耶鲁大学哲学公开课《死亡》18 死亡之害（三）不朽性1

前半节继续论述 the badneee of death ，后半节开始新的话题，不朽，以及长生的欢乐与烦恼。
围绕古罗马哲学家 Lucretius 的这些论证比较有意思：Nothing bad about the eternity before I was born. So, nothing bad--of the eternity of nonexistence. So nothing bad about the eternity of nonexistence after I die. 既然我不为生前“不存在”悲伤，也就不应该为死后之“不存在”遗憾，前提是the deprivation account。这些西方人有关生命的哲学与东方非常不同，西方有僵直性，就是直接使用逻辑推理，地方则不然，有许多玄虚。
Very, very common response,  that this period involves loss, because the very definition of "loss" is, you don't have something that at an earlier time you did have. So this period involves loss. But the period before birth does not involve loss, because although I don't have life, I haven't, previous to the period, had life, so I haven't lost anything.
大仙说他是1954年生人，似乎象，但似乎更年轻一些，他说话那么铿锵有力。我逐渐认识到，他是个非常好的演说家，并且肯定受过专门演说训练，非常具有感染力，是前面这三个老师中唯一一个有如此风采的，而且他的发音也非常舒服，非常标准，因为他说话很慢，所以才能更清楚地认识到“准确”的概念。
讨论开始，既然人类只能生活这么长时间，那么我们到底生活在哪个时代才是合适的、美好的？古罗马时期、还是当今、还是其他任何时间？只有在这个质问中，我们才会宏观地观察到自我与文明之间的有机关系，而非仅只有现实（政治）的向度。
将生命整体地shift至以前的任何阶段试一试，是否就更好呢？不是，其实我们需要的或渴望的其实是长生。This is a very deep fact about human caring. We are oriented towards the future and concerned about what happens in it, in a way that we're not oriented and concerned about what happened in the past.这是个事实，但也不完全正确。好奇心，我认为，占有很大的比重。越来越能感受到这里的讨论是纯西方的。假如作为中国传统的，我是说世俗的，更多考虑的是家族、儿孙兴旺、面子等类似概念，会很大不同。
is it true that immortality's a good thing? 假如死亡剥夺了“好”的生活，当然bad，但剥夺或停止的是“悲惨的”或重复无趣的生活，实际上死亡会是“好的”。things that are good for you in limited quantities can become bad for you if you get more and more and more and more of them. Is it true that life would get better and better and better, the longer it is?
以Jonathan Swift 的Gulliver's Travels《格利佛游记》说明，长生是个痛苦：  He imagines Gulliver coming to a country where a subset of the people live forever, immortals. And at first, Gulliver says, "Oh, isn't this wonderful?" But he forgot to think about the fact that if the kinds of changes that we undergo continue to accumulate, then you're getting older. Not just older, but weaker, in more and more discomfort, senility sets in with a vengeance, until eventually you've got these creatures that live forever, but their mind is gone, and they're sort of in pain and they can't do anything because their body's utterly infirm and diseased and sick. That's not a wonderful thing to have. If immortality was like that, says Swift, that would be horrible. For an immortality like that, death would be a blessing. And Montaigne, in the essay that I've had you look at, says indeed, death is a blessing, because it puts an end to the pain and suffering and misery that afflict us in our old age.
我突然想起来，从哲学思考人生等，看一般中国的文学作品，其视野似乎更为具体，或曰狭隘。而西方的则更为宏观广大一些，一般而言，从封建社会开始之前尚不明显，自封建之后就发扬起来，还不知道其原由，或许是政治环境的逼仄？现在愈加如此，即一种极度内视，明显的宏观不够，视野狭窄实际上是。“现实”，世俗，或曰“过度关注政治”，是同一个概念？如西方，尤其是美国的，如电影，更多关注“人类”、太空、明天的科幻等，在中国根本见不到类似的题材。这是个非常明显的“文化”差异。
在天堂里获得永恒怎么样？我婆婆是个虔诚的基督教徒，很老了，今年春节交代后事，说大家要在她死后遵守教规办理后事，这样她才能顺利进天堂。不知道她是否考虑过天堂是什么样的生活。幸亏她没有考虑过，朦胧就是美，有无限的想象空间。
大仙说，人们只知道进天堂，却并不知道天堂有着具体如何的生活，这在宗教里从来没有描述过。假如在天堂就是天天念赞美诗如何？天天念？念，不是100年1000年，而是一亿年，永远念，如何？我想那是酷刑。所以，看来进天堂，没有具体描述的天堂，实际上也不是好事，所以还是死了什么都没有更轻松一些——这是我的想法。
看来，大仙是个犹太人。我才在耶鲁这里上了3门课，就有2个教授可能是犹太人，这比例也太高了吧？他长得那么象撒达姆大叔，看来犹太人与阿拉伯人确实是亚伯拉罕的后人不假。
对于永恒或不朽，事实上每个老年人都可以给出哲学家一样的智慧答案，他们多数人心甘情愿地不期望永生，到时候你就知道了。这也是为什么你从老人的脸上能够看到夕阳的宁静的原因。这也是为什么我现在感到可以接受死亡的原因之一，因为我也老了，经受了太多的痛苦，当然也有欢乐；已经够了，再多也无所谓了。所以，年轻确实是件好事，好好享受生活。Bernard Williams says： No kind of life would be one that would be desirable and attractive forever. No kind of life at all. In short, says Williams, every life would eventually become tedious and worse, excruciatingly painful. Every kind of life is a life you would eventually want to be rid of. Immortality, far from being a wonderful thing, would be a horrible thing.
说到底，生活或生命在于质量，而不在于长度，所以好好享受生活，丰富生命，才是最重要的。我今天就很享受，给自己泡了杯好喝的水，吃了个水果，并且不想那么累着学习了。轻松玩去！