1

Abeba Birhane 阿贝巴·比尔哈内
1 According to Ubuntu ${}^1$${}^1$^(1){ }^{1} philosophy, which has its origins in ancient Africa, a newborn baby is not a person. People are born without “ena”, or selfhood, and instead must acquire it through interactions and experiences over time. So the “self”/“other” distinction that’s axiomatic in Western philosophy is much blurrier in Ubuntu thought. As the Kenyan-born philosopher John Mbiti put it in African Religions and Philosophy (1975): “I am because we are, and since we are, therefore I am.”
根据乌班图 ${}^1$${}^1$^(1){ }^{1} 哲学，其起源于古代非洲，新生儿不是一个人。人们出生时没有“自我”，而必须通过互动和经历随着时间的推移来获得。因此，在乌班图思想中，“自我”与“他者”的区别在西方哲学中是显而易见的，但在这里却模糊得多。正如肯尼亚出生的哲学家约翰·姆比提在《非洲宗教与哲学》（1975）中所说：“我之所以存在，是因为我们存在；既然我们存在，因此我存在。”
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，一个人在社区的熔炉中部分形成。人际关系影响自我理解。我是谁取决于许多“他人”：我的家人、朋友、文化和同事。我去杂货店购物的自我，在行为和举止上与和我的博士导师交谈的自我不同。即使是我最私密和个人的反思，也与不同人的观点和声音交织在一起，无论是那些赞同我的人、批评我的人，还是赞美我的人。
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 ${}^2$${}^2$^(2){ }^{2}. The 17th-century French
然而，波动和模糊自我的概念可能令人不安。我们可以在很大程度上将这种不适归因于勒内·笛卡尔。17 世纪的法国人

philosopher believed that a human being was essentially self-contained and selfsufficient; 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 way towards defining its contours.
哲学家认为人类本质上是自给自足的；一个天生理性、受思想束缚的主体，应该以怀疑的态度面对她头脑之外的世界。虽然笛卡尔并没有单独创造现代思维，但他在定义其轮廓方面走了很长一段路。
4 Descartes had set himself a very particular puzzle to solve. He wanted to find a stable point of view from which to look on the world without relying on God-decreed wisdoms; a place from which he could discern the permanent structures beneath the changeable phenomena of nature. But Descartes believed that there was a tradeoff between certainty and a kind of social, worldly richness. The only thing you can be certain of is your own ${\mathrm{cogito}}^3$${\mathrm{cogito}}^3$cogito^(3)\operatorname{cogito}^{3} - the fact that you are thinking. Other people and other things are inherently fickle and erratic. So they must have nothing to do with the basic constitution of the knowing self, which is a necessarily detached, coherent and contemplative whole.
笛卡尔给自己设定了一个非常特别的难题。他想找到一个稳定的视角，从中观察世界，而不依赖于上帝所规定的智慧；一个可以辨别自然变化现象下永久结构的地方。但笛卡尔认为，确定性与某种社会、世俗的丰富性之间存在权衡。你唯一可以确定的就是你自己的 ${\mathrm{cogito}}^3$${\mathrm{cogito}}^3$cogito^(3)\operatorname{cogito}^{3} ——你在思考的事实。其他人和其他事物本质上是善变和不稳定的。因此，它们与认识自我的基本构成无关，而认识自我是一个必然超然、连贯和沉思的整体。
5 Few respected philosophers and psychologists would be identified as strict Cartesian dualists ${}^4$${}^4$^(4){ }^{4}, in the sense of believing that mind and matter are completely separate. But the Cartesian cogito is still everywhere you look. The experimental design of memory testing, for example, tends to proceed from the assumption that it’s possible to draw a sharp distinction between the self and the world. If memory simply lives inside the skull, then it’s perfectly acceptable to remove a person from her everyday environment and relationships, and to test her recall using flashcards or screens in the artificial confines of a lab. A person is considered a standalone entity, irrespective of her surroundings, inscribed in the brain as a series of cognitive processes. Memory must be simply something you have, not something you do within a certain context.
很少有受人尊敬的哲学家和心理学家会被认定为严格的笛卡尔二元论者 ${}^4$${}^4$^(4){ }^{4} ，因为他们相信心灵和物质是完全分开的。但笛卡尔的“我思故我在”仍然无处不在。例如，记忆测试的实验设计往往基于这样一个假设：可以清晰地区分自我和世界。如果记忆仅仅存在于颅骨内部，那么将一个人从她的日常环境和人际关系中移除，并在实验室的人工环境中使用闪卡或屏幕测试她的回忆是完全可以接受的。一个人被视为一个独立的实体，与她的周围环境无关，作为一系列认知过程铭刻在大脑中。记忆必须仅仅是你拥有的东西，而不是在特定情境中你所做的事情。
6 Social psychology purports to examine the relationship between cognition and society. But even then, the investigation often presumes that a collective of Cartesian subjects are the real focus of the enquiry, not selves that co-evolve with others over time. In the 1960s, the American psychologists John Darley and Bibb Latané became interested in the murder of Kitty Genovese, a young white woman who had been stabbed and assaulted on her way home one night in New York. Multiple people had witnessed the crime but none stepped in to prevent it. Darley and Latané designed a series of experiments in which they simulated a crisis, such as an epileptic ${}^5$${}^5$^(5){ }^{5} fit, or
社会心理学旨在研究认知与社会之间的关系。但即便如此，研究通常假设一群笛卡尔式的主体是调查的真正焦点，而不是随着时间与他人共同发展的自我。在 1960 年代，美国心理学家约翰·达利和比布·拉塔内对基蒂·杰诺维斯的谋杀案产生了兴趣，这是一位年轻的白人女性，在纽约回家的路上被刺伤和袭击。多个人目睹了这一犯罪行为，但没有人出手制止。达利和拉塔内设计了一系列实验，模拟了一种危机，例如癫痫发作，或者

smoke billowing in from the next room, to observe what people did. They were the first to identify the so-called “bystander effect”, in which people seem to respond more slowly to someone in distress if others are around.
烟雾从隔壁房间涌入，观察人们的行为。他们是第一个识别所谓“旁观者效应”的人，即当周围有其他人时，人们似乎对处于困境中的人反应更慢。
7 Darley and Latané suggested that this might come from a “diffusion of responsibility”, in which the obligation to react is diluted across a bigger group of people. But as the American psychologist Frances Cherry argued in The Stubborn Particulars of Social Psychology: Essays on the Research Process (1995), this numerical approach wipes away vital contextual information that might help to understand people’s real motives. Genovese’s murder had to be seen against a backdrop in which violence against women was not taken seriously, Cherry said, and in which people were reluctant to step into what might have been a domestic dispute. Moreover, the murder of a poor black woman would have attracted far less subsequent media interest. But Darley and Latanés focus makes structural factors much harder to see.
达利和拉塔内提出，这可能源于“责任扩散”，即反应的义务在更大的人群中被稀释。但正如美国心理学家弗朗西斯·切里在《社会心理学的顽固细节：研究过程的论文》（1995）中所论述的，这种数字化的方法抹去了可能有助于理解人们真实动机的重要背景信息。切里表示，基诺维斯的谋杀必须在一个对女性暴力不予重视的背景下来看待，并且人们不愿意介入可能是家庭纠纷的情况。此外，谋杀一名贫穷的黑人女性所引起的后续媒体关注将会少得多。但达利和拉塔内的关注使得结构性因素更难以被看见。
8 Is there a way of reconciling these two accounts of the self - the relational, worldembracing version, and the autonomous, inward one? The 20th-century Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin believed that the answer lay in dialogue. We need others in order to evaluate our own existence and construct a coherent self-image. Think of that luminous moment when a poet captures something you’d felt but had never articulated; or when you’d struggled to summarise your thoughts, but they crystallised in conversation with a friend. Bakhtin believed that it was only through an encounter with another person that you could come to appreciate your own unique perspective and see yourself as a whole entity. By “looking through the screen of the other’s soul”, he wrote, “I vivify my exterior.” Selfhood and knowledge are evolving and dynamic; the self is never finished - it is an open book.
8 是否有办法调和这两种自我观念——关系性、包容世界的版本和自主、内向的版本？20 世纪的俄罗斯哲学家米哈伊尔·巴赫金认为答案在于对话。我们需要他人来评估自己的存在并构建一个连贯的自我形象。想想那一瞬间，当一位诗人捕捉到你曾感受到但从未表达的东西；或者当你努力总结自己的想法时，它们在与朋友的对话中得以清晰。巴赫金认为，只有通过与他人的相遇，你才能欣赏自己独特的视角，并将自己视为一个完整的实体。他写道：“通过他人灵魂的屏幕看，我使我的外在生动起来。”自我和知识是不断演变和动态的；自我从未完成——它是一本开放的书。
9 So reality is not simply out there, waiting to be uncovered. “Truth is not born nor is it to be found inside the head of an individual person, it is born between people collectively searching for truth, in the process of their dialogic interaction,” Bakhtin wrote in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics (1929). Nothing simply is itself, outside the matrix of relationships in which it appears. Instead, being is an act or event that must happen in the space between the self and the world.
现实并不仅仅存在于外面，等待被揭示。“真理不是诞生于个体的头脑中，也不是可以在个体的头脑中找到的，它是在共同寻找真理的人们之间诞生的，存在于他们对话互动的过程中，”巴赫金在《陀思妥耶夫斯基的诗学问题》（1929）中写道。没有什么是单独存在的，超越它出现的关系矩阵。相反，存在是一种行为或事件，必须在自我与世界之间的空间中发生。
10 Accepting that others are vital to our self-perception is a corrective to the limitations of the Cartesian view. Consider two different models of child psychology. Jean Piaget’s theory of cognitive development conceives of individual growth in a Cartesian fashion, as the reorganisation of mental processes. The
接受他人对我们自我认知的重要性是对笛卡尔观点局限性的修正。考虑两种不同的儿童心理学模型。让·皮亚杰的认知发展理论以笛卡尔的方式构思个体成长，视其为心理过程的重组。
developing child is depicted as a lone learner - an inventive scientist, struggling independently to make sense of the world. By contrast, “dialogical” theories, brought to life in experiments such as Lisa Freund’s “doll house study” from 1990, emphasise interactions between the child and the adult who can provide “scaffolding” for how she understands the world.
发展中的儿童被描绘为一个孤独的学习者——一个富有创造力的科学家，独立地努力理解世界。相比之下，“对话式”理论在 1990 年丽莎·弗罗伊德的“玩偶屋研究”等实验中得以体现，强调儿童与能够为她理解世界提供“支架”的成人之间的互动。
11 A grimmer example might be solitary confinement in prisons. The punishment was originally designed to encourage introspection: to turn the prisoner’s thoughts inward, to prompt her to reflect on her crimes, and to eventually help her return to society as a morally cleansed citizen. A perfect policy for the reform of Cartesian individuals. But, in fact, studies of such prisoners suggest that their sense of self dissolves if they are punished this way for long enough. Prisoners tend to suffer profound physical and psychological difficulties, such as confusion, anxiety, insomnia, feelings of inadequacy, and a distorted sense of time. Deprived of contact and interaction - the external perspective needed to consummate and sustain a coherent self-image - a person risks disappearing into non-existence.
一个更严峻的例子可能是监狱中的单独监禁。这种惩罚最初旨在鼓励内省：让囚犯的思维向内转，促使她反思自己的罪行，并最终帮助她以道德洁净的公民身份重返社会。这是一个完美的政策，适合于笛卡尔式个体的改造。然而，实际上，对这些囚犯的研究表明，如果他们以这种方式受到惩罚的时间过长，他们的自我意识会逐渐消失。囚犯往往会遭受深刻的身体和心理困扰，如困惑、焦虑、失眠、自卑感和扭曲的时间感。失去接触和互动——维持和巩固一致自我形象所需的外部视角——一个人面临着消失于无形的风险。
12 The emerging fields of embodied and enactive cognition ${}^6$${}^6$^(6){ }^{6} have started to take dialogic models of the self more seriously. But for the most part, scientific psychology is only too willing to adopt individualistic Cartesian assumptions that cut away the webbing that ties the self to others. There is a Zulu ${}^7$${}^7$^(7){ }^{7} phrase, “Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu”, which means “A person is a person through other persons”. This is a richer and better account, I think, than “I think, therefore I am”.
12 新兴的具身和行动认知领域开始更加认真地对待自我的对话模型。但在大多数情况下，科学心理学仍然乐于接受个体主义的笛卡尔假设，这切断了自我与他人之间的联系。有一句祖鲁语短语“Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu”，意思是“一个人是通过其他人而成为一个人的”。我认为这比“我思故我在”更丰富、更好。

axiomatic/ææksiə’mætık/adj. something that is axiomatic does not need to be proved because you can easily see that it is true 不需证明的，不言自明的
公理的/ææksiə’mætık/形容词. 公理的事物不需要证明，因为你可以很容易地看到它是真实的。不需证明的，不言自明的
blurry /'bls:ri/ adj. indistinct or hazy in outline 模糊的
模糊的 /'bls:ri/ 形容词。轮廓不清晰或模糊。

inform /m’form/ $vt$$vt$vtv t. to influence someone’s attitude or opinion 影响（某人的态度或观点） entangle /m’tæygal/ $vt$$vt$vtv t. to involve someone in an argument, a relationship, or a situation that is difficult to escape from 使卷入，使陷入
告知 /m’form/ $vt$$vt$vtv t . 影响（某人的态度或观点） 纠缠 /m’tæygal/ $vt$$vt$vtv t . 使卷入，使陷入一个难以逃脱的争论、关系或情境
disconcerting //diskan’ss:try/ adj. making you feel slightly confused, embarrassed, or worried 令人困惑的, 令人尴尤的, 令人不安的
令人困惑的, 令人尴尬的, 令人不安的
contour /'kDntua/ $n$$n$nn. the shape of the outer edges of something such as an area of land or someone’s body 轮廓; 外形
轮廓 /'kDntua/ $n$$n$nn . 某物的外边缘形状，例如一片土地或某人的身体 轮廓; 外形
discern /dI’ssm/ $vt$$vt$vtv t. to notice or understand something by thinking about it carefully（仔细想过之后）觉察出，弄清楚，辨明
辨别 /dI’ssm/ $vt$$vt$vtv t . 通过仔细思考注意到或理解某事（仔细想过之后）觉察出，弄清楚，辨明
fickle /'fikal/ adj. someone who is fickle is always changing their mind about people or things that they like, so that you cannot depend on them 三心二意的, 靠不住的, 变化无常的 something such as weather that is fickle often changes suddenly (天气等) 变幻莫测的
变化无常的 /'fikal/ 形容词。一个三心二意的人总是对他们喜欢的人或事物改变主意，因此你无法依赖他们。三心二意的，靠不住的，变化无常的。像天气这样的事物变化无常，常常会突然改变。
erratic/I’rætik/ adj. something that is erratic does not follow any pattern or plan but happens in a way that is not regular 不规则的, 不确定的, 不稳定的
不规则的， 不确定的， 不稳定的
contemplative /kən’templativ, 'kdntəmplestıv/ adj. spending a lot of time thinking seriously and quietly 沉思的, 冥想的, 默想的
沉思的, 冥想的, 默想的
confines /'kdnfainz/ $n$$n$nn. limits or borders 范围，界限
范围，界限
inscribe / n 'skrarb/ $vt$$vt$vtv t. to carefully cut, print, or write words on something, especially on the surface of a stone or coin（尤指在石头或硬币表面）雕刻，印制，题写 purport /ps:'pot/ $vt$$vt$vtv t. to claim to be or do something, even if this is not true 声称 bystander /'bar,stændə/ $n$$n$nn. someone who watches what is happening without taking part 旁观者,局外人, 看热闹的人
刻字 / n 'skrarb/ $vt$$vt$vtv t . 小心地在某物上切割、印刷或书写文字，尤其是在石头或硬币的表面（尤指在石头或硬币表面）雕刻，印制，题写 声称 /ps:'pot/ $vt$$vt$vtv t . 声称是或做某事，即使这不是真的 旁观者 /'bar,stændə/ $n$$n$nn . 观看发生的事情而不参与的人 旁观者，局外人，看热闹的人
dilute /dar’lu:t/ $v$$v$vv t. to make a quality, belief etc. weaker or less effective 降低（质量）；削弱（信念）
稀释 /dar’lu:t/ $v$$v$vv 动词：使某种品质、信念等变得更弱或效果更差。
reconcile /'rekənsarl/ $vt$$vt$vtv t. if you reconcile two ideas, situations, or facts, you find a way in which they can both be true or acceptable 使和谐一致; 调和；协调
调和 /'rekənsarl/ $vt$$vt$vtv t . 如果你调和两个想法、情况或事实，你会找到一种它们都可以真实或可接受的方式 使和谐一致; 调和；协调
luminous /'lu:mannas/ adj. shining in the dark 发光的; 夜明的
发光的; 夜明的
crystallise /'kristəlarz/ $v$$v$vv. if an idea, plan etc. crystallises or is crystallised, it becomes very clear in your mind（使想法、计划等）变得明朗而具体
使想法、计划等变得明朗而具体
vivify /'viva,far/ $vt$$vt$vtv t. to give new life or energy to something 使生动, 使活跃
使生动，使活跃
solitary /'splètari/ adj. doing something without anyone else with you 单独的, 无伴的
单独的, 无伴的
introspection /,intra’spek $\int \partial n/n$$\int \partial n/n$int del n//n\int \partial n / n. the process of thinking deeply about your own thoughts, feelings, or behaviour 内省, 反省
内省 /,intra’spek $\int \partial n/n$$\int \partial n/n$int del n//n\int \partial n / n . 深入思考自己的思想、感受或行为的过程
insomnia / In’spmnia/ $n$$n$nn. if you suffer from insomnia, you are not able to sleep 失眠
失眠 /ɪn'sɑmniə/ $n$$n$nn . 如果你遭受失眠，你就无法入睡。
consummate /'kdnsomert/ $vt$$vt$vtv t. to make something complete, especially an agreement 实现, 完成 embody / rm’bddi/ $vt$$vt$vtv t. to be a very good example of an idea or quality 代表, 体现（思想或品质）
实现 /'kdnsomert/ $vt$$vt$vtv t . 使某事完整，特别是协议 代表 / rm’bddi/ $vt$$vt$vtv t . 是某个思想或品质的很好例子

Complete the following sentences using the expressions in the box below. Change the form where necessary.
完成以下句子，使用下面框中的表达。必要时改变形式。

A The “self”/ “other” distinction has a long-term influence in academia.
“自我”/“他者”区分在学术界有着长期的影响。
B Self-perception develops through impacts from others.
自我认知通过他人的影响而发展。
C Descartes was wrong, due to the “self”/ “other” distinction on selfhood.
笛卡尔是错的，因为在自我身份上存在“自我”/“他者”的区别。
8 Unit 1 8 单元 1

Read Paragraphs 3-4 and analyse the pattern the writer has used to explain Descartes’ opinion on selfhood.
阅读第 3-4 段，分析作者用来解释笛卡尔对自我的看法的模式。