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 A Deweyan might regard the promotion of education for leisure as a reversion to an ancient and outdated hierarchical social stratum that promotes escapism and the status quo.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。
