該不該多懂一點哲學？

This holiday season, many of us will receive unexpected gifts. But Onora O’Neill, the British professor emeritus of philosophy at Cambridge University, has just collected a spectacular one: this week, in a swanky ceremony at the New York Public Library, she was awarded $1m for her contributions to philosophy by the Berggruen Institute, a research organisation based in Los Angeles and created by Nicolas Berggruen, the Paris-born philanthropist and investor.

這個圣誕假期，我們很多人都會收到意想不到的禮物。但英國劍橋大學(Cambridge University)名譽哲學教授奧諾拉•奧尼爾(Onora O'Neill)剛剛收獲了一份大禮：上周，在紐約公共圖書館(New York Public Library)舉行的一場隆重儀式上，她憑借自己在哲學上的貢獻獲得了博古睿研究院(Berggruen Institute)授予的100萬美元獎金。博古睿研究院是一家位于洛杉磯的研究機構，由生于巴黎的慈善家、投資家尼古拉斯•博古睿(Nicolas Berggruen)創(chuàng)立。

There are a number of reasons why this makes me want to cheer. First, there are not many other women of O’Neill’s age (she is 76) who are collecting $1m prizes of any type for their intellectual endeavours – unfortunately, in Britain, many other older female icons around these days appear to be either cooking-show hosts or royalty.

此舉讓我為之歡呼的理由有很多。首先，沒有多少女性能在奧尼爾這般年紀(76歲)憑借任何類型的智力努力獲得百萬美元獎金——遺憾的是，如今在英國，其他許多老年女性名人似乎要么是烹飪節(jié)目主持人，要么是皇室成員。

Second, it is wonderful to see philosophy being celebrated. In theory, almost everyone knows that the discipline is ancient and worthy but, in recent years, the main focus of the government and academic world has been on technical and scientific fields; liberal arts and social sciences have taken a back seat, not just in terms of college and school courses, but in the ideas we decide to reward. McKinsey, the global management consultancy, has calculated that there is currently about $350m of prize money on offer in various competitions and awards around the world – a figure that has swelled dramatically in recent years because a host of philanthropic billionaires have been establishing prizes. But if you scroll down the list of awards (including the “XPrize” created by Silicon Valley whizz-kids), most of the money is going towards science, medicine, technology, clean energy and so on. Until the creation of the Berggruen Prize for Philosophy & Culture (last year’s inaugural recipient was the distinguished Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor), there was almost nothing large that recognised “merely” smart philosophical ideas.

第二，看到哲學受到頌揚令人高興。理論上，幾乎所有人都知道，這門學科古老且值得尊敬，但近年來，政府和學術界主要聚焦于技術和科學領域;人文學科和社會科學被置于次要地位——不僅是就大學和學校課程而言，也包括我們決定獎勵的思想。全球管理咨詢公司麥肯錫(McKinsey)估算，目前世界各地的各種競賽和獎項總計提供約3.5億美元獎金——這一數字近年來急劇膨脹，原因是很多億萬富翁慈善家紛紛設立獎項。然而，如果你仔細查看獎項列表(包括由硅谷怪才們創(chuàng)立的“XPrize”)，大部分獎金都流向了科學、醫(yī)藥、技術、清潔能源等領域。直至博古睿哲學與文化獎(Berggruen Prize for Philosophy & Culture)創(chuàng)立——去年的首屆得主是加拿大著名哲學家查爾斯•泰勒(Charles Taylor)——幾乎沒有什么大獎“僅僅”認可智慧的哲學思想。

But perhaps the most important reason why the $1m awarded to O’Neill makes me want to cheer is what she has actually achieved. During her long academic career at Cambridge University, she not only earned acclaim for developing brilliant treatises linked to the work of Immanuel Kant but, as the judges noted, she was also “exceptional in combining pure theory – particularly, but not solely, of the Kantian kind – with its practical enactment”.

但或許，我希望為奧尼爾獲得百萬美元獎金歡呼的最重要原因是她真正取得的成就。在劍橋大學的漫長學術生涯中，她不僅因對伊曼努爾•康德(Immanuel Kant)作品的深入研究而收獲贊譽，而且(正如評委們指出的)還“在把純理論——尤其(但不僅僅)是康德式的理論——與其實踐相結合方面非常出色”。

More specifically, O’Neill has written books on justice and human rights, chaired the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, run the UK’s Equality and Human Rights Commission and now sits in the House of Lords, as a cross-party peer. It is enough to make your head spin but it also illustrates a bigger point: it pays to break down some of the silos that haunt our professional worlds, and to get academics involved in public policy (and vice versa). Indeed, at a time when politics is so tribal and petty – in relation to Brexit and much else – we need this more than ever.

更具體地說，奧尼爾撰寫了關于正義和人權的著作，執(zhí)掌納菲爾德生命倫理學理事會(Nuffield Bioethics Council)，負責英國的平等與人權委員會(Equality and Human Rights Commission)，如今作為一名跨黨派成員在上議院(House of Lords)擔任議員。這些光環(huán)足以令你頭暈目眩，但也說明了一個更大的要點：打破困擾我們職業(yè)世界的一些“豎井”、讓學術人士參與公共政策是有好處的(反之亦然)。的確，在一個政治變得如此部落化和瑣碎的時代(無論是英國退歐還是其他事務)，我們比以往任何時候都更需要這樣做。

O’Neill has plenty of interesting ideas to share. Take her views on trust. In recent years (as I have noted in recent columns), there has been endless hand-wringing over the idea that, in the west, trust is declining. O’Neill believes this is misplaced. “[People say] the aim is to have more trust. Well, frankly, I think that’s a stupid aim,” she said in a recent TED talk. “I would aim to have more trust in the trustworthy but not in the untrustworthy. In fact, I aim positively to try not to trust the untrustworthy.”

奧尼爾有很多有趣的思想可供分享。以她對信任的看法為例。近年來(正如我在最近幾篇專欄文章中指出的)，對于西方世界信任水平不斷下滑一說，各方表達了沒完沒了的焦慮。奧尼爾認為這是錯位的。“(人們稱)目標是擁有更多信任。坦白地說，我認為這是一個愚蠢的目標，”她在最近的一次TED演講中表示。“我的目標將是對值得信賴的人(而非不值得信賴的人)有更多信任。實際上，我的目標是盡量不要相信不值得信賴的人。”

Instead, O’Neill argues that “we need to think much less about trust, let alone about attitudes of trust detected or mis-detected by opinion polls” and focus “much more on being trustworthy, and how you give people adequate, useful and simple evidence that you’re trustworthy”.

相反，奧尼爾認為，“我們需要少思考信任問題，更不必關心民調發(fā)現(xiàn)或誤讀的對信任的態(tài)度”，而應將注意力“更多地聚焦于做到值得信任，以及你如何給人們足夠、有用且簡單的證據，證明你值得信賴”。

This requires better transparency. Another, less discussed, route to building trust is for institutions and individuals to make themselves vulnerable. Companies like Amazon that offer consumers the right to return goods do this: they build trust by making themselves open to criticism (and financial loss) when goods are returned. Online ratings on sites such as Uber and Airbnb do the same: they build so-called distributed trust by letting the seller and buyer rate each other. Maybe, O’Neill says, we should introduce this idea into British politics and government too.

這需要更高的透明度。另一個較少被討論的建立信任的途徑是機構和個人讓自身變得脆弱。亞馬遜(Amazon)這類向消費者提供退貨權的企業(yè)做到了這一點：當貨物被退回時，他們通過接受批評(和財務損失)建立了信任。優(yōu)步(Uber)、愛彼迎(Airbnb)等網站的在線評級也一樣：他們通過讓賣家和買家相互評價，建立了所謂的“分布式信任”。奧尼爾表示，或許我們應該把這種思路也引入英國的政治和政府中。

But there is another key point: O’Neill believes we need to concentrate on the concepts of ethics and duty. This has gone out of fashion in recent years; instead, there is more of a focus on citizen rights and regulations. But O’Neill is convinced that it is impossible to cure society’s ills by simply imposing further rules. “You have this compliance mentality gone mad, and it doesn’t work,” she told me over lunch this week. Instead, she wants society to rediscover the forgotten concept of ethics – and to celebrate this.

但還有一個關鍵點：奧尼爾認為，我們需要專注于倫理和責任的概念。這在近幾年已不再流行;相反，更多關注被投向公民權利和規(guī)章制度。但奧尼爾確信，僅僅通過實行更多法規(guī)不可能治愈社會的種種弊病。她上周與我共進午餐時表示：“當今這種合規(guī)思維已經瘋了，它不管用。”相反，她希望社會重新發(fā)現(xiàn)被遺忘的倫理概念，并頌揚之。

This won’t necessarily be popular in the modern political world. But it is an interesting idea to ponder, particularly at this time of year. Perhaps it is time to put some of O’Neill’s thoughts – or those of any other modern philosophers – into our Christmas crackers. We could all do with a little more philosophy in the world, with or without a million-dollar prize.

這樣做在現(xiàn)代政治世界不一定會受歡迎。但這是一個值得深思的有趣想法，尤其是在每年的這個時候?；蛟S是時候把奧尼爾的一些思想(或者其他任何現(xiàn)代哲學家的思想)放入我們的圣誕拉炮里了。在這個世界上，我們都需要多一點哲學——有沒有百萬美元獎金都是如此。