Absurdity and Suicide
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories — comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer. And if it is true, as Nietzsche claims, that a philosopher, to deserve our respect, must preach by example, you can appreciate the importance of that reply, for it will precede the definitive act. These are facts the heart can feel; yet they call for careful study before they become clear to the intellect.
荒诞与自杀
真正严肃的哲学问题只有一个，那就是自杀。判断人生是否值得活相当于回答最基本的哲学问题。其他的一切问题，诸如世界是否有三个维度，思维是否有九种或十二种类别，都在其次。这些都是游戏（而已）；人们首先必须要回答（这个问题）。如果真如尼采所言，一个哲学家要想赢得人们的尊敬则必须以身作则，（那么）你会意识到回答这一问题的的重要性，因为回答优先于最终的行动。（虽然）这些都是我们内心可以感受到的事实，但是还需要仔细研究下去，才能让它们在思想上更加清楚。
If I ask myself how to judge that this question is more urgent than that, I reply that one judges by the actions it entails. I have never seen anyone die for the ontological argument. Galileo, who held a scientific truth of great importance, abjured it with the greatest ease as soon as it endangered his life. In a certain sense, he did right. . . . That truth was not worth the stake. Whether the earth or the sun revolves around the other is a matter of profound indifference. To tell the truth, it is a futile question. On the other hand, I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see others paradoxically getting killed for the ideas or illusions that give them a reason for living (what is called a reason for living is also an excellent reason for dying). I therefore conclude that the meaning of life is the most urgent of questions. How to answer it? On all essential problems (I mean thereby those that run the risk of leading to death or those that intensify the passion of living) there are probably but two methods of thought: the method of La Palisse and the method of Don Quixote. Solely the balance between evidence and lyricism can allow us to achieve simultaneously emotion and lucidity. In a subject at once so humble and so heavy with emotion, the learned and classical dialectic must yield, one can see, to a more modest attitude of mind deriving at one and the same time from common sense and understanding.
如果我问自己，如何评判此问题比彼问题更加紧要，那么我回答，根据它所牵涉的行为去判断。我从未看到任何人为本体论而死。掌握一项重大科学真理的加利略，一旦真理使他的生命遭受危险，他便轻易抛弃真理。在某种意义上，他做的对。那一真理不值得（为它遭受）火刑。太阳和地球是否彼此绕着对方转完全是无关紧要的。说实话，这是一个无用的问题。在另一方面，我看到许多人因觉得人生不值得活而死。我看到另一些人为了那些给予他们生的理由的想法或幻想而矛盾地死去（所谓的生的理由，也是极好的死的理由）。因此我得出结论，人生的意义是最紧要的问题。如何回答这一问题呢？在一切基本问题上（因此我意思是在那些导致死亡风险或那些增加生活热情的问题上），可能仅有两种思考方式：拉帕利斯（La Palisse） 式和唐吉柯徳（Don Quixote）式。唯有（保持）现实与抒情之间的平衡，才能让我们同时获得感性和理智。可以看到，在一个既卑微又充满情感的主题中，学术的，经典的辩证法必须让步于一种更加谦逊的，既源自常识又源自理解的心态。
人生是否值得活这个问题会影响人的生死，因此是最紧要的问题。而思考这个问题的方法只有两种，要么是拉帕利斯式，要么是唐吉柯徳。
拉帕利斯以说自明之理出名，有句调侃他的话，“If he wasn't dead he would still be alive”，这正呼应了同样的自明之理，“如果人生没有意义，那去死好了。”；
唐吉柯徳追求骑士头衔而不得，于是他便自封自己是骑士，与幻想出来怪物搏斗。和拉帕利斯式的人生不同，唐吉柯徳式的人生觉得生命有意义，然而这意义是他自己构想出来的。
Suicide has never been dealt with except as a social phenomenon. On the contrary, we are concerned here, at the outset, with the relationship between individual thought and suicide. An act like this is prepared within the silence of the heart, as is a great work of art. The man himself is ignorant of it. One evening he pulls the trigger or jumps. Of an apartment-building manager who had killed himself I was told that he had lost his daughter five years before, that he had greatly changed since, and that the experience had “undermined” him. A more exact word cannot be imagined. Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined. Society has but little connection with such beginnings. The worm is in man’s heart. That is where it must be sought. One must follow and understand this fatal game that leads from lucidity in the face of existence to flight from light.
自杀一直被当作一种社会现象来对待。正好相反，我们在此从一开始就关注个人思想与自杀之间的关系。自杀这一行为正如一件伟大的艺术品，被酝酿在人们内心的幽静处，（但）自杀者本人对此却一无所知。（直到）某个夜晚，他扣动板机或纵身越下。我曾听说其中一位自杀身亡的公寓经理，他在自杀时的五年前失去了他的女儿，从那时起他就发生了巨大的变化，是他女儿的死“吞噬”了他。想不到比“吞噬”更准确的词了。开始思考正是开始被“吞噬”。社会与这种开始并没有什么联系。噬心虫是长在人们的心中。那正是它应该被探寻的地方。人们必须关注并且理解这场致命的游戏，它会导致（我们）从存在面前的清醒飞离光明。
There are many causes for a suicide, and generally the most obvious ones were not the most powerful. Rarely is suicide committed (yet the hypothesis is not excluded) through reflection. What sets off the crisis is almost always unverifiable. Newspapers often speak of “personal sorrows” or of “incurable illness.” These explanations are plausible. But one would have to know whether a friend of the desperate man had not that very day addressed him indifferently. He is the guilty one. For that is enough to precipitate all the rancors and all the boredom still in suspension.
自杀的原因有许多，并且通常最明显的原因并不是最有力的原因。很少有人在深思熟虑后自杀（但这一设想并不排除）。引发自杀危机的因素几乎总是无法证实的。报纸上经常（把原因）归结于“个人的悲痛”或“不治之症”。（虽然）这些解释看似合理，但我们得知道，在（自杀）那天，是否有那个绝望之人的某位朋友冷淡地和他说过话。（如果有）那位朋友是一位罪人，因为那足以引发一切仍在犹豫中的怨恨和厌倦。
But if it is hard to fix the precise instant, the subtle step when the mind opted for death, it is easier to deduce from the act itself the consequences it implies. In a sense, and as in melodrama, killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it. Let’s not go too far in such analogies, however, but rather return to everyday words. It is merely confessing that that “is not worth the trouble.” Living, naturally, is never easy. You continue making the gestures commanded by existence for many reasons, the first of which is habit. Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized, even instinctively, the ridiculous character of that habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation, the uselessness of suffering.
然而，如果确定思想选择死亡那微小一步的精确时刻很困难，那么从自杀行为本身推断它所暗含的后果则相对容易。在某种意义上，正如情节剧中（上演）那样，自杀相当于一种承认，承认人生对你而言太过艰难，或承认你不理解人生。然而，我们还是不要在这种类比中走的太远，而是回到日常用语中来，这只不过是在承认“人生不值得如此麻烦”。自然而然，人生绝不是安逸的。出于多种原因，你不断地做着被生活所支配的事，其中头一个原因是习惯。自杀意味着你已经意识到，甚至是出于本能地意识到这种习惯的荒诞性，意识到（能让自己）活下去的深刻理由的匮乏，意识到那种日常焦躁的反常性，意识到遭受（这一切）的无用。
What, then, is that incalculable feeling that deprives the mind of the sleep necessary to life? A world that can be explained even with bad reasons is a familiar world. But, on the other hand, in a universe suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels an alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and his setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity. All healthy men having thought of their own death, it can be seen, without further explanation, that there is a direct connection between this feeling and the longing for death
那么，是什么不可估量的感觉剥夺了对生命而言不可或缺的精神睡眠呢？即使一个被用蹩脚理由解释的世界也是一个熟悉的世界，然而，在另一方面，在一个被剥夺了幻想和光明的宇宙中，人们会感觉自己是一个局外人，一个陌生人。这种自我的流放无可救药，因为他被剥夺了对遗失家园的记忆和对应许之地的希望。这种个人与其人生之间的背离，（就像）演员与其人设的背离，正是荒诞感。所有健全的人都考虑过自杀，无需进一步解释就可以看出，这种感觉和对死亡的渴望有直接的联系。
The subject of this essay is precisely this relationship between the absurd and suicide, the exact degree to which suicide is a solution to the absurd. The principle can be established that for a man who does not cheat, what he believes to be true must determine his action. Belief in the absurdity of existence must then dictate his conduct. It is legitimate to wonder, clearly and without false pathos, whether a conclusion of this importance requires forsaking as rapidly as possible an incomprehensible condition. I am speaking, of course, of men inclined to be in harmony with themselves.
这篇文章的主题正是（讨论）荒诞与自杀的这种关系，即在多大程度上，自杀是荒诞的解决办法。对一个不会弄虚作假的人，一个原则能被确立，即某人所信以为真的事物一定决定他的行为。于是，对存在的荒诞性的信念也必定会支配人的行为。（因此我们）有理由明确地并非虚情假意地想知道，此重要事物（指荒诞性）的结果是否是要求人尽可能快地摒弃无法理解的境况。当然，我所谈论的是那些倾向于和自己和谐共处的人。
Stated clearly, this problem may seem both simple and insoluble. But it is wrongly assumed that simple questions involve answers that are no less simple and that evidence implies evidence. A priori and reversing the terms of the problem, just as one does or does not kill oneself, it seems that there are but two philosophical solutions, either yes or no. This would be too easy. But allowance must be made for those who, without concluding, continue questioning. Here I am only slightly indulging in irony: this is the majority. I notice also that those who answer “no” act as if they thought “yes.” As a matter of fact, if I accept the Nietzschean criterion, they think “yes” in one way or another. On the other hand, it often happens that those who commit suicide were assured of the meaning of life. These contradictions are constant. It may even be said that they have never been so keen as on this point where, on the contrary, logic seems so desirable. It is a commonplace to compare philosophical theories and the behavior of those who profess them. But it must be said that of the thinkers who refused a meaning to life none except Kirilov who belongs to literature, Peregrinos who is born of legend, and Jules Lequier who belongs to hypothesis, admitted his logic to the point of refusing that life. Schopenhauer is often cited, as a fit subject for laughter, because he praised suicide while seated at a well-set table. This is no subject for joking. That way of not taking the tragic seriously is not so grievous, but it helps to judge a man.
说的清楚点，这个问题似乎可能即简单又难以解决。但（我们若）假定这种简单的问题就包含同样简单的答案，现实暗含现实，那就错了。先验且颠倒问题项，正如一个人是自杀还是不自杀问题那样，它似乎仅有两个哲学的解决办法，要么“是”，要么“否”。这将太简单了。但必须考虑那些还没有结论而继续提出疑问的人。在这里，我并没有讽刺的意思：这样做的人是大多数。我还注意到一些人，他们回答“否”，可行为却好像他们认为是“是”一样。事实上，如果我采用尼采的标准，他们是在以这样或那样的方式认为“是”。在另一方面，经常出现（的一种情况是），那些自杀的人对生命的意义是确定的。这些矛盾是不断的。甚至可以说，相反地，在逻辑似乎可取的这点上，他们从未如此渴求。虽然将哲学理论与宣称这些理论的人的行为相比较，是老生常谈的事。但必须指出的是，在那些拒绝承认生命意义的思想家中，除了文艺作品中基里洛夫、被传奇人物佩雷格里诺斯以及传说中的朱尔斯·莱基尔，没有一个将推演逻辑到拒接人生的那个点上。叔本华经常作为一个合适的取笑对象被提起，因为他曾在丰盛的餐桌上赞美自杀。这件事不好笑。那种不严肃谈论悲剧的方式不是多么严重的事，但它可以用来评判一个人。
In the face of such contradictions and obscurities must we conclude that there is no relationship between the opinion one has about life and the act one commits to leave it? Let us not exaggerate in this direction. In a man’s attachment to life there is something stronger than all the ills in the world. The body’s judgment is as good as the mind’s, and the body shrinks from annihilation.We get into the habit of living before acquiring the habit of thinking. In that race which daily hastens us toward death, the body maintains its irreparable lead. In short, the essence of that contradiction lies in what I shall call the act of eluding because it is both less and more than diversion in the Pascalian sense. Eluding is the invariable game. The typical act of eluding, the fatal evasion that constitutes the third theme of this essay, is hope. Hope of another life one must “deserve” or trickery of those who live not for life itself but for some great idea that will transcend it, refine it, give it a meaning, and betray it.
面对如此矛盾和晦涩的问题，我们必定会得出如此结论，即一个人对人生的看法与其逃避它所采取的做法之间没有关联吗？在这方面，我们还是不要夸大其词。在一个人与其人生的联系中，存在着某种比世间一切苦难都要强大的东西。身体的判断不亚于精神的判断，且身体从毁灭开始萎缩。我们在养成思考的习惯之前就养成了谋生的习惯。在那场催使我们走向死亡的竞赛中，身体始终保持着它不可挽回的领先地位。总而言之，那种矛盾的本质建立在被我称之为“逃避”（eluding）的行为上，因为他比帕斯卡尔（Blaise Pascal）意思下的“转移”（diversion），即多了些（含义），也少了些（含义）。“逃避”（eluding）是一场永恒不变的游戏。这种“逃避”的典型行为，即致命的逃离，是希望，它构成了本文的第三个主题。对另一种“值得活”的人生的希望，或对那些不是为了生活本身而是为了某些崇高理想而活的人的欺骗，二者将超越人生，升华人生，赋予人生某种意义，（但也）背叛了人生。
Thus everything contributes to spreading confusion. Hitherto, and it has not been wasted effort, people have played on words and pretended to believe that refusing to grant a meaning to life necessarily leads to declaring that it is not worth living. In truth, there is no necessary common measure between these two judgments. One merely has to refuse to be misled by the confusions, divorces, and inconsistencies previously pointed out. One must brush everything aside and go straight to the real problem. One kills oneself because life is not worth living, that is certainly a truth—yet an unfruitful one because it is a truism. But does that insult to existence, that flat denial in which it is plunged come from the fact that it has no meaning? Does its absurdity require one to escape it through hope or suicide—this is what must be clarified, hunted down, and elucidated while brushing aside all the rest. Does the absurd dictate death? This problem must be given priority over others, outside all methods of thought and all exercises of the disinterested mind. Shades of meaning, contradictions, the psychology that an “objective” mind can always introduce into all problems have no place in this pursuit and this passion. It calls simply for an unjust—in other words, logical—thought. That is not easy. It is always easy to be logical. It is almost impossible to be logical to the bitter end. Men who die by their own hand consequently follow to its conclusion their emotional inclination. Reflection on suicide gives me an opportunity to raise the only problem to interest me: is there a logic to the point of death? I cannot know unless I pursue, without reckless passion, in the sole light of evidence, the reasoning of which I am here suggesting the source. This is what I call an absurd reasoning. Many have begun it. I do not yet know whether or not they kept to it.
这样下去，任何东西都制造困惑。到目前为止，努力还没有白费，人们已经在玩弄文字游戏，并且假装相信了如此论断，即拒绝赋予人生以意义必将导致人生不值得活。事实上，在这两种判断之间并没有必然的共同标准。只不过，人们得妨止被上文所指出的困惑、逃离和矛盾所误导。人们必须撇开一切而去直面真正的问题。一个人由于人生不值得活而去自杀，这无疑是事实，但却是一个无用的事实，因为这是一个自明之理。但那种对生存的践踏，那种让生活深陷其中的断然否定， 是来自于人生无意义这一事实吗？难道人生的荒诞性要求人通过希望或自杀来摆脱它吗？──抛开其他的一切问题，这正是那种必须要被澄清，被查明和被阐明的问题。是荒诞造成了自杀吗？这个问题必须被给予比其他问题的更高的优先级，超出一切思想的方法和一切客观精神的实践。 意义，矛盾以及客观精神总能够介入其全部问题的心理学，此三者的身影将在这场追逐和这种情感中无处遁形。（考虑）该问题仅仅需要一种不公正的──或者换个词，逻辑的──思想。这并不容易。（思想）合乎逻辑通常很容易，但到痛苦的最后还合乎逻辑这几乎不可能。因此，那些亲手将自己杀死的人才跟随自己情感的变化走向终点。对自杀的思考给我一个机会去提出唯一令我感兴趣的问题：到了死亡的终点还是否存在逻辑？除非在这唯一的事实和我正提议的源头的推理里，不带鲁莽情感地探求，否则我不可能知道（该问题的答案）。这就是我所谓的荒诞推理。许多人已经开始这一探索了。我不知到他们是否还在坚持。
When Karl Jaspers, revealing the impossibility of constituting the world as a unity, exclaims: “This limitation leads me to myself, where I can no longer withdraw behind an objective point of view that I am merely representing, where neither I myself nor the existence of others can any longer become an object for me,” he is evoking after many others those waterless deserts where thought reaches its confines. After many others, yes indeed, but how eager they were to get out of them! At that last crossroad where thought hesitates, many men have arrived and even some of the humblest. They then abdicated what was most precious to them, their life. Others, princes of the mind, abdicated likewise, but they initiated the suicide of their thought in its purest revolt. The real effort is to stay there, rather, in so far as that is possible, and to examine closely the odd vegetation of those distant regions. Tenacity and acumen are privileged spectators of this inhuman show in which absurdity, hope, and death carry on their dialogue. The mind can then analyze the figures of that elementary yet subtle dance before illustrating them and reliving them itself.
在卡尔·雅斯贝尔斯揭示世界不可能作为一个统一体去构建时，他解释说，“这个限制将我引向自身。在那里，我再也不能退回到我正表达的客观观点之后；在那里，我自身以及他人的存在对我而言再也不是客体”。步许多人后尘，他正在干涸的沙漠里呼唤，在那里，思想已经到达了它们的边界。是的，步许多人后尘，但他们是多么渴望摆脱这一切啊！在那个思想踌躇的最后的十字路口，许多人，甚至一些最卑微的人，都已经抵达。然后，他们放弃了对他们来说最宝贵的东西—他们的生命。另一些人，精神领域的王子们，同样也做出了放弃。但他们是在精神最纯粹的反抗中发起自己精神的自杀。真正的努力是停在十字路口，尽可能地停在那儿，仔细地去考察那些遥远地区的奇花异草。坚韧和敏锐是这场冷酷表演的特许观众，在这场表演中，荒诞、希望和死亡进行着它们的对话。于是，先用思想去分析这场基本但又微妙的舞姿，然后再对其进行解释并重新体验。