普遍主义与人性良善:伦理的可能性与有限性

Universalism and Human Goods:the Possibilities and Limits of Ethics

普遍主义曾是现代思想的宏愿.启蒙时代的欧洲思想家们,瞩目于一个科学发现的新时代,一个全球对话与商贸的新世界,眼睁睁看着欧洲大陆被宗教战争和相互对立的政治联盟撕裂,于是这些思想家们共同谋划了一个真理与正义的普遍标准,这一普遍标准建立在人类知性基础上,不受宗教启示和文化成见的支配.①思想家们希望,一旦合理地建立起这一普遍理性原则,科学真理将取代迷信,人类社会将会跨越传统行事的局限,民族与宗教冲突将会终结,普遍理性的最终结果将会是“永久和平”(“perpetual peace”)②,一如康德(Immanuel Kant)在1 795年手稿中所预言的.

Contemporary Western religious, moral, and political thought emphasizes the problems with universalism. European Enlightenment rationalism held out the promise of truths that would transcend cultural and theological differences but these claims now frequently seem to be instruments of power relationships and cultural hegemony. Nevertheless, the problems that motivated the search for human universals remain, and unless all those problems are to be reduced to questions of efficiency and security, scholars who explore the world’s cultural traditions must ask whether those traditions can provide channels for communication in an increasingly global community. Universalism is more difficult to achieve than the European Enlightenment thought, but thinking across boundaries of culture, conviction, and history is more necessary today than it has ever been. The task of the humanities is to develop a more realistic, dialogical approach to human universals that will permit collaboration and mutual understanding, even when it does not result in agreement.