智者与现代性——亚里士多德《形而上学》第四卷的思想史意蕴

Sophists and modernity:Ideological significance in Volume 4 of Aristotle's Metaphysics

现代性在什么意义上可被视作智者的后裔?黑格尔认为现代性源于智者,他的论证虽然有可商榷之处,却极富洞见。《形而上学》第四卷显示,智者的问题不在于是否陷入感官主义或主体主义,也不在于是否违反了矛盾律,而在于遗忘了实体,并企图以一种服务于多变的效用的虚构秩序来代替事情本身的秩序。这种做法在本质上不是智者的自私自利或偶然意见,而是亚里士多德时代希腊生活中的一种普遍现象,代表了西方文化中迄今难以彻底摆脱的一种危险,而现代性正是这种生活方式的彻底推进,主要表现在世界图景、意识形态、技术和虚无主义4个方面。

In which sense can modernity be taken as an offspring of the sophists？ Hegel believed that modernity originated from the sophists. Although his argument is in some respects problematic, his conclusion is very insightful. Volume 4 of Metaphysics shows that the key problem of the sophists lies neither in sensualism or subjectivism, nor in violating the law of contradiction, but in forgetting the substance and replacing the order of the thing itself with a virtual order which serves only the change- ful utility. This is essentially not the egoism or accidental opinion of the sophists, but a very popular phenomenon in Aristotle＇s times, and represents a kind of danger rooted deeply in the western culture. Till now this kind of danger has remained. Modernity is just the radical promotion of this life-style, whose four most prominent expressions are world-image, ideology, technology and nihilism.