中国科学院大学研究生学术英语读写教程 Unit1 Psychology TextA 原文和翻译

中国科学院大学研究生学术英语读写教程

Unit1 Psychology TextA 原文和翻译

Descartes Was Wrong: “A Person Is a Person Through Other Persons”
笛卡尔错了：“人之所以为人，在于他人”
Abeba Birhane

1
According to Ubuntu philosophy, which has its origins in ancient Africa, a newborn baby is not a person. People are born without “ena”, or selfhood, and instead must acquire it through interactions and experiences over time. So the “self”/“other” distinction that’s axiomatic in Western philosophy is much blurrier in Ubuntu thought. As the Kenyan-born philosopher John Mbiti put it in African Religions and Philosophy (1975): "I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am. "

根据起源于古代非洲的乌班图哲学，新生儿不是人。人出生时没有“ena”，即自我，而是必须通过长期的互动和经历获得它。因此，西方哲学中公认“自我”/“他人”的区别在乌班图思想中要模糊得多。正如肯尼亚出生的哲学家约翰·姆比蒂在《非洲宗教与哲学》（1975 年）中所说：“我存在是因为我们存在，因为我们存在，所以我存在。”

2
We know from everyday experience that a person is partly forged in the crucible of community. Relationships inform self-understanding. Who I am depends on many “others”: my family, my friends, my culture, my colleagues. The self I take grocery shopping, say, differs in her actions and behaviours from the self that talks to my PhD supervisor. Even my most private and personal reflections are entangled with the perspectives and voices of different people, be it those who agree with me, those who criticise, or those who praise me.

我们从日常经验中知道，一个人的成长部分是在社会的严酷考验中形成的。人际关系可以加深对自我的理解。我是谁取决于许多“他人”：我的家人、我的朋友、我的文化、我的同事。比如说，我去杂货店购物时的自我，其行为举止与我与博士生导师交谈时的自我不同。即便是我最私密、最个人的反思，也会与不同人的观点和声音纠缠在一起，无论是那些同意我的人，批评我的人，还是赞扬我的人。

3
Yet the notion of a fluctuating and ambiguous self can be disconcerting. We can chalk up this discomfort, in large part, to René Descartes. The 17th-century French philosopher believed that a human being was essentially self-contained and self- sufficient; an inherently rational, mind-bound subject, who ought to encounter the world outside her head with skepticism. While Descartes didn’t single-handedly create the modern mind, he went a long wa