ABSTRACT Shelley’s speculative essay, ‘A Future State’, has been unduly neglected. Its ostensibly circumscribed argument and strictly empiricist, Humean logic appear to set it apart from more intimate reflections on similar topics such as ‘On Love’ and ‘On Life’, which are regularly anthologised. Redating of the composition to the winter of 1818–19 when Shelley was at Rome or Naples alters the significance of the piece, indicating that it is an intermediary work that scrupulously re-proposes earlier sceptical and materialist formulations as a means of putting belief in an afterlife to the test. The dialectical strategy of the text places the inescapable and lamentable fact of mortality – a pressing and ongoing concern as reflected in the narrative, ‘The Coliseum’, and ‘A Vision of the Sea’ – in opposition to the extraordinary persistence and prevalence of ‘persuasion’. This approach is neither rigidly materialist nor idealist. The fascination of ‘A Future State’ lies in the fact that, as one who wholly excludes recourse to religious testimony or faith, since there is no factual evidence to support it, Shelley continued to advocate extreme doubt (in the manner of Hume) whilst admitting to an irrepressible human desire for everlasting life, founded on an innate resistance to change.

中文翻译：

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反对证据：“说服”和雪莱“未来状态”中的经验事实

摘要雪莱的思辨性文章《未来国家》被过分忽视了。它表面上是局限的论点和严格的经验主义，休谟逻辑似乎使它与对类似主题的更亲密的反思区分开来，例如“论爱情”和“论生活”，这些主题经常被选集。将乐曲改写为雪莱在罗马或那不勒斯的 1818-19 年冬天改变了作品的意义，表明它是一部中间作品，谨慎地重新提出了早期的怀疑主义和唯物主义表述，以此作为一种手段，让人们相信来世的考验。文本的辩证策略将不可避免和可悲的死亡事实置于一个紧迫的和持续的关注点，正如叙事“斗兽场”中所反映的那样，和“海洋的愿景”——与“说服”的非凡坚持和盛行相反。这种方法既不是严格的唯物主义，也不是唯心主义的。“未来国家”的魅力在于，作为一个完全排除求助于宗教证词或信仰的人，由于没有事实证据支持，雪莱继续提倡极端怀疑（以休谟的方式），同时承认人类对永生的不可抑制的渴望，这种渴望建立在对改变的天生抵抗力之上。