Let us take an example from contemporary history. It is evident now, for example, that the choice between private and public means, that choice which has obsessed so much recent political and economic discussion in underdeveloped countries, is not a matter of religious principle. It is not a moral issue to be decided on absolutist grounds, either by those on the right the use of public means as wicked and sinful, or by those on the ft who regard the use of private means as wicked and sinful. It is simply a practical question as to which means can best achieve the desired end. It is a problem to be answered not by theology but by experience and experiment. Indeed, I would suggest that we might well banish some overloaded words from intellectual discourse. These words no longer have clear meanings. They are sources of heat, not of light. They belong to the vocab ulary of demagoguery, not to the vocabulary of analysis.
让我们看一个当代的例子。例如，选择公有制还是选择私有制的问题，在发展中国家占据了如此多的政治经济讨论，现在已经很清楚了。它不是宗教的原则。它不是一个由绝对论者意见决定的道德问题，也不能被那些认为公有制是罪恶的右派，或那些认为私有制可耻的左派来决定。它不是理论能回答的问题，只能通过经验和试验来解决。我甚至提议在思想界和学术界的讨论中摒弃某些用滥了的词语，这些词语不再有清晰的含义。这些词语只能使头脑发热，而不会给人以智慧的光芒。它们是煽动的言辞，而不是分析的话语。
So, with the invention of the mixed society, pragmatism has triumphed over absolutism. As a consequence, the world is coming to understand that the mixed economy offered the instrumentalities through which one can unite social control with individual freedom. But ideology is a drug; no matter how much it is exposed by experience, the craving for it still persists. That craving will, no doubt, always persist, so long as there is human hunger for an all-embracing, all-explanatory system, so long indeed as political philosophy is shaped by the compulsion to return to the womb.
随着混合社会的发明，实用主义战胜了绝对论。由此，世界明白了混合经济提供了把社会控制和个人自由有机结合的手段。但意识形态体系就像毒品；不管实践怎样揭露它，对它的渴望依然存在。这种渴望无疑会永远存在，只要还有人渴望找到一种无所不包并能解释一切的意识形态体系。真的，只要政治哲学的形成仍受到追根溯源这种冲动支配。
来源:可可英语 http://www.kekenet.com/daxue/202006/610900.shtml
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