现代共和思想的时间意识:以波考克和阿伦特为例

Temporal Consciousness of Modern Republican Theory:Take Pocock and Arendt as Examples

作为当代共和主义复兴的代表人物,阿伦特和波考克的共和主张来自现象学和史学建构的不同背景。但在他们不同的理论诠释背后,隐含着对政治近似的本体论假定和时间想象。藉由波考克的公民人文主义话语,这种时间想象得以揭示,他把共和主义解释为现代早期与基督教神圣时间相抗衡的政治模式。而阿伦特的共和主义则试图以"开端时间"来抵御现代的"过程时间",并以开端的自我奠基来解决共和国的持久性问题。他们两人对时间性的共同关注,表明他们都反对把现代视为一种无休止的进步过程,或围绕着对"物的管理"展开的均质流动的时间。对他们来说,共和国体现了人以行动开辟空间来克服时间的努力,对政治的热情乃是出于人类在真正意义的世俗王国中寻求不朽的渴望。同时,他们关于共和主义的时间模式仍有差别,这种差别解释了他们对美国革命的不同态度。

As the representatives of contemporary revivals of republicanism, Arendt and Pocock argue for republicanism from different theoretical background of phenomenology and historiography. But their different interpretations still have a similar ontological assumption and temporal imagination about politics. This essay first illustrated Pocock＇s modern republican discourse through a tension between the early modern time and the Christian sacred time; Then it argued that Arendt took ＂the time of beginning＂ to fight against the modern time of process and placed the beginning as a self-foundation for durability of Republics. In their common concerns for temporality, they refused to think the modern age as an endless progress or a homogeneous flux organized around ＂the management of objects＂. For them, Republics signify that the human being overcomes time with space opened by action, and the political passion to found an immortal secular city in the world. They meanwhile still proposed a little different temporal models for republicanism, which reflected in their different attitudes to the American Revolution.