西方政治秩序演变的历史分析——沃格林《政治观念史稿》述评

Histo rical Analysis of the Evolution of Western Political Order--A Review of Voegelin’s History of Political Ideas

沃格林的《政治观念史稿》以政治观念的“唤启”功能为出发点,将观念史和政治史融为一体,探索西方文明几千年的演变路径。全书以宏大的叙事方式,通过分析希腊化时期“精神的瓦解”、基督教兴起与西方政治秩序的构建、中世纪神圣帝国秩序,以及宗教改革以来现代性的兴起及其危机,提供了西方文明共同体形成、发展、内外变迁及衰落的全景分析。这不是一部通常意义的政治观念史著作,它是关于西方政治秩序演变的历史分析,是一位杰出思想家对西方文明如何导致现代性以及如何克服现代性危机的哲学诊断。

Anchored on the conception of the evocative function of political ideas,Voegelin's History of Political Ideas analyzes the evolution of Western civilization by combining both history of political ideas and political history.Through analyzing the spiritual disintegration in the Hellenistic age,the rise of Christianity and the formation of Western political order,the Holy Empire in the Middle Ages,and the rise of modernity and its crisis in the wake of the Reformation,he outlines a grand picture of the formation,development,both internal and external vicissitudes,and the decline of Western political order.This work is not an ordinary study of the history of political ideas,but a historical analysis of the evolution of Western political order.Above all,it is an analysis and diagnosis by one of the important thinkers in contemporary times on the factors that led to the rise of modernity and the possible path to overcome the crisis of modernity.