设a为实数 函数f x:札记 (评论: Liberty)

2011-03-31 18:40:36 　　来自: 丁萌 (真正的青年是不必惊慌的)
Liberty的评论    4

　　在这本著名的主张“消极自由”价值立场的书中，以赛亚•伯林首先以一篇论述二十世纪政治思想观念的文章作为铺垫。根据伯林一贯的论述，自柏拉图一直到马基雅维里的思想家，无论他们各自的政治观念多么不同，总是共享三个观点：即认为社会问题是急需解决的真切问题；对于这些问题可以通过思想和知识上的澄清得到解决；以及，真理具有统一性，所有可欲的价值都是彼此兼容而不冲突的。伯林认为，这种观念到了马克思主义的二十世纪子嗣那里，被另一种更激进化的策略所取代：即从构想解决问题的办法转移到消除问题本身，随之而来的则是对于提问者本人进行医学和心理学的分析，相信只要治疗了思想和精神上的疾病，所谓的困惑也会自然消失，而剩下的工作就是通过技术进步和筹划来大踏步迈向一个目的论预先设定的理想未来。伯林对此批评说：“Injustice, poverty, slavery, ignorance—these may be cured by reform or revolution. But men do not live only by fighting evils. They live by positive goals, individual and collective, a vast variety of them, seldom predictable, at times incompatible.”（页87）人生并不仅仅是消除困境和治疗疾病，人还有广阔得多的生活目标可以追求；强制别人做某件他或许并不想做的事情，哪怕这是好事，也是对于他的限制——至少限制而非实现了他的个人自由。伯林的这种观点似乎与马克斯•韦伯相似：只要你严肃地选择并忠诚于某位神就可以了。但伯林似乎走得更远，因为他说，任何以目的论或形而上学作为外衣试图推动社会往某个目标迈进的理论学说，骨子里都是“决定论”的变体。
　　伯林对“决定论”的界定非常广泛：“We are plainly dealing not with an empirical theory but with a metaphysical attitude which takes for granted that to explain a thing—to describe it as it ‘truly’ is, even to define it more than verbally, that is, superficially—is to discover its purpose. Everything is in principle explicable, for everything has a purpose, although our minds may be too feeble or too distraught to discover in any given case what this purpose is.”（页105）在伯林看来，形形色色的“决定论”可以有两种不同表现：要么认为我们可以知道得太多，要么认为我们注定知道得太少。根据前一种看法，孔德等社会科学家就认为自然科学的研究方法可以应用于历史学和其他人文科学，解释具体的历史现象，从而人们的行为和思想就没有什么不可思议的地方了；根据后一种看法，人注定是无知的动物，我们永远不可能了解超越我们之上的神秘力量（绝对精神、大历史、阶级、种族，等等），所以我们对具体现象的认识都是有缺陷的。无论呈现为哪一种样子，在伯林看来，决定论的根本问题在于它推卸了个体责任——
　　Certainly it is to commit oneself to the view that the notion of individual responsibility is, ‘in the end’, an illusion. No effort, however ingenious, to reinterpret that much-tormented expression will, within a teleological system, restore its normal meaning to the notion of free choice.（页107）
　　What the variants of these attitudes entail, like all forms of genuine determinism, is the elimination of the notion of individual responsibility…If the history of the world is due to the operation of identifiable forces other than, and little affected by, free human wills and free choices (whether these occur or not), then the proper explanation of what happens must be given in terms of the evolution of such forces.（页115）
　　因为，既然“some area, at any rate, of their lives is not totally determined by laws, whether metaphysical or theological or expressing the generalized probabilities of the sciences”（页110）我们就没有理由再使用带有强烈情感色彩的词汇评价人们的所作所为，谴责和赞扬都没有了意义——因为他们的行为要么是特定的心理和生理原因决定的，要么是超越于他们理解范围之外和之上的力量决定了的。伯林说，人们可以谴责一个小偷，但你不能谴责一个因心理疾病而有偷窃癖的人，人们所能做的只是哀叹他的不幸并治疗他的疾病。
　　不过，伯林又再三强调，他要做的不是在哲学层面驳倒决定论，而只是指出，持有决定论观点的人往往言行不一致，说一套做一套。比如：
　　the existing use of these basic words and concepts constitutes some evidence, not, indeed, for the proposition that determinism is false, but for the hypothesis that many of those who profess this doctrine seldom, if ever, practice what they preach, and (if my thesis is valid) seem curiously unaware of what seems, prima facie, a lack of correspondence between their theory and their real convictions, as these are expressed in what they do and say.（页5）
　　I do not here wish to say that determinism is necessarily false, only that we neither speak or think as if it could be true, and that it is difficult, and perhaps beyond our normal powers, to conceive what our picture of the world would be if we seriously believed it.（页122）
　　如果我们从“不负责任”的角度来考察伯林提到的思想家，那似乎确实会发现很少有人谈到这一点：无论是孔德、黑格尔还是马克思，没有人会公开表明个体无需对自己的行为负责。但这究竟是表明这些思想家对于自己所说的和所做的表现出惊人的无知（就像伯林倾向于认为的那样），还是有可能伯林的概括本身有问题？我认为是后者。当然，具体地辨析伯林提到的各个思想家是不是能够被称为“决定论者”不可能在这里进行，而这样的工作本身有可能变成强调每一位被称为是“后现代主义者”的哲学家其实都不是“后现代主义者”那样老套；我想说的是（借用G. A. Cohen的区分）伯林似乎混淆了inevitability与unavoidability的差别。先允许我重申伯林的主要论点：由于个人的每一件行为都是被他自己无法控制的某种外在或内在、超越性或非超越性的因素决定的，而“负责”只有在个人有意识选择并决定自己的行为且由此造成了后果的情况下才是可能的，因此决定论阐释就排除了个体责任的可能性。我们不妨举个例子：如果共产主义社会是必然到来的，而个人在社会经济结构中的位置决定了他的思想方式和行为方式，那么“阶级”就使个人推卸了责任，必然的目标和必然的决定因素推出个人所做所为的必然性。但建构社会主义社会当然不承认个人或集体从此不需要为他的行为负责——关键在于，马克思主义设想的“必然”类似于人们平时说的“这场战争A方必然会胜利”那样。在后面这个句子中，“必然”并不意味着A方的士兵可以什么都不做，更不意味着无论他们做什么都会导致胜利的结果。Cohen清楚地辨析了人们谈论inevitable与unavoidable时的不同语义内涵：
　　The words ‘inevitable’ and ‘unavoidable’ do not always mean the same thing—which is not to say that they never do—and it is indicative of the semantic difference between them that there are no living worlds ‘evit’ and ‘evitable’ which mean ‘avoid’ and ‘avoidable’…That something is bound to happen establishes that it is inevitable, whoever may have or lack the power to avoid it: it might be bound to happen because everyone with the power to avoid it is irreversibly resolved not to use it. The fact that something is inevitable does not settle whether anyone has that power, and we can ask, of something that is inevitable, whether or not it is, for anyone, avoidable.（History, Labour, and Freedom，页69、70）
　　在此，重要的是，人们尽管有能力阻止“必然”发生的事情发生，但是他们不愿意这样做；而“必然”发生的事情之所以成为“必然”的重要原因之一是，“it is their most rational course”（Cohen，页55）。因此，需要回答的问题就不再是马克思主义理论如何解释个人责任问题，而是如何解释参与革命是符合理性的行为。（当然，这是另一个问题了。）
　　让我们后撤一步，重新思考一下为什么伯林要把包括实证主义、马克思主义等在内的分歧极大的思想统统冠之以“决定论”的称呼，并且指责它推卸了个体责任？显然，考虑到写作年代的冷战背景，伯林是想主张在美国等西方国家得到伸张的“多元主义”和“消极自由”。伯林聪明的地方在于，他并没有斩钉截铁地断言“积极自由”是坏的而“消极自由”是好的，他甚至走得如此之远，以至于首先指出，自由和民主统治不一定是相辅相成的：“there is no necessary connection between individual liberty and democratic rule. The answer to the question ‘Who governs me?’ is logically distinct from the question ‘How far does government interfere with me?’ It is in this difference that the great contrast between the two concepts of negative and positive liberty, in the end, consists.”（页177）当然，根据这段引文中提出的两个问题，我们可以知道伯林想说的不是“民主”，而是“积极自由”。他说，自己之所以要伸张“消极自由”并不是因为“消极自由”本身没有毛病（“It is doubtless well to remember that belief in negative freedom is compatible with, and (so far as ideas influence conduct) has played its part in generating, great and lasting social evils.”[页37]），而是看到了太多滥用“积极自由”的情况：
　　[T]he ‘positive’ conception of freedom as self-mastery, with its suggestion of a man divided against himself, has in fact, and as a matter of history, of doctrine and of practice, lent itself more easily to this splitting of personality into two: the transcendent, dominant controller, and the empirical bundle of desires and passions to be disciplined and brought to heel. It is this historical fact that has been influential.（页181）
　　相比于“消极自由”，“积极自由”太容易被滥用了，甚至会被其他价值所淹没。因此，伯林说，自由就是自由而不是别的什么，无论是正义、平等还是博爱都无法取代“自由”——在这个意义上，法律本身就是对自由的限制，无论它对社会稳定和个人安全来说是不是必要。那么，归根结底，为什么要坚持“消极自由”？“积极自由”被滥用是一回事，由此推出“消极自由”的可欲性则是另一回事。伯林的确告诉我们，私人性和与此相关的自由是人们生活不可或缺的，人们可能会因私人空间过于狭小窒息而死。（阿伦特也说过类似的话：私人空间无法忍受公共空间投来的强光。）但是，根据伯林自己的看法，“私人性”难道不是现代世界的发明吗？
　　[I]t seems to me that the issue of individual freedom, of the frontiers beyond which authority, whether lay or ecclesiastical, should not normally be allowed to step, had not clearly emerged at (ancient Greek) this stage; the central value attached to it may, perhaps, be the late product of a capitalist civilization, an element in a network of values that includes such notions as personal rights, civil liberties, the sanctity of the individual personality, the importance of privacy, personal relations and the like.（页33-4）
　　既然不是“自古皆然”，伯林有什么理由认为应当重视“消极自由”的可欲性？施特劳斯看到了这里的相对主义困境：“不仅我们的所有主要目的都只具有相对有效性；甚至那个因绝对地洞察到我们所有目的的相对有效性而自称为必然的目的也只是相对有效的。”（《“相对主义”》）
　　不过，我们不必走得更远，追问伯林是不是承认无产阶级所具有的“饿死的自由”至少在理论上是一种消极自由（不过，伯林也说过：“The workers, in theory, probably enjoyed wide negative freedom. But since they lacked the means of its realization, it was a hollow gain.”[页41]）；如果将伯林对于“消极自由”与他对于“决定论”的质疑联系起来，或许可以推出这样一个命题：“消极自由”放弃了“积极自由”经常披上的决定论外衣，因而可以宣称个体责任——你为你自己的所作所为负责，因为且仅仅因为它是你自己的选择。事实上，主张“消极自由”乃是对于“积极自由”之滥用的一个反拨：就此而言，伯林看似激进的论述实际上是防守式的。最能表现这一点的是，每当伯林的质疑达到需要提出反论辩（counterargument）的时候，他总是会提出所谓“日常语言”或“日常经验”来支持自己的观点，例如：
　　‘Objective’, ‘true’, ‘fair’ are words of large content, their uses are many, their edges often blurred. Ambiguities and confusions are always possible and often dangerous. Nevertheless such terms do possess meanings, which may, indeed, be fluid, but stay within limits recognized by normal usage, and refer to standards commonly accepted by those who work in relevant fields; and that not merely within one generation or society, but across large stretches of time and space.（页148-9）
　　I…assume that all or most men need and consciously seek food, clothing, shelter, some degree of protection for their persons, and facilities for getting their grievances listened to or redressed. Perhaps I assume something more specific, namely, that persons who have acquired a certain degree of wealth or economic power will not be indefinitely content to lack political rights or social status; or that human beings are prey to various passions—greed, envy, lust for power; or that some men are more ambitious, ruthless, cunning or fanatical than others; and so forth. these are the assumptions of common experience…These inexact disciplines depend on a certain measure of concreteness, vagueness, ambiguity, suggestiveness, vividness and so on, embodied in the properties of the language of common sense and of literature and the humanities.（页142）
　　伯林想说的是，类似“消极自由”和“多元主义”这样的价值之所以需要得到强调，是因为对于“积极自由”的滥用已经造成了历史上太多的冲突、流血和暴力，造成了各种理论在实践过程中走火入魔。问题在于，伯林所诉诸的“日常经验”前提似乎并不牢靠。譬如，当伯林指出有很多自由主义思想家无意识间也会在关涉他人的问题上“越俎代庖”时，其中包括一个约翰•穆勒的例子：“Even Mill is prepared to say that I may forcibly prevent a man from crossing a bridge if there is not time to warn him that it is about to collapse, for I know, or am justified in assuming, that he cannot with to fall into the water.”（页196，强调为引者所加）请注意，伯林在这里的强调重点是：穆勒假定自己知道什么是他人的利益，而这是不对的。可是，按照“日常经验”，我们当然会假定一些事情符合别人的利益，而另一些事情则不会是他人所希望的。那么，确定此类“假定”的正当与不正当的界线在哪里？如果“消极自由”最终规定他人完全是一个“他者”，那么所谓被日常语言和经验普遍接受的“标准”又如何确定？更糟糕的是，伯林说，寻求统一性的理论建构实际上是人心最深处的欲望之一（“One of the deepest of human desires is to find a unitary pattern in which the whole of experience, past, present and future, actual, possible and unfulfilled, is symmetrically ordered.”[页155]）……
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2011-03-31 21:17:04 骡马人

　　伯林这种自由主义比后现代主义还要害怕同一性
　　马克思所谓的自然法则和铁的规律并不是我们一般意义上的决定论，而是针对于资本主义的“自然性”来说的，因为资本主义本身造成了“自然性”的概念，如自然人性，无门不能违反的自然的经济规律，所以从内部爆破资本主义的规律自然也会呈现自然的必然的特征。

2011-04-04 08:32:59 苏门答腊

　　整理下发到《读书》小组去吧，更多的人可以看到