Why Be Good If No One Is Watching? 沒人看見，為什麼還要做好人？

🔊Plato put the same challenge at the start of the Republic, and put it into the mouth of his own brother. Glaucon says that he does not believe what he is about to argue and wants to hear it refuted. Justice, on the common view, is a compromise. Everyone would like to wrong others freely and suffer no wrong in return. Since that is impossible, people agree to restrain themselves, and they keep the agreement because they are watched. Take away the watching and you will see what they are. A shepherd named Gyges, the story goes, found a gold ring on a corpse in a chasm opened by an earthquake. Sitting among the other shepherds, he happened to turn the setting of the ring inward and found that he had become invisible. He had himself sent to court, seduced the queen, killed the king with her help, and took the kingdom.

柏拉圖在《理想國》的開頭提出了同樣的挑戰，並且把它放進了自己親兄弟的嘴裡。葛勞康說，他並不相信自己接下來要論證的東西，他是想聽到它被駁倒。照一般的看法，正義是一種妥協。每個人都希望能隨意對別人行不義，自己卻不受任何不義。既然那不可能，人們就約定各自克制；而他們之所以遵守這個約定，是因為有人在看。把「看」拿掉，你就會看到他們的真面目。故事說，一個名叫蓋吉斯的牧羊人，在地震裂開的深谷裡，從一具屍體上撿到一枚金戒指。他坐在其他牧羊人當中，無意間把戒指的戒面轉向掌心，發現自己隱形了。他設法讓自己被派到宮廷，勾引了王后，在她的協助下殺了國王，奪取了王國。

🔊Now suppose there were two such rings, Glaucon says, and a just man wore one and an unjust man the other. “No man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market.” The two would end by behaving alike, and this shows that no one is just willingly. He then sharpens the test. Give the unjust man a spotless reputation along with his crimes, and give the just man the reputation of a villain, so that he is whipped and tortured for his goodness. Now say which of the two is better off. To answer Glaucon, one must show that justice is worth having for itself, with every reward removed.

葛勞康說：現在假設有兩枚這樣的戒指，一個正義的人戴一枚，一個不正義的人戴另一枚。「我們無法想像有任何人的本性堅硬如鐵，能夠堅守正義。只要能夠安然無事地從市場上隨意拿走自己喜歡的東西，沒有人會不對不屬於自己的東西伸手。」兩個人最後的行為會一模一樣；而這就顯示，沒有人是甘願行正義的。接著他把檢驗磨得更利。讓那個不正義的人在犯下種種罪行的同時，享有無瑕的名聲；讓那個正義的人背著惡徒的名聲，為了他的善而受鞭打與拷問。現在說說看，兩人當中誰過得比較好？要回答葛勞康，就必須顯示：把一切獎賞都拿掉之後，正義本身仍然值得擁有。

🔊The answer takes Plato the remaining nine books. Its core is a comparison. A soul has parts: reason, spirit, and the appetites. It is in good order when reason governs with the support of spirit, and each part does its own work. That order is what justice in a person is, and injustice is a civil war in which the appetites have seized control. “Virtue is the health and beauty and well-being of the soul, and vice is the disease and weakness and deformity of the soul.” Nobody asks why he should want to be healthy if no one is watching. Once justice is seen to be the health of the thing we live by, Socrates says, the question whether it pays “has become ridiculous.” Gyges with his ring is a man free to feed a disease. Plato describes where that road ends, in the tyrant who can have anything and is the slave of his own cravings, who trusts no one and has no friend.

這個回答花了柏拉圖其餘的九卷。它的核心是一個類比。靈魂有幾個部分：理性、意氣與欲望。當理性在意氣的支持下治理，而每一個部分各盡其職的時候，靈魂就處於良好的秩序。那個秩序，就是一個人內在的正義；不正義則是一場內戰，欲望在其中奪了權。「德行是靈魂的健康、美與安適；惡是靈魂的疾病、虛弱與畸形。」沒有人會問：如果沒人看見，我為什麼還要想健康？蘇格拉底說，一旦看出正義就是我們賴以生活的那個東西的健康，「它划不划算」這個問題就「變得可笑了」。戴著戒指的蓋吉斯，是一個可以隨意餵養一種疾病的人。柏拉圖描寫了那條路的盡頭：那個什麼都能擁有、卻是自己渴求的奴隸的僭主；他不信任任何人，也沒有朋友。

🔊Critics have long asked whether this answers the question that was put. Glaucon asked about justice in the ordinary sense, not stealing, not killing. Socrates replies about an inner harmony. It is not obvious that a man with a well-ordered soul would keep his hands off the market stalls, or that a thief could not be calm and self-controlled. The bridge between the two has to be built, and Plato builds it mostly by assertion.

批評者一直在問：這有沒有回答被提出來的那個問題？葛勞康問的是日常意義上的正義：不偷、不殺。蘇格拉底答的是一種內在的和諧。一個靈魂井然有序的人，是否就不會對市場的攤子伸手？一個竊賊，是否就不可能冷靜而自制？這並不明顯。兩者之間的那座橋需要有人來搭；而柏拉圖搭它，多半是靠斷言。

🔊A second tradition accepts Glaucon’s account of justice as a bargain and denies that the ring exists. Hobbes imagines a “Foole” who says in his heart that there is no such thing as justice and that breaking an agreement is reasonable whenever it pays. Hobbes replies that it never reliably pays. A man who breaks faith must count on not being found out, and no one can count on that. He lives by the errors of others, and if they stop erring he is cast out of the society that keeps him alive. Modern research on cooperation says something similar in the language of games: where people deal with one another repeatedly, a reputation for honesty is the most valuable thing one can own.

第二個傳統接受葛勞康把正義說成一樁交易，卻否認那枚戒指存在。霍布斯設想了一個「愚人」；他在心裡說，根本沒有正義這回事，只要划算，背約就是合理的。霍布斯回答：它從來不會穩穩地划算。一個背信的人，必須指望不被發現；而沒有人能指望這一點。他靠著別人的失誤過活；一旦別人不再失誤，他就會被逐出那個使他得以活命的社會。現代對合作的研究，用賽局的語言說了類似的話：在人們反覆打交道的地方，誠實的名聲是一個人所能擁有的最有價值的東西。

🔊The reply is sound as far as it goes, and it concedes the main point. It says that we should be just because we are always, in effect, watched. It has nothing to say to the person who really does hold the ring. Experiments suggest that such a person is not rare. When people are given a chance to cheat a little without any risk of discovery, a large number do, and they cheat less when a picture of a pair of eyes is hung on the wall.

就它所及的範圍而言，這個回答是站得住的；而它讓出了要點。它說的是：我們應該行正義，因為我們實際上永遠有人在看。對於一個真的握著那枚戒指的人，它無話可說。實驗顯示，這樣的人並不罕見。當人們得到一個可以稍微作弊、而且毫無被發現之虞的機會時，為數不少的人會作弊；而當牆上掛著一張畫著一雙眼睛的圖片時，他們作弊得比較少。

🔊The Confucian classics take up the case of the unobserved person directly, and their answer begins by denying that he is unobserved. The Doctrine of the Mean says: “Nothing is more visible than what is hidden, and nothing more manifest than what is minute. Therefore the gentleman is watchful over himself when he is alone.” The Great Learning explains the paradox. The petty man, when he is by himself, stops at nothing. When he sees a gentleman he tries to cover it up, and it does him no good, because others see him “as if they saw his lungs and liver.” What is real within takes shape without. And it begins with a rule against lying to oneself: one should hate what is bad as one hates a foul smell.

儒家的經典直接處理了「沒人看見的人」這個情況；而它們的回答，是從否認「他沒人看見」開始的。《中庸》說：「莫見乎隱，莫顯乎微，故君子慎其獨也。」《大學》解釋了這個弔詭。「小人閒居為不善，無所不至」；見到君子就想遮掩，卻毫無用處，因為別人看他「如見其肺肝然」。「誠於中，形於外。」而這一切，是從一條不許對自己說謊的規則開始的：「所謂誠其意者，毋自欺也。如惡惡臭。」

🔊Two claims are packed together here. One is a claim about character. A person is made by what he does repeatedly, and most of what anyone does is done unobserved, so the private hour is where one becomes what one publicly is. The ring would not hide Gyges from the one observer who is always present and whose opinion he must live with. This is Yang Zhen’s “I know,” and it is why Confucius says of the gentleman that if he looks within and finds nothing to be ashamed of, he has nothing to fear. The other claim is about knowledge. We are poor at hiding what we are, and a habit of small dishonesty shows in the face. The first claim is close to Plato’s. Neither Plato nor the Confucians think that the just person is paying a price in private for a public good.

這裡有兩個主張被包在一起。一個是關於品格的主張。人是由他反覆做的事造就的；而任何人做的事，大部分都是在沒人看見的時候做的；所以，獨處的那個小時，正是一個人變成他在公開場合所是的那個人的地方。戒指藏不住蓋吉斯，使他不被那位永遠在場、而他必須與其評價共處的觀察者看見。這就是楊震的「我知」；孔子說君子「內省不疚，夫何憂何懼」，也是這個道理。另一個是關於認識的主張。我們並不擅長隱藏自己是什麼樣的人；小小不誠實的習慣，會寫在臉上。第一個主張很接近柏拉圖。柏拉圖與儒家都不認為，正義的人是在私底下為一項公共的善付出代價。

🔊Kant would say that every answer so far has made the same error. Each tries to show that justice pays, in health of soul or safety or peace of mind. But a person who is honest because honesty pays is the prudent shopkeeper of the last lesson, whose acts accord with duty and have no moral worth. To ask “What do I get for being good?” is already to have left the moral point of view. The reason to give back the gold is that it is not yours. The Oxford philosopher H. A. Prichard argued in 1912 that moral philosophy had rested on this mistake since Plato: it kept trying to prove that we ought to do our duty by appeal to something else, when the obligation is seen directly or not at all.

康德會說，到目前為止的每一個回答都犯了同一個錯。它們各自都試圖顯示正義是划算的，換來的是靈魂的健康、安全，或心安。然而，一個因為誠實划算才誠實的人，就是上一課那位精明的店主；他的行為合乎義務，卻沒有道德價值。問「我做好人能得到什麼？」，就已經離開了道德的觀點。把黃金還回去的理由是：那不是你的。牛津的哲學家普里查德在 1912 年論證：道德哲學自柏拉圖以來，一直建立在這個錯誤上；它不斷試圖訴諸別的東西，來證明我們應當盡自己的義務；而義務這回事，要嘛直接被看見，要嘛根本看不見。

🔊That leaves the reader with a choice among kinds of reason. One may hold with Hobbes that the ring is a fiction and honesty is the best policy. One may hold with Plato and the Confucians that injustice damages the person who does it, whether or not anyone finds out. Or one may hold with Kant that the request for a further reason is a confusion. The question is less remote than it was. A great deal of modern life is conducted under conditions that Glaucon would have recognized: anonymous, at a distance, with little chance of being held to account. How people behave there is the old experiment, run every day on a very large scale.

這就讓讀者在幾種理由之間作選擇。可以跟霍布斯一樣主張：戒指是虛構的，誠實是上策。可以跟柏拉圖與儒家一樣主張：不管有沒有人發現，不正義都會損害行不義的那個人。也可以跟康德一樣主張：要求一個「更進一步的理由」，本身就是一種混淆。這個問題不像從前那麼遙遠了。現代生活有很大一部分，是在葛勞康認得出來的條件下進行的：匿名、隔著距離、幾乎不必負責。人們在那裡怎麼表現，就是那個古老的實驗；它每天都在以極大的規模進行著。