2015考研英语阅读爱的沉思

　　Book Review;Meditations onlove;Truly, madly, deeply

　　书评;爱的沉思;爱得真挚，疯狂，深刻;

　　Plato described love as a serious mental disease.Aristotle saw it as a single soul inhabiting twobodies. Tina Turner dismissed the feeling as asecond-hand emotion. The nature of lovehow andwhen and why and with whom humans fall for eachotherhas preoccupied thinkers through the ages.Now a philosopher and a scientist have a go in twonew and markedly different books.

　　柏拉图曾经将爱描述为严重的心理疾病。亚里士多德认为爱是一灵栖两躯。蒂娜特纳并不认为这种感觉是种二手情感。爱的本质便是人们怎样，何时，为何，与谁共浴爱河，而这种本质已让思想家们研究了好几个世纪。如今，一位哲学家和一位科学家在其两本截然不同的新书中尝试着探求爱的本质。

　　In his latest work, In Praise of Love, Alain Badiou, a French philosopher, identifies threeprevailing philosophical views of love. It can be an ecstatic encounter; an unsentimentalcontract; or an illusion, best treated with scepticism. He rejects all three. For Mr Badiou,love is the decision to live life through two perspectives, that of both the lover and thebeloved. As such, it is more than the sum of its parts. Love is a construction, he writes, alife that is being made, no longer from the perspective of One but from the perspective ofTwo.

　　法国哲学家阿兰巴迪欧在其新作《爱的礼赞》中指出，关于爱，有3种被普遍认同的哲学观点：爱是一种令人欣喜的邂逅;一种理性的维系;一种与怀疑主义共存的幻觉。不过，这三种观点都被巴迪欧否定了。对他而言，爱是决定在以后的生命中，同时拥有两个人的思想。因此，爱，不止于是部分的叠加而已。爱是建造，他写道，爱不再是一个人的思想能够孕育出的生命，它需要两个人。

　　Mr Badiou sees risk as central to love. A loving relationship demands multiple and sharedperspectives, which always give rise to incongruences and tensions. He reserves specialscorn for dabblers in internet dating, who evidently believe that the search for a photo,details of his or her tastes, date of birth, horoscope sign, etc will ultimately net a risk-freeoption. This is to neglect the very essence of love, according to Mr Badiou, which involvesthe presence of risk, the possibility of failure and the need for vulnerability.

　　巴迪欧认为爱的核心便是风险。一段恋爱关系讲求既多样又相同的思想，这便总会让两人感觉不合适，导致关系紧张。他一直都鄙视婚恋网上马虎配对的人。显然，这些人相信只需搜集未来另一半的照片，喜好，生日，星座之类的，终会成功地筛选出一个零风险的选项。他认为，这样做忽视了爱的本质爱中存在着风险，有可能以分手告终，它也需要其中一方的示弱。

　　The book s chatty style lends a deceptive simplicity to the ideas within. Get to work unpicking theseconcepts and it soon becomes plain that, like many French philosophers, Mr Badiou sacrificesclarity for linguistic zip and sparkle. Nonetheless, he leaves the reader with an incisiveoverview of philosophical thinking on love, from Plato to Kierkegaard to Lacan.

　　该书的闲谈式风格会让人误以为：书中的思想都很简单。先得摒弃掉这些观点，之后，明显可以看到，巴迪欧与许多法国哲学家一样，追求的不是清晰明确，而是语言上的表现力与闪光点。不过，对于从柏拉图到克尔凯郭尔再到拉康关于爱的哲学思想，他的概述可谓鞭辟入里。

　　Robin Dunbar s book, The Science of Love and Betrayal, isperhaps surprisinglyeasier toget to grips with. Dr Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary anthropology with a study in thisweek s science section , is best known for Dunbar s number, the limit to thenumber of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. He laments thatscientists have largely ignored the concept of love. In this book he bridges the gap betweenthe biological explanations for humans romantic behaviour and the psychological,historical, social and evolu- tionary contexts that help to shape it.

　　罗宾邓巴的新书《爱与背叛的科学》更容易理解，或许这有点令人惊讶。邓巴博士是进化人类学的教授，本期科学专栏刊登了一篇他的研究。令他广为人知的是邓巴数字，即一个人最多可以拥有的稳定社交关系的人数。他感到惋惜的是，科学家几乎忽略了爱的概念。生物学上对人类浪漫行为做出了解释，这与有助于塑造这种行为的心理，历史，社会，及进化因素本毫无关联，但在该书中，他将两者联系了起来。

　　In particular, he is interested in why humans have developed such an affinity forpairbonding, despite the fact that strictly monogamous mating and rearing systems are notterribly advantageous in evolutionary terms. Monogamy is not unique to humans. Whatis unique, however, is the intensity with which the species falls in love. Nearly everyhuman culture in history exhibits this complex sense of longing, Dr Dunbar observes.

　　邓巴博士尤为感兴趣的是，虽然就进化角度而言，严格的一夫一妻制及养育制并不占多大优势，但为何人类还如此热衷于培养两个人的情侣关系。一夫一妻制并不只是人类特有。不过，人类特有的是这个物种爱火燃烧的炽热。邓巴博士观察到，历史上，几乎人类的每种文化都表现出了这种复杂的渴望。

　　To understand this predisposition for monogamy, he takes readers through the myriadfeelings of love, from the heady, breathless exhilaration of falling, to the stubbornpersistence of familial affection, to the bitterness of betrayal. Throughout the book DrDunbar excels at taking obvious and familiar informationmen prefer curvy women; womenprefer men who dance well; older women rarely reveal their ages in lonely-heartscolumnsand explaining the complex and often unexpected evolutionary science that liesbehind it all.

　　为了理解一夫一妻制的偏向，邓巴博士带领读者体味了爱的各种感觉，从初坠爱河时忘乎所以，呼吸困难的兴奋，到义无反顾地维持家庭关系，再到遭到背叛时的心如刀割。纵观全书，邓巴的高超之处在于利用人们常见且熟悉的信息男人偏好曲线玲珑的女人; 女人喜欢舞技出众的男人;年龄稍大的女人很少在征友专栏揭露自己的年龄同时解释了这些现象背后复杂且常出人意料的进化科学。

　　Love is a journey, a game, a many-splendoured thing. Though some give it a bad name , the rest of us find the subject endlessly fascinating. Thestruggle to understand such a mystifying phenomenon invariably requires the help ofphilosophers and scientists, and others besides. Good news for Mr Badiou and Dr Dunbar.

　　爱是一次旅行，一场游戏，一件美妙的事。尽管有人给予爱很低的评价，但是其余人都认为爱是一个永恒迷人的主题。当人们竭尽全力理解这迷一样的现象时，总是需要哲学家，科学家，及其他专家的帮助。这对巴迪欧和邓巴来说，是个好消息。