秩序之下的国家——评卡西尔《国家的神话》

The State under Order—A Review of Ernst Cassirer's The Myth of the State

《国家的神话》一书是卡西尔晚年的作品,他在书中揭示了现代政治的神话色彩,考察了极权主义的生成方式。在卡西尔看来,早期的神话和语言反映了人类最早的直观性认知方式,世界笼罩在人神共居的神话秩序中。哲学兴起后,人成为第一原理,柏拉图创建了理念王国,中世纪的上帝代替理性,世俗国家依旧处在上帝的神圣秩序之下。随着马基雅维利的改革,国家获得独立性,历史取代理性成为第一原则。直到黑格尔的客观唯心主义把历史与理性高度结合后,现实的国家不仅成为绝对精神的承担者,更是历史的最终形式,国家如同神灵在世,它毫无约束,最终被极权野心所利用。卡西尔在书中揭示了文化要素对国家权力的限制作用,他不认为权力能为自己立法,只有在文化、理性和历史所建构的秩序之下,国家才能确认自己的位置。

The Myth of the State is Ernst Cassirer's last works. In this book,he reveals the myth of modern politics,and examines the generation of totalitarianism. In Cassirer's view,the myth and language of early times reflects intuitive human cognition,when humans and gods lived within the order of myth. When philosophy arose,the gods retreated,and people become the first principle.Although Plato created the concept of the ideal state,in the Middle Ages,God again replaced rationality,and the secular state was under the divine order of God. After Machiavelli's reforms,the secular state won independence from the divine order,and history's replacement it with rationality became the first principle. Until Hegel's objective idealism combined history and rationality,realistic countries became not only the care takers of absolute spirit,but also the ultimate form of history.Actual states were like living gods,because of no constraints,it finally was utilized by totalitarian ambitions. In his book,Cassirer reveals that culture restricts the state's power. However,he does not think that power could legislate itself. Instead,it is only the construction within the order of either culture,rationality or history,that states can confirm their own positions.Cassirer was a German philosopher,linguist and social thinker in the 20 th century. He explains his theory of the state in his book The Myth of the State. The book was finished during the Second World War. As a citizen of Nazi German,he witnessed the myth of modern politics behind the war.He discussed the restrictions the state had on the history of ideas,in order to avoid the chaos of power. In his view,the theory of Nazi German was not born out of classical English- French sociology and politics. He felt that beyond Locke's and Rousseau's theories of natural law,there was another,more dangerous theory of the state,namely that the state can easily become the organ of violence at service of totalitarianism and racism. Its creator was the myth. He believed that the idea of myth revealed a kind of intuitive method of cognition; later this intuitiveness was increasingly restricted by the logic of philosophy and the materials of history. However,when the state became the care taker of absolute spirit,then,power lay in the gods,and modern politics descended into tragedy.Myth is the most important part of Cassirer's theories. He researched the relationship between myth and language in order to reveal the different methods of thought derived from logical deduction.Myth and language have the same origin,when something bursts into people's eyes,they generate emotions. This is not the deduction between two things within logical cognition. Cassirer thinks that language is the foundation of human cognition,and that because of language,humans can rid themselves of chaos and disorder,and construct the formation of the human mind. The same process happens in myth and religion. Cassirer regards 'mana'as the beginning of myth. Mana is divinity,and it is used to express respect to extraordinary things. It is the medium between the secular andthe divine. In language,it is expressed through emotion and feelings. It's only after the appearance of mana,can the gods occur.In myth,there is no history. In this sense of time,gods are the beginning, but at the same time,they exist alongside man and things. From Homer,to Dionysus and to Oedipus,myth leads the world from order to rebirth. from being to renewal. Myth also leads people from the secular to the divine. In individual action,negative language turns into positive imagination and cohesive force.People use rituals to organize the living world,and rituals continue by means of the force of myth and language. Within the foundation of the history of Greece,Cassirer confirms his theory of cosmic vision. He does not agree with the theory that the state is a construct; it must be situated within the history of ideas.When philosophy conquers myth,people eliminate the gods,and human beings turn to become the first principle. The cosmic order is reduced to rationality and ethics. Socrates founded the concept of the self- being of humans,and Plato founded the concept of the ideal state. Cassirer regarded Plato's Republic highly. In his view,this book was the first one that was able to conquer order through myth by means of rationality and ideas. Plato further developed Socrates' theories,he thought that people's political character was their evidence of being human,and that the republic was the unifier between rationality and ethics.Reason,lawfulness and order were the foundation which formed not only the material world,but the ethical world as well.However,Plato's ideas and concept of order were incomplete,and after the attacks by the Stoics,his retention of slavery shocked the basis of the ideal state. Human equality based upon rationality and ethics received more and more attention.Faced with the concept of universal freedom,Plato was ignored. During the Middle Ages,the theme was religion. Hierarchy dealt myth a critical blow.Even though Plato constructed the concept of rational order,it had no basis in reality,nor continuous integrity. In Cassirer's view,this hierarchy lost Plato's imagination of republic,but it was more realistic. Afterwards,people turned their attention to law. In the Christian view,man was degenerate,and the state must limit the evil of human beings. Everyone should obey the monarchy, because the monarch was the representative of god on earth. But,there is law above the monarch,and this concept changed the power of Roman law that ordered all things. Law runs though both the secular and divine worlds,and combines them into a whole.Cassirer also discussed that although the influence of late medieval Neoplatonism and Aquinas was not extensive,they inspired the independence of modern politics,and did,in fact,disperse hierarchy. Neoplatonism emphasized rational light,and Aquinas turned the passive into the active through the universality of God. Since God existed in all things,and people can confirm it directly from experience,man should take pains to establish power and the order of justice. Cassirer thought Aquinas' ideas made the originally unified world collapse. Once upon a time,God and the world was a whole,but now,since God was widespread,divided up into different parts,God must also appear in each part. Reason was the guide of God,and by the force of reason,people can set up their own legislation and state order. Then,Machiavelli arose at the historic moment.The world split into different parts,and as such,religion was separated,and human society was a just state. Cassirer thought,Machiavelli's contribution was to make Plato's first concept have no place. There was no recognition of the independence of law of countries in the Middle Ages.Although Aquinas separated the parts,God still functioned in every part. The reform of Galileo and Machiavelli established independent secular principles,nature had natural law,and the same did states. States did not need religion,otherwise religion became a part of the state. States had no mor-al responsibility; the state's goodness lay in just political skills. Cassirer,of course,understood the disadvantages of Machiavelli's political theory.This was because if states released themselves from the divine,they could only rely on fate. History is a crystal ball to predict fate; it was a political cue.Then,a new category appeared on the horizon: society. History pushed society to the front,and the French were deeply influenced by social theory. However,the failure of the French revolution led to a general doubt of Kant's rational strength. By the 19 th century,history had become a kind of ideal,especially in Germany,and historians advocated that the source and cause of power was history. Power here not only referred to the top- down operation of state,it was also embodied in ethnic groups and cultures because of the influence of social theory. In the German romantic view,culture,such as art and poetry,could purify the world. The 'totalitarianism'put forward by them was an indication of cultural poetics. They tried to forget the political troubles with cultures. Even the nationalism was seen as the product of love,and the state was seen as the expression of art. But the romantic view could solve political problems.When confronted with Napoleon,romantic love had become a bitter suffering.Since then,reality has taken the place of history; the political world is intuitive. In the 20 th century the state has obviously been influenced by myth. In trying to answer the question of Machiavelli's fate, Carlyle's moral hero worship used a hero model to replace rationality. Gaby's racism emphasized historically that,ontology is higher than morality. Hegel reflects the extreme. On the one hand,Cassirer admired Hegel's logic and ideas,but on the other hand,he thought Hegel was the source of totalitarianism. Hegel's dialectics and absolute spirit make him move towards another extreme: reality and history. Hegel cleverly used the birth of Jesus to prove the existence of God. The idea inevitably appeared in history,history is the explicit form of rationality,connotation and denotation is the same. Also,reality is the result of historical development. When talking about the state,Hegel's objective idealism is more apparent. States once again became the main form of social life.Specifically,the state is the essence and core of history,and people are the highest and the most perfect things in the state. Ethics occur at the state level,because the state is 'absolute spirit ',a considerate individual and just agent,whose advocation is power. But the state here is no longer Plato's ideal,nor is it Aquinas' God; it is just the reality of the state. As the final form of history,nationalism will be the highest moral principle. In Cassirer's view, the impression of Hegel is Machiavelli's national skills,due to the introduction of the objective spirit,he gives rootless politics rationality,that power is moral,and that it has legal rights. If Machiavelli's secular state eliminates rationality and ethics leaving only the power of the state that is what is found in Hegel. Hegel regarded the state as a separate part within the whole ontology of reason and morality. In this way,the reality of politics can easily penetrate rationality and the layers of material history. Directly reflecting the objective spirit, it echoes the 'divine gods'with intuitive logic. The myth of totalitarianism in the 20 th century is based on such thinking.Ignoring natural law,they turned into a completely different direction from Rousseau,Locke and others who advocated democratic politics. Nonetheless,Cassirer also saw in Hegel inspiration by the romantics,and in the above state he set up a higher stage,art and science co- exist,the country's power is not only a powerful force of material situation,more should guide spirit toward the high degree of harmony.At the end of his book,Cassirer tells a story of Marduk who kills a dragon to create the world.When the highest god overcomes the devil,Tiamat,and other evil dragons,he creates the world and creates order through Tiamat's body. In Cassirer's explanation of politics,the myth is Taimat,it has never disappeared,and order is restruc-tured by it. However,once the supreme god retreats,myth is bound to return,and the world returns to chaos. Modern myths have not created the vitality of life. The Industrial Revolution destroyed the universal order of mythology,people no longer have any surprise,and feelings when facing nature. The world forgets the power of rebirth,natural order turns into production and manufacturing,and the freedom of imagination turns to violent language without reference and blind enthusiasm. Lost are the constraints of rationality and history,the phantom of myth hangs up the state immediately,but sadly,myth is lost to provide the background of order and rules,and abuse by political ambition and trickery.As one of the most important scholars in the20 th century, Cassirer has a broad intellectual background, including philosophy, linguistics,history,anthropology and so on. Due to deep accumulation and broad vision,he is able to grasp keenly the tipping points of history,and does so through historical data and logic,reaching to the very essence of points of time. Cassirer thinks that study of culture should not be confined to the pe-ripheries of social theory. On the contrary,culture bears the burden of history. Because it is armed with a cosmic view,culture can provide the world freedom and the vitality of life. As with myth,however,culture also has its basis and boundaries,and by ignoring this it is easy to be corrupted by ambition. In Cassirer's opinion,culture,reason and history are the only three points able to establish a reasonable order for the world,in which rationality confirms law,history provides accordingly,and culture realizes freedom. The state,and even the human society,achieves its position by searching within the established order.