Name: 理解 "充滿希望的悲觀主義" | 灰色地帶 (Understanding "hopeful pessimism" | The Gray Area)
Uploaded: 2025-07-17T08:14:48.000Z
Duration: 49 min 47 s

嘿，我是《灰色地帶》的主持人肖恩。

For the show this week, I talked to Mara Vanderloot, a philosophy professor and the author of a book called Hopeful Pessimism.

在本週的節目中，我採訪了哲學教授、《充滿希望的悲觀主義》一書的作者馬拉-範德羅特。

This week is an audio-only episode, but we'll be back on video next week.

本週只播出音頻，下週我們將恢復視頻播出。

We live in a culture obsessed with hope, trained to believe that keeping the faith is the key to sustaining success.

我們生活在一個迷戀希望的文化中，被訓練成相信保持信念是持續成功的關鍵。

The sun will come out tomorrow, and when it does, we'll take the sunny side of the street.

明天太陽會出來的，到時候，我們會選擇向陽的一面。

And as long as we don't stop believing, what a wonderful world this will be.

只要我們不放棄信念，這將是一個多麼美好的世界。

That's nice, but, and just hear me out, what if that's the wrong message?

這很好，但是，聽我說完，如果這是個錯誤的資訊呢？

What if the path to a better world isn't through blind hope?

如果通往更美好世界的道路不是盲目的希望呢？

What if what the world needs now is a particular kind of hope, balanced with a little clear-eyed pessimism?

如果世界現在需要的是一種特殊的希望，同時又有一點清醒的悲觀主義，那又會怎樣呢？

I'm Sean Elling, and this is The Gray Area.

我是肖恩-艾林，這裡是《灰色地帶》。

She's a lecturer in philosophy at the University of St. Andrews and the author of Hopeful Pessimism.

她是聖安德魯斯大學的哲學講師，也是《充滿希望的悲觀主義》一書的作者。

It's a quietly radical invitation to rethink the stories we tell ourselves about hope, despair, and what it means to live with dignity in a breaking world.

這本書悄然發出激進的邀請，讓我們重新思考我們告訴自己的關於希望、絕望的故事，以及在這個破碎的世界裡有尊嚴地生活意味著什麼。

For Vanderloot, despair is not always the enemy, and hope is not always a virtue.

對於範德羅特來說，絕望並不總是敵人，希望也不總是美德。

Instead, she argues that the fuel we need to drive forward, to have the courage to be activist, to make change, to fix a broken future, is pessimism.

相反，她認為，我們需要悲觀主義來推動前進，鼓起勇氣積極行動，做出改變，修復破碎的未來。

I have been called a pessimist many times, and I've always recoiled a little because usually when people say that, it's a soft insult.

我曾多次被人稱為悲觀主義者，我總是有點反感，因為通常人們這麼說的時候，都是一種輕微的侮辱。

It means you're pathologically negative, and that pisses me off because if you're not blindly optimistic or if you're just being honest about the world as best you can be, that doesn't mean you're a hopeless pessimist, but that is the way a lot of people think.

這意味著你病態地消極，這讓我很生氣，因為如果你不盲目樂觀，或者你只是儘可能誠實地看待這個世界，這並不意味著你是個絕望的悲觀主義者，但很多人就是這麼想的。

And that seems to be what you're trying to dispel in this book.

而這似乎正是你在這本書中想要消除的。

I think I've noticed similar things as you have as well, that when someone is called a pessimist or when we talk about pessimism, it tends to be an insult or an accusation of some sorts.

我想我也注意到了和你類似的事情，那就是當有人被稱為悲觀主義者，或者當我們談論悲觀主義時，它往往是一種侮辱或某種指控。

Similarly, when people call themselves an optimist, it's like the kindest way to pay yourself a compliment without outright doing it, right?

同樣，當人們稱自己為 "樂觀主義者 "時，這就像是對自己最友善的讚美，而不是直截了當的讚美，不是嗎？

It's sort of, well, I'm an optimist, so that's my virtue.

我是個樂觀主義者，這是我的優點。

And people don't say the same thing about pessimism.

而人們對悲觀主義的看法卻不盡相同。

I do think there are different kinds of pessimism, and I think professing it with a kind of hopeful pessimism is maybe a way of dispelling some of that anxiety that people feel around the term.

我確實認為悲觀主義有不同的種類，我認為以一種充滿希望的悲觀主義來表達它，也許是一種消除人們對這個詞的焦慮感的方式。

I've always struggled with cynicism a bit, and I suppose that's a cousin of pessimism.

我一直在與憤世嫉俗作鬥爭，我想這是悲觀主義的表親。

I think cynicism, nihilism, defeatism, fatalism, those are all the ones that we should be rightly a bit more cautious towards, but they can go together with pessimism, but they don't necessarily have to.

我認為憤世嫉俗、虛無主義、失敗主義、宿命論，這些都是我們應該謹慎對待的，但它們可以與悲觀主義並存，但不一定非得如此。

I was going to ask you what you think most people get wrong about pessimism, but is it kind of what you're saying now, that it gets confused with passivity and resignation?

我本來想問你，你認為大多數人對悲觀主義的誤解是什麼，但是不是就像你現在說的那樣，悲觀主義與被動和逆來順受混為一談了？

Yeah, I think that's probably the main thing.

是的，我想這可能是最主要的。

The book comes out of concern over climate change and the way the climate change debate gets carried out in particular.

這本書是出於對氣候變化的擔憂，尤其是對氣候變化辯論方式的擔憂。

But even outside of that, I think there's often an assumption that there's just two options, either you're optimistic about the future and you'll do what you can to make it better, or you're pessimistic and you've already given up.

但即使在這之外，我認為人們往往認為只有兩種選擇：要麼你對未來持樂觀態度，你會盡你所能讓它變得更好；要麼你很悲觀，你已經放棄了。

A lot of people who would call themselves pessimists, they might think, for instance, that the future is likely to get worse or that there are very bad things happening in the world.

很多自稱為悲觀主義者的人可能會認為，未來可能會變得更糟，或者世界上會發生非常糟糕的事情。

So it might be a certain vision of reality now or of the future that's quite pessimistic.

是以，這可能是對現實或未來的某種悲觀看法。

That doesn't mean we're not going to do anything about it.

但這並不意味著我們對此束手無策。

It might make us all the more committed to work for change.

這可能會讓我們更加堅定地致力於變革。

And I think there have been examples of what I call hopeful pessimists or activistic pessimists, both in the past, but they also exist today.

我認為，我所說的充滿希望的悲觀主義者或積極的悲觀主義者，在過去有，但在今天也存在。

Well, there's a lot of nuance here, right?

這裡面有很多細微差別，對吧？

I mean, these things exist on a continuum.

我的意思是，這些東西是連續存在的。

And part of the problem is this moral binary, is the phrase you use in the book, where optimism is framed as courage and pessimism as despair or defeatism, where optimism is good, pessimism is bad.

問題的一部分就在於這種道德上的二元對立，你在書中用了這個詞，樂觀主義被視為勇氣，悲觀主義被視為絕望或失敗主義，樂觀主義是好的，悲觀主義是壞的。

Is that a legacy of Enlightenment thought or some other period of thought, or has it always been framed this way?

這是啟蒙思想或其他思想時期的遺產，還是一直都是這樣？

I think, in part, some of the dichotomy really comes from the first inception of these terms.

我認為，在某種程度上，這種對立確實來自於這些術語的最初出現。

But that's early 18th century, and that's in the context of the problem of evil.

但那是 18 世紀初的事了，而且是在邪惡問題的背景下。

And so how could a good God have created a world full of suffering?

那麼，善良的上帝怎麼會創造一個充滿苦難的世界呢？

Do the goods of life outweigh the benefits?

And that has to do rather with what I call value-oriented optimism and pessimism.

這與我所說的以價值為導向的樂觀主義和悲觀主義有關。

So that's more about the value of reality, what life is ultimately like.

所以，這更多的是關於現實的價值，關於人生的終極意義。

And only later do the terms get used in a more future-oriented way, which is how we tend to use them today.

只是到了後來，這些術語才以一種更加面向未來的方式被使用，也就是我們今天傾向於使用它們的方式。

And I think the sort of the tendency that there's this binary or that there's this dichotomy, that it's really an existential choice.

我認為，存在這種二元對立的傾向，這其實是一種生存選擇。

You're going to be either one or the other, and there's going to be a moral failure on the other side.

你要麼是其中之一，要麼是另一方，而另一方將是道德的失敗者。

I think that comes into being quite early in the debate, but it shifts meaning over time as these terms also shift in meaning.

我認為這在辯論初期就已經出現了，但隨著時間的推移，它的含義會發生變化，因為這些術語的含義也會發生變化。

I do believe that in the course of the 20th century, when we really start seeing optimism and pessimism being used in these future-oriented ways, so as expectations about the future,

我確實相信，在 20 世紀，當我們真正開始看到樂觀主義和悲觀主義被用於這些面向未來的方式時，也就是對未來的期望、

I think very early you get this comfort with pessimism, as well as this enthusiasm for optimism, as if optimism is naturally a kind of virtue that we have.

我認為，在很早的時候，你就會對悲觀主義感到欣慰，也會對樂觀主義充滿熱情，好像樂觀主義天生就是我們的一種美德。

There's another kind of extreme pessimism.

It's the person who is certain about what's going to happen and believes not just that it might go badly, but that it absolutely will go badly.

這種人對即將發生的事情很有把握，不僅相信事情可能會變得糟糕，而且相信事情絕對會變得糟糕。

I mean, is what I'm talking about here not really pessimism to you?

我的意思是，對你來說，我所說的難道不是真正的悲觀主義嗎？

Is this more like fatalism or even nihilism?

這是否更像是宿命論甚至虛無主義？

So I think it exists on the same spectrum, but as soon as someone says, well, this will certainly happen or things are bound to get worse, I would say that that's no longer pessimism.

是以，我認為它存在於同一個光譜上，但只要有人說，嗯，這肯定會發生，或者事情肯定會變得更糟，我就會說，這不再是悲觀主義了。

That's something like fatalism or nihilism or defeatism.

這就像是宿命論、虛無主義或失敗主義。

That's one of the other, the related, the siblings on the spectrum, so to speak.

可以說，這是光譜上其他相關的兄弟姐妹之一。

In the pessimist tradition, people like Schopenhauer, they would not have espoused something like that at all.

在悲觀主義傳統中，像叔本華這樣的人，他們根本不會支持這樣的東西。

They say, you know, the pessimist withholds certain expectations about the future.

他們說，你知道，悲觀主義者對未來抱有某種期望。

We don't have that kind of certainty because of the kinds of beings we are.

我們沒有這種確定性，因為我們是這樣的人。

And that's one of the things that I'm most concerned to kind of dispel or to counter in the book.

這也是我在書中最想消除或反駁的一點。

And when it comes to fatalism, there can be both pessimistic and optimistic kinds as well.

說到宿命論，既有悲觀的，也有樂觀的。

What would an optimistic fatalism look like?

Well, a pessimistic fatalist would say something like, well, things are bound to get worse, so we may as well give up.

悲觀的宿命論者會說，事情肯定會變得更糟，所以我們還是放棄吧。

An optimistic fatalist, more subtly, would say something like, it's all going to be fine.

樂觀的宿命論者會更巧妙地說，一切都會好起來的。

Humanity is going to solve this problem for us.

And that also means, well, if there's a problem, it's not necessarily a problem for me because things are going to work out in the end.

這也意味著，如果有問題，對我來說不一定是問題，因為事情最終會解決的。

That's also a kind of closing off of the future in actually quite a problematic, but maybe even more nefarious way because it often assumes a kind of fatalism that it doesn't wear on its sleeves.

這也是一種對未來的封閉，實際上很有問題，但也許更邪惡，因為它往往假定了一種宿命論，而它並沒有把這種宿命論穿在自己的袖子上。

It doesn't pronounce itself as the kind of fatalism that actually it implies.

它並不像它所暗示的那種宿命論。

在我看來，這只是盲目的希望。

Maybe you could call it blind hope, but it does declare itself as a kind of optimism.

也許你可以說這是盲目的希望，但它確實宣稱自己是一種樂觀主義。

If pessimism defined in the fatalistic mode is something like being certain that things are going to get worse, then the optimism that stands counter to it would be the kind of attitude that believes, well, things are definitely going to get better in the end.

如果說宿命論模式下的悲觀主義是一種 "事情肯定會變得更糟 "的態度，那麼與之相對的樂觀主義則是一種 "事情最終肯定會變得更好 "的態度。

I would be fine with also calling that a blind hope.

我也可以說這是一種盲目的希望。

That's same perhaps as the other kind is maybe a sort of blind despair.

這也許和另一種盲目的絕望是一樣的。

These terms can coexist together, but I think those are important modes and thought processes to also recognize because I think they're equally dangerous and important to dispel.

這些術語可以共存，但我認為這些模式和思維過程也很重要，因為我認為它們同樣危險，同樣需要消除。

I do want to talk more about the dangers of hope, but I don't want to get too far ahead of myself here because I do want to linger a little bit more on pessimism.

我確實想更多地談談希望的危險，但我不想在這裡說得太遠，因為我確實想再多談談悲觀主義。

And I'm very intrigued by this argument that pessimism actually makes room for action because in your words, it expects nothing.

悲觀主義實際上為行動留出了空間，用你的話說，悲觀主義什麼都不指望，我對這個論點非常感興趣。

Why do you think this is a better approach than acting in the hope or even the expectation of success?

為什麼說這是一種比希望甚至期待成功的行動更好的方法？

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理解 "充滿希望的悲觀主義" | 灰色地帶 (Understanding "hopeful pessimism" | The Gray Area)

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