我们的认知方式:全球化——普遍主义的终结?

Our Way of Knowing:Globalization—the End of Universalism?

自启蒙运动以来普遍主义(即观念与价值具有普遍适用性)一直是欧洲思想的特征。它同时也是自由主义和社会主义的现代化话语中的一个设想,这些话语认为当社会实现现代化时,它们将共同拥有某些、通常是随着启蒙运动一起出现的价值和信仰(人权、民主、社会主义等等)。当全球化把许多现代化的假设合并起来后,某些全球化的倡导者继续相信全球化将成为一个有用的工具,致力于使与现代资本主义社会密切联系的某些观念得到普及。与此相反,本文认为全球化见证了那些被现代化交付给历史的传统重新出现。我们今天所看到的是,在"全球现代性"的背景下,出现了各种文化现代性的主张和文化分歧,它们挑战了普遍化的假设。至少在现在,全球化所创造出来的共性最好被描述为"差异中的共性"。

Universalism(the universal applicability of ideas and values) has remained the characteristic of European thoughts since the Enlightenment.It is also an assumption in both liberal and socialist modernization discourses which claim that as societies modernize,they come to share in common certain values and beliefs(human rights, democracy,socialism,etc) emerging along with the Enlightenment.As globalization incorporates many assumptions of modernization,some advocates of globalization continue to believe that globalization will serve as a vehicle for the universalization of ideas associated with modern capitalist society.This article suggests instead that globalization has witnessed the reemergence of traditions that modernization had consigned to the past.What we are witnessing today is that under the circumstances of 'global modernity',different cultural claims on modernity and cultural divergences appear and challenge assumptions of universalization.At least for the present,the commonalities created by globalization may best be described as 'commonality inside difference'.