世间鲜有人将他人的共同福祉置于首要地位，更少有人愿意为了实现这一目标而承受个人苦难。纳尔逊·曼德拉、瓦茨拉夫·哈维尔和莫罕达斯·甘地是这样的人，刘晓波亦是如此。
刘晓波天生求知若渴。在大学和研究生求学期间，他研习中国古典文学，深深醉心于庄子的道家思想与唐诗，尤其是诗人司空图的诗论。共产党指责他为了西方价值观而背弃中国文化，这种说法既无知又荒谬。
他确实研究过西方思想家的著作，从苏格拉底一直到西奥多·阿多诺，其中尤为深入地钻研了奥古斯丁和阿奎那的思想。他出版了一本视野宏阔的西方哲学史著作，题为《形上学的迷雾》。由于该书问世之时，正值1989年春季全国性学生抗议活动如火如荼之际，因而鲜少受到关注。书中将西方哲学家分为两类：一类是受形上学诱惑者，另一类则是未受这一思想痼疾侵染者。
1996年至1999年，在劳改营服刑的三年间，刘阅读了大量关于宗教——特别是基督教神学——的著作。他重读了奥古斯丁，随后又研读了西蒙娜·薇依的《等待上帝》、汉斯·昆的《论基督徒身份》、迪特里希·潘霍华的《狱中书简》以及许多其他作品。潘霍华的著作对刘而言特别珍贵，因为其中包含的道德指引，探讨了像他们两人那样的政治犯应如何看待狱中经历。
晓波的朋友们几乎都说，他从劳教所出来后判若两人：变得比以前温和、谦逊且宽容了许多。他那著名的“我没有敌人”的理念，便是在那段岁月里形成的。从1999年到2009年他最后一次入狱期间，他的人权工作始终聚焦于“弱势群体”——包括妇女、儿童、普通工人、政治犯以及其他各类弱势族群。
他的一生历经坎坷，但在我看来，始终贯穿的一点是他对自己理性判断的坚定信赖。除非自己想通了其中的道理，否则他绝不接受任何主张。早在孩提时代，他就敢于同父亲甚至幼儿园老师争辩（他曾劝告女老师：“别那么单纯吧。”）在攻读硕士和博士学位期间，每当导师的指导与他自己的判断相左时，他都会断然拒绝师长的建议。当异议运动中的朋友主张采取暴力手段时，他会直言不讳地提出反对意见，即便明知这可能会导致友谊破裂，他也毫不退缩。
我们该称之为“勇气”吗？在我看来，这个词并不完全贴切。对晓波而言，做他认为对的事，与其说是出于勇气，不如说是出于逻辑。如果他的理智认定某件事是正确的，他便会去做；如果新的认知让他意识到别的事更好，他就会做出改变。理智始终占据主导地位，勇气不过是辅助罢了。
莱比锡，2026年7月
The Triumph of an Honest Mind
– for the Liu Xiaobo Human Rights Award Ceremony
Perry Link
Leipzig, July 2026
Few people in this world make the common good of others their highest priority. Still fewer are ready to accept personal suffering in pursuit of the goal. Nelson Mandela, Vaclav Havel, and Mohandas Gandhi were such people. Liu Xiaobo was as well.
Liu was born with a voracious mind. In college and graduate school he studied classical Chinese literature and became enthralled by the ancient Daoism of Zhuangzi and by Tang poetry, especially the literary theory of the poet Sikong Tu. The Communist Party’s charges that he sold out Chinese culture for Western values are simply ignorant–and absurd.
He did read Western thinkers, from Socrates through Theodor Adorno, with lengthy stops at Augustine and Acquinas. He published a wide-ranging history of Western philosopy that he called The Fog of Metaphysics. The book was little noticed because it came out just when the nationwide student protests in spring 1989 were heating up. It divided Western philosophers into two groups—those who were seduced by metaphysics and those who remained free from that intellectual scourge.
During three years in a labor camp from 1996 to 1999, Liu consumed texts on religion, especially Christian theology. He re-read Augustine and then went on to read Simone Weil’s Waiting for God, Hans Küng’s On Being a Christian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters from Prison, and many other works. Bonhoeffer was especially valuable to Liu for his moral advice on how a political prisoner, as Liu and Bonhoeffer both were, should regard prison experience.
Nearly all of Xiaobo’s friends said that he emerged from the labor camp a changed person: much more gentle, modest, and tolerant than before. His famous philosophy of “I Have No Enemies” grew out of those years. His human rights work from 1999 until 2009, when he entered prison for the final time, was focused on 弱势群体 ‘vulnerable groups’–women, children, ordinary workers, political prisoners, and others.
His life had many twists and turns, but, in my view, one constant from start to finish was his unshakeable trust in his brain. He accepted no proposition until it made sense in his own mind. As a small boy he argued with his father and even with his kindergarten teacher (“Don’t be so simplistic,” he advised her.) He stoutly rejected the advice of his M.A. and Ph.D. dissertation directors whenever their counsel ran counter to his own judgment. When friends in the resistance movement advocated violence, he contradicted them flatly, even when he knew his words could cost him a friendship.
Should we call this “courage”? That word is not, in my view, quite the right one. For Xiaobo, doing what he thought it was right to do was less a matter of courage than of logic. If his mind told him something was right, he would do it. If new knowledge told him that something else was better, he would change. His mind was always the boss. Courage was ancillary.
【欧洲之声】2026.07.17
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