評論
打印
Culture
文藝版塊
Book review
書評
War throughout history
歷史中的戰(zhàn)爭
Fight club
戰(zhàn)斗俱樂部
Why War? By Richard Overy.
《為何有戰(zhàn)爭？》理查德·奧弗里著。
In 1931 the League of Nations offered Albert Einstein, a physicist and vocal pacifist, the chance to choose a correspondent on a subject of his choice.
1931年，國際聯(lián)盟為阿爾伯特·愛因斯坦（物理學(xué)家和積極發(fā)聲的和平主義者）提供了一個機(jī)會，讓他選擇一位通信者并就他選擇的主題進(jìn)行討論。
He opted for Sigmund Freud, an Austrian psychologist, as his partner.
愛因斯坦選擇了奧地利心理學(xué)家西格蒙德·弗洛伊德作為他的討論搭檔。
“Is there a way of delivering mankind from the menace of war?” was the question.
討論的問題是“有沒有一種方法可以使人類免受戰(zhàn)爭的威脅？”。
Freud was not optimistic; he thought that in every human there was a “death drive”, an impulse to violence and destruction.
弗洛伊德并不樂觀，他認(rèn)為每個人心中都有“死亡驅(qū)力”，這是一種傾向于暴力和破壞的沖動。
The slim pamphlet emerging from their exchange, “Why War?”, makes for heavy reading.
從兩人之間的交流脫胎而來的是一本薄薄的小冊子《為何有戰(zhàn)爭？》，但讀起來卻很沉重。
Since then, at least five books with the same title have been published.
自那以后，至少有五本同名書籍已出版。
Richard Overy, a British historian of the second world war, has now written a sixth, which skilfully draws together nearly 100 years of scientific and historical scholarship.
理查德·奧弗里是研究第二次世界大戰(zhàn)的英國歷史學(xué)家，他現(xiàn)在寫了第六本同標(biāo)題的書，這本書巧妙地匯集了近100年的科學(xué)和歷史學(xué)術(shù)研究。
His goal is to understand the mechanisms that have embedded warfare throughout human history.
他的目標(biāo)是理解讓戰(zhàn)爭嵌入整個人類歷史的機(jī)制。
Although the answers, he finds, have remained “contested, fractured and frustratingly elusive”, there is one undeniable constant: that human groups from the earliest times to the present have resorted to collective, lethal violence against other groups when prompted by ambition, fear, need or prejudice.
雖然他發(fā)現(xiàn)答案仍然是“有爭議的、分裂的、令人沮喪地難以捉摸的”，但有一個不可否認(rèn)的不變因素：從最初到現(xiàn)在，人類群體在野心、恐懼、需求或偏見的驅(qū)使下，會對其他人類群體采取集體的、致命的暴力行為。
To bring some shape to the debate, Mr Overy has split his critique of the academic literature into two sections.
為了使辯論更有條理，奧弗里將他對學(xué)術(shù)文獻(xiàn)的評論分為兩部分。
The first covers science: anthropology, biology, ecology and psychology.
第一部分涵蓋了科學(xué)研究：人類學(xué)、生物學(xué)、生態(tài)學(xué)和心理學(xué)。
War can be explained as hard-wired into people through evolution (a Darwinian struggle for survival), determined by cultural norms or triggered by ecological pressures.
戰(zhàn)爭可以被解釋為是通過進(jìn)化（達(dá)爾文式的生存斗爭）而先天根植于人類之中，或由文化規(guī)范所決定的，或由生態(tài)壓力所引發(fā)的。
Accordingly, people can be the prisoner of their genes or try to create societies in which warfare is no longer seen as desirable or inevitable.
因此，人們可以成為基因的俘虜，也可以嘗試創(chuàng)建這樣的社會：在這個社會中，戰(zhàn)爭不再被視為可取或不可避免的。
The second section, which historians and many readers will favour, puts greater emphasis on human agency and mankind as the creator of cultures that sustain or even exalt warfare.
第二部分（歷史學(xué)家和許多讀者會更喜歡這部分內(nèi)容）更加強(qiáng)調(diào)人類的能動性，以及人類作為維持戰(zhàn)爭，甚至崇尚戰(zhàn)爭的文化的創(chuàng)造者角色。
Mr Overy describes “four broad motivational categories”: belief (religion), power, resources and security.
奧弗里描述了“四大廣義動機(jī)類別”：信仰（宗教）、權(quán)力、資源和安全。
These were the forces behind modern wars and also, Mr Overy argues, much earlier conflicts between pre-state groups.
這些是現(xiàn)代戰(zhàn)爭背后的驅(qū)動力，而且奧弗里認(rèn)為，也是前國家集團(tuán)之間沖突的背后驅(qū)動力。
From Neolithic times, across Europe and North America, sites of mass burials show unmistakable signs of violence: skulls with stone-axe injuries, arrowheads lodged in vertebrae and decapitations.
從新石器時代開始，在整個歐洲和北美，大規(guī)模墓葬遺址都顯示出明確無誤的暴力跡象：帶有石斧傷痕的頭骨、卡進(jìn)脊椎中的箭頭和斬首。
Weapons for killing other humans rather than just for hunting were common; cave paintings show men skirmishing.
用于殺害其他人類而非僅僅用于狩獵的武器很常見，洞穴壁畫展示了男性的小規(guī)模戰(zhàn)斗。
Early warfare was clearly different in scale from that waged by modern states.
早期戰(zhàn)爭在規(guī)模上顯然與現(xiàn)代國家發(fā)動的戰(zhàn)爭不同。
But Mr Overy shows that the causes and aims of early conflicts were frequently not dissimilar to those of later periods.
但是奧弗里表明，早期沖突的原因和目標(biāo)與后來的戰(zhàn)爭往往沒有什么不同。
A different question is whether—as Steven Pinker, a Canadian cognitive psychologist, argued in 2011—people are actually becoming less violent than their ancestors and less inclined to wage war.
一個不同的問題是，正如加拿大認(rèn)知心理學(xué)家史蒂文·平克在2011年所主張的那樣，人們實際上是否比他們的祖先更少一些暴力傾向、更不愿意發(fā)動戰(zhàn)爭。
Although there has been no war between great powers since 1945, Mr Overy remains sceptical.
盡管自1945年以來大國之間沒有發(fā)生過戰(zhàn)爭，但奧弗里先生仍然持懷疑態(tài)度。
The idea that modern men have developed an aversion to killing others is contradicted by the experience of the second world war when, after only brief spells of training, 100m ordinary men were persuaded “to bomb, shell, shoot and bayonet millions of their fellow species”.
現(xiàn)代男性已經(jīng)對殺戮產(chǎn)生厭惡的觀點與第二次世界大戰(zhàn)的經(jīng)歷相矛盾，當(dāng)時，在經(jīng)過短暫的訓(xùn)練后，1億普通男性被說服去“轟炸、炮擊、射擊和刺殺數(shù)百萬他們的同類”。
The prospect of a wider war in the Middle East combined with the renewed relevance of nuclear weapons, suggests that the stage is set for “the kinds of war for which there is a long historical pedigree”.
中東地區(qū)戰(zhàn)火蔓延的前景與核武器再次變得重要的情況相結(jié)合，表明為“那種具有悠久歷史淵源的戰(zhàn)爭”所提供的舞臺已經(jīng)搭建好了。
Mr Overy ends with a conclusion that would surely have depressed Einstein and buttressed Freud: “If war has a very long human history, it also has a future.
奧弗里在結(jié)尾得出了一個結(jié)論，這個結(jié)論肯定會讓愛因斯坦感到沮喪，而為弗洛伊德提供了支持：“如果說在漫長的人類歷史中有戰(zhàn)爭，那么未來戰(zhàn)爭也會存在。”
