古典学的人类学相关性：还原并反思地引申一种主张

On the Relevance of the Classics to Anthropology:Critically Re-engaging an Old Argument

近代人类学的奠基者曾高度重视借鉴古典学的研究成果。20世纪初,学科理念发生巨变。此后数十年间,古典学者继续借鉴人类学思想,而现代新人类学中重视古典学的学者却越来越少。20世纪60年代初,克拉克洪在其所著《论人类学与古典学的关系》一书中对这一变化表示喜忧参半。他乐见人类学思想渗入古典学,担忧人类学因减少汲取古典学的养分而丢失其本来的品质。克拉克洪指出,人类学的根基是人文与科学,此二者均为古希腊人的发明,现代新人类学要保持其品格,便有必要重返古希腊。鉴于克氏主张的重要性,本文力图对之加以还原,并在此基础上进行反思。本文认为,克拉克洪有规避西学人类学的神学关联及过度渲染古希腊特殊性的倾向,更存在以"文化"概念"消化"文野关联的问题。要扭转这类倾向,克服这类问题,应有选择地丰富古典旧人类学有关"中间环节"的看法。

Most of the founders of anthropology attached great importance to the classics.By contrast,in the early half of the 20 th century,anthropologists rarely thought of relating their ethnographic findings and theories to the subject.In Anthropology and the Classics published posthumously,Clyde Kluckhohn,one of the leading American cultural anthropologists,reflected on the change.Kluckhohn reviewed the history of reciprocity between the two important human sciences and forcefully argued for building a new bridge between them.He argued that the foundations of anthropology were humanism and science.These were laid during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment,but they were deeply rooted in ancient Greek "cultural grammar"and its intellectual expressions.For modern anthropology to recover its humanist and scientific vitality,as Kluckhohn insisted,it was necessary to go back to the classics whereby the(Western)anthropologists could(1)dig deeper into the history of their discipline(s)and(2)include the study of the culture of Antiquity in their scope.The author writes the present review article more than half a century after Kluckhohn made his calling.To do justice to Kluckhohn’s long forgotten text,he spends two full sections on Kluckhohn’s history of reciprocity between anthropology and the classics,outline of the ancient Greek anthropological perspectives,and synopsis of Greek "cultural grammar".He seeks to restore the project Kluckhohn developed.Considering it from a broader scope of disciplinary history,the author finds Kluckhohn’s critique of the social science utilitarian facet of modern Western anthropology inspiring.As he points out,core to Kluckhohn’s project was a turn toward the revival of the humanistic tradition of anthropology which has remained to be realized.In re-engaging Kluckhohn’s argument,the author is also critical of it.In the much extended concluding section,he reconsiders Kluckhohn’s text in the terms of its following shortcomings:(1)In various places,Kluckhohn contrasted Ancient Greek"culture"and Christian"ethics",implying that many similarities can be discovered between the ancient West and the"primitive others"studied by the anthropologists.In"exceptionalizing"Christianity,he excluded Biblical anthropology from his explanation and made his understanding of the "Westernness"of Western anthropology short of a reflection on its"theological anxiety".(2)To achieve his"comprehension of past and present relations between the classics and anthropology", Kluckhohn relied too heavily upon his knowledge of Anglo-American anthropology and German philological ethnology and classics to leave any space for the achievements of L’Année sociologique,some of which in fact form a comparative approach to the classics.(3)The concept of"culture"as applied in Anthropology and the Classics is also problematic.It makes Kluckhohn’s project less inclusive than the evolutionist perspective of the "transitional/intermediary type"-e.g.,that provided by Robert Marett and his associates(Marett ed.,1908)-in which a notion of the "translation"between other and self could be rediscovered.Consequently,certain "accidental resemblances"between the cosmologies of ancient China and Greece got clear of Kluckhohn’s eyesight.Kluckhohn believed that among the several"Axial Age breakthroughs"only the ancient Greek one,with its unique humanism and scientific spirit,was the soil from which anthropology grew.Because he perceived the classics with which anthropology was to get re-affiliated as exceptionally Western,Kluckhohn failed to offer an adequately comparative and historical perspective for anthropology-now much an inter-cultural cosmo-political mission.