The Western Illusion Of Human Nature-猫眼课题宝

西方对人性的幻想

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2008

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M. Sahlins

(前言：在过去的一二十年里，关于“西方文明”的课程在美国大学课程中所起的作用越来越小。在这里，我试图通过将“西方文明”减少到大约一个小时来加速这一趋势。我的理由是尼采的原则，即大问题就像冷水澡：一个人应该尽快进出。)两千多年来，我们称之为“西方人”的民族一直被他们内心的幽灵所困扰：人性中如此贪婪和争论的幽灵，除非以某种方式加以治理，否则它将使社会陷入无政府状态。关于不守规矩的动物的政治科学在很大程度上以两种对比鲜明、交替出现的形式出现：要么是等级制度，要么是平等；要么是君主权威，要么是共和均衡；要么是一种统治制度，（理想地）通过外部力量约束人们的自然自利；或者是一个自由而平等的自我组织体系，其对立（理想地）在共同利益中调和了他们的特殊利益。在政治之外，这是一种秩序的整体形而上学，因为由等级或平等解决的基本无政府状态的相同一般结构在宇宙和城市的组织中都可以找到，同样在人体的治疗概念中也可以找到。我认为这是一种特殊的西方形而上学，因为它假设了自然与文化之间的对立，这是西方特有的，与其他许多认为野兽基本上是人类而不是人类基本上是野兽的人形成鲜明对比——对他们来说，没有“自然”，更不用说必须克服的东西了。如果时间允许的话，我可以对这些本质主义给出许多限定，以至于我可以被视为“自我诱导失败的后现代崇拜”的熟练者（zurburg）。事实上，我更像是j·s·穆勒的独眼哲学家，想从对事物的痴迷中得出一些普遍的真理

(Preface: Over the past decade or two, courses on “Western Civilization” have been taking a smaller and smaller role in the curricula of American colleges. Here I attempt to accelerate the trend by reducing “Western Civ” to approximately one hour. My justiVcation is the Nietzschean principle that big issues are like cold baths: one should get into and out of them as quickly as possible.) For more than two millennia, the peoples we call “Western” have been haunted by the specter of their own inner being: an apparition of human nature so avaricious and contentious that, unless it is somehow governed, it will reduce society to anarchy. The political science of the unruly animal has come for the most part in two contrasting and alternating forms: either hierarchy or equality, monarchial authority or republican equilibrium: either a system of domination that (ideally) restrains people’s natural self-interest by an external power; or a self-organizing system of free and equal powers whose opposition (ideally) reconciles their particular interests in the common interest. Beyond politics, this is a totalized metaphysics of order, for the same generic structure of an elemental anarchy resolved by hierarchy or equality is found in the organization of the universe as well as the city, and again in therapeutic concepts of the human body. I claim it is a speciVcally Western metaphysics, for it supposes an opposition between nature and culture that is distinctive to the West and contrastive with the many other peoples who think beasts are basically human rather than humans are basically beasts — for them there is no “nature,” let alone one that has to be overcome. Time permitting, I would oUer so many qualiVcations of these essentialisms that I could be taken for an adept of “the post modern cult of self-inWicted failure” (Zurburgg). As it is, I am rather in the position of J. S. Mill’s one-eyed philosopher, thinking to derive some universal truths from an obsession with a

The Western Illusion Of Human Nature

西方对人性的幻想

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