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The 18th century writer, David Hume, is one of the world's great philosophical voices because he hit upon a key fact about human nature - that we are more influenced by our feelings than by reason.
18世纪的作家大卫·休谟是世界上伟大的哲学之声之一，因为他偶然发现了一个关于人性的关键事实——我们更多地受感情而不是理性的影响。
This is, at one level, possibly a great insult to our self image, but Hume thought that if we could learn to deal well with this surprising fact, we could be both individually and collectively a great deal calmer and happier than if we denied it.
在某种程度上，这可能是对我们自我形象的极大侮辱，但休谟认为，如果我们能学会很好地处理这个令人惊讶的事实，我们个人和集体都会比否认这个事实更平静、更快乐。
Hume was born in Edinburgh in 1711, to a family that was long established but far from rich.
休谟1711年出生于爱丁堡，出生于一个历史悠久但并不富裕的家庭。
He was the second son and it was clear early on that he would need to find a job eventually, but nothing seemed to suit him.
他是家里的次子，很早就知道他最终需要找份工作，但似乎没有什么是适合他的。
He tried law, the vocation of his father and his older brother, but soon decided that it was: "a laborious profession, requiring the drudgery of a whole life."
他试过法律，这是他父亲和哥哥的职业，但很快就认定这是一种“辛苦的职业，需要一生的苦力。”
He was considered for academic posts at the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow, but he didn't land either job.
他曾被考虑在爱丁堡大学和格拉斯哥大学担任学术职务，但两个职位他都没有得到。
So, he set out to become a public intellectual, someone who would make his money selling books to the general public.
他开始成为一名公共知识分子，一个向公众出售书籍赚钱的人。
It was pretty hard-going.
真是太难了。
His first book, 'A Treatise of Human Nature', for which he had the highest hopes, met with a dismal reception.
他对自己的第一本书《人性论》寄予了极大的希望，但却遭到了冷遇。
"Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise", he wrote.
“从未有一次文学尝试比我的书更不幸，”他写道。
"It fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction as to even excite a murmur along the zealots."
“它从出版社夭折了，没有达到这样的效果，甚至激起了狂热者的杂音。”
But Hume kept at it, realising that the blame largely lay with the way that he had expressed his ideas.
但休谟坚持了下来，意识到责任主要在于他表达思想的方式。
And doggedly training himself to write in a more accessible and popular manner, eventually, he did find an audience.
他坚持不懈地训练自己，使自己的写作更加通俗易懂，最终，他获得了读者。
His later works: popular history books and collections of elegant essays were best-sellers of the day.
他后来的作品：通俗的历史书和优雅的散文集是当时的畅销书。
As he would say, not without some pride: "The money given me by booksellers much exceeded anything formerly known in England; I was to become not only independent but opulent."
正如他不无骄傲地说：“书商给我的钱远远超过了以前在英国所知道的任何东西；我不仅要独立，而且要富足。”
Humes philosophy is built around a single powerful observation: that the key thing we need to get right in life is feeling rather than rationality.
休谟的哲学是建立在一个强大的观察：我们需要在生活中得到正确的关键是感觉，而不是理性。
It sounds like an odd conclusion.
听起来是个奇怪的结论。
Normally we assume that what we need to do is train our minds to be as rational as possible, to be devoted to evidence and logical reasoning and committed to preventing our feelings from getting in the way.
通常我们认为我们需要做的是训练我们的头脑尽可能的理性，致力于证据和逻辑推理，并致力于防止我们的感情来阻碍。
But Hume insisted that whatever we may aim for - reason is the slave of passion.
但休谟坚持认为，无论我们的目标是什么，理性都是激情的奴隶。
We are more motivated by our feelings than by any of the comparatively feeble results of analysis and logic.
我们更受感情的驱使，而不是任何相对薄弱的分析和逻辑结果。
Few of our leading convictions had driven by rational investigations of the facts.
我们的主要信念很少是由对事实的理性调查推动的。
We decide whether someone is admirable, what to do with our spare time, what constitutes a successful career, or who to love on the basis of feeling above anything else.
我们决定一个人是否值得尊敬、如何利用业余时间、什么是成功的职业、要来爱谁，都是基于感觉。
Reason helps a little, but the decisive factors are bound up with our emotional lives, with our passions, as Hume calls them.
理性有一点帮助，但决定性的因素是与我们的情感生活与我们的激情，休谟如此说道。
Hume lived in a time known as the Age of Reason, when many claimed that the glory of human beings consists in their rationality, but for Hume a human is just another kind of animal.
休谟生活的时代被称为理性时代，当时许多人声称人类的荣耀在于他们的理性，但对休谟来说，人只是另一种动物。
Hume was deeply attentive to the curious way that we very often reason from not to our convictions.
休谟深深地注意到了我们常常的推理是从“确信”来，而不是到“确信”去。
We find an idea nice or threatening and on that basis alone declare it true or false.
我们发现一个想法是好的或有威胁性的，仅凭这个就可以宣布它是真是假。
Reason only comes in later to support the original attitude.
理性只是后来才出现，以支持原来的态度。
What Hume didn't believe however was that all feelings are acceptable and equal.
然而，休谟不相信的是，所有的感情都是可以接受和平等的。
That's why he firmly believed in the education of the passions.
这就是为什么他坚信激情的教育。
People have to learn to be more benevolent, more patient, more at ease with themselves and less afraid of others.
人们必须学会更仁慈、更耐心、更自在、更少害怕别人。
But to be taught these things they need an education system that addresses feelings rather than reason.
但要教会他们这些东西的话，他们需要一个教育体系，解决的是感情而不是理性。
This is why Hume so deeply believed in the role and significance of public intellectuals.
这就是为什么休谟如此坚信公共知识分子的作用和意义。
These were people who (unlike university professors that Hume grew to dislike immensely) had to excite a passion-based attachment to ideas, wisdom and insight.
这些人（不像休谟越来越讨厌的大学教授）必须激发对思想、智慧和洞察力的激情依恋。
Only if they succeeded would they have the money to eat.
只有成功了，他们才有钱来吃饭。
It was for this reason that they had to write well, use colorful examples and have recoursed wit and charm.
正是因为这个原因，他们必须写得好、使用丰富多彩的例子，并依靠智慧和魅力。
Hume's insight is that if you want to change people's beliefs, reasoning with them like a normal philosophy professor won't be the most effective strategy.
休谟的见解是，如果你想改变人们的信仰，像普通哲学教授那样与他们进行推理并不是最有效的策略。
He's pointing out that we have to try to adjust sentiments by sympathy, re-assurance, good example, encouragement and what he called "art".
他指出，我们必须通过同情、再肯定、好榜样、鼓励和他所说的“艺术”来调整情绪。
And only later, for a few determined souls, should we ever try to make a case on the basis of facts and logic.
只有到了后来，对于一些意志坚定的人来说，我们才应该试图在事实和逻辑的基础上提出理由。
A key place where Hume made use of the idea of the priority of feeling over reason was in connection with religion.
休谟运用情感优先于理性这一观点的一个关键之处是与宗教有关。
Hume didn't think it was rational to believe in god.
休谟认为信仰上帝是不合理的。
That is - he didn't think there were compelling logical arguments in favor of the existence of a deity.
也就是说，他认为没有令人信服的逻辑论据支持神的存在。
He himself seems to have floated between mild agnosticism (there might be a god, I'm not sure) and mild theism (there is a god, but it doesn't make much difference to me that there is).
他自己似乎在温和的不可知论（可能有上帝，我不确定）和温和的有神论（有上帝，但对我来说没有太大区别）之间徘徊。
However the idea of a vindictive god, someone ready to punish people in an afterlife for not believing in him in this one, this he considered a cruel superstition.
然而，关于一个恶意的上帝的想法：有人准备在来世惩罚不相信他的人，休谟认为这是一个残酷的迷信。
Hume's central point is that religious belief isn't the product of reason.
休谟的中心观点是宗教信仰不是理性的产物。
So arguing for or against it on the basis of facts doesn't touch the core issue.
因此，以事实为依据进行支持或反对，并不触及核心问题。
To try to persuade someone to believe or not believe with well-honed arguments seemed particularly daft to Hume.
在休谟看来，试图用精辟的论据说服某人相信或不相信，似乎特别愚蠢。
This is why he was a foremost defender of the concept of religious toleration.
这就是为什么他是宗教宽容观念的最重要的捍卫者。
We shouldn't treat those who disagree with us over religion as rational people who've made an error of reasoning and so need to be put right, but rather as passionate emotion-driven creatures who should be left in peace so long as they do likewise with us.
我们不应该把那些在宗教问题上与我们意见相左的人视为理性的人，他们在推理上犯了错误，因此需要纠正错误，而应该把他们视为充满激情的情感驱动的生物，只要他们和我们一样，就应该让他们平静下来。
Trying to have a rational argument over religion was for Hume the height of folly and arrogance.
对休谟来说，试图对宗教进行理性的辩论是愚蠢和傲慢的表现。
Hume was what is technically known as a skeptic - someone committed to doubting a lot of the common sense ideas of the day.
休谟被称为怀疑论者——一个致力于怀疑当时许多常识观点的人。
One of the things he doubted was the concept of what is technically called "personal identity".
他怀疑的一件事就是所谓的“个人身份”的概念。
The idea that we have that we can understand ourselves and have a more or less graspable and enduring identity that runs through life.
我们有这样一种观念，即我们能够理解自己，并拥有一种或多或少可以理解和持久的身份，这种身份贯穿于我们的一生。
Hume pointed out that there is no such thing as a "Core Self" "When I enter most intimately into what I call 'myself'", he famously explained,
休谟指出，当我最亲密地进入我所称的“我自己”时，根本没有“核心自我”这回事，他著名的解释是，
"I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure.
“我总是偶然发现一些特别的感觉或其他，热或冷，明或暗，爱或恨，痛苦或快乐。
I never can catch 'myself' at any time without a perception and can never observe anything but the perception."
我在任何时候都无法捕捉到没有知觉的‘我自己’，也无法观察到除了知觉之外的任何东西。”
Hume concluded that we aren't really the neat definable people reason tells us that we are and that we seem to be when we look at ourselves in the mirror or casually use that grand and rather misleading word 'I'.
休谟的结论是，我们并不是一个真正用理性可以定义的人，而且当我们照镜子时，或者随意地使用那个宏大的、相当误导人的词“我”时，我们似乎是。
Yet, despite being skeptical of temper Hume was very happy for us to hold onto most of our common-sense beliefs because they are what help us make our way in the world.
然而，尽管对脾气持怀疑态度，休谟还是很高兴我们能坚持大多数常识性的信念，因为它们帮助我们在这个世界上取得成功。
Trying to be rational about everything is a special kind of madness.
试图对每件事都保持理性是一种特殊的疯狂。
Hume was making a slight dig at Descartes.
休谟在挖苦笛卡尔。
The French philosopher had died 60 years before Hume was born.
这位法国哲学家在休谟出生前60年去世。
But his intellectual influence was still very much alive.
但其精神影响仍然非常活跃。
He had argued that we should throw out every fruit of the mind that wasn't perfectly rational.
他曾主张，我们应该抛弃一切不完全理性的思想成果。
But Hume proposed that hardly anything we do is ever truly rational.
但休谟提出，我们所做的任何事情都不是真正理性的。
And yet he ventured that most beliefs are justified simply because they work.
然而，他大胆地说，大多数信仰都是正当的，因为它们是有效的。
They're useful to us. They help us to get on with what we want to do.
它们对我们很有用，它们帮助我们继续做我们想做的事。
A test of a belief isn't its provable truth but its utility.
对一种信仰的检验不是它可证明的真理，而是它的效用。
Hume was offering a corrective which we sometimes badly need to our fascination with prestigious but not actually very important logical conundrums.
休谟提供了一个纠正的方法，我们有时迫切需要纠正我们对著名但实际上并不十分重要的逻辑难题的迷恋。
In opposition to academic niceties he was a skeptical philosopher who stood for common sense.
他是一个持怀疑态度的哲学家，主张常识，反对学术上的讲究。
Championing the everyday and the wisdom of the unlearned and the ordinary.
拥护普通人和普通人的日常生活和智慧。
Hume took a great interest in the traditional philosophical topic of Ethics.
休谟对伦理学这一传统哲学话题非常感兴趣。
A conundrum of how humans can be good.
人类如何成为好人的难题。
He argued that morality isn't about having moral ideas.
他认为道德不是要有道德观念。
It's about having been trained from an early age in the art of decency through the emotions.
这是关于从小就通过情感接受正派艺术的训练。
Being good means getting into good habits of feeling.
做好人意味着养成良好的感情习惯。
Hume was a great advocate of qualities like wit, good manners and sympathy because these are the things make people nice to be around outside of any rational plan to be good.
休谟是智慧、礼貌和同情心等品质的伟大倡导者，因为这些品质能使人在任何理性的计划之外变得善良。
He was hugely struck by the fact that a person and here again, he was thinking of Descartes could be ostensibly rational and yet, not that nice.
他被这样一个事实深深地打动了，他再一次想到笛卡尔表面上是理性的，但是，没有那么好。
Because being able to follow complex argument or deduce trends from data doesn't make you sensitive to the sufferings of others or skilled at keeping your temper.
因为能够遵循复杂的论据或从数据中推断出趋势，并不能使你对别人的痛苦敏感，也不能使你善于控制自己的脾气。
These qualities are the work of our feelings.
这些品质是我们感情的产物。
So, if we want people to behave well, what we need to do is to rethink education.
所以，如果我们希望人们表现良好，我们需要做的是重新思考教育。
We have to influence the development of feeling.
我们必须影响感情的发展。
We have to encourage benevolence, gentleness, pity and shame through the seduction of the passionate sides of our nature, without delivering dry, logical lectures.
我们必须鼓励仁慈、温柔、怜悯和羞耻，通过诱惑我们天性中充满激情的一面，而不是发表枯燥、合乎逻辑的演讲。
Hume's philosophy always emerged as an attempt to answer a personal question.
休谟的哲学总是试图回答个人的问题。
What is a good life? He wanted to know how his own character and that of those around him could be influenced for the best.
什么是好生活？他想知道怎样才能对自己和周围人的性格产生最好的影响。
And oddly, for a philosopher, he didn't feel the traditional practice of Philosophy could really help.
奇怪的是，作为一个哲学家，他并不觉得传统的哲学实践真的有帮助。
Though he was scholarly, he was in large part, a man of the world.
虽然他是学者，但在很大程度上，他是一个凡夫俗子。
For some years, he was an adviser to the British ambassador in Paris who welcomed his shrewd wisdom.
几年来，他一直是英国驻巴黎大使的顾问，人们都喜欢他精明的智慧。
He was much liked by those around him, known by the French as 'Le Bon David', a humane, kind and witty conversationalist, much in demand as a dinner companion.
他很受周围人的喜爱，法国人称他为“好大卫”，一个人道、善良、机智的健谈者，大家都很喜欢与他共进晚餐。
That's the way Hume lived.
休谟就是这样生活的。
Not in the intellectual seclusion of a monastery or ivory tower, but deeply embedded in the company of other humans, dining.
不是在修道院或象牙塔的知识隐居中，而是深深地植根于其他人的陪伴中。
He especially liked roast chicken, chatting about love and career and playing Backgammon.
他特别喜欢吃烤鸡，聊爱情和事业，玩西洋双陆棋。
Hume died in Edinburgh in August 1776, at home, in his house in St.Andrew's Square.
1776年8月，休谟在爱丁堡圣安得鲁广场的家中去世。
His doctor wrote about the last hours to Adam Smith, for many years, Hume's best friend.
他的医生给亚当·斯密写了关于最后几个小时的信，他是休谟多年来最好的朋友。
Hume remains a rather outstanding thing.
休谟仍然是一个相当杰出的人物。
A philosopher, alive to how much Philosophy can has to learn from common-sense.
他是一个意识到哲学可以从常识中学到许多东西的哲学家。
