How to Do Philosophy

September 2007 In high school I decided I was going to study philosophy in college.

2007 年 9 月 在高中时，我决定在大学学习哲学。

I had several motives, some more honorable than others.

我有几个动机，其中一些比其他的更光荣。

One of the less honorable was to shock people.

其中一项不太光荣的事情就是震惊人们。

College was regarded as job training where I grew up, so studying philosophy seemed an impressively impractical thing to do.

在我长大的地方，大学被视为职业培训，所以学习哲学似乎是一件非常不切实际的事情。

Sort of like slashing holes in your clothes or putting a safety pin through your ear, which were other forms

有点像在衣服上割洞或者用安全别针穿过耳朵，这些都是其他形式

of impressive impracticality then just coming into fashion.

令人印象深刻的不切实际然后才刚刚流行起来。

But I had some more honest motives as well.

但我也有一些更诚实的动机。

I thought studying philosophy would be a shortcut straight to wisdom.

我认为学习哲学是通往智慧的捷径。

All the people majoring in other things would just end up with a bunch of domain knowledge.

所有主修其他学科的人最终都会获得一堆领域知识。

I would be learning what was really what.

我会学习什么是真正的东西。

I'd tried to read a few philosophy books.

我尝试读一些哲学书籍。

Not recent ones; you wouldn't find those in our high school library.

不是最近的；你在我们高中的图书馆里找不到这些。

But I tried to

但我尝试过

read Plato and Aristotle.

读柏拉图和亚里士多德。

I doubt I believed I understood them, but they sounded like they were talking about something important.

我怀疑我是否相信自己理解了他们，但他们听起来像是在谈论一些重要的事情。

I assumed I'd learn what in college.

我以为我会在大学学到什么。

The summer before senior year I took some college classes.

高年级前的那个夏天，我参加了一些大学课程。

I learned a lot in the calculus class, but I didn't learn much in Philosophy 101.

我在微积分课上学到了很多东西，但是在哲学101上我学到的东西不多。

And yet my plan to study philosophy remained intact.

然而我学习哲学的计划仍然没有改变。

It was my fault I hadn't learned anything.

是我的错，我什么也没学到。

I hadn't read the books we

我没读过我们的书

were assigned carefully enough.

分配得足够仔细。

I'd give Berkeley's Principles of Human Knowledge another shot in college.

我会在大学里再次尝试伯克利的《人类知识原理》。

Anything so admired and so difficult to read must have something in it, if one could only figure out what.

任何如此令人钦佩且如此难以阅读的东西一定有其内涵，只要人们能够弄清楚其中的内容。

Twenty-six years later, I still don't understand Berkeley.

二十六年后，我仍然不了解伯克利。

I have a nice edition of his collected works.

我有一本很好的他的文集。

Will I ever read it?

我会读它吗？

Seems unlikely.

似乎不太可能。

The difference between then and now is that now I understand why

那时和现在的区别在于，现在我明白了为什么

Berkeley is probably not worth trying to understand.

伯克利可能不值得尝试去理解。

I think I see now what went wrong with philosophy, and how we might fix it.

我想我现在明白哲学出了什么问题，以及我们如何解决它。

Words I did end up being a philosophy major for most of college.

我所做的一切最终成为大学大部分时间的哲学专业。

It didn't work out as I'd hoped.

结果没有如我所愿。

I didn't learn any magical truths compared to which everything else was mere domain knowledge.

相比之下，我没有学到任何神奇的真理，其他一切都只是领域知识。

But I do at least know now why I didn't.

但我现在至少知道为什么我没有这么做。

Philosophy doesn't really have a subject matter in the way math or history or most other

哲学并不像数学、历史或大多数其他学科那样有一个主题

university subjects do.

大学科目是这样的。

There is no core of knowledge one must master.

没有一个人必须掌握的核心知识。

The closest you come to that is a knowledge of what various individual philosophers have said about different topics over the years.

最接近这一点的是了解多年来各个哲学家就不同主题所说的内容。

Few were sufficiently correct that people have forgotten who discovered what they discovered.

很少有人足够正确，以至于人们忘记了谁发现了他们的发现。

Formal logic has some subject matter.

形式逻辑有一些主题。

I took several classes in logic.

我选修了几门逻辑课。

I don't know if I learned anything from them.

我不知道我是否从他们身上学到了什么。