HISTORIA MAGISTRA VITAE,INTERRUPTING: THUCYDIDES AND THE AGONISTIC TEMPORALITY OF ANTIQUITY AND MODERNITY

In this essay I discuss Koselleck's thesis on the dissolution of historia magistra vitae in modernity with a view to exploring how the modern historiographical engagement with Thucydides entails qualifications of this argument. Focusing on Barthold Georg Niebuhr's contextualization of Thucydides in a new temporality of “ancient and modern history,” I examine how modernity is caught between conflicting notions of its own prehistory, and that this conflict suggests that the forward‐leaping qualities of Neuzeit were co‐articulated with other temporal notions, and particularly an idea of historical exemplarity associated with historia magistra vitae. This plurality of times highlights an agonistic temporality linking antiquity and modernity: a model of conflicting times inscribed in a dialogue through which modern historiography interrupted the “useful” history of antiquity, while simultaneously being itself interrupted by it. By following this dialogue, I seek to test two interrelated hypotheses: a) that modernity produced a multitemporal scheme in which the ideas of differential time and the future were intertwined with a notion of historia magistra vitae as meaningful and sense‐bearing time; and b) that contradictions in this scheme arising from the modern confrontation with Thucydides's poetics challenges the opposition between historia magistra vitae and modern historical sense and configures a temporality that is self‐agonistic in the sense that it confronts historical actors before and beyond the terms through which they may be able to give it meaning. Formulated as a poetics of the possible, this notion is approached as a corrective alternative to the modern consideration of the future as distanced from the space of experience, but nonetheless as grounded in actuality and therefore largely mastered by human knowledge and action.     

“赫尔墨斯神像案”与修昔底德的史学思想

修昔底德的《伯罗奔尼撒战争史》记载公元前五世纪下半叶雅典城邦发生的重大事件——赫尔墨斯神像案。在案件真相难以确定的情况下,修氏将案件和由此案牵扯出的亚西比德渎神案置于雅典政治斗争的大背景下作考察,表述了自己的认识。他的认识反映出从特殊(案件具体内容)到一般(案件性质的判断),又从一般到特殊的思维过程。修氏对此两案的记载,表明史料能成为史家的证据,史实能被认识最终取决于史家独立的历史思维。这种史学思想的自主性是修氏史学理论的最深刻之处。     

修昔底德选用史料方法刍议

修昔底德的史著以叙述伯罗奔尼撒战争为主要内容,涉及希腊世界主要城邦的政治、军事、经济、外交以及海陆交通等方面丰富多样的史料。修昔底德按照自己处理史料的原则,对于战前史和战争史本身的史料分别采取了不同的处理方法。对于战前史料的选择和考信方法主要采用比较考异法和反溯法;对于当代史料的选用及考信方法主要采取实录法、辨异法、推测法、纠错法、隐微法等五种。修昔底德貌似如实直书的表象背后,隐含着名副其实的“修昔底德陷阱”。     

《伯罗奔尼撒战争史》是如何写出来的？--“修昔底德问题”研究的回顾与思考

修昔底德创作《伯罗奔尼撒战争史》花费了毕生精力,全书各个部分的写作次序和时间如何迄今悬而未决。从1846年这个问题提出到20世纪80年代初,大体有两派观点:"分离论"和"一体论"。前者认为,修昔底德的著作是分阶段写成的,这不仅表现在时间上,还表现在作者的思想上;后者则认为,尽管这部书是未完之作,且有一些不完善地方,但全书一以贯之,因此主要在一个时间段写成。两派各执一词,探讨逐步深入。1984年美国学者康纳提出修昔底德文本的同质性问题,即作者有意带领读者一起面对事件,其思想认识和叙事形式都发生了变化,故其文本不是同质的。这对"分离论"起到了纠偏的作用,也超越了"一体论"。在康纳观点指引下,英国学者鲁德和美国学者德沃尔德研究了修昔底德的叙事方式。鲁德认为"修昔底德问题"是一个"无法回答的问题";德沃尔德则证明其叙事的组织形式发生了变化。"修昔底德问题"将激发学者们的研究热情,砥砺他们的才智,推动着学术界不断深化对于史学的认识。     

Herodotus’ Use of Aeschylus’ Persae as a Source for the Battle of Salamis

Herodotus demonstrably used Aeschylus’ Persae at various points in his account of the battle of Salamis. The author argues that Herodotus relied on the Persae far more heavily and in far more places than commonly admitted owing to Herodotus’ thoroughgoing interpretation and revision of his source. Tracing such interpretation and revision reveals much about Herodotus as an historian; moreover, the demonstrable use of a written source (which Herodotus, in fact, never mentions) raises additional questions about the extent of Herodotus’ reliance upon written sources elsewhere.     

修昔底德的“命运”说

"命运"说是修昔底德历史思想中的重要内容。在《伯罗奔尼撒战争史》中,"命运"一词主要指机遇、运气(包括好运和厄运)等人类无法预见、非人格化的力量,而与神意无涉。它通常表现为人力无法预计和支配的偶然现象和事件,与人的智慧、谋算、预见力相对立,并对人的心理和活动产生很大的影响。修氏承认"命运"对人事的影响,但更强调人的智慧、远见和理性的判断在人事成败中的作用。修氏的"命运"说,体现了古希腊思想的进步。     

EXPERIENTIALITY AND “NARRATIVE REFERENCE,” WITH THANKS TO THUCYDIDES1

Lately, the concept of experience, which postmodernist theoreticians declared dead, has seen a renaissance. The immediacy of experience seems to offer the possibility of reaching beyond linguistic discourses. In their attempt to overcome the “linguistic turn,” scholars such as Ankersmit, Gumbrecht, and Runia pit experience against narrative. This paper takes up the recent interest in experience, but argues against the opposition to narrative into which experience tends to be cast. The relation between experience and narrative is more complex than is widely assumed. Besides representing and giving shape to experience, narratives are received in the form of a (reception) experience. Through their temporal structure, narratives are crucial to letting us re‐experience the past as well as to representing the experiences of historical agents. This potential of narrative is nicely illustrated by Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War in which “side‐shadowing” devices restore history's experientiality. Through “side‐shadowing,” narrative can challenge the tendency toward teleologies inherent in merely retrospective histories and can re‐create the openness intrinsic to the past when it still was a present. However, the “side‐shadowing” devices used by Thucydides are fictional. To conceptualize the price and gain of “side‐shadowing” in historiography, the paper advances the concept of a “narrative reference” (a concept analogous to Ricoeur's “metaphorical reference”). Introspection, speeches, and other “side‐shadowing” devices sacrifice truth in a positivist sense, but permit a second‐level reference, namely to history's experientiality. In a final step, the paper turns toward modern historians—most of whom are reluctant to use the means of fiction—to briefly survey their attempts at restoring the openness of the past.     

Warlords and Holymen. Scotland AD80-1000

This article compares and contrasts the work of Quentin Skinner and Jacques Derrida on power and the State. It argues that despite Skinner's explicit repudiation of Derrida's method of philosophising, he has come to advocate an approach to the history of ideas that bears important and striking similarities to Derrida's thought. I attribute this intellectual gravitation toward Derrida as the logical outcome of a shared understanding on the nature of the cosmos and man's place within it—an understanding profoundly indebted to the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche and the genealogical history of Michel Foucault. As a means to illustrate the narrowing intellectual gulf between Skinner and Derrida, I compare their respective thoughts on the nature of the modern and contemporary State, a State that both intellectuals see as emerging from a dominant western philosophical tradition that, at its core, is marked by the idea of fear. For both Skinner and Derrida this has profound consequences for the possibilities open to individuals and societies for free thought and political action.     

Methodism and the Rise of Political Correctness

Abstract

Does Aristotle's case for honorable statesmen endanger the case for democratic institutions and equal rights, as two critics contend? It had better not: democracies too need the guidance of a Mandela, an FDR, a Washington. Also, the ancient thinkers had their own doubts about grand ambition, seeking to cabin such types through education and moderate republics, including democratic republics. Also, the objection neglects the relativism, doctrinairism, and postmodernist disillusion that eventually undermined modern political philosophy. Might the old philosophers’ reasonableness, not least on the topic of leadership, be now indispensable to political science? After such points I address the other criticisms: have I not neglected the Biblical improvements on classical political science? Do I portray adequately Plato's analysis of that quintessential lover of power and glory, Alcibiades?