'《理性的悲伤》：哈里斯为21世纪寻找一种悲剧伦理
In his recent book, Reason’s Grief: An Essay on Tragedy and Value, 乔治•哈里斯, Chancellor Professor of Philosophy at the College of William and Mary, argues for a return to the 回家ric sense of tragedy as a springboard toward understanding how to live a life in which the good has a chance of outweighing the bad in the 21st century.
哈里斯认为，悲剧伦理的缺失会给世界带来更多的悲剧。 All notions—philosophical, political and religious—that keep the human animal from appreciating the ultimate incomparability of values exacerbates the dilemma, he said.
“回家r had this view: The point of life is to live honorably knowing that life is going to be tragic,” Harris explained. 在书中，他对建立在最高价值观念之上的哲学和宗教结构提出了挑战。 Central to Harris’ argument are assertions that human values are conflicting and that humans sometimes are confronted with choices in which the conflicting values are “incomparable,” leading to loss that rises beyond “reason’s regret” to “reason’s grief.”
“Tragic loss is a pervasive feature of human life,” Harris said. “As a species, we must understand that we occupy a very brief period of history and that we will, at some point, vanish without a trace.” 在这样的背景下，以及悲剧在个人情况下发生的方式，哈里斯呼吁一种接受这种损失的伦理观点，并赋予人类充满希望的活力。
面对自己的医疗困境，哈里斯一直在努力表达这样的希望。 2002年，他被诊断出患有骨髓异常增生性贫血，这是白血病的一种。 Although he does not deal with his condition directly in the book, he admitted that it “must have” influenced that project. “It makes you aware that there is a beginning and an end, and the end doesn’t necessarily come when you want it to,” he said.
在最近的一次视频采访中，哈里斯考虑到自己的身体状况，反思了自己对快乐的理解。 “Whether I was created by God, or whether I’m just the result of the laws of nature, I’m alive. 我能看到颜色。 我能听到音乐。 … These are the things that fill up life, and I am ecstatic that I got the chance,” he said.
Although Harris devotes many pages in Reason’s Grief to examining the arguments of past thinkers from Aristotle to Kant in light of tragedy, he does interlace his own insights with contemporary examples. Just as 之前的 philosophers tended to be “too optimistic,” so, too, are current governmental and cultural leaders.
“There’s a kind of American optimism that is very dangerous in my opinion,” Harris said. “It devises solutions to the problem that simply exacerbate the tragedy. 我们需要在某种程度上降低我们的期望。 我们需要问，在人类的条件下，什么样的生活是可能的，不要假装我们可以拥有一切。 The nature of our values is such that we cannot have it all, and we create more tragedy by avoiding that topic than if we addressed it head-on.”
哈里斯的观点与多元社会固有的挑战有关，多元社会的假设是，通过财富和先进的技术，任何群体的成员都可以消除牺牲的需要。 In Reason’s Grief, he wrote that too many advocates of multiculturalism fail to acknowledge differing cultural values and conceptions of inclusiveness. “That we can learn from other cultures, few would deny,” he wrote. “If that is what multiculturalism is, then that is one thing, a very good thing. But if multiculturalism means rejecting the time-tested values of secular pluralism, that is quite another.”
在视频采访中，哈里斯详细阐述了这一点。 “A pluralistic society needs something to bond it together. It’s not going to be its differences. We can’t celebrate all of our differences. 我们必须找到一种解决办法，使人们尽管存在分歧，但仍能团结在一起。 In my view, the solution to that problem is to share the burdens.”
In Harris’ view, the burdens often are reflective of the tragic losses each group must entail.
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