神圣的和亵渎的现代自我:评《神圣的和亵渎的爱情机器》中的价值逆反

The Sacred and Profane Modern Selves:Inversion of Values in The Sacred and Profane Love Machine

艾丽斯·默多克是20世纪中后期活跃在英国学术领域的重要哲学家和小说家。她一生都致力于现代性文化的伦理学讨论,并用自己的写作实践不断探索和建构新的公共话语,为当代文化理论提供新的伦理学词汇。她于20世纪70年代创作的小说《神圣的和亵渎的爱情机器》对构成现代性隐忧之价值逆反现象进行了深刻剖析。小说以不动声色的笔触,冷静而尖刻地展现了现代人物质繁荣的表象下精神生活趋于工具化和自利化,公共文化中“崇高之道”逐渐丧失的暗淡现实。小说用极度的美学体验唤醒人们关于善之价值的伦理思考,最终搭起通向正义图景的桥梁。

As an important philosopher,novelist,and public intellectual,Iris Murdoch was an active presence in the English academic field in the latter half of the twentieth century.She dedicated her life to exploring ethical issues of modernity,constructing new public discourses,and creating an ethical vocabulary for modern cultural theories.Her 1974 novel The Sacred and Profane Love Machine is a thought-provoking examination of the inversion of values,which emerged as a modern malaise.With an impersonal style,the novel displays,calmly yet sharply,the dark reality that,under the sacred lure of material prosperity,tends to be growing instrumentality and self-interestedness in people's spiritual life,as well as a gradual loss of the"sublime course"in public culture.The novel evokes people's ethical conception of the value of goodness through an extreme aesthetic experience,and eventually constructs a landscape of justice as well as a bridge for its practice.