无我抑或忘我?——人类共同体的伦理基础初探

Egoless or Selfless?: On the Ethical Foundation of Community

东西方都在当下提出了人类(命运)共同体的伦理理想,但在其伦理基础的问题上却出现了分歧。西方的他者伦理学构建了绝对被动的"无我"理念,以期克服现代性中封闭、独立、支配他者的主体性,却无法找到现在向未来过渡的动力学,未来变成了"将——来"。相较之下,中国伦理理想中的"忘我"理念更有利于规避当前国际伦理政治关系中的保守主义和隔离主义,其中包含无我、有我、忘我三重境界,在让渡中进入既有我也无我的状态,规避了西方现代主体性的孤立、封闭和霸权主义,未成为彻底的无或无能,而是保留了与他人携手行动的自由和能动性,其基础恰恰是审美中的"无我"。

Chinese and western ethics lay different foundations for human community.In the west,to avoid the hegemony in the post-Kantian ethics based on the free and liberal Subject,Levinas imagines an egoless state in which"I"respond passively to the"face"of the Other rather than becoming a solitary,enclosed and totalizing subject.Shaped by its philosophical tradition,however,the ethics of the other does not contain an agency or dynamism to guarantee itself as a realizable ethical ideal.Chinese ethics,in a quite different way,distinguishes tree states,egolessness,self and selflessness.The ethical self,formed from an egoless aesthetic-ethical relationship with nature,is a self beyond egoism.Therefore,it takes as its responsibility and freedom to sacrifice itself and build a shared community with others in a selfless state.Since the selflessness comes from an active self-sacrifice,the self is not impotent,as the one in the ethics of the other,but rather active and capable of acting for the other.