拉岡講座245

拉岡講座245

Scepticism, certainty and the subject who is supposed to know
懷疑主義、確定性、與應該知道的主體

3
What distinguishes the Cartesian approach from the ancient search of the episteme, what distinguishes it from the skepticism that has been one of its terms, is what we shall try to articulate on the basis of the double function of alienation and separation.

區別笛卡爾的方法，跟古代認識論的尋求有何不同，區別它跟懷疑主義的術語有何不同，正是我們憑藉疏離與分裂的雙重功用的基礎，所要表達的內容。

What is Descartes looking for? He is looking for certainty. I have, he says, an extreme desire to learn to distinguish the true from the false—note the word desire—in order to see clearly—in what?— in my actions, and to walk with assurance in this life.

笛卡爾正在尋找什麼？他正在尋找確定性。他說：「我極度渴望要學會區別真理跟虛假」。請注意渴望這個字，他渴望清楚地看到什麼？「我渴望在我的這一生，在我的立身處世，我要確定知道，我到底為何而為。」

Is not this something quite different from the aim of knowledge? This approach is not that of a dialectician or a professor, still less that of a cavalier. It has been stressed that Descartes’ biography is marked above all by his wanderings in the world, his encounters and, after all, his secret ambition—
Larvatus prodeo. If I point this out, although I am one of those who regard concern for biography as secondary to the meaning of a work, it is because Descartes himself stresses that his biography,
his approach, is essential. to the communication of his method, of the way he has found to truth.

這難道不是相當迴異於知識的目標嗎？這個作風不是一位辯士或一位學者的作風，尤其不是一位浪漫騎士的作風。有人強調，笛卡爾的傳記的特色，尤其是在於他的漫遊各地，他的傳奇際遇，他深藏不露的尋求真理的企圖心。雖然我一向認為笛卡爾著作的偉大，遠勝過他的傳記，我還是指出這一點，那是因為笛卡爾本人強調，他以傳記作體驗的作風，對於他的研究的溝通及尋求真理的方式，是非常重要的。

He makes it quite clear that what he has given is not—as Bacon tried to do some years earlier—the general means of conducting one’s reason correctly, without abdicating it, for example, to experience. It is his own method, in so far as he set out in this direction with the desire to learn to distinguish the
true from the false in order to see clearly—in what? —in my actions. This example, then, is a particular one, and Descartes goes so far as to add that if what was for me, at a particular moment, my way, does not seem right for others, that is their affair, that they should gather from my experience what they
think is worth gathering. This forms part of the introduction by Descartes of his own way to science.

他清楚地表達，他提供我們的方法，跟培根早先幾年提供我們的方法不同。他的方法不是要尋求如何理性地安身立命，而是要親身體驗來證實。當他開始朝這個方向，渴望學習到如何區別真實跟虛假，他就是用這一套方法，看明白「自己的立身處世」。由於這個例子只是他自身的一個特例，笛卡爾繼續補充說：「在特殊時刻，適用於我的方式，似乎未必適用於別人。各人有各人的不同際遇，我的經驗充其量只供參考，他們應該收集他們認為值得收集的。」笛卡爾以科學作為真理之道，就這樣形成。

Does this mean that no knowledge is aimed at? Does it mean that knowledge weighs lightly in Descartes? Not at all, it is with this that he begins—there’s, enough knowledge around and to spare, there always has been, there still is. It is not I who have imposed this allusion here, but Descartes’ own text. He was trained by the best teachers, he was a pupil of the Jesuits at the College de La Flèche and there was no lack of knowledge, or of sapience, there.

這是否意味著，笛卡爾的目標是主觀體驗，而不是客觀知識？這是否意味著，客觀知識對於笛卡爾無足輕重？絕非如此！雖然他從主觀體驗出發，但是存在他四周圍的客觀知識，仍然綽綽有餘，始終存在，也一直存在。這不是我牽強附會，而是笛卡爾自己的文本記載。他接受過無數傑出師長的教導，他在拉、菲列齊學院，是耶穌會的門徒。那裡，客觀知識或雋永睿智，從來是不虞匱乏。

Shall I go so far as to say that it is not for nothing, that it is precisely a result of his Jesuit education, that he acquired his acute feeling of the superabundance of knowledge? Is there not at the heart of what is transmitted through a certain humanist wisdom something like a hidden perinde ac cadaver, which is not where it is usually placed, namely, in the supposed death that the rule of St Ignatius seems to require?

他博聞強識，觸類旁通，不是憑空而來，確實就是他曾接受過耶穌會教育的結果。我這樣說，不算是誇張罷？然而，這個人本主義薈萃的耶穌會核心，所傳遞的智慧，難道沒有透露出某些像是隱藏的「僵化教條」？這些僵化教條早已奄奄一息，依照聖、伊革拿提斯的規章所要求的，不是應該揚棄更新嗎？

Personally, I don’t feel very close to it, and these Jesuits, as I myself see them, from the outside, always seem to me to be very much there, not to say full of life —they make their presence felt, and with a diversity that is far from suggesting that of death. No, the death referred to here is that which is hidden behind the very notion of humanism, at the heart of any humanist consideration. And even when an attempt is made to animate the term as in the phrase the human sciences, there is something that we shall call a skeleton in the cupboard.

就我個人而言，我不覺得它已經到達如此地步。這些耶穌會教士，依我所見，從外表看來，他們似乎還是昂揚自在，有時甚至是意氣風發。他們到處耀武揚威，顯露多方才學，絲毫不會讓人聯想到是奄奄一息。不會的，這裡所提到的奄奄一息，是指人本主義這個觀念，由於背離人本主義的理想核心，所潛藏的危機。現在，即使有人企圖以人本科學這個詞語，使它振衰起蔽，但是我們還是覺得其核心價值，已經積重難返了。

It is here that Descartes finds a new way. His aim is not to refute uncertain knowledge. He is happy to let such knowledge run around quite freely, and with it all the rules of social life. Indeed, like everyone at this historical moment at the beginning of the seventeenth century, in that inaugural moment
of the emergence of the subject, he has present all around him a profusion of libertines who serve as the other term of the vel of alienation. They are in reality Pyrrhonians, sceptics, and Pascal calls them by their name, except that he does not stress in a sufficiently free way its meaning and implications.
Scepticism does not mean the successive doubting, item by item, of all opinions or of all the pathways that accede to knowledge.

笛卡爾就是在這個地方，開闢一條新路。他的目的不是要反駁客觀知識的不確定。他很樂意讓這樣的客觀知識，以及社會生活的規範，順其自然地運作。的確，十七世紀剛開始，是一個歷史轉捩點，是人本主義的主體剛出現的時刻。笛卡爾跟大家一樣，周圍環繞著一大群的自由主義份子。這些人後來充當疏離的欲望驅力的代名詞。他們實際上古代的庇羅主義者，也就是懷疑論者，巴斯卡就直接稱呼其名為懷疑論者，只是不恣意妄為地強調懷疑一詞的意涵及引伸。懷疑主義並不意味著不斷地懷疑，對於所有的意見，對於處理客觀知識的各項途徑，逐一懷疑。

It is holding the subjective position that one can know nothing. There is something here that deserves to be illustrated by the range, the substance, of those who have been its historical embodiments. I would show you that Montaigne is truly the one who has centred not around scepticism but around the living moment of the aphanisis of the subject. And it is in this that he is fruitful, that he is an eternal guide, who goes beyond whatever may be represented of the moment to be defined as a historical turning-point. But this is not scepticism.

人若只堅持主觀的立場，將永遠無法瞭解客觀的知識。任何事情的理解，端賴在歷史上躬逢其會者，他們的見識及才識的範圍。我舉個例子。哲學家蒙田的思想，就不是以人本的懷疑主義的為中心，而是以主體的失蹤作為生命的覺醒時刻為中心。在這一點，蒙田的成就輝煌，足以當我們永遠的嚮導。他超越所謂歷史轉捩點的可能的代表。但是，他並不是懷疑主義者。

Scepticism is something that we no longer know. Scepticism is an ethic. Scepticism is a mode of sustaining man in life, which implies a position so difficult, so heroic, that we can no longer even imagine it—precisely perhaps because of this passage found by Descartes, which led the search for the path of certainty to this very point of the vel of alienation, to which there is only one exit—the way of desire.

懷疑主義現在已經不再盛行。它是一門倫理學，是人安身立命的一種模式。它意味著，人生的處境如此艱難，如此悲壯，以致於它超越我們的想像能力。笛卡爾就在此時開闢一條新的通道。他引導我們尋求確定性的途徑，到達疏離的欲望驅力這裡。這裡只有一個出口，就是透過欲望的途徑

This desire for certainty led Descartes only to doubt—the choice of this way led him to operate a rather strange separation. I would simply like to touch on a few points, which will serve as reference points in grasping an essential function, masked though it may be, which is still vital, present and directive in
our method of investigating the unconscious.

尋求人生確定答案的欲望，導致笛卡爾處處懷疑。這條途徑的選擇，引導他進行一項奇異的分裂。我現在只想先說幾點，可以充當理解一個基本功能的指標。雖然這個功能隱而不顯，它的存在作為指標依舊很重要，當我們設法要探討無意識的時候。

雄伯譯
32hsiung@pchome.com.tw