自然及其真理之中:斯宾诺莎的唯物主义及其政治哲学

Nature and Its Truth in the Middle:Spinoza’s Materialism and Its Political Philosophy

斯宾诺莎政治哲学的研究意图是通过可靠和无可争辩的推理,从人的真正本性去确立和推论最符合实际的原则和制度,这既是对培根以来的唯物主义建立科学本体论与认识论的总结,更是唯物主义向伦理领域拓展的开始。斯宾诺莎试图以客观真理性的探寻来提升人类现实福祉,而自然神论只是对客观真理性的描述,其实质在于承认作为经验主体的人类的不圆满性与自由之可能。在此基础上,唯物主义最终展现为对自然状态与国家状态的审慎界定,前者之中人类乃是拥有完整的自然经验且试图保存自我的自然存在物,后者之中则是自然权利的理性化与秩序化。斯宾诺莎对基于力量的自然权利的先在性判断,以及由此展开的对自由的界定和对各种政体的对比,在启蒙运动前夜展现出政治哲学应有的真理性维度,其中要义是对实存的政治经验的分析,以及对政治思考的理念性前提的怀疑与批判。

The research intention of Spinoza’s political philosophy is to establish and deduce the most practi⁃cal principles and systems from the true nature of human beings through reliable and indisputable reasoning,which is both a summary of materialism since Bacon in establishing scientific ontology and epistemology,and the beginning of the expansion of materialism into the field of ethics.Spinoza attempted to enhance the wellbeing of human reality by the search for objective truth,while natural theism is only a description of objective truth,the essence of which lies in the recognition of the incompleteness of human beings as empirical subjects and the possibility of freedom.On this basis,materialism eventually reveals itself as a careful definition of the state of nature,in which human beings are natural beings possessing full natural experience and trying to pre⁃serve themselves,and the state of the state,in which natural rights are rationalised and ordered.Spinoza’s prior judgement of natural rights based on power,and the resulting definition of freedom and comparison of polities,show the truthful dimension of political philosophy on the eve of Enlightenment,which consists in the analysis of actual political experience and the scepticism and critique of conceptual presuppositions of politi⁃cal thinking.