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One of the most provocative analyses of love ever produced is to be found in the writings of the Danish Existential philosopher Soren Kierkegaard.
丹麦存在主义哲学家索伦·克尔凯郭尔的著作对爱情做出了有史以来最具挑衅性的分析。
In a book entitled Works of Love, published in Copenhagen in 1847, Kierkegaard - then thirty-four years old - proposed a theory which deliberately upset every leading idea that his own age (in this respect very similar to our own) liked to entertain about this hallowed concept of love.
1847年，也就是克尔凯郭尔34岁时，他在哥本哈根出版的一本名为《爱的作品》的书中提出了一种理论，故意颠覆了他的同龄人(在这方面与我们非常相似)喜欢将神圣爱情观娱乐化的观念。
First and most importantly, Kierkegaard insisted that most of us have no idea what love is - even though we refer to the term incessantly.
首先，也是最重要的一点是，克尔凯郭尔坚持认为，我们大多数人都不知道什么是爱——尽管我们经常提到这个词。
The first half of the nineteenth century in Europe saw the triumph of what we today call 'Romantic love', involving a veneration and worship of one very special person with whose soul and body we hope to unite our own.
十九世纪上半叶的欧洲，我们今天所说的“浪漫爱情”取得胜利，“浪漫爱情”即指我们尊敬并崇拜一个非常特别的人，希望自己的灵魂和肉体能与他的相结合。
Kierkegaard insisted that through concentrating on Romantic love, we develop a narrow and impoverished sense of what love should actually be.
克尔凯郭尔坚持认为，专注于浪漫爱情，会让我们对爱的理解趋向狭隘和贫乏。
Love is not, he insisted, the special excitement we feel when in the presence of someone unusually beautiful, pure or accomplished.
他认为，爱不是我们面对一个异常美丽、纯洁或成就非凡的人时所无与伦比的兴奋感。
He proposed that we return instead to an exacting version of Christian love, which commands us to love everyone, starting - most arduously - with all those who we by instinct consider to be unworthy of love.
他建议我们遵循基督教严格的要求去爱——爱每一个人，从所有我们本能地认为不值得爱的人，也就是最艰难的一部分开始。
Kierkegaard made a vital distinction between what in Danish is termed kaerlighed - true love, the kind Christians are commanded to give and elskov,or erotic love.
克尔凯郭尔用丹麦语对所谓的kaerlighed，也就是基督徒要求我们给予他人的“真爱”，和elskov，也就是“性爱”，进行了至关重要的区分。
For Kierkegaard, we should learn to love all the many people it would be so tempting to curse and to hate; those whom we believe are mistaken, ugly, irritating, venal, wrong-headed or ridiculous.
对于克尔凯郭尔来说，我们应该学会爱所有那些我们会忍不住诅咒和憎恨的人，那些我们认为做错事的、丑陋的、令人恼火的、贪婪的、执迷不悟的或荒谬的人。
To learn to love such people, that is to practise kaerlighed, and that is the real accomplishment - and the summit of our humanity.
学会爱这样的人，是一种真爱，也是真正的成就——抵达人性的巅峰。
It is true love when we can look at someone who appears misguided, lazy, angry or proud and instead of labelling them revolting, can wonder with imagination and sympathy how they might have come to be this way; when we can perceive the lost, vulnerable or hurt child that must lie somewhere within the perplexing or dispiriting adult.
当我们看到一个看起来误入歧途的、懒惰的、愤怒的或骄傲的人，没有给他们贴上负面的标签，而是带着想象力和同情，想知道他们为什么会变成这样，才是真正的爱；当我们能感受到一个困惑或沮丧的成年人心中有一个角落藏着一个迷失的、脆弱的或受伤的孩子时，才是真正的爱。
Love means making the effort to extend our compassion beyond the bounds of attraction so that we may look generously on all those we might at first glance have deemed beyond the pale or 'undeserving'.
爱意味着努力将我们的同情心延伸到吸引我们同情心的人之外，宽容地看待那些我们乍一看会认为出格的，或不值得被爱的人。
Kierkegaard tells us that if we understood love properly, when we said we loved a person, we wouldn't mean that we admired them but that we had a handle on all the many difficulties that underpinned their troubling and objectionable sides.
克尔凯郭尔告诉我们，正确地理解了爱意味着当我们说爱一个人时，并不意味着我们钦佩这个人，而是我们能够应付导致他制造麻烦，表现得令人反感的所有问题。
Kierkegaard was especially aggrieved by how his contemporaries had replaced the Christian emphasis on forgiveness with the pursuit of something that feels a great deal more objective, hard-edged and rational, namely justice.
克尔凯郭尔尤其感到愤愤不平的是，他的同时代人追求更客观、更强硬和更理性的东西，也就是正义，而无视基督教强调的宽恕。
The pursuers of justice want to give everyone what they actually deserve.
正义的追求者希望所有人得到他们应该得到的东西。
This sounds extremely reasonable - until one comes face to face with an uncomfortable fact: that if we all actually ended up with what we truly 'deserved', the world would at once be rendered entirely unlivable.
这听起来非常合理——但令人不快的事实是，如果我们真的只能得到我们“应得的”，世界将立即变得让人无法忍受。
The attempt to pursue justice all costs, and the belief that doing so is theoretically possible, gives rise to appalling intolerance, for if one really believes that one can be a flawless instrument of righteousness, then there is logically no limit to the degree of rage or the sternness of punishments that can be brought to bear upon 'wrong doers'.
不惜一切代价追求正义，以及相信这样做在理论上的可行性，会导致极端的偏见，因为如果一个人真的认为自己可以成为完美的正义执行人，那么从逻辑上讲，可以对“过错者”施加无限的愤怒或严厉的惩罚。
But for Kierkegaard, our goal should not be try to create a world in which everyone gets exactly what they deserve; it is to try to ensure that as many of us as possible get the kindness that we need.
但对于克尔凯郭尔来说，我们的目标不应该是创造一个人人都能得到他们应得的东西的世界，而是确保我们中大部分人都能得到他们所需的善意。
