现代性视域下哲学基点的重审——以黑格尔、马克思和哈贝马斯为中心的考察

Re-examining the Basis of Philosophy from the Perspective of Modernity:Focusing on Hegel,Marx,and Habermas

现代性构成了描述现代世界之核心特征的叙事范式,如何诊断现代性问题是哲学理论的一项重要课题。只有从哲学本体论的基点出发,才能厘清不同现代性话语背后的内在逻辑与证成机制。黑格尔、马克思和哈贝马斯给出了三种不同的现代性方案,即意识观念论方案、物质实践论方案和交往互动方案。黑格尔在耶拿时期提出意识哲学的思路,他把意识以自身为中介、朝向普遍性的发展序列看作社会伦理关系的形成路径。马克思从物质生产实践出发,辨识出黑格尔意识概念的非物质形态和不自足的特性,揭示了自我意识得以产生的历史性前提,把哲学基点落实在物质实践上。哈贝马斯强化了黑格尔意识概念的中介特征,把主体间的互动关系转化为社会生活的规范条件。虽然这三种路径基于不同的哲学基点而存在分歧,但它们之间又因现代性问题意识而具有思想对话的可能性,这对我们理解现代性进路选择的多种可能性具有启发意义。

Modernity is a narrative paradigm that delineates the key characters of the modern world.Diagnosing the problems of modernity is a crucial topic in philosophy.Only by examining the basis of philosophy can we clarify the rationales and divergences behind different discourses on modernity.Hegel,Marx,and Habermas proposed three distinct schemes of modernity:the scheme of self-consciousness,the scheme of material practice,and the scheme of intersubjectivity.In the First Philosophy of Spirit(1803-1804),Hegel introduces the concept of consciousness and attempts to establish a modern ethical order where self-consciousness and universal consciousness coexist and reinforce each other,leading to the compatibility of the individual and the community.The intermediary structure of consciousness serves as Hegel’s means to reconcile the relationship between subject and object,particular and universal,and individual and others.The greater the universality of self-consciousness,the more compatibility there will be with others,and the more likely a unified social normative structure can be achieved.Hegel identifies language,work,and family as three progressive stages in which self-consciousness and universal consciousness are formed and transformed.Accordingly,the development of social ethical norms,ranging from natural family relations to the public sphere,becomes possible.However,Hegel’s sequence aims at rational and absolute consciousness and dismisses direct and empirical human activities.This is refuted by Feuerbach and others.Unlike Hegel,who derives the constitutive power of social order from the three stages of consciousness in language,labor,and family,Marx formulates in German Ideology the theory of historical materialism based on the three factors of productivity,social conditions,and consciousness,where productivity plays a decisive role in shaping the social order.Without access to Hegel’s Jena manuscripts,Marx discovers the central role of labor in the practice of material production and social relations.Marx also recognizes that Hegel’s category of labor is draped under the cloak of idealism.His rejection of Hegel’s concept of self-consciousness is a crucial theoretical impetus for establishing the foundation of material practice.On the one hand,Marx praises Feuerbach for reducing Hegel’s concept of self-consciousness to the sensual person.On the other hand,Marx further transforms Feuerbach’s naturalistic interpretation of humans into a practical and realistic determination of human activities.By restoring the basic status of material practice,Marx demonstrates that the concept of consciousness is not a constant but a variable that can only emerge under the historical material premise.This refutes Hegel’s understanding of self-consciousness as a given conceptual structure.In Labor and Interaction,Habermas develops the intermediary structure of Hegel’s concept of consciousness and transforms the interactive relationship based on the language medium into the conditions of social order,where interaction is regarded as superior to labor.This involves two aspects.First,according to Habermas,the Hegelian knowing subject undergoes a movement of detranscendentalization and enters social space.Second,by distinguishing between labor and interaction,Habermas criticizes the instrumentalization of Marx’s labor theory.However,this approach of interpretation not only deviates from Hegel’s context but also encounters another theoretical difficulty when Habermas criticizes Marx’s concept of labor for lacking interaction.Communicative interaction denies any given pragmatic premise and cannot transcend the premise of the lifeworld.Although these three theories differ from each other,they open a dialogue with each other from the perspective of modernity,which is instructive for us to comprehend the multiple possibilities of modernity approaches.