“权力导致腐败”吗?——中文世界对阿克顿勋爵权力观的误读再探

“Is Power Inherently Evil”?--A Typical Mistranslation and Misunderstanding of Lord Acton’s View of Political Power in the Chinese Context Revisited

“权力导致腐败,绝对的权力导致绝对的腐败”是阿克顿勋爵关于权力隽语的经典误译,却俨然已成为国人熟知的政治学名言。虽有李泽厚、许良英等学者从语言学的角度给予更正,却收效甚微。此种误译无形中助长了自由至上主义的权力观,以及将权力本身视为恶的偏颇理念。有鉴于此,借助历史梳理与文献研读相结合的方式,厘清该名句及阿克顿相关论述的历史语境、文本语境与跨文本语境,提出该句的精准中译应为“权力易腐,绝对权力必腐”,进而阐释阿克顿“中性权力观”的丰富内涵,特别是德性维度,探究其对英美自由主义权力观的可能修正与发展。

The classic mistranslation of Lord Acton’s famous saying“Power tends to corrupt;absolute power corrupts absolutely”seems to have become a wellknown political saying among Chinese people.Although some scholars,such as Li Zehou and Xu liangying,have made corrections from the perspective of linguistics,their solution had been shown to be less effective.This kind of mistranslation virtually encourages the libertarian view of power and the biased idea that power itself is evil.It is necessary to combine historical textual research with literature study.This is not only beneficial to the clarification of the historical background,textual context and cross-textual context of Lord Acton’s famous words on power but also beneficial to the focus on the rich connotation of Lord Acton’s“neutral view of power”,especially the dimension of virtue.Finally,we can give an accurate translation of Lord Acton’s view of power,which is more helpful to find out the possible revision and development of the view of power of British and American liberalism.