杰弗里·萨克斯：孔子的智慧可以帮助我们克服现代挑战

https://www.chinaminutes.com/News/News-Article/jeffrey-sachs-confucius-wisdom-can-assist-us-in-overcoming-modern-challenges?

中国新闻| 东西方相遇 2023 年 10 月 12 日

杰弗里·萨克斯：孔子的智慧可以帮助我们克服现代挑战
再次感谢尼山论坛让我们齐聚一堂进行这一极其重要的讨论。 我们已经听到了关于共同价值观对我们这个时代的重要性以及我们这个时代共同价值观的潜力的精彩演讲。 中国的全球文明倡议和尼山论坛是世界上独一无二的场所，可以帮助打造我们迫切需要的共同价值观和社区。 我们在世界上有共同的价值观吗？ 我认为答案是我们在世界上可以拥有共同的价值观。 这是一个潜力问题，但我们目前世界上还没有共同的价值观。 世界上存在着巨大的分歧、巨大的不信任、前所未有的紧张局势和巨大的危险。

我们来这里是为了帮助找到共同的价值观和社区来解决这些紧张局势，克服世界危机，特别是在世界各国之间找到和平与和谐。 我认为当今世界的极端紧张局势有几个原因。 也许最重要的是世界秩序正在发生变化，而且我相信变化是好的。

过去两个世纪非常不寻常。 在那个时期，世界上一小部分地区，有时被称为西方，或者我认为可以更准确地称为世界的北大西洋地区，即美国和西欧，主导了世界政治的大部分 以及世界经济的大部分。 北大西洋主导的世界已经结束。 这是好事，因为由于中国经济的出色发展和世界许多其他地区的进步，这种情况已经结束。 因此，我们确实已经进入了多极世界，但我们对新的多极世界还没有共同的理解或共同的价值观。 我们各国之间也有着前所未有的相互依存关系。 我们比历史上任何时候都更加相互联系和相互依存。

当然，早在2000年前，罗马帝国和汉朝之间就已经有了丝绸之路。 但这不是我们在数字时代所拥有的相互依赖，也不是我们技术、信息金融、货物和人员的实际流动的紧密联系。 我们还面临着前所未有的前所未有的共同全球挑战，例如，由于过去两个世纪工业化时代我们的经济体系与地球相互作用的方式，目前世界正在遭遇一系列环境灾难。 。 当然，我们还有更强大的武器。

在人类历史上，我们第一次拥有了可以终结文明、甚至终结人类本身的武器。 所以我们的时代异常复杂。 而且我们现在并不处于一个和谐时期。 我们正处于一个压力巨大的时期。 我把这种压力的很大一部分责任归咎于我自己的国家、美国，因为美国仍然有一种心态，因为我们听说过霸权或全球卓越或在一个世界上占据主导地位，而这既不可行也不可取。

但这是当今美国政治文化的一个事实，它使世界比正确理解我们的全球互联性和不合时宜的观念、美国在某种程度上就是世界的过时观念更加危险。 领导者。 在当今复杂且相互关联的世界中，这几乎是荒谬的。

现在，我们来这里是为了更好地理解我们的世界和真正可行的共同价值观。 我相信这是可能的，但正如我们明智的演讲者已经指出的那样，这是一条漫长而崎岖的道路。 它不会来自口号、谚语或深刻的智慧。 事实上，这必须通过集体互动来实现。 经过多年的讨论、辩论、遭遇和认识，我们作为人类的共性以及我们在地球上的共同利益。

我相信，古代智慧可以发挥极其重要的作用，帮助我们找到 21 世纪的共同价值观。 这就是为什么这个独特的论坛在这个独特的地方成为人类的一份礼物。 让我说，我相信古代智慧至少可以通过四种方式帮助我们应对现代挑战。

首先，古老的智慧可以帮助我们治愈我们自己的社会。 请记住，孔子本人在教导他的学生并向周时代的领导人讲授时，已经在谈论对古代智慧的需求。 所以2500年前，孔子自己就说过，我们需要古代智慧来理解我们现代的挑战，现代在公元前500年的春秋时期，就已经需要古代智慧了。 按照孔师的智慧。

二、古代无线

sdom 帮助我们互相理解。 通过研究古代哲学，我们了解不同文明的根源。 因为儒家文明不同于西方文明。 它更多的是关于和谐与社会。 它比许多西方古代文明所特有的个人主义更具关系性。 因此，通过研究古代文明，我们了解了现代社会的深层根源，因为我们的社会反映了甚至可以追溯到数千年前的根源。

第三是通过学习古代智慧，我们铭记历史。 我来自一个几乎不了解历史的国家。 这是一个新国家。 大约只有240岁，250岁。 这在人类历史上根本算不了什么。 我们几乎什么都不记得了。 顺便说一句，如果我们研究孔子、研究孟子，我们一定会记住，我们正在研究一个具有3000多年活力的文明和2500多年的儒家智慧。 这有助于我们认识到我们是多么的短视。

因为美国西方国家认为，西方世界理所应当领导世界。 但这只是人类历史长河中仅仅两个世纪的产物。 由于他们不了解人类历史，他们不明白这个特定的想法是多么短暂。 研究古代智慧如此重要还有第四个原因，那就是当我们研究孔子、亚里士多德、佛陀和其他圣人的古代智慧时，我们确实找到了我们所寻求的共同价值观。 这就是奇妙之处。

如果你研究我所说的我们文化的ABC，亚里士多德、佛陀和孔子，我们会发现它们都是我们现代帕兰德的美德伦理学家所说的。 他们都认为，要获得和谐幸福的生活，就必须培养个人的美德，培养政治社会的美德。 所以他们是美德哲学家，他们教导我们提升我们的美德。 在儒家思想中，“仁”是“仁”，在亚里士多德思想中，“仁”是“易”，即实践智慧，以及其他美德，如节制、正义或坚韧。 但这些哲学家宣称，我们需要提高自己来改善社会，我们需要有德行的领导人来帮助培养公民的美德。

这是亚里士多德、佛陀和孔子的共同见解。 我想强调，如你所知，这些哲学家都是非常务实的人。 他们从事政治。 他们正在从事实践。 他们是政治顾问。 他们不仅仅是我们所认为的纸上谈兵的哲学家。 在他们那个时代，他们中没有人在政治行动上取得那么成功，因为美德并不容易实现。 我记得最伟大的哲学家中，苏格拉底当然是被雅典政府处决的。 柏拉图试图成为锡拉库萨城邦的政治顾问，但惨遭失败。 这让我松了口气，因为我也是政府顾问，你可能会失败。 如果柏拉图会失败，你也会失败。

因此，知道即使是最伟大的哲学家在实践中也失败了，这是非常有趣的。 孔子当然也不得不离开鲁国。 他不得不流亡国外。 他向这个地区的统治者讲话，但没有一个人认真听他讲话。 直到接下来的2500年，他的作用才变得如此强大。 所以哲学并不容易。 修德不容易，这对我们来说是一个重大的挑战。 最后我想提一下，亚里士多德本人在生命的最后一年，即公元前323年，不得不离开雅典，因为当亚历山大大帝在巴比伦去世时，他的保护消失了，亚里士多德不得不逃命。 所以弘扬德行的生活并不是那么轻松的生活。

有时候政治家不想听，但是哲学家的作用是非常非常强大的，智慧是非常深刻的。 我想以一个实际的说明结束，这就是当领导者了解美德的必要性时成功的希望。 我想提到60年前的一个案例，是我一生中一位伟大的美国总统约翰·F·肯尼迪总统的案例。 因为60年前，美国和苏联差点爆发核战争。 我今天强调这一点，因为美国和俄罗斯这两个国家再次陷入战争。 因为我相信美国不理解肯尼迪总统所理解的东西。

六十年前，肯尼迪总统明白，我们需要通过共同价值观找到一条途径来与苏联实现和平。 他试图让美国人民相信，与一个被美国人民视为敌人的国家实现和平是可能的。 他在 60 年前发表了一场精彩的演讲，我希望人们能够学习，因为它是基于西方哲学的精华。 这就是所谓的肯尼迪和平演讲。 他还谈到了全球价值观。 他在那次演讲中说，所以我

我们不要对我们的分歧视而不见，而应该关注我们的共同利益以及解决这些分歧的方式。 如果我们现在不能结束这些差异，至少我们可以帮助世界实现多样性的安全，因为归根结底，我们最基本的共同联系是我们都居住在这个小星球上。 我们都孕育着同一个时代。 我们都珍惜孩子的未来，我们都是凡人。 当肯尼迪总统发表这一声明时，苏联总统表示我想与那个人讲和。 五周后，他们就部分禁止核试验条约达成了一致。 他们之所以实现和平，是因为肯尼迪看到了实现和平的可能性。 他伸出手来求和。

他说，我们同在一个星球，这几乎是孔子所说的“四海之中，兄弟”，以此来与对方和平相处。 这是肯尼迪总统所说的。 尼卡达·克鲁兹切也听到了。 几乎整整 60 年前的今天，肯尼迪总统在联合国大会上向世界领导人说了以下这些话。 他说，阿基米德在解释杠杆原理时，据说向他的朋友们宣告，给我一个可以站立的地方，我就能撬动世界。 我这个星球上的同胞们，让我们在这个国家大会上表明自己的立场，看看我们能否在我们的城市推动世界实现公正和持久的和平。 这就是尼山论坛正在使之成为可能的事情。 我们感谢你们，感谢山东省政府，感谢中华人民共和国政府，感谢这个伟大国家的人民邀请我们来这里共同努力。 非常感谢。

Jeffrey Sachs: Confucius' Wisdom Can Assist us in Overcoming Modern Challenges

https://www.chinaminutes.com/News/News-Article/jeffrey-sachs-confucius-wisdom-can-assist-us-in-overcoming-modern-challenges?

China News | East Meets West  12 October 2023 

Again by expressing my gratitude to the Nishan Forum for bringing us together for this extraordinarily important discussion. We have already heard wonderful talks about the importance of common values for our time, and the potential for common values of our time. And   China's Global Civilizations Initiative and the Nishan Forum are a unique venue in the world to help forge those common values and the community that we urgently need. Do we have common values in the world? The answer, I think, is that we can have common values in the world. This is a matter of potentiality, but we do not currently have common values in the world. We have great divisions, tremendous distrust, unprecedented tensions and very great dangers in the world. 

We are here to help find the common values and the community to solve those tensions, to overcome the world's crises, especially to find peace and harmony among the nations of the world. I think that there are several reasons for our extreme tensions in the world today. Perhaps the biggest is that the world order is changing, and I believe changing for the good. 

The last two centuries were very unusual. They were a period in which one rather small part of the world, which is sometimes called the West, or, I believe can be more accurately called the North Atlantic region of the world, the United States and Western Europe, dominated much of world politics and much of world economy. And that North Atlantic-led world has come to an end. And that is good, because it has come to an end because of China's wonderful economic development and the progress in many other regions of the world. So we have truly arrived at a multipolar world, and yet we do not have a shared understanding or common values for that new multipolar world. We also have unprecedented interdependence of our nations. We are more interconnected and interdependent than ever in history. 

Of course, already, 2000 years ago, there was a silk road between the Roman Empire and the Han Dynasty. But this was not the interdependence that we have in our digital age and our intense interconnections of technology, information finance, the physical flow of goods and people. We also face unprecedented common global challenges as never before, as exemplified by the range of environmental catastrophes now being visited upon the world because of the way that our economic system has interacted with the physical Earth for the past two centuries, during the age of industrialization. And of course, we have more powerful weapons. 

For the first time in human history, we have weapons that can end civilization, even end humanity itself. So our times are extraordinarily complicated. And we are not in a harmonious period. We are in a period of tremendous stress. I put a lot of responsibility for that stress on my own country, on the United States, which still has a mentality, as we heard of hegemony or global preeminence or dominance in a world in which that is neither feasible nor desirable. 

But it is a fact of American political culture to this day, and it makes the world very much more dangerous than if there were a proper understanding of our global interconnectedness, and of the anachronistic idea, the outdated idea that the United States somehow is world leader. This is almost preposterous in our complex and interconnected world today. 

Now, we are here to forge a better understanding of our world and truly workable common values. I believe this is possible, but as our wise speakers have already indicated, it is a long and rocky road. It will not come from a slogan or a saying or a piece of deep wisdom. In fact, it will have to come through collective interaction. Over many years of discussion, debate, encounter and realization of our commonality as human beings and our common interests on the planet. 

I believe that ancient wisdom can play a tremendously important role in enabling us to find common values for the 21st century. And that's why this unique forum, in this unique place, is such a gift for humanity. Let me say that I believe there are at least four ways in which ancient wisdom can help us in our modern challenges.

The first is that ancient wisdom can help us to heal our own societies. Remember that Confucius, himself, teaching his students and lecturing to leaders of the  Zhou era, already was talking about the need for ancient wisdom. So 2500 years ago, Confucius himself said, we need ancient wisdom to understand our modern challenges，modern in the era, 500 BC, in the spring and autumn period, already, ancient wisdom was needed. According to the wisdom of Master Kong.

Second, ancient wisdom helps us to understand each other. By studying ancient philosophy, we understand the roots of different civilizations. Because Confucian civilization is different from Western civilization. It is much more about harmony and society. It is much more relational than the individualism that characterizes a lot of Western ancient civilization. So by studying ancient civilization, we learn the deep roots of our modern societies, because our societies reflect roots that go back even thousands of years of course.

The third is by studying ancient wisdom, we remember history. I come from a country that knows almost no history. It's a new country. It's only 240 years old roughly, 250 years old. It's nothing in the span of human history. And we remember almost nothing. By the way, if we study Confucius and study Mencius, we are bound to remember that we are studying a civilization that is more than 3,000 years old in its vigor and Confucian wisdom, 2,500 years old. And that helps us to appreciate how a shortsighted we can be. 

Because the Western countries in the United States believe that it is natural that the Western world should lead the world. But this is an artifact of simply two centuries in the vast sweep of human history. And since they don't know the human history, they don't understand how fleeting that particular idea is. And there is a fourth reason why studying ancient wisdom is so important, and that is that when we study the ancient wisdom of Confucius, of Aristotle, of the Buddha and other sages, we do find the common values that we seek. This is what is so wonderful. 

If you study what I call the ABCs of our culture, Aristotle, Buddha and Confucius, we find that they are all what we would say in modern parland's virtue ethicists. They all believe that the way to a harmonious and happy life is by cultivating the virtues of the individuals and cultivating the virtues of political society. So they are virtue philosophers, and they teach us to promote our virtues. In Confucianism, that is Ren, and in Aristotelian thought, it is pronesis, or practical wisdom, and other virtues, such as temperance, or justice or fortitude. But these are philosophers who proclaimed that we need to improve ourselves to do improve society, and we need virtuous leaders to help cultivate the virtues of the citizens. 

This is a common insight of Aristotle, Buddha and Confucius. I want to emphasize, as you know, these philosophers were very practical people. They were engaged in politics. They were engaged in practice. They were political advisers. They were not only armchair philosophers, as we think of them. And none of them was that successful in their day in political action, because virtues are not easy to achieve. And I recall that of the greatest philosophers, of course, Socrates, was executed by the Athenian state. Plato tried to be a political adviser to the city state of SYRACUSEA and he failed miserably. It gives me great relief, because I'm also an advisor to governments, and you can fail. If Plato can fail, you can fail. 

So it's very interesting to know that even the greatest philosophers failed in practice. And Confucius, of course, had to leave the Lu kingdom. He had to go into exile. He spoke to the rulers in this region, none of them listened very carefully to him. It was only in the next 2500 years that his effect was so powerful. So philosophy is not easy. Cultivating virtue is not easy, and this is a major challenge for us. I recall finally, I wanted to mention that Aristotle, himself, in the last year of his life, in 323BC, had to leave Athens because his protection was gone when Alexander the Great died in Babylon, and Aristotle had to flee for his life. So the life of promoting virtue is not such an easy life.

Sometimes the politicians don't want to listen, but the effect of the philosophers is very, very powerful, and the wisdom is very profound. I want to end with a practical note, and that is the hope for success when leaders understand the need for virtue. And I want to refer to a case 60 years ago, which was a case of the one great United States president during my lifetime, president John F Kennedy. Because 60 years ago, the United States and the Soviet Union almost came to nuclear war. And I emphasize this today, because the same two countries, the US and Russia, are at war again. Because I believe the United States doesn't understand what President Kennedy did understand. 

Sixty years ago president Kennedy understood that we needed to find a way through common values to reach peace with the Soviet Union. And he tried to convince the American people that it was possible to make peace with a country that was regarded as an enemy by the American people. And he gave a phenomenal speech 60 years ago that I hope people will study, because it was based on the best of Western philosophy. And it's called Kennedy's Peace Speech. And he talked about global values. And he said in that speech, so let us not be blind to our differences, but let us direct attention to our common interests and to the means by which those differences can be resolved. And if we cannot end now those differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity, for in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet. We all breed the same era. We all cherish our children's future, and we are all mortal. When President Kennedy made that statement, his counterpart in the Soviet Union, said I want to make peace with that man. And five weeks later, they had agreed on the partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. They made peace because Kennedy saw that it was possible to make peace. He reached out to make peace.

He inspired peace with his counterpart by saying we all share this same planet, almost Confucius’s words when Confucius said, within the four seas, all men are brothers. This is what President Kennedy said. And Nicada Cruzche have heard it. And almost exactly 60 years ago, to this day, President Kennedy said the following to world leaders in the UN General Assembly. He said, Archimedes, in explaining the principles of the lever, was said to have declared to his friends, give me a place where I can stand and I shall move the world. My fellow inhabitants of this planet, let us take our stand here in this assembly of nations, and let us see if we, in our town can move the world to a just and lasting peace. This is what the Nishan Forum is making possible. We are grateful to you, grateful to the Shandong government, grateful to the government of the People's Republic of China, and grateful to the people of this great country for inviting us here to share in this endeavor. Thank you very much.