到底什么是快乐
2010-08-11 01:44:37   来源：看英语   评论：0 点击：

　　As someone who writes about happiness, I'm often challenged to answer these three questions:

　　作为一个写有关“快乐”的文章的人，我通常被问到下面的3个问题：

　　1. How do I define "happiness," anyway?

　　我到底是如何定义“快乐”?

　　2. Instead of happiness, which is fleeting/deceptive/egotistical/illusory, isn't the real goal to achieve joy/contentment/satisfaction/peace/self-realization or [fill in the blank]?

　　与其追求“快乐”这种短暂的/骗人的/自私性的/虚幻的东西，难道我们不该追求愉快/满足/满意/平和/自我实现或其他什么吗?

　　3. How can we agree on what it means to achieve these states? What I mean by happiness might not be what you mean by happiness. You say happiness is a warm puppy; I say happiness is living alone in a cabin at Walden Pond; etc.

　　对于我们而言，实现这些状态意味着什么呢? 我对快乐的定义和你的不一样。你说快乐是一只温暖的小狗；我说快乐是独自住在Walden Pond的一间小木屋里面；等等。

　　In law school, we spent an entire semester discussing the meaning of a "contract," and I know all too well how a term can elude you as you try to define it. For the purposes of my happiness project, I decided not to worry about definitions too much. In scholarship, there's merit in defining terms precisely, and one positive psychology study identified fifteen different academic definitions of happiness, but when it came to my project, spending a lot of energy exploring the distinctions among "contentment," "positive affect," "subjective well-being," "hedonic tone," and a myriad of other terms didn't seem necessary. I decided instead to follow the hallowed tradition set by Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart, who defined obscenity by saying, "I know it when I see it."

　　在法学院，我们花了一整个学期讨论“合同”的定义，我很了解，越想定义一个术语，越难以抓住这个术语的含义。为了我的快乐计划，我决定不去考虑定义。在学术方面，准确定义术语是有价值的，有一个积极的心理学研究为快乐找出了十五种不同的学术定义，但是在我的计划里，似乎没有必要花很多精力探讨“自足”、“积极影响”、“主观幸福”、“享乐情调”等无数个其它术语之间的区别。相反，我决定追寻最高法院大法官波特斯图尔特的神圣传统——他用一句“当我看到它就会认出它”的话定义猥亵。