经济学人讣告||沃诺克女男爵,哲学家和英国人类胚胎实验立法设计者

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导读

感谢思维导图作者

Cece,消防人,经济学人粉丝

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听力|精读|翻译|词组

Seeing things clear

洞悉事物本质

英文部分选自经济学人Obituary版块

Philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock chaired the Committee of Inquiry into Human Fertilisation and Embryology whose report published in 1984 led to the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 which permitted IVF and experiments on human embryos for the first 14 days after fertilisation.In this interview, the 94-year-old speaks about the impact of Louise Brown's birth, her work on the report and how the attitude towards IVF and experimentation on human embryo has changed in the last 34 years.

Mary Warnock

玛丽·沃诺克

Seeing things clear

洞悉事物本质

Baroness Warnock, philosopher and deviser of Britain’s rules on embryo experiments, died on March 20th, aged 94

沃诺克女男爵,哲学家和英国人类胚胎实验立法设计者,于3月20日逝世,享年94岁。

A question Mary Warnock often asked herself was why she had become a philosopher at all. She was not much good at it. Her many books, written mostly for money, contained no original thinking. For a while, when she was first up at Oxford reading Mods and Greats, she thought she would be a historian of ancient Greece. But she was not scholarly in that way. In the end she embraced philosophy because she fell in love with a philosopher, Geoffrey Warnock, and it seemed a practical arrangement. They could share books, and swap learned aphorisms as they washed the dishes. And so they did. A drunken young man who climbed into their lodgings once, when Geoffrey was principal of Hertford, reported that he had found them in bed discussing Kant. That was fantasy, but whenever she took on yet another project Geoffrey would quote Hobbes at her, about the reckless pursuit of power.

玛丽·沃诺克(Mary Warnock)经常问自己:“我怎么就成哲学家了?”她并不太擅长哲学。为了赚钱,她写过不少书,但并没有提出什么独到的见解。最初在牛津大学学习古典学时,她有一阵子认为自己会成为研究古希腊的历史学家。但是,她并没能成为那样的学者(战火蔓延、学业中断)。最终,她因爱上了哲学家杰弗里·沃诺克(Geoffrey Warnock)而选择了哲学。这似乎是一个合算的安排:他们可以共享书籍,或在茶余饭后分享习得的格言警句。而这也确实是他们生活的写照。杰弗里在赫特福学院当院长时,一名喝醉的年轻人曾爬进他们的住所。年轻人声称,他发现沃诺克夫妇躺在床上讨论康德(哲学)。当然啦,这个故事的可信度不高,但有件事倒是千真万确,每次玛丽又拿下了个新项目,杰弗里都会用霍布斯的话来拿她打趣,说她“谋起权来不计后果”。

注:康德道德哲学的三个层次

http://www.aisixiang.com/data/105630.html

The second question that confronted her was what philosophy was for. The 1950s and 1960s were something of a golden age for it, not only at Oxbridge but on the BBC Third Programme, where she was the token goofy woman in a quartet of thinkers for regular radio debates. (“But surely there must be something deeper?” she would ask, only to be put down.) Philosophers were public figures, and their opinions sought. The one she most admired, J.L.Austin, had specialised in what people intended to do when they spoke words, an exercise often dismissed as logic-chopping. But it seemed extremely useful to her as a general exercise, because it unblocked things. It was an excellent way of digging down to what people really meant to say, and hence, she realised, fine training for chairing committees and public enquiries.

玛丽面对的第二个问题是:“哲学的意义是什么?”二十世纪五十和六十年代可谓是哲学的黄金时期,不仅在“世界哲学中心”牛津剑桥,而且也在一些广播电台,哲学活动都在如火如荼地开展。她定期参加BBC第三频道(BBC Third Programme,BBC Radio 3前身)的广播辩论节目,扮演思想家四人组中的“笨女人”。她经常会问一些幼稚的问题,比如,“但我认为肯定还有更深层次的东西?”这么做只为帮他人抛砖引玉。哲学家是公众人物,他们的一些观点会受到大众的追捧。她最欣赏的哲学家是J.L.奥斯汀(J.L.Austin),其擅长透过话语揣测人们的意图。虽然这种技巧常被贬为“见风使舵”,但是对玛丽而言却非常管用,因为这能帮她看清事物的本质。这种“察言观色”是揣测人们真实意图的极佳手段,基于此,她进一步发现,这对她主持委员会以及应对公众质询也是一种极好的锻炼。

Note: Radio 3 is the successor station to the BBC Third Programme which began broadcasting on 29 September 1946.The name Radio 3 was adopted on 30 September 1967 when the BBC launched its first pop music station, Radio 1and rebranded its national radio channels as Radio 1, Radio 2 (formerly the Light Programme), Radio 3, and Radio 4 (formerly the Home Service).

So this was what she did, on top of all her writing and teaching and fellowships at Lady Margaret Hall and St Hugh’s; on top, too, of bringing up five children with properly cooked meals and improving books at suppertime. She became famous for enquiries into environmental pollution, withholding of evidence, animal testing and the running of the Royal Opera House. Two reports in particular, on the teaching of children with special needs in 1978 and on human fertility and embryology in 1984, changed British law in dramatic and lasting ways. Her education report recommended that children with disabilities should be taught for the first time in mainstream schools and given special support. The embryology report allowed human embryos to be used for scientific experiments, but under statutory authority and for a maximum lifespan of 14 days, the point at which the bundle of cells began to differentiate into an individual. (She was particularly pleased with that clear cut-off rule: everyone could count to 14.) It also paved the way for ivf, an advance she keenly wanted to see.

因此,“洞悉事物本质”成了她的处事哲学。写作、教书、任职玛格丽特夫人学堂和圣休学院时如此;抚养五个孩子,为他们准备可口的饭菜,趁晚餐时间修改著作时亦是如此。她因调查环境污染、证据扣留、动物实验和英国皇家歌剧院经营等问题而成名。尤其是她主持起草的两份报告,均对英国立法产生了深远的影响。一份是1978年提交的关于特殊需求儿童教育的,另一份是1984年提交的关于人类受精和胚胎学的。教育报告建议,残障儿童首先应该在主流学校接受教育,并依据他们的特殊需求得到相应帮助。而另一份胚胎学报告建议,人类胚胎可以被允许用于科学试验,但是必须在法定权限内,并且试验周期不得超过14天(“14天原则”)。14天是胚胎开始发育成人的临界点。玛丽对这个明确的限制原则尤为满意:14天以前的胚胎才能用于科学研究。这份胚胎学报告同样为体外受精铺平了道路。玛丽急切地想见证这一科学进步。

注:
1.everyone could count to 14:人人都能数数到14,即人们不能以数错数为理由而研究14天以上的胚胎。暗指14天研究期限的合理性。

2.允许研究“14天以上胚胎”为时尚早

http://tech.163.com/16/1210/08/C7TLE8B800097U81.html

Some said she was abrasive as a chairman. She thought she was generally fair. Her upbringing, in the care of a nanny in a fatherless house, had been heavy on good manners, and her loathing of Margaret Thatcher (who had appointed her to both her most important committees) stemmed from what she saw as the prime minister’s bullying behaviour, as well as her lower-middle-class philistinism and “odious suburban gentility”. In committee, in her slightly dishevelled philosopher’s clothes, she simply tried to induce public servants to think rationally. Private and public morality had to be disentangled. If anyone said they were “not happy” with some proposal, she would urge them to say what they meant. If she herself had incoherent thoughts, as she did about surrogacy, mixing up abhorrence of it with her own bliss at giving birth, she turned the same fierceness inwards. Evidence was required.

有人认为她作为委员会主席,做事太过伤人,她却认为自己大部分时候行事都很公正。她由保姆照看长大,为人彬彬有礼,但成长中缺少父爱。她亲眼目睹首相玛格丽特·撒切尔的欺凌行为,她身上中下层社会阶级的市侩,以及平淡乏味的庸俗礼节,因而滋生出对她的厌恶情结(尽管她最重要的两个委员会职位都是撒切尔任命的)。她会在会议上穿着打扮得不修边幅,想通过自己的随性来鼓励这些公务员进行理性思考,鼓励不把个人道德和公众道德搅和在一起。假如有人对某项提议提出异议,她会鼓励他直言不讳。她自己的想法有时也会前后矛盾,比如代孕,她认为分娩是恩赐,却因道德原因厌恶代孕,她把这些情绪压抑在自己的内心,因为做事必须讲求证据。

注:philosopher’s clothes:某服装品牌,其主要设计师大多既是哲学家,也是艺术家,其设计主题也往往围绕哲学展开,例如“Sorry But I Kant” t-shirt。

She also could not help dominating debate because of the very questions raised. When did human life begin? When did that life become so intrinsically valuable that it must not be destroyed? When did it become so valueless that it ought to be ended? (Euthanasia was a passionate cause, even before morphine gently killed Geoffrey off.) In the case of special-needs children, what was the point of giving them something from which they could hardly benefit? Once these questions were seen in terms of right and wrong, conflict raged. A clear head like hers had to sort it out.

对于一些有争议的特殊问题,她总是忍不住主导辩论,例如生命何时诞生、何时变得无比珍贵,不能被泯灭;何时又变得一文不值,应当了结?(早在她丈夫服用吗啡结束自己生命之前,安乐死便是个令她情绪激动的话题)。在特殊需求儿童问题上,给予他们无法受益的东西究竟有什么意义?一旦我们用对和错来评判这些问题,冲突在所难免。只有像她这样聪明的头脑才能理清头绪。

Yet moral philosophy was not her field. At Oxford, where it was in poor shape and seen as a soft option, it hardly impinged on her at all. As a schoolgirl at the exceptionally holy St Swithun’s, in Winchester, she had desperately wanted to be good in thought, word and deed; at university she threw out moral absolutes, becoming an “atheist Anglican”, as she remained. Nonetheless, just as she still loved Winchester Cathedral and the language of the Book of Common Prayer, she was still inherently interested in the way human beings attached value, and moral weight, to what they did.

但伦理学终究不是她的天地。在牛津时,伦理学还处于未成型阶段,被认为可有可无,她也没有因此受到影响,选择了独善其身。在格外神圣的圣斯威辛学校求学时,她迫切地想做到善思、善言、善行。在大学期间,她丢弃道德上的绝对准则,成为无神论圣公会的一员,至今仍是其成员。尽管如此,就如同她爱戴温彻斯特教堂和英国国教祈祷书的辞藻一样,她仍对人类行为与其价值观和道德标准之间的关联十分感兴趣。

In so far as she was linked to any “ism” it was the existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, the subject of three of her books. She found much that he wrote sheer gobbledygook and some of his beliefs ridiculous, but agreed with his premise that humans gave meaning to an essentially meaningless world. By the time of the embryology report she had also moved to consequentialism: it was the likely outcome of an action that made it right or wrong. The usual outcome of medical research was that disease was cured. Therefore it was good. To ban carefully restricted experiments in the name of mere hidebound metaphysics, as many of her critics tried, was outrageous. She could not bear those bigots, and was glad to be made a dame in spite of them.

若说有什么"主义"和她有关,那就是让·保罗·萨特(Jean-Paul Sartre)提出的存在主义了,这也是她三本著作的主题。她认为萨特所作的内容晦涩难懂,如同天书。他的某些观点甚至有些荒谬。尽管如此,她依然赞同他的理论前提—世界本无意义,是人类赋予世界意义。发表胚胎学报告时期,她已转而支持效果论:人的行为善恶取决于最终结果。医学研究通常结果是可以使某种病被治愈。因此,医学研究这种行为是好的。她多次批评指出:许多实验已经受到了严密限制,若再以偏狭守旧,形而上学的名义禁止这些实验,简直就是荒谬不公。她受不了这些人的顽固偏执,也庆幸自己未与其同流合污。

注:

1. 存在主义(Existentialism),当代西方哲学主要流派之一。这一名词最早由法国天主教哲学家加布里埃尔马塞尔提出。存在主义是一个很广泛的哲学流派,主要包括有神论的存在主义、无神论的存在主义和人道主义的存在主义三大类,它可以指任何以孤立个人的非理性意识活动当作最真实存在的人本主义学说。存在主义以人为中心、尊重人的个性和自由。人是在无意义的宇宙中生活,人的存在本身也没有意义,但人可以在原有存在的基础上自我塑造、自我成就,活得精彩,从而拥有意义。

https://baike.baidu.com/item/存在主义/100757?fr=aladdin

2. 效果论(Consequentialism)亦译“结果论”。是一种片面强调效果的道德评价理论。与“动机论”相对。认为人的行为善恶取决于效果;判断或评价行为的善恶,无须考察动机,只要看它的效果。

https://baike.baidu.com/item/效果论/8233089?fr=aladdin

3. 让-保罗·萨特(Jean-Paul Sartre,1905年—1980年),法国20世纪最重要的哲学家之一,法国无神论存在主义的主要代表人物,西方社会主义最积极的倡导者之一,一生中拒绝接受任何奖项,包括1964年的诺贝尔文学奖。在战后的历次斗争中都站在正义的一边,对各种被剥夺权利者表示同情,反对冷战。他也是优秀的文学家、戏剧家、评论家和社会活动家。

https://baike.baidu.com/item/让-保罗·萨特?fromtitle=Jean-Paul+Sartre&fromid=3164552

Consequentialism relied on trust that human beings mostly wanted to do good, not harm, and this was sometimes too optimistic. She was sorry that her recommendations for special-needs education made some children unhappy, and wanted to keep the rules on bioethics very tight. By and large, though, she was delighted to apply her brain in the public sphere. As the years passed, governments seemed increasingly to distrust and ignore intellectual elites, precisely because the great universities fostered freedom of thought which could not be controlled. She fiercely attacked that prejudice. A philosopher let loose was what democracy needed. Ergo, she was delighted she had become one.

效果论所奉行的观点是:深信大多数人类都想行善事而非施恶行,有时候这种观点太过乐观。她所奉行的特殊教育适得其反,使得部分儿童产生不快情绪,为此她深感抱歉。她还希望能在生物伦理学上实行严格管制。总体而言,她还是很欣慰能够将智慧运用于公共领域。时光流逝,政府似乎越来越不信任并开始忽视知识精英了,因为他们认为很多大学太鼓励思想自由,使得人心不易受到管控。她强烈抨击政府的这种偏见。无拘无束的哲学家正是民主制度所需。因此,她为自己成为自由民主大军中一员而感到高兴。

翻译组:

Alex,不务正业的理工男

Rachel,爱吃火锅的处女座翻译生

Yao,准上外小硕,只读不背的经济学人爱好者

校核组:

Kemay,决心练好笔译的未来口译员

Liv,上海打怪奋斗小青年,英专本科生

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观点|评论|思考

本次观点由Vicky全权执笔

Vicky,少儿英语老师,笔译新人

94岁高龄的玛丽.沃诺克走了,上帝收走了他留在人间的另一个伟大的头脑。

玛丽并没有积极地用女权主义者来标榜自己,但是她的《沃诺克报告:调查委员会关于人类受精和胚胎学的报告》却帮助了无数的女性更好的主宰了自己的身体和人生。虽然她曾经说过,试管婴儿得以实践最重要的是两个因素是:1、人们的思想进度到这个阶段,可以接受试管婴儿的概念。2、科学技术进步到这个阶段,让这项技术可以面向大众进行应用。可是如果没有她睿智和准确的提出“14天原则”,即14天之内的胚胎可以当做非人类生命的物体进行科学研究使用,则试管婴儿所引发的伦理道德及法律上的疑虑必然使这项技术的推广窒碍难行。“14天原则”既符合生物科学里胚胎发展到人类功能的阶段变化,最重要的是它以最简洁的方式,给了法律一个最直观的依据,为试管婴儿的推广,铺平了道路。

玛丽之所以能够在纷繁的道德伦理的桎梏权衡中,迅速找出问题的核心,得益于她在学术研究中,发现哲学可以帮助解决一些聚讼不休的现实问题,于是她就把哲学这种貌似最悬浮的形而上的学问,用在了解决公共政策制定中的问题这种最大众的地方,让这个最阳春白雪的学科服务到了每一个下里巴人。

玛丽曾经说过,她对未来最大的恐惧,就是人类这个物种的消亡。但是她对这个她觉得必然会发生的事情,其实也谈不上恐惧和焦虑,因为她觉得人类在未来100年后,一定会改变对死亡的看法,就像现在,因为试管婴儿我们对生命的诞生方式的看法已经转变,那么未来谁又知道人类将如何看待死亡呢?

玛丽并没有明确的说明她觉得未来人类眼中的死亡究竟是什么,也许一生用思考解决问题的她想要留给我们一些努力探索的空间,又或者去到了另一个世界的她,仍然在努力思考着。而她留给我们的诸多思想瑰宝,也将在人类未来的前进道路上继续熠熠生辉,帮助我们更清醒理智的看待这个世界。

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