里·戴维斯：我们来谈一下《正义论》这本书吧。这本书的主要内容是什么？罗尔斯是如何陈述他的观点的？

Michele Moody-Adams:It's an account of distributive justice for a contemporary liberal democracy that takes the following idea as the core of such a theory, the idea of justice as fairness, an idea that he thought allowed him to say that what you would want if you were trying to decide the principles that would determine the distribution of benefits and burdens from social cooperation and would do so essentially for your whole life, you would want the principles that shape that conception, he thought, to be the product of a situation that was fair, fair between people understood as free and equal human beings, as free and equal citizens. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：《正义论》讨论了当代民主社会的分配公正问题。罗尔斯理论的核心是“正义即公平”，他提出了如何分配社会合作产生的利益和负担。罗尔斯认为只有公平地对待自由平等的公民，机制才能拥有长久的生命力。

Zachary Davis:InA Theory of Justice,Rawls wanted to show how individual liberty and equality could be harmonized. He did this through a thought experiment.

扎卡里·戴维斯：在《正义论》中，罗尔斯尝试通过思想实验，论证自由和平等间的原则性调和。

Zachary Davis:He asks us to imagine ourselves in a conscious state, before the time of our own birth. Rawls calls this the original position. We don’t yet know what family or circumstances we’ll be born into. It is impossible for us to see where our lives will begin. We are behind, as he calls it, a veil of ignorance. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：罗尔斯引导读者想象来到自己出生之前的世界，罗尔斯称之为原初状态。在原初状态中，每个人被蒙上一层无知之幕，不知道自己的身份和家世。

Zachary Davis:He then asks us to consider the question, “If we knew nothing about where we’d end up, what sort of a society would it feel safe to enter?”

扎卡里·戴维斯：罗尔斯接着向读者抛出一个问题“如果你对自己的社会地位一无所知，你会选择制定怎样的社会规则？”

Michele Moody-Adams:So Rawls creates this thing called the “veil of ignorance'', that at the first stage of choice basically limits any kind of information that an individual agent could have about his or her own actual state. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯提出了“无知之幕”的概念。在无知之幕下的个体无法获得任何关于自身身份或地位的信息。

Michele Moody-Adams:It’s an elaborate thought experiment that's meant to model, or mimic, or create, in imagination, a situation in which we could think that the right kinds of principles were being chosen. And he believed that was the way to ensure fairness.

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯详细描述了这一场思想实验。人在原初状态下做出的选择，可以确保社会的公平。

Michele Moody-Adams:The original position basically says when you're thinking about what your society should look like, imagine that you could be the worst off person. You could be the one. No matter how privileged you are in the life you bring to reading this book, you could be the one. And then your responsibility is to say, “Fairness and morality demand of me that I take that ‘rational, self-interested view’, and I ask, how might it produce a moral world that would allow anybody, even if they're in that least well-off position, to have some kind of the flourishing or thriving life?” 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：在原初状态的假定里，你有可能处于社会最底层。无论你在真实生活中的社会地位如何，原初状态里的你，社会地位都有可能是最低的。你需要理性地思考，你个人对社会公平和道德的需要。怎样的社会制度，才可以保障每一个人，即使是社会最底层的人，都有机会安居乐业？

Michele Moody-Adams:I think he thought of this being a way of saying, “Who would not think, when they contemplate the other possibilities fully, who would not think that this is a better alternative than just allowing for people who are not well situated to fully suffer and to have absolutely no hope of a flourishing existence?” 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯认为，当每个人都充分考虑了所有可能性后，他们不会选择牺牲社会地位较低的人。让社会地位较低的人始终活在痛苦之中，对未来毫无希望，并不是一个好的制度。

Michele Moody-Adams:So, to give it some life and some substance, he thought you needed for a moment to abstract away from everyday life, even everyday political life, and think about what would be a fair situation in which such a choice of principles to shape, you know, the distribution of the benefits and burdens of cooperation. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯认为，想要制定出有长久生命力的社会制度，我们需要偶尔从日常生活和政治生活中抽离出来，专注思考什么是公平，如何分配由社会合作而产生的利益和负担。

Zachary Davis:From this thought experiment, Rawls thought people would arrive at two basic principles. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：通过这场思想实验，罗尔斯推导出正义的两个基本原则。

Michele Moody-Adams:The first would be a principle concerning equal basic liberties and their protection as a way of recognizing how fundamental individual liberty is to all the things we value, including freedom of conscience, freedom of thought, freedom of expression. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：第一原则是平等原则，每个人都应享有平等的基本自由，人的基本自由包括良心自由、思想自由和表达自由。这些自由权都应得到保护。

Zachary Davis:This was key to Rawls. He wanted to make sure individual liberties were protected.

扎卡里·戴维斯：罗尔斯一直强调对个体自由的保护。

Michele Moody-Adams:And then he thought that the second principle should concern the distribution, the shape really, of material goods and how they, as benefits in particular of social cooperation, are distributed. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：第二原则是分配原则，回答了社会合作产生的利益应该如何分配。

Zachary Davis:This was how Rawls thought equality and liberty could fit together. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：罗尔斯认为这是调和平等和自由的关键。

Michele Moody-Adams:He thought that a just society could have material inequality in things like income and wealth and even ownership of property and so forth. But he thought that they could only be justified as fair, going back to the idea of justice as fairness, if any inequalities could be shown to be to the benefit of the least well-off in your society.

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯认为一个正义的社会，人与人在收入、财富和房产上可能会有物质上的不均。但是回归到“正义即公平”的理念，任何不平等只要有利于社会中最不富裕的人，即可视为正义的、公平的。

Michele Moody-Adams:He leaves it open ultimately, whether this would be an ordinary property owning society that we're all familiar with or could there be a socialist version? He actually, even to the end of his days, said that he thought you could adapt it for either kind of society. But he genuinely believes there will be markets, there will be competition of some kind. But if some people lose out in that competition, either because of where they start in life or because of the kind of capacities, talents and traits they're born with, don't we think that it would be fair to create a society in which no one would lose out entirely? 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯并没有直接回答，正义的社会制度是否应该允许私有物权，还是应该成为社会主义社会。即使在去世之前，罗尔斯也坚持认为任何社会形态都可以实现正义。他相信市场竞争一定会存在。但是如果一个人是因为天生的家境、才能、天赋或性格，在竞争中处于劣势，这个社会不足以被称之为公平。

Zachary Davis:So the idea that you choose a system that ends up benefitting the least well-off.

扎卡里·戴维斯：总而言之，要选择一个令最劣势的人受益的社会体系。

Michele Moody-Adams:Among other people, that's the important part. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：在各种群体中最劣势的人，这是最重要的部分。

Zachary Davis:Among other people. So I guess what came to my mind was, well, what he wants is basically innovation, where you're incentivizing interesting creative people to develop cheaper ways of doing things, new technologies, new health care, that eventually will trickle down and help everybody live better even if they get it last.

扎卡里·戴维斯：“在各种群体中”，我对此的理解是，罗尔斯主张的其实是创新。激励前沿人才创造新的科学技术，或者是新的医疗技术，降低社会的生产总成本。社会总效益的提升会带动每个人的生活品质的提升，包括最底层的人群。

Michele Moody-Adams:There are a couple of things I will say. So you're absolutely right that he did not have in mind a system that would in some way from on high, purport to distribute every good in society equally. He actually thought that would in the end not benefit anybody, because over time, there would be disincentives for people who might increase the total social pie, to take risks and engage in activities that do create innovation and as I said, increase that total social pie. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：我还想说几点。你说的很对，罗尔斯并不是主张自上而下平均分配每一件物品。他认为均分无益，因为平均主义会抑制创造力，不利于提升社会总效益。

Michele Moody-Adams:But the other thing for him that's important is that one of the values that makes life in any society and political society worthwhile, that recognizes the kind of beings that we are, is the value of liberty. And I started out quite deliberately talking about the importance of freedom of conscience, of freedom of thought, of freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, that some of the deepest meaning-giving commitments that any human being has, that constitute goods that we all care about, once the veil is lifted, they are the goods that we can realize only by virtue of having liberty to exercise choice, and to believe things that matter to us for whatever reason they might matter as long as our action on those beliefs, you know, doesn't in some way limit others' liberty or make it impossible for others to pursue activities and opportunities that might affect their material well-being.

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：还有一点我想强调，是自由赋予了社会生活和政治生活意义，人的自我认知也是建立在思想自由之上。我刚才特地强调良心自由、思想自由、宗教自由、言论自由和集会自由的重要性，这些基本的自由权是每一个人内心深处最珍视的权利，是构成“善”的根基。当无知之幕被揭开，我们需要自由的选择权和思想，才能达成积极的成果。每个人的自由权同等重要，我的自由权不能限制了别人的自由权，或损伤了别人的利益。

Zachary Davis:Now, I think to me, what is kind of striking and very memorable and revolutionary about this thought experiment is in particular the way the veil of ignorance removes our own identities. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：这场思想实验最令我印象深刻的是，无知之幕下，每个人都模糊了对个人身份的认知。

Zachary Davis:We live within these heads and these bodies and these colors. And you can't help, for the most part, to seek one's own group's well-being. So what is he saying about the veil of ignorance as regarding justice for all identities? How does that ensure that it doesn't matter what body or group you're born into?

扎卡里·戴维斯：我们每个人生来拥有不同的头脑、身体和肤色，总是不可避免地试图最大化某一特定群体的利益。罗尔斯是不是要论证无知之幕可以实现对所有群体的正义，无论其出身或是种族？

Michele Moody-Adams:That is one of the hardest questions, actually, to address about the theory. There are worries that this abstractly conceived choosing party, so fully stripped of commitments, maybe doesn't have the basis upon which to make any choices at all. But Rawls is adamant that there is a perspective on the world. This is partly what many moral thinkers would say as well, from which you're being asked to be disinterested. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：这是罗尔斯理论中最难理解的部分。有人质疑，因为没有任何约束，“无知之幕”模型假定的人一定无法出合适的选择。但是罗尔斯坚信人总是自带立场的，这也是许多伦理学家认同的。从不同的立场出发的人，都要保持客观公正。

Michele Moody-Adams:There may be some domains of choice where, of course, you ought to be thinking about your group and about us, not always us versus them, but us and them. But aren't there, Rawls is asking, aren’t there domains of concern in which what you want is to distance yourself, to abstract yourself from the interestedness that might lead you to discount the values that somebody else cares about? This is very critical in religious belief. Rawls always reminded us one of the people he valued most, despite the surface level commitment to utilitarianism that John Stuart Mill has, Mill was a much more complex thinker than that, one of the great defenses of individual liberty is in the essayOn Liberty from 1859 by Mill, and Mill actually says at one point, “There's just no parody, moral parody, moral equality, between your feeling of being offended by what somebody else believes and their feeling in the moral importance of their being to hold being able to hold onto that belief.”

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：面对某些选择，你一定会特别照顾你所在的群体，考虑“我们”的利益，这里的“我们”不一定和“他们”对立，可以是“我们和他们”的共同利益。但也有一些时候，你只想要自己放下自私，避免伤害他人珍视的价值和利益。这在宗教信仰中是非常关键的。尽管约翰·斯图亚特·穆勒是功利主义流派的思想家，但罗尔斯对穆勒非常推崇。罗尔斯认为功利主义只是穆勒思想的表面，穆勒在1859年发表的《论自由》里论证了个体自由的重要性。穆勒曾经说“你可能感到被他人的信仰冒犯，他人则无比重视坚持自己信仰的自由，这两者在道德上都是平等的。”

Michele Moody-Adams:This, I would argue, is one of the things we've lost sight of a lot in contemporary life, that there is an intolerance of difference, I mean, in this very deep way that shapes people that cannot be thought or remedied, I believe Rawls would say as well, unless we are willing in some domains of choice around things like religious belief or traditions, cultural traditions and so forth, as long as people aren't acting on them in a way that harms others. So Rawls does talk about tolerating intolerance, particularly dangerous, violent intolerance. He talks about that. But we have a duty to tolerate people even when they are just profoundly different from us, that he would argue as one example, he would argue it's not a duty that you can understand the demands of unless you shape those demands from a disinterested point of view. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：我们在现代生活中，往往忽视了人对异见的包容度，忽视了思想的可塑性。罗尔斯提出，除了在一些原则性问题上，比如宗教信仰或传统文化，只要一个人的行为没有对他人造成伤害，异见是可以共存的。罗尔斯还强调某些人会通过危险的、暴力的行为表达异见，我们对此要更加包容。每个人都有责任包容他人，哪怕是与自己截然不同的他人。罗尔斯也指出，理解他人的需求并非你的责任，除非这些需求是客观存在的。

Zachary Davis:Rawls recognized how big a role chance plays in a person’s life. He didn’t think that if you were born into good circumstances you deserve it any more than someone who was born to poor circumstances. And that’s what his veil of ignorance experiment was all about, figuring out how to organize a society so that you had an equal chance no matter your circumstance. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：罗尔斯强调机遇对人的重要性。含着金钥匙出生的人并不比出生贫寒的人更应该获得这种优势。罗尔斯的“无知之幕”思想实验，就是想设计一个社会系统，让每一个人，无论出身环境，都享有平等的机遇。

Michele Moody-Adams:Rawls is drawing on an idea in Kant called The Kingdom of Ends, the idea that by our individual choices, where we're not actually thinking directly about creating a world by a certain set of things we do in some choice situations, we could in principle create a world in which everybody has the capacity to lead the life of a flourishing, rational choosing, you know, free agent.

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯借鉴了康德设计的“目的王国”思想实验。我们并不是通过一次次独立的选择来建设社会。我们应该创造一个社会，让每个人都有能力过上富足的、理性的、自由的生活。

Michele Moody-Adams:There are so many things that a person could not choose about where they start out in life. You can choose a lot about how you move from the place that you started out in. But Rawls's intuition is that because you don't choose the family, this is another very critical thing for him, that there might be ways in which society needs to be attentive to the influence of family. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：人无法选择人生的起点，但可以选择人生的进程。但因为人无法选择自己的家庭，罗尔斯特别呼吁关注家庭对个人的影响。

Michele Moody-Adams:Can we find ways with our policies, social policies, where you're born, even what traits and special talents you have, you know, somebody might be very good at quantitative things, formal studies, and so they become a great computer scientist. Are they better people for that? Do they deserve a better life, you know, in the Silicon Valley for that? Rawls’s argument is, no, you don't take their goods from them for all sorts of reasons because that would disrespect their liberty. But you can't let them think that certain fundamental shaping of institutions should somehow mirror the thought that they deserve to be where they are because they're just better people than the rest of us or others who didn't succeed in the same way.

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：我们的政策是否可以平抑人天生的差异？每个人与生俱来的性格和才能不尽相同，比如有人对数字特别敏感，擅长学习，然后成为了一名优秀的计算机科学家，但他们真的比别的人更优秀吗？他们比别人更值得在硅谷的优渥生活嘛？罗尔斯并不是主张剥夺他们获得的物质条件，因为这是对他们自由的侵害。但他提出，设定社会制度时，并不应该想当然认同那些人比其他人优秀，就应该获得如此的生活。

Zachary Davis:It raises perhaps the core value and curse of contemporary life, which is the belief in meritocracy, which is, you know, this almost impossible thing to figure out because you want to reward people for the things they do, and yet we all know, you're born to two professors well, of course, you've got all these advantages. So how do we balance that? 

扎卡里·戴维斯：精英统治是当代社会的核心价值，但也是无法解决的困境。一方面，我们鼓励通过个人努力取得成就，但我们也知道，如果你的父母都是教授，你自然获得了某种优势。那么我们如何平衡呢？

Zachary Davis:And, you know, as I thought about, okay so I'm there behind the veil of ignorance. And I get to pick laws, I get to help make the society that I'm going to come down to. Why would I not vote for communism? I mean, because it would make sure that I get as much as anybody and because human beings care so much about relative status, relative material well-being. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：假设我处于无知之幕下，我来选择法规，构建我之后要加入的社会。那我为什么不选择共产主义呢？共产主义可以保证我获得的和其他人一样多，毕竟人都是不患寡而患不均的。

Zachary Davis:You know, I don't know how he thinks that humans are going to be enlightened enough to care about these ideas of dignity and being able to live a certain life. Now, I mean, yes, you would selfishly say, “Okay, I want to be able to kind of choose in life. I don't want people controlling me.” I think it would be in your self-interest to enforce equality across every domain because the risk of feeling less than is so strong.

扎卡里·戴维斯：罗尔斯相信人的思想进步后，会为了尊严而选择特定的生活。我不是很认同这种看法，我认为人会很自私地说“我想在生活中行使自由选择权，我不想要别人控制我”。在社会每个方面推行平等符合你的个人利益，因为你太害怕自己将处于相对劣势。

Michele Moody-Adams:You've raised a number of really critical questions, the last point about envy, which Rawls actually talks at great length about in the third section ofA Theory of Justice, and he thinks that he can produce a system from the two principles I described earlier that minimizes the role of envy. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：你提出了几个非常重要的问题。你刚刚提到的最后一点，关于人性的贪婪，罗尔斯在《正义论》第三章花了大量笔墨来论述。罗尔斯认为根据正义二原则设计的社会体系可以抑制人性的贪婪。

Michele Moody-Adams:But here's the challenge for the theory that says we're going to guarantee equal shares in perpetuity, and that's that to keep that guarantee in place would require a continual intervention, if you will, in the system that you've set in motion, and interventions that might fail to appreciate why certain values, I'll mention liberty again, especially, and choice and agency, these are all linked together, why those values have such pride of place in this system. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：有人对罗尔斯提出了质疑，如果想要保证永久的平均分配，就需要持续的干预。在罗尔斯设定的社会体系里，持续的干预有悖于其核心价值观，比如自由权、选择权和代理权等。

Michele Moody-Adams:Rawls talks about a conception of how his theory would work out over time. He calls it the system of “pure procedural justice”. He says, “What you want is a system where you design the principles fairly and right from the beginning so that you don't need to keep interfering, and you can count on the procedure as it unfolds over time to produce a just world, whatever that may look like. You can't predict that now.” 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯提出了“纯粹程序正义”的概念，用来说明他的理论随着时间的推移会逐渐奏效。罗尔斯指出“你只需要在制定社会系统时，采用公平的原则，那你就不需要持续的干预。随着时间的推移，系统和程序会逐渐发挥作用，构建正义的社会。虽然我们无法预测那个正义的世界是什么样的，但一定会是一个正义的世界。”

Michele Moody-Adams:The second thing I would say is, he argues that the danger of assuming you would allow a system that even opened the door to the possibility of these constant interventions is that it would be easier with each intervention to bring back in the “tailoring to your own advantage” problem.

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯还提出另一个观点，如果设定的社会系统允许频繁的干预，那这种干预极有可能为制定这个系统的特定人群带來优势。

Michele Moody-Adams:So he tells you explicitly inA Theory of Justice that you choose knowing that you will be subject to what he calls the strains of commitment, the idea that there will be times when this pure procedure that you're leaving alone, because that's what the best protection of the core values demands, he thinks, you will be tested. You may be tested even when you're looking at others’ shares, but he believes that the shaping of economic institutions will be such that it will be clear that the system is meant to make sure that even with inequalities, you're the best off that you could be in any possible arrangement. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯在《正义论》里详尽论述了，每个人的选择都受到承诺的约束。可能在某些制度安排下，你感觉自己被遗忘了，但这是对社会核心价值的一种保护。罗尔斯也相信经济制度可以确保，即使存在不平等，你获得的福利待遇比其他任何可能的情况都更好。

Zachary Davis:Although Rawls believed in equal opportunity, he didn’t think that meant doing away with individual pursuits and struggle. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：虽然罗尔斯提倡机会均等，但他并不认同摈弃个人的追求和奋斗。

Michele Moody-Adams:I can imagine a Rawlsin argument for a universal basic income possibly, although he doesn't really discuss it. But you would never want some guarantee of goods, resources, money, wealth, etc. to obviate the need and to ignore the importance of the self-respect that comes from work and from making a contribution to your well-being. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：虽然罗尔斯没有讨论过统一基本收入，但我可以想象他对此的观点。如果对每个人的资产、资源、金钱和财富提供保证，那人不会再想通过劳动实现自我价值，获得金钱报酬。

Zachary Davis:Rawls was aware that in this society, there would be times when it wasn’t functioning as it should, that it wouldn’t be perfect. The closest we’ve come in practice is democracy.

扎卡里·戴维斯：罗尔斯知道社会机制会有失灵的时候，最接近完美的做法可能就是民主社会。

Michele Moody-Adams:He doesn't think you're choosing a perfect society. He thinks you're choosing the least bad or the best that you can, given the kind of beings you are, given how history unfolds when we can't predict it, given the, you know, the uncertainty of the natural environment, etc.. He thinks it is the best we can do, given the kind of beings we are, given what we are likely to want. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯的最终目的并不是构建一个完美的社会。历史的进程难以预测，环境的变化也充满不确定性，罗尔斯只是希望构建一个在现有条件下，最不坏的社会。

Zachary Davis:This imperfection was reflected in a powerful way in Rawls’s own time.

扎卡里·戴维斯：在罗尔斯的年代，社会的不完美性体现的淋漓尽致。

Michele Moody-Adams:One set of concerns that he was thinking a lot about were the concerns being articulated by, I’ll say enacted on by, the Civil Rights Movement and people worried about racial inequality in particular. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯当时面临的一大社会冲突，是以美国黑人民权运动为表现的种族不平等。

Michele Moody-Adams:There actually is evidence of his taking notes on, you know, public events, real events, trying to make sure that he understood what the underlying principles were. And particularly in the case of the Civil Rights Movement, this ended up leading him to a very, I think unmatched, totally unmatched appreciation of the value of civil disobedience, I'll say, of dissent and disobedience. Generally, he ends up being particularly concerned with when such disobedience and dissent, and even when it involves breaking the law, when it can be justified, and how it might actually be a kind of corrective for a democratic system that may be in some ways even unintentionally, but sometimes intentionally, that may be departing from its fundamental values. How do you bring it back to celebrating the deepest values of political morality that we care about?

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯一直在记录公共事件，尝试理解其背后的真正动因。在美国黑人民权运动中，他曾非常欣赏公民的不服从和不遵循精神。但这种不服从和不遵循逐渐演化成了对法律的无视，甚至将违法行为合法化，这令罗尔斯颇感担忧。这种不服从和不遵循在潜移默化中修正了民主制度，但有时也是故意为之，令民主制度与其基本价值观渐行渐远。如何才能引领社会回到基本的政治伦理价值观呢？

Michele Moody-Adams:I will add to this that Rawls has lately been the object of some criticism from some contemporary African-American political philosophers. Even though he starts thinking about social justice, partly as a consequence of the Civil Rights Movement, that perhaps he didn't understand fully enough the depth of racial injustice. And it's a powerful objection. I have lately, myself, been thinking about this. I think it's an objection that ultimately misfires. In fact, I think it's based on one of those rather narrow readings of a view that Rawls actually cautioned us all against. But I can see why it might look as though he didn't care, but actually did care deeply. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：尽管罗尔斯在美国黑人民权运动后开始思考社会正义，他还是受到很多当代非裔美国政治哲学家的批判，可能他对种族不平等的理解不够透彻。罗尔斯的观点受到了激烈的反对，我最近也在思考这个问题，但我认为很多质疑的声音是基于对罗尔斯理论狭隘的解读。但我也能够理解为什么他们会误解罗尔斯。

Zachary Davis:Why is his book revered the way it is? What influence has it had?

扎卡里·戴维斯：为什么罗尔斯的书如此大受欢迎？他对后世有怎样的影响？

Michele Moody-Adams:When he won the National Humanities Medal at some point in the late 90s, I forget the date, then President Clinton said, “You are receiving this award, among other things, because you renewed our faith in democracy.” That's verbatim what Clinton said. I think that's why the book remains very powerful to people. It claims on occasion early on in the preface to both editions of the book, to be giving a kind of rationally reformed, or revised account of what we already think democracy should look like, only making it better.

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：罗尔斯在20世纪90年代后期获得了美国国家人文科学奖章。时任总统克林顿说“因为你重塑了我们对民主的信心，所以给你颁发这个奖章”。这也是为什么《正义论》对今天的我们依旧有重要价值。罗尔斯也在两版《正义论》的序言中表明，对我们所期待的民主，进行理性的改革和修正，是为了让它变得更完善。

Michele Moody-Adams:When we start to lose our faith in democracy, perhaps especially those fundamental values of political morality and I've said equality and liberty, but I, you know, to be more precise, equality before the law. Substantive equality of opportunity and, of course, equal liberty. And as I said, then, Rawls added the fair value of political liberties. He provided, I think, an endlessly rich picture of what we might do to renew and revise democracy when it sort of went off the rails.

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：我们逐渐失去对民主的信心，尤其是其基本价值观，平等和自由，或者更准确地说，法律面前人人平等，即平等的机会和平等的自由权。罗尔斯丰富了政治自由的内涵。他为我们描绘了一副宏伟蓝图，说明了当民主发展有些脱轨时，我们可以采取哪些措施来更新和修正。

Michele Moody-Adams:I do think it does renew faith in democracy. You know, whatever the real world shows us is or isn't likely to happen, that when we're on the brink, it shows us what we might need to renew and reinvigorate to get back to the place where we maybe are approaching, may not be a utopia, but something that could have elements of a realistic utopia, not some far off ideal that, you know, as platonic heaven somewhere. 

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：我非常认同罗尔斯重塑了我们对民主的信心。现实世界的发展充满未知，当发展发向脱离预期的轨道时，他给了我们信心，重振旗鼓，回到原先设定的方向。我们最终不一定可以实现乌托邦社会，不一定可以到达最理想的柏拉图天堂，但可以实现某些乌托邦元素，到达最理想的远方。

Michele Moody-Adams:I think Clinton got it right that it renews our faith in democracy, and that's not a bad thing. Democracy may not be the best of all systems, but it's you know, it's the least bad, it's the best we've got. I think.

米歇尔·穆迪-亚当斯：我同意克林顿说的，它重塑了我们对民主的信心，这不是坏事。民主不一定是最优越的体制，但却是最不坏的，是我们现在所能实现的最优的体制。

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, 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！