来源：《基督科学箴言报》
原文刊登日期：2021年11月29日
As a philosophy professor, Jonathan Jacobs wants his students to think deeply – but not just about the ideas of Kant, Descartes, or Nietzsche. They need to be able to articulate their own thoughts in nuanced ways, he says.
作为一名哲学教授，乔纳森·雅各布斯希望他的学生进行深入思考——但不仅仅是关于康德、笛卡尔或尼采的思想。他说，他们需要能够以细致入微的方式表达自己的想法。
So he pushes first-year students in his classes at John Jay College of Criminal Justice “to go from the blurt, to the sentence, to the paragraph, so that by the time they graduate they are thinking in paragraphs,” he says.
因此，他在约翰杰伊刑事司法学院督促一年级学生“从脱口而出、到句子、到段落，这样他们毕业时就能以段落的形式思考了，”他说。
That’s a lesson we could all learn from, he says. So much of political discourse happens in oversimplified slogans and labels. “That unfortunately makes it very easy to turn disagreements into hostility and hostility into distrust and distrust into an unwillingness to compromise,” Professor Jacobs says.
他说，这是我们都可以学习的一课。太多的政治话语发生在过于简化的口号和标签中。“不幸的是，这很容易让分歧变成敌意，敌意变成不信任，不信任变成不愿妥协，”雅各布斯教授说。
That kind of thinking has produced a society where people see each other as villains and victims, he says. But when we allow ourselves to engage in nuanced discussions – to think and talk in paragraphs – common ground emerges.
他说，在这种思维方式造就的社会里，人们把彼此视为坏人和受害者。但当我们允许自己参与细致入微的讨论——以段落的方式思考和交谈——共同点就会出现。
One root of the problem, he says, is a shift away from a collective understanding of civics. Rather than focusing on the shared values that underpin our institutions and societal norms, we have become caught in a zero-sum game of politics.
他说，问题的根源之一是对公民学的集体理解发生了转变。我们没有把重点放在支撑我们的制度和社会规范的共同价值观上，而是陷入了一场政治零和博弈。
Part of the blame lies with politicians themselves, he says, “because what they have found works for them is pressing the frictional buttons rather than finding a shared landscape” of common concerns. But citizens have a role to play here as well, he insists. American society is built on a shared understanding of civic duty to order and to each other. Part of that commitment includes being willing to approach our fellow citizens as compatriots rather than political adversaries.
他说，部分责任在于政治家自己，“因为他们发现对他们有用的是按下摩擦按钮，而不是找到一个共同关注的共同前景”。但他坚持认为，公民在这方面也要发挥作用。美国社会建立在对秩序和彼此的公民义务的共同理解之上。这一承诺的一部分包括愿意以同胞而不是政治对手的身份对待我们的公民。
Take the current debate over policing. On the one hand, the divisions are stark. When viewed through the simplistic lenses of “defund the police” and “blue lives matter,” the gulf can seem unbridgeable. But do the ideals of public safety and social justice really have to be in opposition?
以当前关于治安的争论为例。一方面，分歧是明显的。从“不给警察拨款”和“警察的命也是命”这样简单的角度来看，这个鸿沟似乎是不可逾越的。但是，公共安全和社会正义的理想真的必须对立吗？
“The values that these allegedly opposing groups endorse as fundamental and as crucial to civil society are not automatically or intrinsically frictional,” he says. “They should be values that the society should be striving to realize, recognizing both of them as vitally important.”
他说：“这两个所谓的对立团体所认可的对公民社会至关重要的基本价值观并不会自动产生摩擦，也不会在本质上产生摩擦。它们应该都是社会应该努力实现的价值观，要承认这两种价值观都极其重要。”
In truth, there are many shared principles that bind us together as Americans. We prioritize them differently, but freedoms of expression and association, ideals of integrity, fairness, and justice, are universally shared. It is from here that Professor Jacobs sees hope for the future.
事实上，有许多共同的原则将我们作为美国人联系在一起。我们对这些原则的优先顺序有所不同，但言论自由和结社自由、正直、公平和正义的理想是普遍共有的。正是从这里，雅各布斯教授看到了未来的希望。
Despite bitter discourse, “American political culture does have resources of resilience,” he says. “It’s not because we are better or exceptional. What matters are the values that we are talking about and how genuinely people endorse them.”
他说，尽管言辞尖刻，“美国政治文化确实有恢复力。这并不是因为我们更好或更卓越。重要的是我们正在谈论的价值观，以及人们对这些价值观的认可程度。”