Daniel J. Boorstin, RIP - Historian, Critic, and American Man of Books 丹尼尔·约瑟夫·布尔斯廷，息止安所 ——美国历史学家、评论家和饱读之士 作者：《新亚特兰蒂斯》多名编辑 @ 2004年春季第五号

译者：Marcel ZHANG（@马赫塞勒张）

校对：史祥莆（@史祥莆），慕白（@李凤阳他说）

来源：《新亚特兰蒂斯》（The New Atlantis）， http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/daniel-j-boorstin-rip The nation’s collective IQ took a nosedive on February 28, 2004, when Daniel Joseph Boorstin — historian, professor, writer, curator, librarian, and great American booster — died of pneumonia at age 89.

美利坚的民族智慧在2004年2月28日这天蒙受了重大损失，是日，美国历史学家、教授、作家、博物学家、图书馆馆长、伟大的美国促进者丹尼尔·约瑟夫·布尔斯廷（Daniel Joseph Boorstin）因肺炎逝世，享年89岁。

Boorstin was best known as a former Librarian of Congress and the author of two best-selling trilogies, one about early America (The Americans, 1958, 1965, 1973), and one about Western science, art, and philosophy (The Discoverers, 1983; The Creators, 1992; and The Seekers, 1998).

布尔斯廷因出任美国国会图书馆馆长和作为两套畅销三部曲的作者而为世人所知，两套三部曲分别是关于早期美国的三部曲（即（《美国人》三部曲，分别出版于1958、1965和1973年）和关于西方科学、艺术和哲学的三部曲（即“人类文明史三部曲”，分别为出版于1983年的《发现者》、1992年的《创造者》和1998年的《探索者》）。

These works of popular history, together with Boorstin’s many other books and essays, combined vast knowledge, erudition, wit, and clarity, and were especially renowned for unexpected and illuminating insights on everyday life, particularly on the unforeseen significance of technological developments.

这些有关通俗历史的杰作，连同他的其他著作和论文，都蕴含着无尽的知识、学识、才识和卓识，尤其是因为其中对于日常生活那出乎意料且富有启发的洞察，特别是对于科技发展那未曾被预见的重要性的洞察，而享有盛名。

Born in Atlanta in 1914, and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Boorstin was quickly recognized as a prodigy, and entered Harvard University at age 15. From there he went to Oxford to study law, and earned the rare distinction of being called to the English bar as an American. Returning to Harvard, he was a lecturer in legal history, and published his first book, The Mysterious Science of the Law, in 1941.

1914年，布尔斯廷出生于亚特兰大，而后在俄克拉荷马州的塔尔萨长大，他很小的时候就被公认为是一个神童，并在年仅15岁时进入哈佛大学。以此为跳板，他又前往牛津大学专修法学，此外还以美国人的身份获得了受邀进入英格兰大律师工会的殊荣。回到哈佛后，他成为法律史讲师，并在1941年出版了他的第一部作品《神秘的法科学》。

His interests turned from law to history, and in 1944 he began a 25-year stint as a member of the history faculty at the University of Chicago. Not formally trained in history, Boorstin was, in his own words, always an amateur — which, he reveled in pointing out, etymologically meant simply “a lover” of the practice. He sometimes seemed to get a special pleasure out of the disdain in which the professionals held him throughout his career.

此后，他的志趣由法律转向了历史，并在1944开始了在芝加哥大学历史系长达25年的执教生涯。布尔斯廷并不是历史学科班出身，用他自己的话讲，始终是个业余人士（amateur）——他总乐于指出，从词源上讲，amateur的意思是“喜好”某种行当的人。在他的整个职业生涯中，总是有内行向他投来鄙夷的目光，而他似乎从中得到了某种特殊的快感。

While at Chicago, Boorstin’s work focused mainly on early American history, and through a series of books (including his Americans trilogy) he pursued the thesis that America’s political life was so peculiar and successful not because of its theories of government, but because the unique circumstances of American history and geography have made Americans inhospitable to abstract philosophy: a nation of pragmatists rather than ideologues, and yet a nation that understands its pragmatism as a theory.

在芝大期间，布尔斯廷的研究主要集中于早期美国历史，并试图在一系列著述（包括他的《美国人》三部曲）中阐述一个论点，那就是美国的政治生活之所以能如此特殊、如此成功，并不是因为它的执政理念，而是因为美国独一无二的历史和地理环境使得美国人对抽象哲学不甚热衷：这个国家的人多为实用主义者，而非理论家，但同时又将实用主义作为一种理论加以阐发。

In his characteristically paradoxical style, Boorstin wrote that “the belief in the existence of an American theory has made a theory superfluous.” This idea, advanced in Boorstin’s underappreciated 1953 book The Genius of American Politics, put him at odds with the scholars of ideology who then dominated the academy, and earned him a reputation as a peculiar conservative iconoclast that would stay with him.

布尔斯廷以他一贯的诡逆风格写道：“认为存在一种‘美国理论’就已经使这种理论的存在成为多余”。他在出版于1953年的一本被低估的著作《美国政治精神》中提出的这个观点，使得他与一些学者格格不入，这些学者的意识形态统治着当时的学术界，为此他还收获了一个伴其终身的名号——乖戾的右翼反传统者。

Boorstin’s boldest and most groundbreaking work was, however, not a history of early America but a piercing analysis of contemporary American self-delusion. The Image, published in 1961, was an effort to reveal the ways in which new technologies, combined with a traditional American craving for novelty and penchant for fantastical salesmanship, were increasingly distancing American life from reality.

不过，布尔斯廷最为大胆和革新的成果不在于早期美国历史，而在于对当代美国的自我蒙蔽所做出的一个鞭辟入里的分析。于1961年出版的《美国虚构事件指南》一书，便旨在揭示，新兴技术与传统美国人对新奇事物和神奇推销术趋之若鹜的结合，是如何令美国人的生活越来越远离现实的。

In the book, Boorstin introduced the term “pseudo-event” (an event, such as a press conference or “photo opportunity,” that exists purely for the purpose of being reported); he famously defined the celebrity as “a person who is well-known for his well-knownness”; and he sought to show, through historical narrative and telling anecdotes, what has been lost and what has been gained as news-making replaces news-gathering, celebrities replace heroes, tourists replace travelers, and images replace ideals.

在这本书中，布尔斯廷率先提出了一个术语“伪事件”（即这样一种事件，比如新闻发布会或“拍照时机”，这种事件的存在纯粹是为了被报道） ；他对名人的著名定义是：“一个因其知名度而知名的人” ；此外，他还千方百计地通过史述和轶事展现诸如以制造新闻取代搜集新闻，以名流取代英雄，以观光客取代旅行者，和以图像取代理想等等现象中的成败得失。

Boorstin’s comments on the first televised presidential debate (the Kennedy-Nixon debate, held the year before The Image was published) still ring as true in this election year as they did four decades ago:

布尔斯廷对第一次总统大选电视辩论（肯尼迪与尼克松的辩论，在《美国虚构事件指南》一书出版前一年举行）所做的评论，在今年这个选举年与40年前一样振聋发聩：

“The drama of the situation was mostly specious, or at least had an extremely ambiguous relevance to the main (but forgotten) issue: which participant was better qualified for the presidency. Of course, a man’s ability, while standing under klieg lights, without notes, to answer in two and a half minutes a question kept secret until that moment, had only the most dubious relevance — if any at all — to his real qualifications to make deliberate presidential decisions on long-standing public questions after being instructed by a corps of experts.

“这种情形下的戏剧性场面多半是华而不实的，或者至少在与这个主要问题（但被遗忘了）的相关性上是极其含糊不清的：究竟哪个参选人更有资格登上总统宝座？当然，一个人站在弧光灯之下在两分半钟内脱稿回答一个直到那时之前都秘而不宣的问题的能力，跟他作为总统做出决策的能力，只有微不足道的关系，甚至毫无关系。总统就长期存在的公共问题做决策时，总是在有一群专家提供咨询，在深思熟虑之后做出的决定。

“The greatest presidents in our history (with the possible exception of F.D.R.) would have done miserably; but our most notorious demagogues would have shone. Pseudo-events thus lead to emphasis on pseudo-qualification.”

“我们历史中最伟大的总统——可能要排除小罗斯福总统这个特例——可能会在电视辩论中表现得非常糟糕；而那些最臭名昭著的煽动家很可能表现得光芒四射。因此，伪事件导致了对伪资格的重视。”

The character of television, Boorstin argued, reinforced the powerful American love of illusion, and the results were not always to be welcomed.

布尔斯廷还认为，电视的特质助长了美国人对假象的热爱，而且有时会产生不受欢迎的后果。

In this and other books, Boorstin made much of the ways in which new technologies and technological attitudes radically alter familiar ways of living in utterly unexpected ways, often for better, though sometimes for worse. In his books and numerous essays, Boorstin reflected on the meaning of science and technology for human life, past and present.

在这本以及其他书中，布尔斯廷列举了很多新型技术和技术性态度是怎样把生活方式彻底转变为一种完全出乎意料的形式的，通常是改良，但有时是恶化。在他数目繁多的书籍和论文中，他反思了由古至今科技对人类生活的意义。

In one essay, “The Republic of Technology and the Limits of Prophecy,” he describes some of the technological forces “that will shape our American lives” in the twenty-first century: Technology invents needs and exports problems; it creates momentum and is irreversible; it uproots and assimilates; it insulates and isolates.

在一篇论文《科技共和与预言之局限》中，他描绘了某些科技力量在21世纪“将会重塑我们的美国生活”：科技催生需求，但同时制造难题；科技会制造出一种态势，而且不可逆转；科技力量摧枯拉朽又潜移默化，隔离社会并孤立人性。

Will we be able, Boorstin wondered, “to share the exploring spirit, reach for the unknown, enjoy multiplying our wants, live in a world whose rhetoric is advertising, whose standard of living has become its morality — yet avoid the delusions of utopia and live a life within satisfying limits?”

布尔斯廷思考的是，我们是否能够“分享探索精神，寻求未知世界，享受欲望倍增的快感，生存于一个以广告为修辞、以生存标准为道德规范的世界，却又回避对乌托邦的幻想而在令人满足的边界中安于现状？”

Timepieces and telescopes, engines and electricity, statistics and space — no aspect of science and technology was beyond his ken. But Boorstin always argued that the book was in fact man’s greatest technical innovation, never surpassed. “The computer can help us find what we know is there,” he said in a speech at the dawn of the age of personal computers, “but the book remains our symbol and our resource for the unimagined question and the unwelcome answer.”

计时器与望远镜，引擎与电力，统计与太空——科技的方方面面都没有脱离他的视野。而布尔斯廷却时常强调，书籍实际上才是人类无出其右的最伟大技术革新。他在个人电脑时代前夕的一次演讲中说到:“计算机可以帮我们找到已经确定在那的东西，但为了探寻以前未曾想象过的问题，找到不受欢迎的答案，书籍仍然是我们的路标，是我们的资料库。”

And Boorstin was always identified with books. His nomination by President Ford to be Librarian of Congress in 1975 was a natural choice, though professional librarians opposed him as — again — a mere amateur, and some liberals in Washington thought him too conservative. A more practical obstacle to his appointment, though, was the demand by several Senators that the prodigious Boorstin not do any of his own writing while he headed the Library of Congress.

并且布尔斯廷也经常被和书籍联系在一起。1975年他被福特总统提名为美国国会图书馆馆长就是一个实至名归的选择，尽管职业图书馆管理员们又一次以他不过是个业余人士为由来反对，此外，一些华盛顿的自由派也觉得他过于保守。而另一个对其任命更实际的阻碍是，几位参议员要求布尔斯廷在供职期间不可著书立说。

Boorstin refused, but promised to write only on his own time, and during his twelve years as Librarian of Congress he continued to write on weekends, in the evenings, and on nearly every weekday from 4 a.m. to 9 a.m., publishing several books and collections of essays.

布尔斯廷拒绝了，但他保证只利用个人时间来写作。在任职美国国会图书馆馆长长达12年期间，他在每个周末，每个晚上和几乎每个工作日的早晨四点到九点都在持续写作，其间出版了几本著作和论文集。

His term at the Library of Congress was noted for its focus on modernizing and democratizing the library’s resources, making them available to the public, and not just to members of Congress. Boorstin opened the library’s reading rooms and collections to all, and during his term the library began to host public events and act as a center of intellectual activity in Washington.

他在国会图书馆的任期因致力于将图书馆资源现代化和民主化而为世人所知，他让这些资源面向公众开放，而不仅限于国会成员。布尔斯廷将图书馆阅览室和馆藏对外开放，而且在他任职期间，图书馆开始承办公共活动，并成为华盛顿的一个学术活动中心。

He even ordered the majestic bronze doors of the library’s main building to be opened up. “They said it would create a draft,” Boorstin told reporters, “and I replied, ‘Great — that’s just what we need.’”

他甚至曾经下令让图书馆主建筑那宏伟铜门保持敞开。布尔斯廷告诉记者：“他们说这会引起一阵气流，而我的回答是，‘太好了，这正是我们所需要的。’”

For six decades, Daniel J. Boorstin’s keen eye and sharp pen were just what America needed to understand the flow and meaning of its history, and to think about its future with a mind open to the unexpected.

60年来，布尔斯廷那敏锐的视角和凌厉的笔触正是美国亟需的，借以了解自身历史的流程和意义，以面向未知的开放心态来看待自身的未来。

In The Seekers, his final book, he warned of the dangers of giving in to the modern technical outlook and forgetting to look upon the world with awe: “Western culture has turned from seeking the end or purpose to seeking causes — from the Why to the How. Might this empty meaning from our human experience?” It was an open question, and Boorstin’s own career offered hope that the answer did not have to be yes. He shall be missed.

他在最后一本著作《探索者》中，对屈服于现代科技图景和忘记对世界心存敬畏的危险发出了警告：“西方文化已经从探求尽头或目标转向了探寻源由——从探寻“为何”转向探寻“如何”。这会清除我们人类经验的意义吗？”这是个没有答案的问题，而布尔斯廷的事业给了我们希望：此问题的答案未必是肯定的。他理应被怀念。

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