黑格尔的三种精神标本:浮士德、哈姆雷特和堂·吉诃德——读《精神现象学》札记(之二)

Hegel's Three Spiritual Exemplars:Faust,Hamlet and Don Quixote:The Second Essay of Reading Phenomenology of Spirit

黑格尔在《精神现象学》中,把欧洲近代文学中三个最典型的人物形象浮士德、哈姆雷特和堂·吉诃德当作西方近代人性形成的三个必经阶段,并详细分析了他们在提升西方人格层次方面所起的作用,描述了西方人在近代社会生活中所走过的心路历程,这就是"快乐和必然性"、"本心的规律和自大狂"、"德行和世界进程",它们为现代西方法律精神准备了思想文化前提。这三个阶段中的代表人物形象都由于自身的内在冲突而一个接一个地走向了自身的毁灭,但他们在西方人的生活中并没有因为时过境迁而被人遗忘,而是内化为他们人格中的某种结构层次,时时作为他们自我反省的镜子,并照亮了人性中永恒的内在矛盾。黑格尔的这种分析值得中国当代思想者在分析中国人性论的危机和前景时加以重视。

In Phenomenology of Spirit,Hegel holds that the three classic characters in modern European literature,namely Faust,Hamlet and Don Quixote,represent three necessary stages of the generation of western human nature in the early modern age. Hegel analyzes at length how these characters improve the personality of modern westerners and describes their stages of spiritual progress in modern social life,namely'pleasure and necessity','the law of heart and the frenzy of self-conceit'and'virtue and the way of the world'. This process constitutes the cultural precondition of the contemporary legal spirit of the western world. Although these three characters have destroyed themselves one by one because of their internal conflicts,they are not forgotten by westerners as time goes on. These characters have been internalized to be some indispensable parts in their personality. They also illuminate the eternal contradiction in human nature as a mirror of westerner's self-reflection. Contemporary Chinese thinkers should treasure Hegel's analysis when they discuss the crisis and prospect of the theories of human nature in China.