愛得真摯 愛得瘋狂 愛得深刻

Take a chance on me 交個朋友吧，或許我就是你的真命天子哦！

PLATO described love as a serious mental disease. Aristotle saw it as a single soul inhabiting two bodies. Tina Turner dismissed the feeling as a second-hand emotion. The nature of love—how and when and why and with whom humans fall for each other—has preoccupied thinkers through the ages. Now a philosopher and a scientist have a go in two new and markedly different books. 柏拉圖將愛情描述爲一種嚴重的精神疾病；亞里士多德認爲愛情是一個靈魂孕育在兩個軀體裏；蒂娜•特納則對愛情不屑一顧，視之爲二手的情感。古往今來，所有思想家都在思索愛情的本質：人們如何相愛？何時墜入愛河？爲何相愛？與誰相愛？如今，一名哲學家和一名科學家各自發表了一本顯著不同的新書，試圖回答這一難題。

In his latest work, "In Praise of Love", Alain Badiou, a French philosopher, identifies three prevailing philosophical views of love. It can be an ecstatic encounter; an unsentimental contract; or an illusion, best treated with scepticism. He rejects all three. For Mr Badiou, love is the decision to live life through two perspectives, that of both the lover and the beloved. As such, it is more than the sum of its parts. Love "is a construction," he writes, "a life that is being made, no longer from the perspective of One but from the perspective of Two." 法國哲學家阿蘭. 巴迪烏(Alain Badiou)最近出版了新書《歌頌愛情》，他在書中提到了哲學界三個主流的愛情觀。愛情可能萌生於一次心動的邂逅，也可能是一個不動情緒的契約或一種似是而非的美好幻覺。巴迪烏對這三種觀點都不以爲然。在他看來，愛情就意味着相愛的兩人要選擇從兩種角度來生活：即愛與被愛的角度。所以，愛情並不只是兩個人生活片段的簡單拼湊。巴迪烏寫道：“愛情是‘一種建構'，戀愛雙方不再單從各自的角度生活，而是從雙方的角度，創造出一種全新的生活方式。”

Mr Badiou sees risk as central to love. A loving relationship demands multiple and shared perspectives, which always give rise to incongruences and tensions. He reserves special scorn for dabblers in internet dating, who evidently believe that the search for "a photo, details of his or her tastes, date of birth, horoscope sign, etc" will ultimately net "a risk-free option". This is to neglect the very essence of love, according to Mr Badiou, which involves the presence of risk, the possibility of failure and the need for vulnerability. 巴迪烏認爲愛情必然存在風險。戀愛關係的維持需要戀愛雙方從多個角度看待問題，互相理解，這也常常導致衝突和爭執。巴迪烏尤爲鄙視通過網絡尋找戀愛對象的人，這些人視愛情如兒戲。顯然，他們認爲：只要搜索到“照片、喜好、年齡、星座等信息”與自己要求相符合的他或她，就能談一場毫無風險的戀愛。巴迪烏認爲，這種行爲忽略了愛情的本質：愛情本就存在風險，可能失敗，需要雙方適時地展示自己脆弱的一面。

The book's chatty style (it is based on a conversation with Nicolas Truong, a French journalist) lends a deceptive simplicity to the ideas within. Get to work unpicking these concepts and it soon becomes plain that, like many French philosophers, Mr Badiou sacrifices clarity for linguistic zip and sparkle. Nonetheless, he leaves the reader with an incisive overview of philosophical thinking on love, from Plato to Kierkegaard to Lacan. 這本書語言親切（主要內容基於與法國記者Nicolas Truong的談話），樸實簡單的文字下蘊含着深刻的思想。如若將這些概念分開來看，很快就可以發現：與很多法國哲學家一樣，巴迪烏並未選擇一語道破，而是玩弄起辭藻，妙語連珠，意味深長。儘管如此，他在書中對自古以來關於愛情的各種哲學思考做了犀利的總結，從柏拉圖到齊克果再到拉康，一應俱全，讀者可藉機一窺究竟。

Robin Dunbar's book, "The Science of Love and Betrayal", is—perhaps surprisingly—easier to get to grips with. Dr Dunbar, a professor of evolutionary anthropology with a study in this week's science section (see article), is best known for "Dunbar's number", the limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. He laments that scientists have largely ignored the concept of love. In this book he bridges the gap between the biological explanations for humans' romantic behaviour and the psychological, historical, social and evolutionary contexts that help to shape it. 相比之下，羅賓.鄧巴（Robin Dunbar）的書《愛與背叛的科學》更容易理解，這一點或許出人意料。鄧巴是一名進化人類學教授，他在本期雜誌的科技部分也發表了一篇研究。鄧巴以其提出的“鄧巴人數（Dunbar's number）”最爲出名。鄧巴人數指能與某個人維持穩定人際關係的人數上限。他感到遺憾的是，科學家們大都忽略了愛情的含義。鄧巴在書中不僅探討了人類做出浪漫行爲的生物學原因，還將這些原因與起到推波助瀾作用的心理、歷史、社會和進化環境等因素更爲緊密地聯繫起來。

In particular, he is interested in why humans have developed such an affinity for "pairbonding", despite the fact that strictly monogamous mating and rearing systems are not terribly advantageous in evolutionary terms. Monogamy is not unique to humans. What is unique, however, is the intensity with which the species falls in love. Nearly every human culture in history exhibits this complex sense of longing, Dr Dunbar observes. 儘管嚴格的一夫一妻婚育制度並非十分有利於人類的進化，但人們還是喜歡有固定的配偶，鄧巴對這一現象的原因尤其感興趣。一夫一妻制並非只存在於人類社會，其它物種之間也有，但人與人相愛的深度卻是其它物種不可比擬的。據鄧巴觀察，從古至今，幾乎每個時期的人類文明都顯示出了這種渴望愛情的複雜情感。

To understand this predisposition for monogamy, he takes readers through the myriad feelings of love, from the heady, breathless exhilaration of falling, to the stubborn persistence of familial affection, to the bitterness of betrayal. Throughout the book Dr Dunbar excels at taking obvious and familiar information—men prefer curvy women; women prefer men who dance well; older women rarely reveal their ages in lonely-hearts columns—and explaining the complex and often unexpected evolutionary science that lies behind it all. 爲了弄清楚人類社會一夫一妻傳統的起源，鄧巴向讀者闡述了戀愛過程所包含的各種錯綜複雜的情感：剛墜入愛河時的戀人陶醉其中，激動得無法呼吸；組成家庭後雙方視彼此爲親人，不離不棄；遭到愛人背叛後，前塵往事如塵埃、內心唯有苦澀酸楚。鄧巴擅於在整本書中運用顯而易見的常識——男人喜歡曲線美的女人；女人喜歡舞技高超的男人；年齡稍大的女性很少會在有情人專欄透露自己的年齡——並解釋這些現象背後所隱藏的複雜的進化科學，往往出人意料。

Love is a journey, a game, a many-splendoured thing. Though some give it a bad name (if Jon Bon Jovi is to be believed), the rest of us find the subject endlessly fascinating. The struggle to understand such a mystifying phenomenon invariably requires the help of philosophers and scientists, and others besides. Good news for Mr Badiou and Dr Dunbar. 愛情是一次旅行，一場遊戲，一件充滿奇妙的事。儘管有人詆譭愛情（如Jon Bon Jovi的歌曲所唱），其它人則認爲它永遠充滿魅力。愛情如此神祕，要弄懂它，哲學家和科學家的幫助必不可少。同時還需要其它人的幫助，巴迪烏和鄧巴的努力可算是沒有白費。