遥远的自由——论黑格尔《法哲学原理》中的一个历史倒错

Remote Freedom: On a Historical Inversion in Hegel's Philosophy of Right

霍耐特断定,在我们这个时代自由已趋于贫乏并形成了病态,为除此弊,他从黑格尔的《法哲学原理》获取思想资源和方案构想,构建了"社会自由"理论。但是,《法哲学原理》本身包含了一个历史倒错:它以普遍的自由为整个体系的出发点,令所有权、家庭、市民社会和国家从中发展出来,而现实历史的发展次序却正好相反,普遍的自由和权利乃是最后达到的成果。如果黑格尔承认社会契约论,那么他这个倒错可以在理论上得到一定程度的合理解释。然而,黑格尔恰恰反对社会契约论,因此,这个倒错就成为一个无法改正的错误和理论模式。这个模式及其方法也潜移默化地影响了法兰克福学派。霍耐特的"社会自由"最终只是体现了一种对前现代社会的乡愁,而并不是一个对现代社会问题的切实解决方案。

Axel Honneth has concluded that in our times it tends to be poor in freedom,and thus pathological.In order to eliminate this poverty and pathology,he has obtained ideas and resources from Hegel s Elements of the Philosophy of Right to construct social freedom.However,this work itself contains a historical inversion.While it takes universal freedom as the starting point of its entire system-from which ownership,family,civil society,and state are derived-real human history develops exactly in the reverse order,because universal liberty and rights are its ultimate accomplishments.If Hegel had recognized the existence of a social contract,the inversion in his theory could have been theoretically justified to a certain degree.However,Hegel himself was precisely against the idea of a social contract,and hence the inversion becomes an uncorrectable mistake and a theoretical model.This model and its methodology have also subtly influenced the Frankfurt School.Honneth s social freedom,ultimately,is more obsessed with nostalgia for a pre-modern society than it is concerned with solving actual problems in a modern society.