关系主义——以中国视角与西方社会学对话

Relationism: A Chinese Perspective

关系主义是当代西方社会学的新兴视角。人们以之来对抗实在论和实证主义。尽管这一关系的转向是革命性的,并且某些关系主义者也希望去克服主客体二元论,但是西方的关系主义社会学从来也没有能够彻底摆脱二元论的桎梏。我们可以从中国传统思想中获得克服西方二元论的启发,即没有人能够在本体论上外在于关系,没有人能够独立于关系而存在,在某种意义上,非二元论的关系是最为真实的社会现象,因为任何个体都是从社会关系中获得其存在的意义。一种反二元论的社会学的关系主义主张人的社会历史存在是前理论和前对象的社会历史关系,没有人能够在本体论上先于此种关系而存在,他们的社会存在和他们彼此之间的关系在本体论上是同时的。

Relationism is a rising perspective in contemporary western sociology. People use it to dispute realism and positivism. Although this turn of relation is revolutionary, and some re- lationists also wanted to conquer the dualism of subject and object, but the western relationistic sociology never completely shakes off the yoke of dualism. We can get the inspiration from Chi- nese traditional thoughts such as Confucianism to overcome the western dualism. This inspiration tells us that nobody can be ontologieally immune to relationships and nobody can exist outside of relationships. In some sense, un-dualistic social relationships are the realest social phenomena be- cause every individual person gets his existential meaning or Being from social relationships. Fol- lowing this thinking we developed a kind of anti-dualistic sociological relationism. It maintains that the socio-historical Being of human being is pre-theoretical and pre-objectified socio-historical relationships. Nobody can be prior to this relationship ontologically, because just the relational e- valuation gives all sides of this relationship their existential meaning. Their social Beings and their relationships to each other come into being at the same time ontologically.