【原声：“忠于真理，保持谦逊”】耶鲁大学致2022毕业生（part2）

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On Intellectual Humility （part 2）

Baccalaureate Address, Yale College Class of 2022

Peter Salovey, President of Yale University,

Another social psychologist, Mark Leary, who recently retired from the faculty of Duke University, closely examined the intellectual humility I seek to nurture in higher education generally and in you today. His review of this attribute – a recognition that “one’s beliefs and opinions might be incorrect” – reveals that it is associated with gratitude, altruism, empathy, and more satisfying relationships. Intellectually-humble people are more likely to be forgiven by others for their mistakes.

我一直以来试图在高等教育中和今天的你们身上培养思想上的谦逊。一位最近从杜克大学退休的社会心理学家Mark Leary对此进行过深入的研究。他重新审视了“承认一个人的观念和观点可能是错误的”这种心理，结果发现它与感恩、利他主义、同情心和更令人满意的关系有关。此外，思想上谦逊的人更有可能因其错误而得到他人的谅解。

As extremism, polarization, and gridlock plague our politics at a time when pressing challenges call on us to harness our shared humanity, Professor Leary details equally substantial advantages of intellectual humility for society, including “lower acrimony that is based on differences in beliefs and ideology…[and] greater negotiation and compromise.”

当全球紧迫的挑战需要我们心怀人类福祉，极端主义、两极分化以及由此产生的僵局困扰着世界政治。在这种情况下，Leary教授对于思想谦逊的研究，对社会有着实质上的启示，包括“减少基于信仰和意识形态差异的争吵……（以及）增加谈判和妥协” 。

Now, when we first met four years ago in Woolsey Hall, I described a series of obligations that would accompany your Yale education, including the responsibility to be constantly curious – and to listen carefully to others. At that 2018 Opening Assembly, I encouraged members of this class to remember that “you have come to Yale because you don’t know everything – not yet.”

四年前我与你们在耶鲁伍尔西音乐厅第一次见面时，我告诉过你们一系列责任将伴随着你们的耶鲁教育，包括持续保持好奇心和仔细聆听他人的意见。在2018年的开学典礼上，我鼓励2022届的成员们铭记，“你们来到耶鲁是因为你们还有需要探索的未知领域。”

Now, even as you prepare to depart Yale four years later, I will again declare that your acquisition of knowledge is unfinished. You’ll leave Yale despite not knowing everything. The transformative power of liberal education lies not in a promise to teach you everything but in the preparedness to meet presumptions – including those we harbor ourselves – with a healthy measure of doubt. It lies not in the ability to answer but in the audacity to question.

现在，在四年后的今天你们完成了学业，我还想说的是你们获取的知识仍不完整。但尽管你们并非无所不知，你们终将离开耶鲁。通识教育的力量不在于承诺教给你们一切，而在于让你们准备好以有益的怀疑态度来应对各种假设，包括我们对自身所处的假设。它不在于回答的能力，而在于敢于质疑的能力。

As graduates, it behooves you to carry forth the inquisitive attitude you have forged here at Yale into the world; to carry forth your insistence on pushing opinions – including your own – beyond the confines of comfort; your resolve to strengthen your reasoning through personal investigation and civil discourse.

作为毕业生，你们有责任将你们在耶鲁锻造的探究精神带向世界；有责任坚持将各种观点——包括你们自己的观点——推出接受的舒适圈之外；有责任带着你们通过个人研究和广泛讨论而追求理性的决心前行。

In thinking of these trademarks of the academic enterprise, I am reminded of a dictum from Rabbi Moses ben Maimon, the great medieval philosopher known as Maimonides. In his introduction to Pirkei Avot, the Ethics of our Fathers, Maimonides urges readers to “accept the truth from whoever speaks it.”

想到这些学术事业的成就时，我想起了伟大的中世纪哲学家摩西·本·迈蒙尼德的一句箴言。他在著作Pirkei Avot的导言中敦促读者“接受真理，无论它出自谁之口”。

Indeed, wisdom is rooted in this willingness – this responsibility – to entertain ideas brought to you by others. To listen carefully. To think critically. To challenge your views – and then to change them when the discovery of truth demands it. As Justice Sonya Sotomayor said recently, “It is, I fear, too easy for people to fail to listen when what they’re hearing is different than what they think.” 

事实上，智慧植根于接受他人带给你的想法的意愿，或者说是责任。仔细聆听，批判性地思考，挑战自己的观点，然后为了发现真理而去改变。正如美国最高法院法官索尼娅·索托马约尔（Sonya Sotomayor）最近所说，“我担心，当人们听到的与他们所想的不同时，他们很容易听不进去了。”

As we know, engaging with those who hold profoundly different perspectives threatens not to betray our beliefs, but to broaden them. Listening to that with which we may disagree is an act not of conciliation, but of fidelity to truth. And admitting what we got wrong is no sign of failure, but a necessary step toward knowledge.

与那些持有不同视角的人互动交流，并不会让我们背弃自己的信仰，反而会扩大它。倾听我们可能不认同的观点，并不是一种妥协，而是对真理的忠诚。承认我们的错误并不是失败的标志，而是走向博学的必要过程。

The mark of a great education consists not only of the new frontiers of knowledge we reach, but of the existing viewpoints we reconsider; not necessarily of the understanding we gain, but of the assumptions we shed. For only when we subject the “prefabricated set of interpretations” President Kennedy spoke of here at Yale to scrutiny, can we elevate our limitations into points of strength. Indeed, humility – that willingness to say we are wrong – enables us to scale otherwise unattainable heights in the lifelong pursuit of knowledge.

伟大的教育的标志不仅在于我们对于新知识的探索抵达到了多远，还在于我们对现有观点有多少重新的思考；这并不一定意味着要收获多少新的理解，而是我们放弃了多少假设。因为只有当我们将肯尼迪总统在耶鲁大学谈到的“一套预设的解释”置于严格的审视之下时，我们才能摒弃局限而获得力量。事实上，谦逊——勇于承认错误——使我们能够在终生追求真理的道路上攀登到其他情况下难以企及的高度。

As Yale graduates, you are allegiant to truth. You know that breakthroughs are byproducts of the questions you raise, the conventions you dispute, the fallacies you uncover. But, also, the mistakes you own. You know that the “new ideas and solutions” I spoke of when we first assembled as a class four years ago – ideas and solutions to fight disease, alleviate suffering, and find justice – are made better when they endure the rigors of critical inquiry.

作为耶鲁大学的毕业生，你们忠于真理。你们知道，突破往往伴随着提出问题、争论不决、承认错误，这其中也包括自己的错误。你们知道，四年前我们第一次相聚于此，我谈到的“新想法和解决方案”，即对抗疾病、减轻苦难和寻求正义的想法和解决方案，这些往往在接受批判和质询之后变得更好。

Perhaps now more than ever, the world into which you will soon enter needs you to search for these solutions. It needs your expertise. But it also needs your example as a graduate of this inspiring learning environment. It needs you to continue probing the preconceptions held by others and, with equal vigor, those you hold yourself. It needs your answers and your questions. It needs your scholarship and your skepticism. It needs your intellectual prowess. And it needs your intellectual humility. It needs you, Class of 2022. 

也许现在比以往任何时候，你们即将步入的这个世界都更需要你们寻找这些解决方案，需要你们的专业知识，但它也需要你们作为这种启发性学习环境下培养的毕业生树立好榜样；需要你们继续深入思考他人的想法，并以同样的活力深挖自己的先入之见；需要你们的答案也需要你们的提问；需要你们的学术研究和你们的质疑精神；需要你们在思想智慧上大展拳脚，也需要你们永葆思想上的谦逊。

2022届毕业生，世界需要你们。

Congratulations!