What Is Happiness? 幸福是什麼？

🔊Most people who are asked say no, and Nozick thought their refusal showed something. If all that mattered to us were how our lives feel from the inside, we would have no reason to hesitate. Since we do hesitate, something else must matter. He suggested three things. We want to do certain things, and not merely to have the experience of doing them. We want to be a certain kind of person, and someone floating in a tank is not brave or kind or anything at all. And we want to be in contact with reality, not confined to a world that human beings have made.

被問到的人，多數說不；而諾齊克認為，他們的拒絕顯示了某件事。如果對我們來說要緊的，只是人生「從裡面感覺起來」如何，我們就沒有理由猶豫。既然我們確實猶豫，就必定還有別的東西要緊。他提出了三樣。我們想要「做」某些事，而不只是擁有「做了那些事」的經驗。我們想要「是」某一種人；而一個漂在水槽裡的人，既不勇敢也不仁慈，什麼也不是。還有，我們想要與「真實」接觸，而不是被關在一個由人造出來的世界裡。

🔊The machine sorts the answers that philosophers have given to the question of what makes a life go well for the person who lives it. The first is hedonism: a good life is one with the most pleasure and the least pain, and nothing else counts in itself. It is the simplest view and the one the machine was designed to embarrass, since a hedonist ought to plug in at once. The second is the desire theory: a life goes well to the extent that the person gets what he wants. It explains the refusal neatly. I want to write a novel, and in the tank I would only believe that I had. Its weakness is that people want things that do them no good, and can be pleased by the fulfillment of desires that were planted in them. The third view holds that some things are good for a person whether or not he wants them or enjoys them: knowledge, friendship, achievement, the exercise of his abilities. Philosophers call it the objective list theory, and its weakness is the question of who writes the list.

關於「什麼使一個人生對過這個人生的人來說是好的」，哲學家給過種種答案；這台機器把它們分了類。第一種是享樂論：好的人生就是快樂最多、痛苦最少的人生，此外沒有任何東西本身算數。這是最簡單的看法，也是這台機器被設計來為難的看法，因為一位享樂論者應該立刻接上去。第二種是欲望論：一個人得到他想要的東西到什麼程度，他的人生就好到什麼程度。它俐落地解釋了那份拒絕。我想要的是寫出一部小說；在水槽裡，我只會「相信」自己寫了。它的弱點是：人會想要對自己毫無益處的東西，也可能因為被植入的欲望得到滿足而高興。第三種看法主張：有些東西對一個人是好的，不管他想不想要、享不享受：知識、友誼、成就、能力的發揮。哲學家稱之為「客觀清單論」；而它的弱點是這個問題：清單由誰來寫？

🔊Hedonism has had one great defender who was no friend of luxury. Epicurus taught in a garden outside Athens around 300 BCE, and his name has become a word for fine dining through a misunderstanding he tried to prevent. “When we say, then, that pleasure is the end and aim, we do not mean the pleasures of the prodigal or the pleasures of sensuality, as we are understood to do by some through ignorance, prejudice, or willful misrepresentation. By pleasure we mean the absence of pain in the body and of trouble in the soul.” The pleasant life is produced by “sober reasoning,” which examines every desire and drives out the beliefs that disturb us. He sorted desires into three kinds. Some are natural and necessary, like the desire for food and shelter, and these are easily met. Some are natural and unnecessary, like the desire for fine food. Some are neither, like the desires for fame and power, and these can never be satisfied, since they have no limit. Happiness comes from wanting what is enough.

享樂論有過一位偉大的辯護者，而他並不是奢華的朋友。伊比鳩魯在西元前 300 年前後，在雅典城外的一座花園裡教學；由於一個他曾經設法防止的誤解，他的名字後來成了「講究美食」的代名詞。「所以，當我們說快樂是目的與目標的時候，我們指的並不是揮霍者的快樂或聲色的快樂；有些人出於無知、偏見或故意的曲解，以為我們是這個意思。我們所說的快樂，是身體沒有痛苦、靈魂沒有擾動。」愉快的生活是由「清醒的推理」產生的；它檢視每一個欲望，並且趕走那些擾亂我們的信念。他把欲望分成三種。有些是自然而必要的，像對食物與遮蔽的欲望；這些很容易滿足。有些是自然卻不必要的，像對美食的欲望。有些兩者都不是，像對名聲與權力的欲望；這些永遠無法滿足，因為它們沒有限度。幸福來自「想要的是足夠的東西」。

🔊Aristotle would have refused the machine without hesitation, and his reason is the root of the third theory. Happiness, for him, is something we do. It is “activity of soul in accordance with virtue,” over a complete life, and a person asleep or inactive is no more happy than a harp that is never played is making music. The man in the tank does nothing. Aristotle also saw a consequence that gentler philosophers have tried to avoid. If happiness is a life of excellent activity, it needs equipment: health, some money, friends, a city at peace. A good person who suffers the fate of King Priam, who saw his sons killed and his city burned, cannot be called happy. So happiness is partly a matter of luck, and he discusses the old saying of Solon that we must “see the end” before calling anyone happy.

亞里斯多德會毫不猶豫地拒絕那台機器；而他的理由，就是第三種理論的根。對他來說，幸福是我們「做」的事。它是「靈魂合乎德行的活動」，而且要在完整的一生當中；一個睡著的人或無所作為的人並不幸福，就像一把從來沒有人彈的豎琴並沒有在演奏音樂。水槽裡的那個人什麼也沒做。亞里斯多德還看到了一個比較溫和的哲學家們設法迴避的後果。如果幸福是卓越活動的一生，它就需要配備：健康、一些錢、朋友、一座太平的城邦。一個好人，如果遭遇了普里阿摩斯王那樣的命運（眼看著兒子們被殺、城被焚毀），就不能被稱為幸福。所以，幸福有一部分是運氣的事；而他討論了梭倫那句古老的話：在說任何人幸福之前，我們必須「看到結局」。

🔊The Chinese tradition has a famous case that tests Aristotle’s claim about equipment. Confucius said of his favorite student: “How admirable Hui is! A bamboo dish of rice, a gourd of water, a mean alley. Others could not bear the misery, and Hui does not let it change his joy.” Later Confucians made a standing question of it: what was it that Yan Hui delighted in? The answer could not be poverty, which no one enjoys. It was something that poverty could not reach, and they took it to be the delight of a person whose desires and whose sense of what is right had become one. This is a happiness that needs little luck.

中國的傳統有一個著名的案例，檢驗了亞里斯多德關於「配備」的主張。孔子這樣說他最鍾愛的學生：「賢哉回也！一簞食，一瓢飲，在陋巷，人不堪其憂，回也不改其樂。」後來的儒者把它變成了一個常設的問題：顏回樂的是什麼？答案不可能是貧窮；沒有人享受貧窮。那是貧窮搆不到的某樣東西；他們認為，那是一個人的欲望與他對「什麼是對的」的感知已經合而為一的時候，所擁有的那份悅樂。這是一種不太需要運氣的幸福。

🔊Zhuangzi goes further and doubts the pursuit itself. He looks at what the world calls happiness, wealth, rank, long life, good food, and at the people rushing after these things “as though they could not stop,” and says that he cannot tell whether their happiness is happiness or not. His own conclusion is a paradox: “The highest happiness is without happiness.” The joy that is sought and held is already anxious. What remains when the seeking stops has no name that the seekers would recognize. Mill discovered the same thing in his breakdown: “Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so.”

莊子走得更遠，懷疑起這份追求本身。他看著世人所謂的幸福（富、貴、壽、美食），看著那些追逐這些東西的人「誙誙然如將不得已」，說他分不出他們的樂到底是樂還是不樂。他自己的結論是一個弔詭：「至樂無樂。」被追求、被握住的那種樂，已經是焦慮的了。追求停下來之後剩下的東西，沒有一個追求者認得出來的名字。彌爾在他的崩潰裡發現了同一件事：「問問自己是否幸福，你就不再幸福了。」

🔊Psychologists now measure happiness by asking large numbers of people how they feel and how satisfied they are with their lives, and several findings bear on the old theories. People adapt. Those who win lotteries and those who suffer serious injuries both return, within a few years, much of the way to where they were, a pattern known as the hedonic treadmill. Epicurus would have expected it. Income raises reported happiness steeply among the poor and less and less above a moderate level. The two measures come apart: a parent of small children often reports less pleasure hour by hour and more satisfaction with life as a whole. And the longest study of adult lives, which has followed a group of Harvard graduates and Boston men since 1938, found that the best predictor of a healthy and contented old age was the quality of a person’s close relationships. No one in the study was in a tank.

心理學家現在測量幸福的方式，是去問為數眾多的人：你感覺如何？你對自己的人生有多滿意？有幾項發現與古老的理論相關。人會適應。中了彩券的人與受了重傷的人，都會在幾年之內，回到離原來不遠的地方；這個樣式被稱為「享樂跑步機」。伊比鳩魯會預料到它。收入在窮人當中使自陳的幸福急遽上升；超過一個中等的水準之後，就越來越少。那兩種量度會脫鉤：幼兒的父母，往往每一個小時回報的快樂較少，對整個人生的滿意卻較多。而關於成人生活歷時最久的那項研究（從 1938 年起追蹤一群哈佛畢業生與波士頓的男性），發現健康而滿足的晚年最好的預測指標，是一個人親密關係的品質。研究裡沒有任何人待在水槽裡。

🔊The machine remains a good test because it separates what we feel from what is so. A reader who would refuse it has learned that he wants more from life than good feelings. A reader who would accept it holds a view with a long and honorable history. Either way it is worth doing the experiment slowly.

那台機器仍然是一個好的檢驗，因為它把「我們感覺到的」與「實際如此的」分開了。一位會拒絕它的讀者，已經得知自己想從人生得到的不只是好的感覺。一位會接受它的讀者，持有的是一個歷史悠久而可敬的看法。不管是哪一種，這個實驗都值得慢慢地做。