【英文原声版96】Martin Jay：The Legitimacy of the Modern Age

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Zachary Davis:Those of us living today generally think of ourselves as modern, that we live in modern times, and that we are very different from the people of the past. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：今天的我们总认为自己是现代人，生活在现代社会，与过去的人完全不同。

Zachary Davis:And yes, we might dress differently and have more impressive technology, but there is an important thing that we share with all humans who have come before—we ask ourselves big, hard questions about life, questions like how we should live and why the world is so full of suffering. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：的确，我们可能在穿着打扮上有别于过去，也掌握了更为先进的技术，但我们和所有过往的人一样，始终在探讨一些关于人生的高深课题，比如我们应该如何生活？为什么世界充满了苦难？

Zachary Davis:Each era comes up with answers to these questions. And although sometimes the answers last a long time, they are never permanent. As times change, people demand new answers. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：每一个时代对这些问题都有自己的答案。有一些答案可能会适用较长一段时间，但不存在亘古不变的通解。随着时代的变迁，人们需要新的答案。

Zachary Davis:In his 1966 bookThe Legitimacy of the Modern Age, German philosopher Hans Blumenberg explores the evolution of humanity's answers to our perennial questions.

扎卡里·戴维斯：1966年，德国哲学家汉斯·布鲁门贝格发表了《现代的正当性》，他在书中探索了人类对以上问题的答案是如何演变的。

Martin Jay:His ideas are extraordinarily complicated and in many cases, counterintuitive and based on an ability really to give the history of ideas a kind of dramatic intensity that is really quite remarkable. It's a book that is so rich that every time you go back to it you discover something new and realize how little you understood the first time around.

马丁·杰：汉斯·布鲁门贝格的观点极其复杂，而且很多时候都与人的直觉相悖。很多时候，他展现出赋予观念史极其丰富内涵的能力，令人刮目相看。这部书的内涵非常丰富，每次阅读时，你都会收获新的感悟，并且意识到自己第一次阅读时的理解有多么肤浅。

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 Martin Jay to discussThe Legitimacy of the Modern Age.

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，我将和马丁·杰教授一起讨论汉斯·布鲁门贝格的《现代的正当性》。

Zachary Davis:What should we know about Hans Blumenberg’s life and context that can help us understand the time that it emerges and the conversations it was part of?

扎卡里·戴维斯：汉斯·布鲁门贝格的生平有哪些值得我们了解的重要事件，可以帮助我们理解这部作品创作于怎样的时代和社会背景？

Martin Jay:He was born in 1920 and grew up in Nazi Germany. His mother had come from a Jewish background, although she converted during his adolescence. 

马丁·杰：布鲁门贝格出生于1920年，在纳粹德国长大。他的母亲是犹太后裔。不过当布鲁门贝格到了青春期后，他的母亲选择放弃犹太教信仰，改宗其他宗教。

Zachary Davis:Despite his Jewish heritage, Blumenberg was able to get an education, studying philosophy at both Paderborn University and Goethe University in Germany. But his studies were soon interrupted. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：尽管布鲁门贝格身上有犹太血统，他还是获得了接受教育的机会，在德国的帕德博恩大学和法兰克福大学学习哲学。但是他的学业很快被迫中断。

Martin Jay:At the very end in 1944, 45, he was prevented from studying, was actually put in a work camp for a while, but was protected and never seriously damaged by the Holocaust. 

马丁·杰：1945年底，布鲁门贝格的学业被迫中断，他被带去了一个劳改营。好在他获得了庇护，没有被卷入犹太人大屠杀。

Zachary Davis:After WWII, Blumenberg resumed his studies in German and classical philology at the University of Hamburg.  

扎卡里·戴维斯：第二次世界大战之后，布鲁门贝格回到汉堡大学继续德语与古典语文学的学习。

Martin Jay:He also had an opportunity to spend time in the Catholic seminary and learned a great deal of theology. And it took a while for him to make his mark. He was not one of the people who was, you know, part of the big discussion of how to deal with the Nazi past, how to deal with the German intellectual contribution to it. He was very much outside the political events of the 1960s. Ultimately, his teaching took him to Münster, which is a fairly provincial university where he spent the last years of his life; he dies in 1996. 

马丁·杰：他也曾在天主教神学院学习过一段时间，他在那里学习了很多神学内容。他花了一段时间才在哲学史上留下自己的印记。当时社会主要都在讨论如何看待纳粹历史，以及德国思想界对纳粹历史的推动作用等话题，但他并没有参与其中。他也没参与20世纪60年代的政治活动。他最终去到明斯特教书，那是一个相对保守的学府，并在这个学校度过了生命的最后阶段。1996年，布鲁门贝格去世。

Zachary Davis:Blumenberg’s main interest was in the history of ideas, which he explored through changes in language, metaphor, and theology.  

扎卡里·戴维斯：观念史是布鲁门贝格主要的研究方向，他试图通过语言学、隐喻和神学的变化来研究观念的变迁。

Martin Jay:And so as a student of language, someone interested in rhetoric, someone interested in metaphor, he first, I think, entered the scene. He was part of a group also of very interesting scholars down in Konstanz around the, I guess it was a journal, or at least a kind of program called Poetics and Hermeneutics.

马丁·杰：作为语言学学者，他对于修辞学和隐喻很感兴趣。布鲁门贝格就是隐喻研究的先锋。布鲁门贝格和另外一群在康斯坦茨附近的学者共同研究创建了一本期刊《诗学与阐释学》，或者说是创立了一个正式的研究项目。

Martin Jay:And then in the mid-60s, he got into a polemic with Karl Löwith, although several other figures like Carl Schmitt, were involved, concerning the meaning of secularization and its alleged debt to Christian, or at least medieval, theology. 

马丁·杰：到了60世纪中期，他与卡尔·洛维特、卡尔·施米特等人争辩世俗化的含义，以及世俗化与基督教、中世纪神学的渊源。

Zachary Davis:Years earlier, in 1949, the German philosopher Karl Löwith published his bookMeaning in History, which examined the themes of modernity, progress, and secularization. Much of the discussion focused on the idea of legitimacy.

扎卡里·戴维斯：1949年，德国哲学家卡尔·洛维特发表了《历史中的意义》，探讨了现代性、进步和世俗化等主题，其中也涉及大量对合法性的讨论。

Martin Jay:Legitimacy means that it is, you know, something that is based on something that gives it a kind of recognition in the eyes of people who accept it. 

马丁·杰：合法性是指某一件事物的存在建立在受众认可的基础之上。

Martin Jay:So a legitimate child is one who has the authority of inheritance. A legitimate law is one that is followed by the people who see its promulgation as based on a kind of acceptance of the authority of those who make the laws. And so legitimacy is a very important concept. 

马丁·杰：比如说，合法的孩子是指有继承权的后代。合法的法律是指由被民众认可的法律制定者们颁布，且民众在颁布后选择遵守的条文。合法性是非常重要的一个概念。

Zachary Davis:Löwith believed that the secular, non-religious modern age was not a legitimate age—it wasn’t, in fact, even a new age—because it wasn’t really secular. He argued the modern age was just a corroded continuation of medieval Christendom. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：洛维特认为世俗化的、非宗教的现代不具有合法性，甚至不能说现代是一个新的时代。他认为现代社会并非真正意义上的世俗化，只是中世纪基督教国家的一种残存。

Martin Jay:Secularization simply takes the content, the substance, of medieval Christian thought and robs it of transcendence, robs it of its divine, we might say, authority and simply adopts it without recognizing or acknowledging where it came from. It's like doing a cover of a musical performance without recognizing who was the original performer and who was the original composer. 

马丁·杰：世俗化并没有改变中世纪基督教思想的内容和主旨，但抹去了其中关于超越和上帝权威的部分。世俗化其实沿袭了很多基督教的思想，只是没有提及这些思想的出处。 就好像你翻唱了某首歌，但不告诉别人原唱和原作曲者是谁。

Zachary Davis:For Löwith, the modern age isnotlegitimate because it is a copy of Christendom, but without the substance of Christianity. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：洛维特认为现代社会并不具有合法性，因为它只是复制了基督教世界，但摈弃了基督教的核心主旨。

Zachary Davis:Hans Blumenberg vehemently disagreed with Lowith and made his counter-argument in his book,The Legitimacy of the Modern Age’

扎卡里·戴维斯：汉斯·布鲁门贝格竭力反对洛维特的主张，并将自己反对洛维特的思考集结成书，这就是我们看到的《现代的正当性》。

Martin Jay:Now, Blumenberg’s argument is that this is a misunderstanding of the relationship between modernity and what preceded it. And the argument is that instead of a secularization, there is a reoccupation of the answers given to questions that are, in a way, perennial questions.  

马丁·杰：布鲁门贝格认为，洛维特错误地理解了现代性与之前制度间的关系。他认为与其说是世俗化，不如说是对那些长期存在的问题提出新答案。

Martin Jay:Basically these are questions that trouble humankind from a very early period, and which still trouble us. 

马丁·杰：这些问题从很早开始就困扰着人类，至今也依旧困扰着我们。

Martin Jay:Certain spaces are created by questions and you need an answer. And when the answer ceases to be successful, you have to reoccupy the answer position with a new answer, which functions for a while to satisfy our need for answers. 

马丁·杰：对于这些长期存在的问题，我们总是需要一个答案。而当某个答案不再适用时，我们需要在原先答案的位置上填上一个新答案，以暂时满足我们对答案的需求。

Zachary Davis:Blumenberg believed there are certain questions that humans will always ask themselves. Questions like: why is there evil? What does it mean to act morally? What is our role in the universe? 

扎卡里·戴维斯：布鲁门贝格认为人类始终在寻找一些问题的答案。例如，邪恶为什么会存在？行为道德意味着什么？人类在宇宙中扮演着怎样的角色？

Zachary Davis:Blumenberg believed that each era comes up with its own answers to these questions. The answer occupies the space that the question created. When an answer stops working, people find a new one to replace it, or “reoccupy” its spot.

扎卡里·戴维斯：布鲁门贝格相信每一个时代对上述问题都会有自己的回答。对于这些长期存在的问题，人类必须给出一个答案。当某个答案不再适用时，人类必须提出新的答案来重新占据答案的位置。

Martin Jay:Now what happens is that in a way, that new answer also begins to show its internal contradictions, or there is new evidence, or whatever it is that causes it no longer to function.

马丁·杰：而实际情况是，新的答案也在一定程度上展现出内部矛盾，或者是出现了一些新的事件或佐证，令答案失效。

Martin Jay:So for example, a myth at one point would function to explain why lightning and thunder, you know, Zeus throws them down, whatever the myth was, and people say, “Okay, look, Zeus is angry.” But at a certain point, people said, “Wait a minute, it's not working for me. Let's come up with something else.” And so meteorology comes up with a better answer. So I think that's a paradigm of that, we might say. 

马丁·杰：举个例子，人们曾经用神话故事来解释闪电和雷声的产生，说是宙斯把它们扔下人间。电闪雷鸣时，人们常常会说“看，宙斯生气了。”但某一天人们开始意识到“稍等一下，这些神话故事的解释对我已经不适用了，我们需要找到新的答案。”气象学由此诞生，更好地解释了电闪雷鸣的现象。这是我们刚刚谈论到的话题的一个范例。

Zachary Davis:Blumenberg applied this same idea of a paradigm shift to Christianity, and secular modernity. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：布鲁门贝格将范式转换的概念运用到基督教和世俗现代性。

Martin Jay:And so Christendom provides certain answers. And according to Blumenberg, these answers ultimately become unsatisfactory. They crumble of their own weight. They create a kind of vacuum, a need for a new answer. 

马丁·杰：对于之前提到的长期困扰人类的问题，基督教给出了很多自己的答案。但布鲁门贝格认为这些答案最终不再令人满意。这些答案无法自承其重，便崩塌了，创造了一种真空，人们需要一个新的答案。

Martin Jay:And so modernity stumbles into new answers, which are still perhaps tentative, and this is the point that he makes, they’re not what we might call satisfactory, definitive, absolute answers which will prevent these questions from ever being asked again. And this is absolutely crucial that these are open ended. Modernity in a way is partly to be admired for its humility. It doesn't, according to Blumenberg, claim that it has all the answers to the questions that plague us. 

马丁·杰：现代性恰好提供了新的答案，这些答案可能依旧是暂时性的。布鲁门贝格也提到这一点，答案不可能是令人满意的、确定的、绝对正确的答案，不能永远地回答长期困扰人类的这些问题。保留答案的开放性是非常重要的。现代性值得被欣赏的原因之一是这一主张是谦逊的。布鲁门贝格从不认为可以用现代性回答所有困扰我们的问题。

Zachary Davis:Blumenberg traces the emergence and evolution of answers to these perennial questions. He begins with the Gnostic tradition which comes out of Jewish and early Christian religious ideas. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：布鲁门贝格追溯了每个时代对这些问题的答案，以及它们的出现与演变。他记录的最早的答案是诺斯替主义，诺斯替主义由犹太教和早期的基督教教义衍生而来。

Martin Jay:Gnosticism says, “Look, what we have is a world which is corrupt, a world in which evil is rampant, a world in which it's extremely hard to think that a benign God would be its origin, and therefore what we need to do is to denigrate this world to escape this world, to take seriously only the world of transcendence, perhaps the world of the afterlife, the world that God makes. This world is created by an evil demiurge. This world is created by some other godlike figure that somehow had, you know, humankind as its target. And as a result, this world is not to be salvaged. There's no salvation in this world. Salvation only comes from leaving it behind.” 

马丁·杰：诺斯替主义者认为“这是一个腐败的、邪恶横行的世界，很难想象这个世界是由善良的上帝所创造的。所以我们需要做的是否认并逃离当下的世界。我们需要认真对待的只有超越的世界、也就是上帝所创的世界，又或者说来世。这个世界是由邪恶的造物主创造的，是由其他不知为何以人类为攻击目标的神创造的。所以，这个世界无法被救赎的。这个世界不存在任何救赎，只有逃离这个世界才能完成救赎。”

Zachary Davis:The Gnostic answer to the problem of evil is that this world isn’t good and it’s not God’s fault, it’s an evil demiurge’s fault.

扎卡里·戴维斯：诺斯替主义者对有关邪恶的问题的答案是，这个世界并不美好，但这不是上帝的过错，是邪恶的造物主的错误。

Martin Jay:Now, the Christian response to this is a kind of panic because God created this world, Christianity and of course, Judaism before it he argues, and he affirmed it. And he is himself, by definition, good. He is himself by definition, rational, wise, perfect. So the real issue is, well how do we then justify this lousy world? How do we then justify the evil that exists? So there are lots of answers, but Christianity comes up, basically, with two answers. 

马丁·杰：基督徒无法接受这样的答案，因为他们相信是上帝创造了这个世界，创造了基督教和犹太教，是上帝创造了一切。上帝就是善良的、理性的、睿智的和完美的。那随之而来的现实问题是，我们应该如何解释这个糟糕的世界？如何解释邪恶的存在？对此人们提出了很多不同的答案，而基督教主要给出了两种答案。

Martin Jay:Christianity understands this cosmos as not evil, not filled with corruption, but on some deep level as inherently rational, and that if we only try hard enough through, let's say, scholastic means, we will understand the rationality of this world. And therefore we don't reject the world the way Gnosticism argues. We have a cosmic rather than acosmic relation. We accept the cosmos. 

马丁·杰：基督教并不认为这个宇宙是邪恶的，是腐朽的，而相信这个宇宙具有某种深层的内在理性。只要我们足够努力，通过学术研究等方法，我们就能理解这个世界的理性。所以基督教徒不会像诺斯替主义者那样拒斥这个世界，他们接受宇宙，与之形成联系而非拒绝与宇宙产生联系。

Martin Jay:Now, the second premise that comes from Augustine, according to Blumenberg, is that the reason there is evil is because God gave man choice. God also created man at least after the fall, with original sin. And so the fact that we are free, the fact we have choice and the fact that we are sinners means that there is something in the world which is a kind of toxin, a poison, and we have to somehow, you know, if it's going to be a moral struggle, we have to basically deal with that. 

马丁·杰：基督教提出的第二种答案来自奥古斯丁。根据布鲁门贝格的描述，奥古斯丁认为邪恶的存在是因为上帝给了人选择的权利。即便在人类堕落之后，上帝也还在造人，新造的这些人都是有原罪的，人类的自由权、选择权和罪人的身份意味着这个世界存在着一种毒药，如果注定是道德挣扎，人类必须找到合适的处理方式。

Martin Jay:And it's ultimately the difficulty of accepting the Augustinian response that creates in the threshold of modernity, a new crisis.

马丁·杰：奥古斯丁提出的答案难以被世人接受有关，现代性的出现正与此相关。奥古斯丁的答案受到了现代性的挑战。

Zachary Davis:Augustine’s answer to the problem of evil was our God-given moral freedom. The world is full of evil, yes, but it is God’s plan that we can—and should—use our freedom to choose the good.

扎卡里·戴维斯：奥古斯丁以上帝给予的道德自由来解释邪恶存在的原因。这个世界充满着邪恶，但上帝认为人类有能力，且应该善用手中的自由，选择善良。

Martin Jay:Now, the great ingenuity of Blumenberg's argument is to say that ultimately this early Christian way of dealing with the Gnostic challenge fails—that it breaks apart. It breaks apart when it comes to the idea of the cosmic rationality that's inherited from, when in the, basically the 13th and 14th century, though it begins in the 12th, another aspect of divinity is stressed, which is the aspect of absolute power and God's capacity to will anything. 

马丁·杰：布鲁门贝格提出了独到的观点，他认为基督教早期对诺斯替主义的反驳是失败的，基督教答案产生了分裂。当涉及到宇宙理性的问题时，基督教分裂为两派。从12世纪开始，到13世纪、14世纪，人们强调神学的另一面，即绝对权力和上帝对任何事物的掌控权。

Zachary Davis:This new emphasis creates a tension between the idea that, on the one hand, God created the cosmos, the cosmos are rational, and God has to play by those rules, and on the other hand, the idea that God is all powerful and doesn’t have to act rationally within the rational cosmos. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：对神学另一面的强调也制造了冲突。一方面，上帝创造了宇宙，宇宙是理性的，上帝必须依规则行事。另一方面，上帝是无所不能的，他在理性的宇宙内不需要保持理性。

Zachary Davis:That old paradoxical question: “Can God make a rock so big even he can’t lift it,” captures this tension.

扎卡里·戴维斯：我们现在都熟知一个自相矛盾的问题：“上帝能不能做出一块大得他举不起来的石头”。这个问题就体现了当时观点间的冲突。

Martin Jay:What becomes a kind of balance between God is rational, God is beholden to the cosmos that he has created, on the one hand, and God is absolutely capable of willing anything without rational, you know, somehow sanction on the other, that this ultimately is decided by a stress on will.

马丁·杰：一方面，上帝被认为是理性的，他对自己所创造的宇宙负有义务。另一方面，上帝被认为无所不能，可以掌控一切，不受理性约束。这两种论调间的微妙平衡最终取决于它们对上帝意志的不同侧重。

Zachary Davis:By stressing the will of humans, these medieval Christian theologians move the focus away from the rational cosmos and onto humans themselves.

扎卡里·戴维斯：中世纪基督教神学家强调人类的意志，他们将关注重点由宇宙理性转移到人类本身。

Martin Jay:So in a sense, the cosmos becomes once again a place of rather frightening contingency of a kind of god who is absent from the world, a god whose providence doesn't decide what our fate will be. 

马丁·杰：他们认为宇宙只不过是某位神偶然降临的令人生畏的地方，这位神不存在于这个世界，他的旨意也无法决定我们的命运。

Martin Jay:Basically, what this does is create an opening. It creates a sense that the world is not simply to be contemplated, to be appreciated simply as inherently rational, but as contingent—leaving man both abandoned and with the opportunity to intervene in the world. Not simply to be passive, not simply to be worshipful in a contemplative way of a world which is inherently rational, but to act in the world, to be assertive in the world, to be capable of, in some sense, going into the world rather than simply admiring it in a kind of passive way. 

马丁·杰：这种观点引发了更多的思考。人们开始意识到不可以简单地判断世界，也不应当认为理性天然存在。理性是一种偶然的存在——人类被这个世界遗弃，但同时也被赋予了干预这个世界的机会。人类不能仅仅是被动地认为，或虔诚地祈祷这个世界具有天然的理性。人类需要采取行动，发挥主观性，走进这个世界而非被动地欣赏它。

Martin Jay:The world is inherently a rather frightening place of meaninglessness because God's will is inexplicable to humans. God's will is so powerful and human capacity to understand it is so modest and limited, that we live in a world bereft, we might say, of the comfort of a world in which there are reasons for everything that we do. 

马丁·杰：这个世界本就是一个无意义，令人害怕的地方，因为人类无法理解上帝的意志。上帝的意志非常强大，而人类理解它的能力却是非常有限，因此在我们所生活的世界里，我们无法为我们所做的每一件事找到合理的解释。

Zachary Davis:As a result, this world becomes very hard for us to make sense of. All that we can seem to understand on some level is howthe world works, not why the world works. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：因此我们很难真正理解这个世界。我们的理解仅限于世界如何运行的层面，而无法理解它运行的深层原因。

Martin Jay:So this is a major, you might say, stepping back to step forward. It's a kind of acceptance of human limits, infinitude, in the service ultimately, of coping with the vastness of our ignorance by now, and this is the second part of Blumenberg's book, now unleashing human curiosity. 

马丁·杰：通过肯定人类的极限与世界的无穷，来应对目前人类的一无所知，这可能是一种以退为进的方法。这也是布鲁门贝格作品第二部分的主要内容，释放人类的好奇心。

Zachary Davis:Ok, a quick recap: Karl Löwith argued that the modern age is not legitimate because it is a copy of Christendom without the substance of Christianity. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：很快总结一下。洛维特认为现代社会并不具有合法性，因为他仅仅复刻了基督教国家，却丢失了基督教的实质。

Zachary Davis:Blumenberg argued against this by saying that the modern age is legitimate because it proposes new answers to perennial human questions such as, why does evil exist?

扎卡里·戴维斯：布鲁门贝格则认为现代社会具有合法性因为它对邪恶为什么存在等长期困扰人类的问题提出了新的答案。

Zachary Davis:Blumenberg continues his argument by exploring the role of human curiosity in the evolution of Christianity.

扎卡里·戴维斯：布鲁门贝格又展开描述了人类的好奇心在基督教演变过程中起到的作用。

Martin Jay:In the part of the book called “The Trial of Curiosity”, Blumenberg points out that humans are not by nature curious, that we are culturally allowed to be or prohibited from being curious. And in both the ancient world and the world of Christianity, curiosity was considered a vice. It killed more than just cats. Why was this the case? Well, partly because the world had been, in a way, made by God. It was to be understood as somehow inherently rational. All we had to do is understand that we didn't have to experiment. We didn't have to break it apart to see how it worked.

马丁·杰：在书中“好奇心的审判”的部分里，布鲁门贝格指出人类天生并不具有好奇心，而是受文化影响，被允许或被禁止产生好奇心。无论是在古代世界还是基督教世界，好奇心被视为一种恶习。好奇心杀死的不仅仅是猫。为什么会发生这种情况呢？部分原因是这个世界是由上帝创造的，它天然具有理性。人类需要做的仅仅是接受它，我们不需要求证，不需要拆解世界运行的方法。

Martin Jay:We simply had to appreciate what God had made. And secondly, we were given texts. We were given the authority of scripture. So what we had to do is read what God's word had told us to do. And curiosity would lead us astray. If you're curious, you're not reading those texts, you're going out and examining the world. 

马丁·杰：我们只要欣赏上帝所创造的一切。其次，我们被赋予了神圣的圣经文本。所以我们要做的就只是阅读上帝要求我们做的事情。好奇心会带我们入歧途。如果一个人好奇心太重，那他不是在阅读经文，而是在审视这个世界。

Zachary Davis:The scriptures were believed to contain all the important answers to all the important questions. There was no point in asking your own big questions, much less trying to answer them. But, that wall of cultural incuriosity eventually began to crack.

扎卡里·戴维斯：人们相信圣经中的文字囊括了回答所有重要问题的重要答案。人类不需要再探索什么宏大的问题，更不用说试图回答它们了。但不鼓励好奇心的文化开始瓦解。

Martin Jay:One of the ways in which curiosity is unleashed, and the trial we might say is won on the side of those who are curious, is there's an uncoupling of the idea of individual human salvation, from the idea of species wide trans-subjective curiosity which produces the scientific revolution. What does this mean? Well, according to Blumenberg, the idea of individual salvation, individual happiness, meant that the only thing you really had to do is to read the scripture and to follow God's word, follow his laws, and you would ultimately achieve salvation. And that's all that mattered. This is a very personal issue, and because it's personal, ends in a way with your death. 

马丁·杰：释放好奇心的方式之一，或者说有好奇心的人所赢得的审判，是打破个体救赎与跨越主体好奇心之间的联系，正是后者，物种层面跨越个体的好奇心促生了科学革命。这意味着什么？布鲁门贝格对这一观点的解读是你需要且仅需要阅读圣经，跟随上帝的旨意，顺从他指定的规则，那么你就会得到个体救赎，体会到个体快乐。对个体而言，重要的无非就是这些。但这些都是非常个人的，会随着你的死亡而消失。

Martin Jay:What the, let's call it, impersonal scientific revolution unleashed was the idea that there was a project, the human project, which existed after your individual death, after your alleged happiness or lack thereof, according to salvation, was decided. It was an endless project, a project that involved all of us in a kind of collective endeavor to make sense of the world as best we can to know its causes, to know how it worked, even though we never could understand ultimate purposes. 

马丁·杰：非个体的科学革命是指在个体死亡之后依旧存在的全人类的共同使命。即使个体的快乐与否已经被救赎论判定，非个体的科学革命依旧存在。这是一个永恒的使命，需要集合全人类的力量共同探索世界，尽力理解世界的成因，理解其运行方法，即使我们永远无法理解世界的最终目的。

Martin Jay:So it's a kind of limited, but endless quest. But it's a trans-suobjective and we might say species quest rather than individual quest. So curiosity becomes something that doesn't harm the individual, whose happiness is based on salvation, but rather is something which abets the human domination, we might say, of nature, or at least the mastery of the world outside. And that's part of the modern legitimation that we legitimate ourselves by this endless quest for a kind of trans-subjective knowledge, which allows us better and better, so we hope, to make sense of and to live comfortably in the world, which is inherently hostile. 

马丁·杰：所以这是一种有限但无止境的追求。这是跨个体的共同追求，可以说是全人类的共同追求而不是个体的追求。个体的幸福源于救赎，所以好奇心并不会对个体产生伤害。好奇心也确立了人类对自然，或者至少说对外部世界的控制权。这也为现代提供了合法性。人类无止尽地追求跨个体的知识，让自己越变越好，也为自身提供了合法性。我们希望理解这个世界，可以在这个世界上自如地生活，虽然这个世界原本对人类怀有敌意。

Zachary Davis:Yeah, the curiosity to me was that if you think that God is willing everything, you could imagine that being a comfort, if you thought he was sort of lovingly involved in your life and the life of your community and world. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：我也来谈谈我对好奇心的理解。如果你认同上帝掌控一切，你相信上帝善意地参与了你的生活、社会网络和世界，你也可以很安逸。

Zachary Davis:But in fact, they saw it as inscrutable and distant. And beyond the powers of reason to discern. So then you say, “Well, alright, so we're not up to the task with our reason. Nevertheless, we want to investigate and will use our desire to learn, to try to make sense of things, including the sense of the human project that we're a part of.”

扎卡里·戴维斯：但事实上，你会发现世界高深莫测，遥不可及，且超出了理性认知的范围。然后你会说，“好吧，所以我们有理由相信我们不能胜任这项任务。尽管如此，我们还是想深入探讨，发挥我们的求知欲，尝试理解世界，作为全人类的一员，一同完成全人类的使命。”

Martin Jay:Right. I mean, it calls into question all the characteristics that were attributed to God. So lovingness, you know, or rationality or, the idea that God somehow had a benign plan. We don't know. God could be a deceiver. God could be not someone who inherently tells the truth, but could deceive. We just don't know. So it's a kind of ignorance. 

马丁·杰：我们对上帝拥有的所有特质都提出了质疑，包括友爱，理性和善良。我们不确定上帝是不是一个骗子，上帝可能并不是天生就说真话的人，他偶尔会欺骗他人。我们只是不知道罢了，是我们无从知晓。

Martin Jay:Now there are people later, Descartes is one for example, who will say “No, no God couldn't be a deceiver. That's just not part of his nature.” But if God can, will anything and will is the crucial characteristic rather than anything else, then he can will to be, certainly from the human perspective, the deceiver. 

马丁·杰：随后出现了以笛卡尔为代表的学者，他们声称“上帝不可能是骗子，欺骗绝不是上帝的天性。”但如果上帝可以掌控一切，而掌控力是所有特质中最重要的一个，那上帝有能力让自己成为人类眼中的骗子。

Martin Jay:And this is a kind of absent God, deus absconditus, who is a little scary. And of course, you know, the various expedience, I mean, predestination, although, of course, what the Calvinists understand is, we don't know if we are predestined or not. I mean, are we members of the elect? Well, we just don't know. So it's this ignorance that we just don't know.

马丁·杰：这种“隐藏的上帝”的观点有一些骇人听闻。加尔文主义者对宿命论的解读是，我们不知道我们的命运是否被注定？我们是否是被上帝挑选的人？人类对这些问题一无所知。

Martin Jay:And so God's will, will do things that we simply can't explain. So it's scary. And it's both, as I said, it's an opportunity because we're now on our own. We have to basically deal with things as best we can. 

马丁·杰：我们用上帝的旨意来解释任何我们无法解释的事件。这听起来有些令人害怕。但这也是一个良机，因为我们掌握了主动权，可以尽力推动世界向更好的方向发展。

Zachary Davis:So if the secularization process, at least as most Western publics think of it today, the story they tell themselves is, “We believed in superstition for a very long time, and then we started looking for evidence. And without that evidence, we sort of grew up and rejected superstition and only believe in reason now.” And that that’s what marks the change from the medieval world to the modern world; science and elevation of reason. And is that simple story more or less the story that Schmitt, and Löwith and others were also saying, although in more sophisticated ways?

扎卡里·戴维斯：目前西方公众对世俗化的认知是，“我们在很长一段时间里对迷信深信不疑，后来开始求证。但当我们找不到佐证时，我们的思想进步了，拒绝迷信，只认理据。”科学进步和对理性的关注标志着我们从中世纪社会跨越进入了现代社会。施密特、洛维特和其他哲学家是否持有同样的观点，虽然他们表述上会更复杂一些？

Martin Jay:Schmitt will argue that every political idea in the modern period is a secularized version of a certain notion of sovereignty, a certain notion of the absolute power of God. And Löwith will say that progress is the stolen version of Christian notions of eschatology. 

马丁·杰：施密特认为，现代社会的每一个政治思想都是某种主权观念或上帝绝对权力观念的世俗化版本。洛维特则主张说社会的进步其实盗用了基督教末世论理念。

Martin Jay:And I think Blumenberg has very good answers to that without buying into that sort of ‘just so’ story that you described, that somehow we weaned ourselves, we became a-la-Kant, mature by getting rid of superstition, getting rid of priests and clerics, and we discovered that science and empiricism and all of what we construe as the skeptical, modern world view works better for us. 

马丁·杰：布鲁门贝格并不认同你刚才提到的观点，进而提出了自己的观点。我们断奶了，摆脱了迷信、神父和牧师，变得好像康德一样，思想逐渐成熟。我们意识到科技和经验主义，以及质疑一切的现代世界观更适合我们。

Martin Jay:Blumenberg doesn't accept that. I mean, the point about the reoccupation argument is that there isn't a radical break between the modern and the pre-modern. What we do is basically come up with fragile, but perhaps for a while, answers to these questions. Why is there evil? Why is there something rather than nothing? You know, all these basic questions that still trouble us.

马丁·杰：布鲁门贝格并不接受洛维特等人的观点，他的“重新占据”理论提出现代与之前的时代之间并没有明确的分水岭。现代性只是试图提供一些短暂适用的答案，用以回答那些长期存在的问题，例如邪恶为什么存在？事物为什么会存在？这些问题至今依旧困扰着我们。

Zachary Davis:According to Blumenberg, our modern era is legitimate because we’re looking for answers to these perennial questions the same way the pre-modern era did. He doesn’t think we’ll ever arrive at a final truth, since these questions will always be with us, but our fragile and temporary answers provide us with some provisional stability to carry on. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：布鲁门贝格认为，现代具有正当性，我们也是在试图回答那些长期存在的问题，这一点和之前的时代别无二致。他认为人类永远无法找到真正的答案，人类将始终在探索这些问题的进程之中，每个时代给出的答案可以在一段时间内被认可，然后便会被质疑甚至被推翻。

Zachary Davis:It sounds like it's not just an affirmation that the modern age has a right to its own narrative. What is he really hoping to convince his readers of, if it's more complex than the modern age is pretty good, you know, it's all right.

扎卡里·戴维斯：听上去布鲁门贝格不仅仅是肯定了现代有自己的叙事逻辑。他也希望说服读者，如果有比“现代是一个好时代”更复杂的判断，那也是没错的。

Martin Jay:Well, one thing we can't do is go back. So, let's say a Heidegerian notion of the recovery of being which has been forgotten. Or Löwith’s idea that we can go back to a certain stoic understanding of nature. The desire to somehow recover the comfort, really, of a world that we've become alienated from. 

马丁·杰：我们不可能回到过去。海德格尔曾经提出恢复被遗忘的存在，洛维特认为我们可以回归对自然的禁欲理解。人类总是渴望回到我们远离了的舒适的世界。

Martin Jay:So Blumenberg at least tells us that there's no going back and that we can't recover anything that was organically whole. And he does that partly by showing that from the get go, all of these alleged moments of great tranquility and synthesis, were themselves riven with conflicts. So this will vs reason. You know, this is very corrosive. I mean the Middle Ages is a period of great turmoil intellectually, theologically. It's not a period in which there is this happy consensus that everybody believes in the same thing, let alone heretics and Jews and people of other faiths who happen to be in Europe. 

马丁·杰：布鲁门贝格至少告诉了我们，我们不可能回到过去，我们也不可能让原来有机的整体恢复成完整的模样。他以下列的论述部分证明了上面的观点，所谓的安宁和融合时刻从一开始就因冲突而分裂。意志和理性之间的对立，这种包含对立的理念本身是具有腐蚀性的，会导致溃败。中世纪经历了思想认知和神学教义的大动荡，当时的人很难就同一件事达成共识，更别提不同宗教间，异教徒、犹太教徒和欧洲信仰其他宗教的教众之间的冲突了。

Martin Jay:I mean, all this is a kind of clear nostalgia for something which didn't exist. And one of the fascinating things that he points out is that Christianity from the get go is trying to deal with a Pagan past. It wasn't simply itself a clean rupture. It was very much from, you know, neo-platonic and other moments in early Christianity trying to incorporate ideas and attitudes from a past which was Pagan and therefore problematic. And how you combined Athens and Jerusalem was always a problem.

马丁·杰：显然，他们是在缅怀某些本不存在的事物。布鲁门贝格还指出，基督教从一开始就受到异教历史影响。基督教和异教之间并没有明确的分界线。基督教在早期阶段，包括新柏拉图时期和其他早期阶段，基督教试图吸纳早已存在的思想和态度，而在此之前的阶段属于异教阶段，这就是问题的所在。将“雅典”和“耶路撒冷”的思想融合起来一直是个难事。

Martin Jay:So there is always a kind of, you might say, always already riven contestatory quality in the alleged age of wholeness. So our age, which is supposedly an age of meaningless alienation, whatever, is not that different. 

马丁·杰：即使是在之前所谓的融合时代，对立的思想争论总是存在。虽然有人认为我们现在所处的时代是分离的年代，但它本质上与过往的时代没有差别。

Zachary Davis:How does Blumenberg think about the meaning of history? Or, you know, a directionality even? I mean, it sounds like he thinks there's always just a complex swirl of ideas that are trying to answer these seemingly perennial questions. 

扎卡里·戴维斯：布鲁门贝格如何解释历史的意义？是否有一个方向性的判断？我感觉，他认为对于那些长期存在的问题，新的答案在复杂的思想浪潮推动下不断涌现出来。

Martin Jay:Well, it's a difficult question because he keeps his cards very close to his chest. So this is clearly not a grandiose philosophy of history. It's not a meta narrative in which we're going in one direction, eschatological, or the secular version of eschatological improvement, it's not also a messianic idea that somehow there'll be an intervention into history, and that salvation will come from some sort of kairos which will allow, you know, a figure or something messianic to interrupt history. He doesn't buy into that. So he's very interested in theology, but I don't think he is himself explicitly a believer in any particular theology. 

马丁·杰：这是一个很难回答的问题，布鲁门贝格将自己的想法收掩得很好。 他的观点显然不是一个宏大的历史哲学；也不是一种元叙事，可以简单地用末世论或世俗化末世论来概括；也不是弥赛亚式的观念，认为历史可以被干预，在救世主或其它伟人干预历史的关键时刻，人类将获得救赎。他并不认同这个观点，他对神学感兴趣，但我并不认为他信奉特定的神学教义。

Martin Jay:So basically, what you get in Blumenberg is a sense that there are some eras that are enormously fecund or rich in dealing with perennial issues. The answers they give are complicated, serious, imaginative, worth taking seriously, but always somehow inadequate. So it's not quite a cyclical view of history, but it is certainly a reoccupation argument so that you get questions, you get answers, those answers are never quite satisfactory, you get a reoccupation. Maybe the next answer lasts a bit longer. But, for example, the idea of myth being replaced, it won't be. There's always going to be myth. There's always going to be language which is rhetorical, or metaphoric rather than, let's say, scientific and absolute.

马丁·杰：布鲁门贝格的书还提到，对那些长期存在的问题，某些时代提出的答案更为丰富和多元。那些答案复杂、严肃又饱富想象力，值得深思，但却总也达不到完备。他并不是提倡历史周期论，而是主张“重新占据理论”。对于那些长期存在的问题，每个时代都会给出一些答案，但这些答案从来不是尽善尽美的，总是需要新的答案。可能下一个答案适用的时间稍长一些。比如说，有人认为神话会被彻底取代，但并不是这样。神话总是会存在，总是会有一些语言注重修辞或隐喻，而非科学和绝对真理。

Martin Jay:Now, this is not a failure. It's not as if well, we should then despair, because we've created some extraordinary things through myth and metaphor and storytelling and anecdotes, and God knows what else. I mean, it's very rich. And that's why we have to continue, he would argue, to work on myth. That's why we have to take metaphor seriously and see that they've helped us in some way to make sense of the world. 

马丁·杰：这不是无神话论的失败，也不是说无神话论好像还不错。如果无神话论被接受的话，我们应该感到失望，因为我们通过神话、隐喻、故事和奇闻逸事创造了大量非凡的内容，已经非常丰富了，我们不可能创造更多。所以我们应该继续创作研究神话故事，我们应该认真研究隐喻，了解它们如何帮助我们理解世界。

Martin Jay:And therefore it's a, Sisyphean in a negative way to put it, but it's a task which is not ever going to end with some sort of stasis. And I think that's, you know, I find that myself attractive. I find it realistic. I find it somehow true to my own experience of what we as human beings try and often fail, but nonetheless occasionally in our limitations, nonetheless create. And you know, it's in some ways, I think to that extent, worth taking seriously, not as a, I don't know what, he's not a charismatic leader. This is not going to create a doctrine that one can follow, but as something which at least intellectuals who can spend the time to make sense of his writing will, you know, be, I think, inspired by. 

马丁·杰：从消极的角度看，这是一项没有尽头的任务，但也可以理解为一项永远不会停滞不前的使命。布鲁门贝格的理论对我很有吸引力，至少从我的个人经历来看是比较”现实主义“的一种态度。人类一直在尝试，虽然常常失败，但也偶尔在能力范围内继续探索与创造。我们也应该认识到布鲁门贝格并不是一个有魅力的领导者，他的理论并不是那种具有鼓动性、让人想要追溯的理论，而是希望可以启发一部分愿意花时间阅读他作品的知识分子。

Zachary Davis:What influence do you think it's had on fields or scholars in general? What do you think is the main contribution that people take from it, that they integrate into their work?

扎卡里·戴维斯：这部书对当时本领域的学者产生了怎样的影响？书中哪一部分被借鉴运用得最多？

Martin Jay:Well, there are substantive issues, such as the issue of whether or not reoccupation is better than transposition in terms of the secularization argument. The argument about the trial of curiosity is fabulous. 

马丁·杰：书中也提到了一些实际问题，比如在世俗化的争论中，重新占据理论是否比换位理论更适用。“好奇心审判”部分的论述也精彩绝伦。

Martin Jay:His larger work on metaphorology has had an impact. People understand, now, metaphor, and people, a lot of people, Derrida, many people have written about metaphor. But Blumenberg is one of the great theorists of metaphor. And what's interesting is that it's an ology of metaphor, that is to say it's a logos, we might say, of metaphor. So it's a kind of scientific or at least reflexive understanding of terminology that is rhetorical. 

马丁·杰：布鲁门贝格也做了大量隐喻学研究，影响深远。现在很多人都对隐喻学有所了解，德里达等学者也发表过这方面的著作。布鲁门贝格是隐喻学最伟大的理论家之一。有意思的是，这是一种隐喻学，或者说隐喻的理法。所以这是一种对修辞术语的科学性，至少说反身性研究。

Martin Jay:So he's one of these figures who is at the, we might say, crossroads of rhetoric and scientific or philosophical language. He's someone who understands the importance of pre-reflexivity, a world which is before our ability to make it conceptually available. He's one of these people who makes respectable, once again, the dialogue between theology, philosophy and science. 

马丁·杰：布鲁门贝格是同时研究修辞学和系统语言学，或者说哲学语言学的代表人物之一。他深刻理解前反身性的重要性，理解这个世界在被人类赋予意义之前的内涵。 他是融汇贯通神学、哲学和科学的重要学者之一。

Martin Jay:So Blumenberg is, you know, I would say, a slow but steady influence. There are lots of translations. There's a new anthology of his work that's come out, books about him are beginning to appear in many different languages. So I would say Blumenberg is worth paying attention to. And although he'll never be as sexy as Derrida or Foucault, or Lacan, I mean, this is, you know, a very, very dry German philosophical style. There's nothing spectacular about it. He's not a charismatic figure.

马丁·杰：我认为布鲁门贝格的影响力是缓慢而有节奏地释放出来的。他的作品被翻译成多国文字。不断有人出版他的作品选集，关于他的书籍也出现在不同语言的书架上。所以布鲁门贝格的作品绝对值得关注。可能他的作品不如德里达、傅科或拉冈等人的那么夺人眼球，他继承了德国哲学家非常平实的风格，没有任何别致花哨的地方。他也算不上一个有魅力的人。

Martin Jay:But his prose and his argumentation, his range of reference, you know, you’re really in the presence of somebody who earns your respect. And for at least some of us, that's worth the price of admission.

马丁·杰：但他的行文和他的论证，以及他的旁征博引，都在提醒读者，这是一位值得尊敬的作家。至少对我们中的一些人来说，他的作品有阅读的门槛，但值得我们费心去跨越这个门槛。

Zachary Davis:Writ Large is a production of Ximalaya. Writ Large is produced by Jack Pombriant, 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！