Leisure, Freedom and Liberal Education
休闲，自由以及自由教育
1. Generally speaking, a liberal education, as the name suggests, is an education for freedom. As one commentator describes it, “a liberal education ought to make a person independent of mind, skeptical of authority and received views, prepared to forge an identity for himself or herself, and capable of becoming an individual not bent upon copying other persons.” Accordingly, liberal education is often valued or justified as a means for acquiring the critical thinking skill that are necessary to attain individual autonomy as well as for meeting the demands of an ever changing world. Given this important yet broad purpose, no wonder there is such a vast array of subjects and disciplines that fall within the purview of liberal education.
一般来说，顾名思义，通才教育是一种自由的教育形式。正如一名评论家所描述的，通才教育应当使人思想独立、敢于质疑权威和别人的观点，并为自己建立一个代表自己身份的观点，并能使人有能力成为独立个体，而不是去效仿他人。因此，通才教育被证明或被评价为获得批判性思维，并以获得个人的自由独立以及适应多变世界需求的一种手段。考虑到这种重要用途，毫无疑问，如此众多的学科和准则都属于通才教育的范畴。
2. While this understanding of liberal education as the acquisition of critical thinking skill and individual autonomy is currently in fashion, it is not the only understanding. Traditionally, the ultimate purpose of liberal education had been the pursuit of leisure not critical thinking skills. While developing a critical mind was included in liberal studies, the ultimate purpose was to cultivate a life of contemplation that transcends the workday world. Liberal education for leisure sought to break through a disenchanted view of the world and awaken wonder at mere being.
将通才教育看作是获得批判性思维能力和个人的独立自由的观点在现在很流行，但这不是唯一的理解。传统上，通才教育的最终目的是追求自由的思想，而不是批判性思维能力。虽然发展批判性思想包括于通才教育中，但终极目标是要对生活的思考态度超越平凡的世界。追求休闲的通才教育要打破不再对世界抱有幻想的观点，并唤醒人们的好奇心。
3. To contemporary eras, an education for leisurely contemplation may sound nostalgic, impractical, or even elitist. A Deweyan might regard the promotion of education for leisure as a reversion to an ancient and outdated hierarchical social stratum that promotes escapism and the status quo. And yet this was neither the intention nor the effect of leisure in the traditional understanding. Rather, leisure involved a humble and intense practice of self-examination so as to ensure a genuine freedom. Freedom, it was thought, was not simply the result of critical thinking but also required a vigilant receptivity—a stillness from the busy world of work and the restive probing of a discursive mind. Proponents maintained that this stillness was necessary for beholding and receiving the fullest disclosure of being, and they considered it the foundation of authentic freedom.
对当代人来说，追求自由思想的教育听起来有些怀旧、不现实，更像是精英主义所为。杜威把休闲看作是恢复到古代的、过时的社会等级制度，使人们更加逃避现实，安于现状。然而，在传统理解上，这既不是休闲的意图也不是休闲的作用。确切地说，休闲包括谦逊、认真的自我反省以确保真正意义上的自由，人们认为自由不仅仅是批判性思维的结果，还包括警惕的接受能力——从繁忙的工作中，回归内心平和、坚持探索的心灵。支持者认为这种平和是领悟和接受最真实的现实所必需的，是真正自由的基础。
4. Today, the conditions of modern life suggest how out of place a call for leisure sounds. The preponderance of our attention, observes Abraham Heschel, is directed toward utilitarian pursuits, including the exploitation of our world’s resources. Surveying contemporary Western culture, Josef Pieper also notes the ascendancy of work for work’s sake. Max weber’s statement, “One does not only work in order to live, but on lives for the sake of one’s work,” captures, the prevailing mind-set of our time. This work-obsessed culture makes total claims on time and space, reducing learning to “the way of expediency,” wherein information and knowledge are accumulated for power and mastery. Universities, rather than being a space apart from the world of work, become engrossed by it.
如今，现代生活的条件表明，追求休闲是多么地不合时宜。由亚伯拉罕所观察到的，我们大部分的注意力都是对实用主义的追求，甚至包括对自然资源的利用上太过功利。审视当代的西方文化，约瑟夫﹒皮珀也认为为工作而工作具有普遍性。马克思﹒韦伯也指出，人不仅是为了活着而工作，而是为了工作而活着，这反映了所盛行的思维方式。工作狂文化使所有的人都在争取时间和空间，学习已沦为一种权宜之计，信息和知识的积累只是为了未来的权利和控制。大学现在不再是一个远离工作的场所，反而是过度关注它。
5. Given such conditions, leisure does contradict the values that drive modern life. However, it is in light of this hegemonic ethos of work that l submit educators should be interested in the historic association of liberal education and leisure. A liberal education for leisure offers a valuable defense against the world of work that a liberal education for critical thinking is vulnerable to. More important, leisure offers a valuable way of learning that ushers in an authentic freedom that a critical approach to learning and liberal education does not.
从这种角度，休闲的确与现代生活的价值观相冲突。尽管如此，正是鉴于这种霸道的工作作风，我主张教育者应该更关注那些历史悠久的研究通才教育和休闲教育的协会。休闲教育能够为工作世界的观点提供强有力的反驳，而这种观点认为通才教育旨在培养批判教育的方式是不堪一击的。更重要的是，休闲教育提供了一种开创了真正自由的非常宝贵的学习方式，而这是培养批判性思维学习方式所不能做到的。
6. In short, cultivating a leisured way of life has been and ought to be an essential part of what is considered a liberal education. A liberal education for leisure, it will be shown, holds some challenging initiatives for the way liberal education is often conceived and practiced.
总之，培养一种休闲的生活方式不仅过去是、也应该是通才教育的很重要的组成部分。追求休闲的通才教育会被证明是具有挑战性的措施，这才是通才教育所设计和实施的方式。
Leisure and Freedom 休闲与自由
7. Though far from passive, leisure can be misconstrued as a form of quietism. As noted, a Deweyan or Marxist critic might contend that leisure, in cultivation passivity, maintains the status quo and thus fails to address or embolden the free agency required to promote social change. This criticism is specious. Rather than passivity, the leisure that Pieper and Heschel call forth involves an intense practice of self-examination that cultivates true freedom by guarding against idleness, compulsive busyness, and pointless desires.
尽管休闲绝非被动，但仍被大家误解为清净无为。如上所述，杜威流派或马克思主义批判者主张既然休闲是被动的维持现状，那它就不能应对推动社会变革的自由意志。这些批判似是而非，而皮珀和赫舍尔推崇的休闲并不是被动的，它认为休闲是一种通过阻止懒散、强制性的忙碌和无意义的欲望来培养真正自由的自我反省式的实践。
8. Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Elder Zossima in The Brothers Karamazov illuminates this point when he contrasts worldly freedom with the freedom cultivated by monks. Worldly freedom, Zossima argues, is more often than not a form of slavery to countless unnecessary desires. Accordingly, worldly freedom is externally understood as the ability to satisfy desires. What this means for the rich, he says, is “isolation and spiritual suicide; for the poor, envy and murder, for they have been given rights, but have not yet been shown any way of satisfying their needs.” Such a person is not free but a slave “to satisfying the innumerable needs they have invented for themselves.”
菲奥多尔·陀斯妥耶夫斯基在《卡拉马佐夫兄弟》中塑造的长老若司马在对比世俗自由和僧侣追求的自由时解释了这个观点。若司马认为世俗自由是满足无谓欲望的奴隶。因此，从表面上看，世俗自由可以理解成一种满足欲望的能力。他说：“对于富人来讲，世俗自由是孤立无援和精神自杀；对于穷人来讲，则是嫉妒和谋杀。虽然他们被赋予这种权利，却没有任何办法来满足他们的需求。”这种人不是自由的，只是满足自我设想的无穷无尽需求的奴隶。
9. Zossima contrasts worldly freedom against monastic freedom, characterized as it is by obedience, fasting, and prayer. These practices, he notes, are laughed at, but it is only through them that one is able to cut away superfluous needs, humble oneself, and thereby attain true interior freedom. The monk’s freedom, while seemingly passive, is in truth a deeper, more vigilant pursuit of freedom.
若司马将世俗自由与僧侣自由进行比较，认为僧侣自由的特点是顺从、禁食、祷告。尽管僧侣的这些做法被人们取笑，但只有如此僧侣才能去掉多余的需求，谦逊自我，获得真正的内在的自由。他们的自由看似被动却是实质的深层次的对自由警醒的追求。
10. Gandhi in the Hind Swaraj articulated this same point. Indians, he said, in their haste to expel the British from their homeland failed to see how their oppression had become internalized. Once the British left India, whether by force or voluntarily, Indians would still be oppressed. Gandhi described it this way: “we want English rule without the Englishman. You want the tiger’s nature, but not the tiger; that is to say, you would make India English, and, when it becomes English, it will be not Hindustan but English. This is not the Swaraj that I want.” What was needed was the attainment of true freedom—or Swaraj, as Gandhi called it —which was often misunderstood as simply expelling the British while keeping their political, military, and economic institutions.
甘地在他的《印度自制》中也明确的表述了这样的观点。他说，尽管印度急于把英国人驱逐出去，却没有看到他们的压迫变得内在化了。不论是被迫还是自愿，英国人虽然离开了，但是印度仍旧是受压迫的民族。甘地这样描述到：“我们想要英国式的统治，而非英国人的统治，就如同你想要老虎的天性而非老虎本身一样。也就是说，你将会使印度英国化。当印度真正英国化以后，就不是真正的印度而是英国化的印度。那不是我们想要的自制。”正像甘地提到的，印度需要获得的是真正的自由--自制。但这种自制又常被误导为仅仅是驱逐英国人，并保留其政治、军队和经济体制。
11. Instead, Gandhi explained, Swaraj involves a deep personal transformation wherein we learn to rule ourselves. It is “something that has to be experienced internally, giving rise to an internal moral transformation for the individual.” Lacking this, he said, Indians become captives to the marketplace and its ratio-dominated epistemology. Moreover, as a consequence, Indians accept the charge that they are a lazy people and that the Europeans are an enterprising and industrious people. This mistaken view stirs up a restlessness to change their condition. In their haste to be free like the English, Indians forget their religious traditions that teach them “to remain passive about worldly pursuits and active about godly pursuits,” and thus give in to the total claims made by the world of work. Focused only on material goods and external freedom, Indians forget their spiritual or interior freedom.
相反，甘地认为，自制指的是一个深层次的转变，在这种转变中印度人要学会自制。它是“一种内在的转变，会引起每个人道德观的改变。”缺少这种改变，印度人就会沦为肉体和精神上的双重奴隶。所以，印度接受了印度人是懒惰的，而欧洲人是进取的、勤劳的这样的指责。这种错误的观点使印度人急于改变自己，以至于在追逐英国自由化的同时，忘记了他们的宗教传统：“止步于世俗追求，执着于虔诚的信仰。”最终印度只能屈从于工作世界创造的东西。只注重于物质世界和外在自由，忘记了他们的精神世界和内在自由。
Education For Leisure针对休闲的教育
12. Given the intrinsic value of leisure, what would an education dedicated to leisure consist of today? How might an emphasis on leisure change the curriculum and educational practice? In attempting to answer these questions, it is helpful first to examine the discursive approach to learning, exploring how it informs contemporary education.
鉴于休闲的内在本质，致力于休闲的教育在如今会由哪些东西构成呢？强调休闲的教育又将如何改变课程设置和教育实践呢？首先把验证式学习法弄清楚对回答这些问题是有帮助的。
13. The discursive approach is perhaps best exemplified in the scientific method that discovers a problem, formulates a hypothesis, and then conducts experiments to measure or assess the validity of that hypothesis. Discursive thinking is also a central part of the Socratic method, wherein a thesis or point of view is offered, followed by a counterpoint, culminating in a rigorous dialectic that seeks to discover a new and better conclusion. The outcomes reached by both scientists and dialecticians are always tentative, continually subject to further questioning. The provisional nature of such inquiry lends itself to a critical mind-set, prone to doubting, problematizing, and questioning.
验证法可能是科学研究方法中的一个最好的例证，即发现问题、提出假设，然后进行试验来验证假设的正确性。验证思维同时也是苏格拉底问答法的核心部分，在苏格拉底问答法中，先提出一个论点或观点，之后是与之对应的论据，然后在严密的辩证法中将该论点逐步升华，得出一个新的或较好的结论。由科学家和辩证学家得出的结论仍然是初步性的，会继续受到质疑。这种探究的暂时性特点有助于形成批判性思维，即倾向于怀疑、提问、质疑。
14. This discursive mind-set is pervasive, seemingly touching every aspect of present day education: in math classes, students are presented with problem; in literature and history classes, questions are entertained; in chemistry and biology classes, labs are designed to provide students with opportunities to experiment and text theories. Moreover, the annual battery of standardized tests seeks to quantify students’ abilities to think critically.
论证思维模式很普遍，似乎渗透到了当今教育的各个方面：在数学课上，学生需解决问题；在文学或历史课上，学生需思考问题；在化学或生物课上，实验课为学生提供实验或检验理论的机会。更重要的是，每年的一系列标准化测试来量化学生批判性思维的能力。
15. Given the dominance of discursive thinking, it is hard to imagine a place for leisure in today’s curriculum. It is not my intention to displace or overturn discursive thinking; its value is well established, but such thinking is vulnerable to abuse. The concern of medieval monks about dialectics being driven more by a love of winning than a desire for wisdom is still valid today.
鉴于论证思维如此之盛行，很难想象在如今的课程中会有休闲教育的一席之地，我并不是想取代或颠覆论证思维法；论证思维的价值是公认的，但是它很容易被滥用。中世纪时期僧侣们对于辩证法的热衷，更多是出于争强好胜而非对于智慧的追求，这种情况现在依然如此。
16. To consider a place for leisure, it is helpful to further compare and contrast leisurely versus discursive approaches to learning. Leisure, as noted, is a form of beholding. It is the step prior to the discursive ratio. Before doubting or questioning can occur, something must have been seen and observed. Thus ratio and intellectus need not be in conflict. The problem, though, is the rush to exploit or problematize that which is seen. For instance, consider a person walking in the woods who suddenly stumbles upon a beautiful field of grass. Such a person, rather than encountering the field in all its grandeur, might quickly jump to considerations of what practical good can be made of it. Perhaps to one person such a field is a valuable piece of real estate for a housing development, to another it is a perfect place to walk a dog, and yet to another it is an ideal place to play football .Or perhaps another person inclined toward scientific scrutiny might ask how, amid a vast forest with trees pollinating every spring, did such a field come to exist? Often one’s interest or agenda can determine and limit how and what one sees.
休闲教育要想拥有一席之地，需要同论证法进行对比。如前所述，休闲是一种醒悟，它在论证思维之前出现。我们在怀疑或质疑之前，必须是看到或观察到一些东西，因此，判断和理智并不冲突。问题是，我们总是急于将所看到的东西视为一个问题。例如，在森林中走的一个人，突然发现一片美丽的草地，他没有去欣赏遇到的美丽景色，而是忙于考虑这片草地会有什么实际价值。对某一个人来说，这片草地可能会有房产开发价值；对另一个人来说，这人可能是遛狗的好地方；而另外一个人可能会认为只是一个踢球的好地方。另外一个习惯于科学审视的人可能会问，怎么会有这样一片草地呢？因为周围都是树木而花草每年都需要授粉。通常，兴趣或日常工作会决定或限制一个人如何看待事物。
17. Leisurely learning is optimistic in assuming that seeing can transcend particular interests of the moment. To pursue leisure is to put on hold vested considerations so as to experience wonder at the mere presence of something. Such a process, of course, is easier said than done .In seeking to keep in check one’s interests or agendas (well-intentioned though they may be), one begins a difficult process of self-examination. The desire to pursue our interests and satiate our desires often outweighs the desire for self-knowledge or even liberation from needless desires.
休闲学习乐观地认为亲眼所见可超越目前的特定利益，追求休闲就是不考虑既得利益而去体验惊奇。但是，这个过程说起来容易做起来难。人们试图约束自己对利益的追求，开始艰难的自我反省。为了满足自己需求的欲望往往超过了自我认识的欲望，甚至超过了那些从肤浅需求中解脱出来的欲望。
18. Preparing for leisure is thus an arduous journey of self-examination that requires patience and abstinence in the face of questions or desires that demand immediate resolution. Hence the ascetic practices of monks that were practiced not as masochistic ends in themselves but always as means to self-understanding. self-control, and ultimately self-surrender to the beholding that is leisure.
因此，对于休闲的培养是一条艰难的自我反省之路，当面临亟待解决的问题和欲望时，要求有足够的耐性和自我节制。由此看来，僧侣式的禁欲修行并非是以虐待自我为目的，而往往是作为自我认知，自我控制，自我遵从，最终到达顿悟的一种手段。
19. Cultivation of humility in the face of that which we think we know is essential. It entails the abiding and practiced awareness that there is more to see. Such humility, as Leclercq says, is “not the acquisition of a scientific principle”, but “an experience, a personal growth in real awareness”. Leclercq’s distinction here is significant. Grasping a principle involves attaining power or control over some aspect of reality. Cultivation of leisure, by contrast, involves surrender and humility in the face of reality so as to receive the vision of intellectus. Thus an education for leisure would no doubt involve rigorous self-examination. Leclercq’s metaphor of growth suggests some direction. We have a natural propensity for leisure but this growth, like the growth of our own bodies, is not reached through personal will power. Leisure can be cultivated but not achieved.
当我们面对已知的事物时，对于谦卑的培养就显得十分必要了。我们必须将“人外有人，山外有山”的意识时刻熟谙于心。正如Leclercq所言，谦卑并非如获得一种科学原理，而像是一种真正觉悟的个人成长历程。Leclercq所指出的这种差别是显而易见的。获得一种科学原理只是得到了对现实中某些方面的权利或掌控。而相形之下，休闲的培养则意味着对现实的遵从和谦卑以便获得理智的洞察力。由此可见，休闲教育无疑要专注于严格的自我反省。这一点从Leclercq将其喻作“成长”中便可见一斑。尽管我们拥有一种休闲的自然倾向，但休闲的成长，就如我们身体的成长一样，不是仅凭个人的意志力就能够实现的。休闲只能逐渐培养，不能一蹴而就。
20. Thus an education for leisure would not employ outcomes or objectives(or grading) in the usual sense, wherein a teacher using a variety of pedagogical strategies can expect a certain degree of success among students, qualitatively or quantitatively measured. It is doubtful that leisure can be directed in the way that a biology teacher can direct students through the dissection of a frog or a grammar teacher in diagramming sentences. Unlike discursive methods, leisure is difficult if not impossible to quantify. Rather, in aiming for leisure, we as educators may only be able to model and invite by creating space in ratio-dominated days for the experience of leisure. However, we cannot force leisure, either with the threat of a failing grade or the promise of a reward, for leisure is an intensely personal endeavor—intangible but real.
因此，休闲教育不能采用通常意义上的结果、目标（或成绩）来定性或定量，也不能因为教师采用不同的教学法就期待学生取得长足的进步。诸如生物老师通过解剖青蛙或语法老师通过图表解析句子的指导方法来培养休闲是值得怀疑的。不同于论证法，要量化休闲，即便是可行的，也是十分困难的。更确切地讲，我们作为教育者要想培养休闲教育，只能在判断思维盛行的当今世界中创造空间来以身作则并吸引学生体验休闲。然而，我们既不能以不及格为威胁，也不能许以奖励，因为休闲作为一种无形却真实存在的积极自我追求是不能被强迫的。
21. In addition to creating space for savoring the wonders of the world, educators who aim to cultivate leisure can hold up exemplars, such as Grandhi and Heschel, who embody a practice of leisure.
除了要创造空间去品味世界的奇妙之处外，旨在培养休闲教育的教育者也要树立类似甘地和Heschel那样践行休闲教育的榜样。
22. Though leisure is fundamentally a personal endeavor, it is difficult to maintain on one’s own. It is best sustained and cultivated within a community, as monastic leisure suggests. To sustain a practice of leisure, monks created communities completely dedicated to it. Without a communal commitment to leisure, it is difficult to ensure the requisite time and space for savory and wonder, as well as an awareness of the discipline and sacrifice that leisure involves. Nevertheless, I believe educators can make inroads by establishing classroom communities that make some space for leisure.
虽然休闲基本上是靠个人努力实现的，但要独自坚持践行却是艰难的。我们所追求的休闲在团体中能得到最好的坚持和培养，就像僧侣所追求的休闲一样。为了能够持之以恒，他们创立了致力于修行的团体。若缺乏对休闲的共同信奉，就很难保证品味和探寻休闲奇妙之处所需的时间和空间，以及休闲所要求的纪律和牺牲意识。不过，我相信教育者们可以从建立课堂团体为休闲提供空间入手，进而成功进入休闲世界。
23. Though leisure came to fruition in a Catholic context, a commitment to leisure today does not require a commitment to a sectarian religious tradition. Instead, leisure, understood as a profound way of seeing, is an intrinsic good available to anyone. This leisured way cultivates a true freedom that resists the restive world of work that defines and appraises one’s value exclusively in terms of what one does. Liberal education justified primarily or exclusively for its contribution to ratio thinking is vulnerable to the hegemonic world of work and risks undermining the very freedom it seeks to attain. In the rush to problematize, to question, to refute, to exploit, and to doubt, one may be masking a discontent with oneself or be blindly driven by questionable desires and interests. Moreover, liberal education as critical thinking offers only one side of the great tradition of liberal education. Valuable as it is, this leisurely way of learning and living once was, and ought to be again today, an essential part of what constitutes a liberal education.
尽管休闲在天主教的背景下曾经得以实现，当今对休闲的追求并不局限于偏狭的宗教传统。反而休闲被视为一种深刻地看待事物的方式，是一种人人可享的内在美德。这种休闲的方式可以培养一种真正的自由来抵制焦躁不安的、仅凭所作所为就来定义和评价一个人的工作世界。若主要甚至仅仅凭借对判断性思维的贡献来评判通才教育的合理性，就会在这个霸道的工作世界面前显得不堪一击，也将使我们难以追寻真正的自由。在匆忙的问题化、提问、辩驳、利用、质疑中，人们可能掩饰着对自身的不满，也容易被不可靠的欲望和利益盲目驱使着。不仅如此，追求批判性思维的通才教育也仅仅体现了传统通才教育的一个方面。而弥足珍贵的休闲教育和生活方式不仅曾经是，现在也依然应该是通才教育的精华所在。
