后现代、现代性重建与中国的现代性问题

后现代主义对现代性的批判为人们提供了一个理解现代的有益视角,它有利于揭示现代性充满矛盾和悖论的一面,促使人们加强对现代性的反思并发掘其尚未释放的理性潜能,从而实现现代性的重建。就中国的后现代主义者而言,他们对现代性的批判过多地集中于剖析其“西化”本质,忽视了现代性的某些普遍内涵,使中国的现代性问题局限于中西对立的二元视野。客观地评价中国的现代性,就应当突破上述理论框架,认识到现代性中所包含的普遍性与特殊性之间的张力,同时借鉴后现代主义的建设性作用,努力实现现代性的解放功能。     

霍耐特承认理论述评

承认理论是霍耐特思想发展贯穿始终的一条主线。霍耐特承认理论是在反思第一代和第二代法兰克福学派理论家和福柯思想的基础上提出的。霍耐特承认理论认为,相互承认关系可以表述为:以爱与关怀为主导观念的私密关系;以平等的权利义务为规范的法权关系;以个人成就为社会等级规范标准的社会尊重关系。霍耐特承认理论完成了社会批判理论的重大转向,创造了批判理论发展的新形态,提出了当代紧迫问题,拓宽了马克思主义研究的问题域,对现代性的批判具有重要启示。但它也存在夸大道德规范、文化在社会生活中的作用,对资本主义的批判力度有限等局限性。     

当代音乐批评中的后殖民话语探究

后殖民话语是在上个世纪90年代形成的,主要是在中国的音乐批评界出现了反思“五四”以来的音乐发展道路,批判现代音乐的契机。后殖民话语是建立在当代文化批判中的现代性反思和后殖民主义理论为依托的。     

后现代旅游探析

现代性衍生的现代工业文明为现代旅游的发展创造了前提条件,它使现代旅游"商业化"、"麦当劳化".后现代主义对现代性和现代旅游进行了深刻批判.在后现代主义的影响下,出现了各种后现代旅游方式.本文分析了后现代旅游的内涵,探讨了后现代旅游概念下旅游产业功能的转变.     

散乱的历史——福柯后现代主义历史观

米歇尔·福柯 (192 6—1984年 )是后现代主义一个重要代表。他对哲学、史学 ,文学、艺术、医学、社会科学等方面都产生了深远的影响。作为一个后现代主义者 ,他对西方的现代性作了深刻的批评。现代历史哲学是现代性有机组成部分 ,所以 ,福柯对现代历史观也进行了全面、系统的批判。这种批判成为他对历史学方面独到的贡献。特别要指出的是 ,他的后结构主义思想①对新历史主义起到了推波助澜的作用。安德森说福柯“创建一种新的历史方法”②,韦纳称福柯为“纯粹的历史学家” ,德勒兹评价更高 ,认为福柯是“一种哲学研究方式的开创者 ,这种研究…     

我看农民群体

<正>从文化批判和现代性建构角度看,农民经常被视为落后和消极的力量。然而,中国农民是勤劳的,而勤劳又总是与质朴相生相伴的,这些无疑都是人类珍贵的文化品质,是我们这个纷扰的现代社会的稀缺资     

从反省现代性到服膺马克思主义——李大钊、陈独秀思想新论

欧战前后,中西方都各自面临着"重新估定一切价值"的时代。但是,因时代的落差,当中国的新文化运动热衷于以欧洲19世纪的文明为范本,猛烈批判传统文化之时,欧洲人却正致力于反省自己的资本主义文明。其反省现代性与社会主义思潮的并兴,不仅标志着西方现代思潮发生了深刻的变动,而且也给其时中国社会思潮的发展带来了深刻的影响。从虔诚地追随西方资本主义文明到认同反省现代性、批判资本主义,再到信仰马克思主义,李大钊、陈独秀这一共同的思想进路,既合乎其自身发展的逻辑,同时也集中代表和凸显了20世纪初年中国社会思潮变动的鲜明主线。他们最终归向马克思主义,既是近代中国历史发展的善果,同时也是整个西方现代思潮影响中国的必然结果。     

论马尔库塞对实证主义的批判

对实证主义的批判是贯穿于马尔库塞批判理论的一条主线。马尔库塞的实证主义批判思想包括三个相互联系的部分：以经验主义为核心的实证理性批判;以形式主义为核心的形式逻辑批判和以分析主义为核心的语言哲学批判。马尔库塞是一位具有激进批判精神和深重历史责任感的西方马克思主义者,其试图解释和应对人类当代课题时对实证主义的批判,与马克思主义学说是一致的。     

历史的无意义与意义——论章太炎《易》学、《春秋》学中的历史观

章太炎在中国现代思想史上具有独特的地位。他不但大力破除中国"传统",而且对"现代性"也进行了深刻和透彻的批判。对"进化进步史观"的批判是章氏"反现代性"思想的核心。以往学者多关注其"俱分进化论",而作为"汉学"的嫡系传人,章太炎用《易》学和《春秋》学表述了一套与其"齐物论"相贯通的完整的历史观。他彻底批判了对历史的形而上学预设及其"起源"观念,否定了"进化进步"的历史及其意义;但他从未否定特殊、具体的历史连续性,并肯定一种自觉的历史连续性和对"传统"的创造,积极鼓励每一种文化追求价值自足和自立,从而促进现实秩序的批判性更新和创造。他的思想实践在当代中国的语境中富有启发意义。     

马克思现代性理论对构建中国特色社会主义现代性的启示

马克思主义理论在本质上是现代性理论。身为现代性初盛时期的哲学家,马克思以资本主义社会为载体,揭示了现代性产生的根源,分析了现代性发展的场域,透视了现代性的成就与弊端,指明了超越资本主义现代性的双重路径。在当前中国的现代性构建中,我们应正确认识中国的现代性境遇,在继承中发展马克思的现代性理论,坚定不移地走中国特色社会主义道路,从而实现对旧有现代性模式的双重超越。     

Secularism Meets Coloniality: Mariategui's Andean Political Theology

This article seeks to clarify the link between Mariategui's political theology and his critique of modern-secular-coloniality. I argue that understanding the place and the significance of Mariategui's critique of secularism/colonialism helps us grasp the fuller extent of Mariategui's thought, a pioneering critic of modernity in the early twentieth century who keenly understood the limits of modern-liberal framework for analyzing the political problems of Latin America. Mariategui's reading of Marx and revolution raises important challenges to various forms of twenty-first-century political theologies that tackle modernity from within Western liberal modernity (postmodern theories and philosophies). Mariategui offers important insights not only for critics of the secular and modernity who fail to attest to the important question of coloniality from which secularism/modernity must be disentangled, but also for critics of colonialism/coloniality who fail to view religion as the key fabric of coloniality.     

Manent and Perreau-Saussine on MacIntyre’s Aristotelianism

This essay examines Pierre Manent’s and Émile Perreau-Saussine’s critique of Alasdair MacIntyre. Both criticize MacIntyre’s neo-Aristotelianism as an apolitical Aristotelianism, arguing that it is a deficient because it neglects Aristotle’s question of the best regime. In examining MacIntyre’s narrative biography of Justice O’Connor in Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity, I show the merit of this critique, in that it obscures what the applications of MacIntyre’s Aristotelianism are in the modern polity. While MacIntyre is not without a strong reply to their objections, I conclude that the deeper, unresolved disagreement MacIntyre has with Manent and Perreau-Saussine is over how to characterize modernity.     

Excavating Utopia: Why Archaeologists Should Study “Ideal” Communities of the Nineteenth Century

The study of utopias is riddled with contradictions: we admire and fear them; they are a radical critique of the modernist societies that surround them, and yet they are in some ways the archetypal product of modernity. This paper suggests that studying Utopia could be of value in analyzing some of the complexities and contradictions of Western society and ideology in the nineteenth century, as well as causing us to question some of the preconceptions we regularly bring to the study of the archaeological past. Finally I will suggest that a different kind of nineteenth century, one which includes the radical dissent and resistance of utopian thinkers and experimenters, provides a strong basis for a critique of the social values of modern capitalism.     

2. IN DEFENSE OF PROVINCIALIZING EUROPE: A RESPONSE TO CAROLA DIETZE

This response to Carola Dietze's critique of Provincializing Europe takes up for examination three key expressions or ideas on which the original argument of the book was founded: hyperreal Europe, historicism, and political modernity. I appreciate the spirit of Dietze's engagement with the book, but I show that her critique is based on a degree of misapprehension of these three central ideas. While clarifying the details and the degree of my disagreement with Dietze, I provide my own critique of Dietze's proposal of “equal histories” by arguing that Dietze has not named or explained the unit with respect to which different histories could be considered equal. I also argue that Dietze's proposals about judging societies only by their “own” standards, and basing human dignity on the idea of a “human nature” that could be seen as a “constant,” do not solve the problems she sees with my book and are themselves open to some serious historical and logical criticism.     

Levinas's beginnings: ethics,politics, and origins

It is commonplace in philosophy, political theory, and theology to speak of the other and the problem of the identity of the West. No one has done as much to foreground the language of the other in recent years as Emmanuel Levinas, whose works have sparked a renewed interest in ethics across the humanities. Moreover, few have advanced as forceful a critique of European otherness, not only its exclusivity (whereby the other is marginalized) but also its hegemony (whereby the other is absorbed). I explore Levinas's critique of Western ethical thought in order to try to pinpoint what exactly he offers to post‐Hegelian reflection on the other, focusing on his insistence that equality must be grounded in the asymmetry of ethics. The question is: does this take one further than Europe, modernity, the West? If so, where is one thereby going? If not, what is novel or important in these claims?     

From Dionysus to the Anti-Christ

Abstract

This essay is a reconstruction of Rene Girard's Christian apology in “I saw the Devil fall like Lightening.” It develops Nietzsche's antithesis between Christ and Dionysius which Girard identifies as the antithesis of modernity as such. Against Girard's own alliance with Carl Schmitt the essay adopts the Trinitarian point of view suggested by the author, in order to show that it is Erik Peterson's “Trinitarian” critique of Carl Schmitt's political theology of sovereignty which could fulfill the “true” aim of the author in fact much better.     

Rethinking the Historical Genealogy of Orientalism

The publication of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978 Said, E. 1978. Orientalism, New York: Random House.  [Google Scholar]) marked a paradigm shift in thinking about the relationship between the West and the non‐West. Said coupled his critique of European discourse on the Middle East to issues of representation generally, demonstrating that Western discourse on the Middle East was linked to power, trafficked in racist stereotypes and continually reproduced itself. Despite important achievements, the critique of colonial representations often appeared abstract and disengaged from its own history as well as the specific colonial histories it sought to explain. We contend that while colonial representations have been theorized, they have yet to be adequately historicized. To this end, we trace the genealogy of the critique of colonial forms of knowledge in Britain, France and the US from the mid‐1940s to 1978. We argue for the historicization of the critique of orientalism, and for a more philosophically adequate theorization of modernity in world history.     

Marx and Modernity: Rethinking Labour,Capital, and Capitalism

This article argues that China’s modern historical development and, more generally, modern global developments can be illuminated by a renewed encounter with Marx’s critical analysis of capitalism. This renewed encounter entails a fundamental critique of traditional Marxism’s understanding of capitalism and of socialism. It seeks to explain the historically dynamic character of capitalist society as a system of ongoing constraints. This central feature of the contemporary world cannot be grasped adequately by intellectual paradigms, such as theories of identity or of politics, which have been dominant in recent decades. The approach outlined here analyzes capitalist modernity as structured by a historically unique social function of labour, and is based on a fundamental reevaluation of the meaning of labour in Marx’s analysis as the object, rather than the standpoint of his critique. The focus on the historical specificity of Marx’s analytic categories also calls into question any conception of a transhistorically valid social science.     

The modernity of nations. A tribute to Walker Connor

To fully appreciate Walker Connor's contribution to the foundation of the contemporary study of nationalism, two main factors must be taken into account. First, the context of positivist behavioural political science within which in the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, he articulated his critique of the concept of nation‐building. In this context, Connor emerged as a critic of the limitations and the naivité of positivist modernization theory. His dissenting voice called for critical rethinking and revision of the central concepts of the theory of political development, some of which enjoyed almost doctrinal status. Second, despite his criticism of modernization theory, Connor retained a strong conviction that nations and national sentiment were the products of modernity; indeed, in his judgement, they formed the primary content of modernity. This too was a critical stance within the rising tide of nationalism studies since 1989–1990, when ideology and wishful thinking influenced to a considerable extent the interpretation of nationalism. Walker Connor's intellectual legacy should thus be understood as a heritage of critical thought that is informed by a noteworthy awareness of the moral responsibilities of scholarly analysis.     

Beyond the Anthropocene: Defining the Age of Destruction

The question of the Anthropocene has gained increased notoriety among archaeologists recently. Precisely because of that, it is in need of thorough critique. The aim of this article is not to rule out the concept of Anthropocene, but to point out some of its problems: the relationship of Anthropocenic discourses with the emergence of an all-embracing biopolitical science; the inadequacies of the term, which blames all humans equally for a specific effect of modernity and capitalism; its failure to accept a diversity of origins (but also the problem of accepting overly deep origins), and the shortcomings of adopting a geological framework for archaeology. I thus suggest that the discipline has to define its own eras – also for the contemporary period – and that the Age of Destruction could be an apt archaeological counterpart for the Anthropocene. One of the benefits of outlining an archaeological era is that it brings modernity and capitalism back to the fore, and with them issues of power and conflict that have been largely lost in recent post-anthropocentric debates.