跟讀練習: PHILOSOPHY - Schopenhauer - 通過影片學習英語口語
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101 句
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Arthur Schopenhauer was a German 19th century philosopher who deserves to be remembered today for the insights contained in his great work,
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The World as Will and Representation.
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Schopenhauer was the first serious
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Western philosopher to get interested in Buddhism,
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and his thought can best be read as a Western reinterpretation and response to the enlightened pessimism found in Buddhist thought.
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In my 17th year, he wrote in an autobiographical text, I was gripped by the misery of life,
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as the Buddha had been in his youth when he saw sickness, old age, pain and death everywhere.
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The truth was that this world could not have been the work of an all -loving being,
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but rather that of a devil who'd brought creatures into existence in order to delight in their sufferings.
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And like the Buddha, it was Schopenhauer's goal to dissect and then come up with a solution to this suffering.
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It's simply the fault of universities
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that Schopenhauer has always been taught in such a dry academic way that it has stopped him from being widely known, read and followed.
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And yet in truth, this is a man who, no less than the Buddha, deserves disciples, schools, artworks and monasteries to put his ideas into practice.
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It's not too late.
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Schopenhauer's philosophy starts by giving a name to a primary force within us which he says is more powerful than anything else,
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our reason, logic or moral sense, and which Schopenhauer terms the will to life, in German the Wille zum Leben.
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The will to life is a constant force which makes us thrust ourselves forward, cling to existence and look always to our own advantage.
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It's blind, dumb and very insistent.
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What the will to life makes us focus on most of all is sex.
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From adolescence onwards, this will thrums within us, turns our heads constantly to erotic scenarios and makes us do very weird things,
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the most weird of which is fall in love all the time.
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Schopenhauer was very respectful of love, as one might be towards a hurricane or a tiger.
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He deeply resented the disruption caused to intelligent people by infatuations or what we'd call crushes,
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but he refused to conceive of these as either disproportionate or accidental.
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In his eyes, love is connected to the most important underlying project of the will to life, and hence of all of our lives Having children.
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Why all this noise and fuss about love, he asked.
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Why all the urgency, uproar, anguish and exertion?
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Because the ultimate aim of all love affairs is actually more important than all other aims in anyone's life
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and therefore it's quite worthy of the profound seriousness with which everyone pursues it.
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The romantic dominates life because, Schopenhauer wrote, what is decided by it is nothing less than the composition of the next generation,
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the existence and special constitution of the human race in times to come.
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Of course, we rarely think of future children when we're asking someone out on a date.
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But in Schopenhauer's view, this is simply
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because the intellect remains much excluded from the real resolutions and secret decisions of its own will.
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Why should such deception be necessary?
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Because for Schopenhauer, we would never reliably to reproduce unless we had first, quite literally, lost our minds.
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This was a man deeply opposed to the boredom, routine, expense and sheer sacrifice of having children.
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Furthermore, Schopenhauer argued that most of the time, if our intellect were properly in charge of choosing who we could fall in love with,
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we would pick very different people to the ones we actually end up with.
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But we're ultimately driven to fall in love, not with anyone we'll just get on with well,
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but with people whom the will to life recognizes as ideal
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partners for the project of producing what Schopenhauer bluntly called balanced children.
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All of us are a little bit unbalanced ourselves, he thought.
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We're a bit too masculine or too feminine, too tall or too short, too rational or too impulsive.
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If such imbalances were allowed to persist or were aggravated in the next generation, the human race would within a short time sink into oddity.
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The will to life must therefore push us towards people who can, on account of their compensating imbalances, cancel out our own issues.
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A large nose combined with a button nose promise a perfect nose.
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He argued that short people often fall in love with tall people and more feminine men with more assertive and masculine women.
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Unfortunately, this theory of balancing attraction led Schopenhauer to a very bleak conclusion namely,
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that a person who is highly suitable for producing a balanced child with is almost never,
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though we can't realise it at the time because we've been blindfolded by the will to life, very suitable for us.
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We should not be surprised, he wrote, by marriages between people who would never have been friends.
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Love casts itself on people who, apart from sex, would be hateful, contemptible and even abhorrent to us.
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The will to life's ability to further its own ends, rather than our happiness, may, Schopenhauer implied, be sensed with particular clarity in that rather scary,
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lonely moment just after orgasm.
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He wrote, Directly after copulation, the devil's laughter is heard.
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Watching the human spectacle, Schopenhauer felt deeply sorry for us.
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We're all just like animals, except because of our greater self -awareness, far more unhappy than animals.
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There are some poignant passages where Schopenhauer discusses the lives of different animals, but he dwells especially on the mole, a stunted monstrosity, his words,
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that dwells in damp, narrow corridors, rarely sees the light of day, and whose offspring look like gelatinous worms,
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but which still does everything in its power to survive and perpetuate itself.
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We're just like moles and just as pitiful.
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We are driven frantically to push ourselves forward, we want to get good jobs to impress prospective partners, we wonder endlessly about finding the one
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and are eventually briefly seduced by someone just long enough to produce a child
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and then have to spend the next 40 years in misery with them to atone for our errors.
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Schopenhauer was always beautifully and comically gloomy about human nature.
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There is only one inborn error, he wrote, and that's the notion that we exist in order to be happy.
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So long as we persist in this inborn error, the world will seem to us full of contradictions.
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For at every step, in great things and small,
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we are bound to experience that the world and life are certainly not arranged for the purpose of being happy.
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That's why the faces of almost all elderly people are deeply edged with disappointment.
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Schopenhauer offers two solutions to deal with the problems of existence.
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The first solution is intended for rather rare individuals that he called sages.
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Sages are able by heroic efforts to rise above the demands of the will to life.
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They see the natural drives within themselves towards selfishness, sex and vanity and override them.
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They overcome their desires, live alone, often away from big cities, never marry and can quell their appetites for fame and status.
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In Buddhism Schopenhauer points out this person is known as a monk
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but he recognizes that only a tiny number of us in any generation will ever go in for such a life.
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The second and more easily available
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and realistic therapy is to spend as long as we can with art
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and philosophy whose task is to hold up a mirror to the frenzy efforts
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and unhappy turmoil created in all of us by the will to life.
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We may not be able to quell the will to life very often, but in the evenings at the theatre
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or on a walk with a book of poetry we can step back from the day to day
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and look at life without illusion.
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The art Schopenhauer loved best is the opposite of sentimental, Greek tragedies, the aphorisms of La Rochefoucauld and the political theory of Machiavelli.
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Such works speak frankly about egoism, suffering, selfishness and the horrors of married life and extend a tragic, dignified, melancholy sympathy to the human race.
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It's fitting that Schopenhauer's own work fitted his description of what philosophy and art should do for us.
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It too is deeply consoling in its morbid, bitter pessimism.
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For example, he tells us, to marry means to do everything possible to become an object of disgust to each other.
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Every life history is the history of suffering.
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Life has no intrinsic worth, but is kept in motion merely by desire and illusion.
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After spending a lot of time trying yet failing to be famous and trying yet failing to have good relationships,
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towards the end of his life Schopenhauer did eventually find an audience who adored his writings.
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He lived quietly in an apartment in Frankfurt with his dog, a white poodle whom he called Atman after the world soul of the Buddhists,
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but whom the neighboring children less respectfully referred to as Mrs. Schopenhauer.
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Shortly before his death a sculptor made a famous bust of him.
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He died in 1860 at the age of 72 having achieved calm and serenity.
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He is a sage for our own times,
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someone whose bust should be no less widespread and no less revered than that of the Buddha he so loved.
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Thank you.
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推薦影片
本課的詞彙與口語要點
這節口語課以影片“PHILOSOPHY - Schopenhauer”為素材。 這段影片共有 101 個句子、1571 個單詞可供跟讀。 講話部分時長為 9:21。 說話人語速自然,每分鐘約 168 個詞,接近日常對話。 只有 80% 的單詞屬於英語最常用的 3,000 詞,詞彙難度較高。
影片中的重點詞彙
影片中 15 個值得學習的單詞,附發音和釋義:
| 單詞 | 發音 | 釋義 |
|---|---|---|
| deeply 副詞 | /ˈdi(ː)pli/ | 深, 深深 |
| sage 名詞 | /seɪd͡ʒ/ | 鼠尾草 |
| argue 動詞 | /ˈɑɹ.ɡju/ | 辯論 /辯論, 爭辯 /爭辯 |
| rarely 副詞 | /ˈɹɛəɹli/ | 很少, 罕有地 |
| marry 動詞 | /ˈmæɹi/ | 結婚 /結婚, 嫁 |
| suitable 形容詞 | [ˈsjuː.tə.bɫ̩] | 合適 /合適, 適當 /適當 |
| unhappy 形容詞 | /ʌnˈhæpi/ | 不高興 /不高興, 不開心 /不開心 |
| illusion 名詞 | /ɪˈl(j)uːʒ(ə)n/ | 幻想, 幻覺 /幻覺 |
| feminine 形容詞 | /ˈfɛmɪnɪn/ | 女性的 |
| misery 名詞 | /ˈmɪz(ə)ɹi/ | 苦難 /苦難, 痛苦 |
| philosopher 名詞 | /fəˈlɑsəfɚ/ | 哲學家 /哲學家 |
| masculine 形容詞 | /ˈmæskjələn/ | 男的, 男性的 |
| dwell 動詞 | /dwɛl/ | 居住, 住 |
| persist 動詞 | /pɚˈsɪst/ | 堅持 /堅持 |
| mirror 名詞 | /ˈmiɹɚ/ | җинзы, 鏡 /鏡 |
影片中出現的短語動詞
| 單詞 | 釋義 |
|---|---|
| come up with 動詞 | 想出, 提出 |
| get on with 動詞 | 繼續 /繼續, 持續 /持續 |
| point out 動詞 | 指, 指出 |
影片中的語法
說話人最常用的結構,並附上影片中的原話:
| 結構 | 影片中的用法 |
|---|---|
| 被動語態 be + 過去分詞 — 強調發生了什麼,而不是誰做的 | be remembered · be read · was gripped |
| 定語從句 who / which + 從句 — 補充說明人或事物 | force which makes · people who can · person who is |
| 現在完成時 have/has + 過去分詞 — 過去發生但與現在仍有關聯的事 | has always been taught · we've been blindfolded |
需要注意的發音
說話人用了 10 次縮略和弱讀形式,例如 we're, can't, we'd。請按聽到的簡短形式來說。
- “th” 音: worthy /ˈwɝ.ði/, furthermore /ˈfɜː(ɹ).ðə(ɹ)ˌmɔː(ɹ)/, sympathy /ˈsɪm.pəθ.i/, thrust /θɹʌst/, thrum /θɹʌm/
- “sh” 和 “zh” 音: illusion /ɪˈl(j)uːʒ(ə)n/, shortly /ˈʃɔɹtli/, conclusion /kənˈkluːʒən/, composition /ˌkɑm.pəˈzɪʃ.ən/, crush /kɹʌʃ/
- 長單詞——注意重音位置: philosopher /fəˈlɑsəfɚ/, composition /ˌkɑm.pəˈzɪʃ.ən/, intelligent /ɪnˈtɛlɪd͡ʒənt/, disappointment /ˌdɪsəˈpɔɪntmənt/, beautifully /ˈbju.tɪ.fə.li/
中文母語者容易讀錯的音:
- /v/ — 不要讀成 /w/,上齒輕觸下唇: devil /ˈdɛvəl/, overcome /ˌəʊ.vəˈkʌm/, prospective /pɹəˈspɛktɪv/, vanity /ˈvænəti/, aggravate /ˈæɡ.ɹə.veɪ̯t/
- 詞尾子音 — 要讀清楚,後面不要加母音: sage /seɪd͡ʒ/, bust /bʌst/, persist /pɚˈsɪst/, awareness /əˈwɛɹ.nəs/, happiness /ˈhæpinɪs/
- /r/ 和 /l/ 的區別: rarely /ˈɹɛəɹli/, shortly /ˈʃɔɹtli/, moral /ˈmoɹəl/, briefly /ˈbɹiːfli/, realistic /ˌɹɪəˈlɪs.tɪk/
如何用這段影片練習
- 先完整聽一遍影片,不要開口,記下不認識的單詞。
- 先用 0.75 倍速逐句跟讀,熟練之後再回到正常速度。
- 錄下自己的聲音並與原聲對比,特別注意 deeply, sage, argue 這類單詞。
什麼是跟讀法?
跟讀法 (Shadowing) 是一種有科學依據的語言學習技巧,最初開發用於專業口譯員的培訓,並由多語言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。這個方法簡單而強大:您在聽英語母語原聲的同時立即大聲重複——就像是一個延遲1-2秒緊跟說話者的影子。與被動聽力或語法練習不同,跟讀法強迫您的大腦和口腔肌肉同時處理並模模擬實的講話模式。研究表明它能顯著提高發音準確性,語調,節奏,連讀,聽力理解和口語流利度——使其成為雅思口語備考和真實英語交流最有效的方法之一。































