哲学抑或思想史?——试论沃格林历史哲学的限度与中国“效应”

Historical Philosophy or Intellectual History:Review of Limitations of Voegelin Historical Philosophy and“the China Effect”

沃格林的历史哲学对各种文明表现出西方学者中罕见的宽容与深度,成为中国思想建构的一个有益镜鉴,然而这种哲学在思想性质、秩序观、历史观等方面的限度也不可不察。在思想性质方面,它在根本上乃是一种思想史的乃至社会科学的考察,即从过往思想中总结历史规律,并以某种本身貌似自明的模型来评判历史,而没有达到哲学对这种考察方式之效力应有的更深刻反思。在秩序观方面,沃格林忽视了他心目中的一些灵知主义“典型”在现代性的边缘之处通达宇宙秩序的可能性。在历史观方面,沃格林虽然反对人的解释受到历史的主导,主张“历史的秩序来自秩序的历史”,却由于致思方式的局限,仅仅看到“历史中的哲学”,没有真正达到“哲学观照的历史”,尤其是忽略了黑格尔历史哲学与谢林肯定哲学“究天人之际”的旨趣。鉴于这些限度,加之中国文明在根本上并未遵从西方以形式感主导的构成方式,我们在沃格林之后“接着说”时不应以沃格林的论述框架为“底本”,而只应将其作为我们重新发掘中国文明“道中庸”的不同方式时的外部参照物。

Voegelin s philosophy of history shows tolerance and in-depth to many civilizations,which is rare in the Western academy,and becomes a useful mirror for the construction of Chinese thought.However,the limits of this philosophy in the nature of thought,the view of order,the view of history,etc.,should not go unnoticed.In terms of the nature of thought,it is essentially a social scientific investigation of the history of thought,namely,summarizing the laws of history from past thought and judging history in some self-evident model,without reaching the deeper reflection that philosophy should have on the effectiveness of this method of investigation.In his view of order,Voegelin ignores the possibility that some gnostic“archetypes”in his mind can reach cosmic order at the edge of modernity.In the aspect of history view,although Voegelin opposes the dominance of human interpretation by history and maintains that“the order of history comes from the history of order”,due to the limitation of the way of thinking,he only sees“philosophy in history”and does not really reach“the history of philosophy observation”,especially ignoring Hegel s philosophy of history and Schelling s purview of affirming philosophy s“investigating nature and man”.In view of these limitations and the fact that Chinese civilization fundamentally does not conform to the Western formal-oriented structure,we should not take Voegelin s framework of discourse as the“base”when we“follow”Voegelin,but should only use it as an external reference when we rediscover different ways of“Tao moderation”in Chinese civilization.