INTRODUCTION
On the Uses of Philosophy
THERE IS A PLEASURE in philosophy, and a lure even in the mirages of metaphysics, which every student feels until the coarse necessities of physical existence drag him from the heights of thought into the mart of economic strife and gain. Most of us have known some golden days in the June of life when philosophy was in fact what Plato calls it, “that dear delight”; when the love of a modestly elusive Truth seemed more glorious, incomparably, than the lust for the ways of the flesh and the dross of the world. And there is always some wistful remnant in us of that early wooing of wisdom. “Life has meaning,” we feel with Browning—“to find its meaning is my meat and drink.” So much of our lives is meaningless, a self-cancelling vacillation and futility; we strive with the chaos about us and within; but we would believe all the while that there is something vital and significant in us, could we but decipher our own souls. We want to understand; “life means for us constantly to transform into light and flame all that we are or meet with”;1 we are like Mitya in The Brothers Karamazov—“one of those who don’t want millions, but an answer to their questions”;
论哲学的用途
哲学里大有可资读书人品尝玩味的乐趣，甚至就连形而上学的虚无飘渺也自有其动人之处，不幸我们都是肉身凡胎，七情六欲一下子就使我们从思想的高空堕入为了生计而锱铢必较的市场中来了。很多人都知道，人类历史上曾出现过一个黄金时代，当时哲学正如柏拉图所说，是“那种难得的快乐”。对羞于露面的真理的热爱似乎超过了对肉体享受和世俗财富的追求。上古对智慧这种无可比拟的崇拜时至今日仍然残留在我们渴望的灵魂中。“生活富于意义”，我们和布朗宁[Robert Browning(1812—1889，英国著名诗人]怀有同样的感慨——“去发现这种意义就是我的美酒佳肴”。我们的一生，大部分时光都是在毫无意义的琐事中，磨磨蹭蹭的踌躇中和碌碌无为的哀叹中蹉跎掉的。我们徒劳地与外界的纷扰和内心的迷惘抗争着，然而，我们一刻也没有丧失这样的信念，即只要我们能够洞悉自己的荧魂，我们就会找到自己赖以安身立命的那丧精神支柱。我们想了解一切，“对我们来说，生活就意味着不断地把我们的全部人格或经历变成光和烈焰”。【尼采：《快乐的智慧》序】我们就像《卡拉马佐夫兄弟》中的米蒂娅——“一个不贪图万贯家财，而只想为自己的问题找到一个答案的人”一样。
we want to seize the value and perspective of passing things, and so to pull ourselves up out of the maelstrom of daily circumstance. We want to know that the little things are little, and the big things big, before it is too late; we want to see things now as they will seem forever—“in the light of eternity.” We want to learn to laugh in the face of the inevitable, to smile even at the looming of death. We want to be whole, to coördinate our energies by criticizing and harmonizing our desires; for coördinated energy is the last word in ethics and politics, and perhaps in logic and metaphysics too. “To be a philosopher,” said Thoreau, “is not merely to have subtle thoughts, nor even to found a school, but so to love wisdom as to live, according to its dictates, a life of simplicity, independence, magnanimity, and trust.” We may be sure that if we can but find wisdom, all things else will be added unto us. “Seek ye first the good things of the mind,” Bacon admonishes us, “and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.”2 Truth will not make us rich, but it will make us free.
世事无常，纷纭变幻，我们只有从整体上把握住它们的意义，才能从日常生活的漩涡中挣脱出来。我们应该在有生之年一是一、二是二地弄清生活的本来面目，并用“永恒的眼光”去识别那叫似乎具有永久价值的事物，我们应该学会在命运面前昂首大笑，甚至在死神降临之际也能处之泰然。我们应该成为完整的人，应该整饬调和我们的种种欲望，以此来协调我们的精力。因为经过协调的活力是伦理学和政治学的终极目标，或许也是逻辑学和形而上学的终极目标。“要成为哲学家”，梭罗说过,“并不是只要有深邃的思想，甚至也不是去建立一所学校就行了，而是要热爱智慧，并愿意按照它的吩咐去过一种艰苦朴素、自食其力、宽宏大量和充满信心的生活“。我们可以肯定，只要我们能找到智慧，其他一切都会不期而至。“先去寻找心灵的宝藏”，培根吿诫我们说，“其余的要么应有尽有，要么失去了也无关痛痒“。真理不会使我们发财，却会使我们自由。
Some ungentle reader will check us here by informing us that philosophy is as useless as chess, as obscure as ignorance, and as stagnant as content. “There is nothing so absurd,” said Cicero, “but that it may be found in the books of the philosophers.” Doubtless some philosophers have had all sorts of wisdom except common sense; and many a philosophic flight has been due to the elevating power of thin air. Let us resolve, on this voyage of ours, to put in only at the ports of light, to keep out of the muddy streams of metaphysics and the “many-sounding seas” of theological dispute. But is philosophy stagnant? Science seems always to advance, while philosophy seems always to lose ground. Yet this is only because philosophy accepts the hard and hazardous task of dealing with problems not yet open to the methods of science—problems like good and evil, beauty and ugliness, order and freedom, life and death; so soon as a field of inquiry yields knowledge susceptible of exact formulation it is called science. Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art; it arises in hypothesis and flows into achievement. Philosophy is a hypothetical interpretation of the unknown (as in metaphysics), or of the inexactly known (as in ethics or political philosophy); it is the front trench in the siege of truth. Science is the captured territory; and behind it are those secure regions in which knowledge and art build our imperfect and marvelous world. Philosophy seems to stand still, perplexed; but only because she leaves the fruits of victory to her daughters the sciences, and herself passes on, divinely discontent, to the uncertain and unexplored.
有些读者会在这里不客气地插进来奉告我们说，哲学毫无用处——如国际象棋，晦涩艰深近乎愚昧无知，停滞不前恰似自满自足。“再也没有什么”，西塞罗说过，“比在哲学家的书本里找到的更为荒谬了”。诚然，有些哲学家学富五车，但却缺乏常识；而且许多高高在上的哲学家也是凭借空气的浮力才飞上青天的。不过，在我们这次航行中，让我们绕开形而上学的浊流和神学争端那“众多喧嚣的海域“，而只在光明之港停泊吧。然而哲学真地停滞不前吗？科学似乎总是在乘胜前进，而哲学则似乎总是在节节败退。不过这只是因为需要哲学解决的问题都是尚无科学方法可资借助的问题——诸如善与恶、美与丑、生与死、秩序与自由等等，而这是一项艰巨、冒险的任务。每当一个研究领域产生了可以用精确的公式来表示的知识时，它就进入了科学的行列。每一门科学都是以哲学开始，以艺术告终的。它起源于假设，而结束于累累的硕果。哲学是对未知事物（如在形而上学中）和所知不确切的事物（如在伦理学或政治哲学中）所做的假设解释，它是真理攻坚战的前哨阵地。科学是被占领的领土，在它的背后，是那些安全地带。在那里，知识与艺术建立了我们这个并不完美的奇异世界。哲学之所以看起来迷惘彷徨、驻足不前，是因为她总是把胜利的果实留给自己的女儿——科学，自己却永不满足地踏上探索未知领域的征程。
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