驯化欲望与驯化权力:马基雅维里和霍布斯为什么做不到

Taming Desires and Power:Why Machiavelli and Hobbes Failed

任何秩序都意味着对欲望的约束,而宪政秩序则同时还意味着对权力的限制,因此,西方近代以来的宪政秩序及相应的政治理论事实上面对着驯化欲望与驯化权力的双重主题。作为西方近代政治科学和政治哲学开创者的马基雅维里与霍布斯,将欲望定位为政治性的权力欲,又缺乏健全的理性概念及其他相关的伦理概念,结果要么只能为欲望提供发泄的出口,要么单纯依赖绝对权力来驯化它们。二者均没有为驯化欲望提供必要的伦理基础,这又导致他们在不同意义上无力提出驯化权力的方案。这些理论上的缺陷提示我们,想要同时驯化欲望与权力,我们必须以更加私人化的欲望作为理论构造的基础,同时探索一种自足的实践理性观念,进而确立一种伦理上自主的社会概念。

The constitutional order implies the constraint on desires,just as any other order does,and the constraint on power at the same time.Hence taming desires and power are the dual subjects of the western constitutional order and the corresponding political theories since modern times.As the founders of the western modern political science and political philosophy,Machiavelli and Hobbes oriented desire as the political desire of power,and they did not develop a sound concept of reason and other relative ethical concepts.As a result,they could only provide some outlets through which the desires might be vented,or resort to the absolute power to tame them.Both of them failed to develop an ethical foundation for the taming of desires,and this led to their failure in putting forward strategies to tame power.These defects in their theories suggest that,in order to tame both desire and power,we must take more private desires as the basis of theoretical construction,and seek a self-sufficient conception of practical reason,and hence an ethically autonomous concept of society.