Being Right of Being Good? Solesmes Benedictinism and the Ethics of Intellectual Work

什么是脑力劳动，为什么要这样做？这些都是适时的问题：随着当代大学倾向于优先考虑一个客观可量化的社会影响概念，对知识的不同观点，尤其是知识可能“为其本身”而存在的观点，似乎越来越难以维持。但是，如果知识不能根据占主导地位的当代指标进行量化，那么它会毫无用处吗？知识的生产本身可能会带来什么社会价值，这一点如何才能显露出来？对本笃会修道院传统的人类学研究可以帮助我们解决这些问题。数百年来，社会的智力工作者是僧侣，而不是学者；但智力实践的伦理总是有争议的：僧侣是应该获得知识，将其传授给更广泛的社会，还是应该更接近上帝？是帮助他的同伴，还是帮助他自己的灵魂？这些争论仍然隐含在法国Solesmes会众的本笃会传统中，那里的僧侣生活特别强调学术。与当代普遍关注的“正确”不同，我对索尔姆斯修道院的人种学-历史学研究将挖掘知识作为一种善的方式的潜力。这种对伦理的关注有望对知识产生新的视角，而知识显然是“为了它自己”而产生的。这些观点可能会为学者、政策制定者和个人提供哪些支持，以颠覆在当代全球化社会中似乎正在加剧的“对”和“错”之间的根深蒂固的分歧？

What is intellectual work, and why do it? These are timely questions: as the contemporary university tends to prioritise an objectively quantifiable concept of social impact, alternative perspectives on knowledge, above all that it might exist "for its own sake", appear more and more difficult to sustain. But if knowledge cannot be quantified according to dominant contemporary metrics, is it useless? What social value might the production of knowledge for its own sake bring, and how might this be made visible? An anthropological approach to the Benedictine monastic tradition can help us address these questions. For hundreds of years, it was monks, not academics, who were society's intellectual workers; but the ethics of intellectual practice was always controversial: should a monk gain knowledge to impart it to wider society, or to move closer to God? To help his fellows, or his own soul? These debates remain implicit in the Benedictine tradition of the French Solesmes Congregation, where monastic life has a particular emphasis on scholarship. In contrast to the widespread contemporary focus on "being right", my ethnographic-historical study of the Solesmes monastery will draw out the potentials of knowledge as a way of being good. This ethical focus promises to yield fresh perspectives on knowledge that is apparently produced merely "for its own sake". What support might these perspectives offer to academics, policymakers and individuals to subvert the entrenched divisions between "right" and "wrong" that seem to be intensifying in contemporary globalised society?