Beyond Excess and Emptiness: Political Ethics in the Modern Context

Author: Qian Yongxiang
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2002-10-01
Features: "Modernity is a desolate situation where gods retreat and values deplete. So, what ethical awareness should actors possess in the modern context? What moral challenges does modernity pose for those who prioritize practice? What constraints should political action in the modern world face? The themes explored in this book reflect the author's perspective on the intellectual trajectories of thinkers like Weber, Lukács, Orwell, Marcuse, and Berlin, as well as the author's reflections on Weber, Marxism, and the broader liberal tradition, inspired and pressured by real-world issues. Through these academic essays, book reviews, public discourse on Taiwan, and historical reflections, the author combines political philosophy with ethical thinking on political action, forming a challenging framework of critical inquiry and practical ethics. The author emphasizes that, compared to nihilism and conservatism, modern ethics must seek equality as a fundamental public value as a way forward. However, the profound and extensive implications of egalitarianism, including the rigorous demands of both pluralism and universality, require practitioners to patiently contemplate and refine them in public life.
Excerpt: Hegel: The last great master of the Western classical philosophical tradition, "Hegel" is not a stranger to most people. Everyone knows Hegel (G.W.F. Hegel, 1770–1831) as a highly accomplished and influential German philosopher, but beyond a few terms like "World Spirit" and "dialectics," most people know little about his thought. This is not surprising, as any work dealing with modern Western thought or ideology is bound to mention Hegel, but if readers wish to delve deeper into the content of his thought, they face significant difficulties. , Hegel's own works are renowned for their obscurity, making it difficult for both general readers and professional philosophers to grasp what he was truly saying. Second, Hegel's intellectual background and historical context are vastly different from today's world, making it hard for contemporary readers to understand the problems he faced or the purpose behind his fundamental concepts. These two factors not only hinder the interest of general readers but also render most mediocre secondary interpretive works of little help. However, it is clear that Hegel is not a philosopher to be ignored. Since his death in 1831, his "ghost" has continued to haunt the development of modern thought. Over the past 150 years, Western countries have experienced several "Hegel revivals," each followed by intense critical waves that ended with new intellectual orientations. Yet, time and again, this phoenix rises from the ashes, exerting an inexplicable attraction on new generations. The Young Hegelians of the 1840s in Germany were replaced by positivism in the reactionary wave following the 1848 revolution; the New Hegelianism of the late 19th century in Britain and America was drowned out by Russell and Moore's new realism and James and Dewey's pragmatism; the "Hegel revival" that flourished in Germany and Italy in the early 20th century was quickly overwhelmed by phenomenology, existentialism, and Nazi ideology; the Hegel studies that emerged in France in the 1930s and 1940s were soon eclipsed by new topics like Freud, Nietzsche, and Marx. It was not until the late 1960s that Western interest in Hegel was reignited. New complete editions and translations continue to appear, and hundreds of papers on him are published annually in academic journals, while over the past decade alone, English-language publications alone have seen around forty books dedicated to him. In 1946, the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote, "To interpret Hegel is to take a stance on all philosophical, political, and religious issues of our time." There is no better way to summarize the importance of Hegel. Thus, although Karl Popper wrote in 1945, "This Hegel farce has caused enough harm. We must stop it. We must speak—even if it means touching this ugly thing and dirtying our hands," an increasing number of people are no longer afraid to "dirty their hands" and explore the truth of this "ugly thing." Why would a once obscure philosopher have such a peculiar fate? This question, of course, has no simple answer. In 1976, the American philosopher Walter Kaufmann wrote an article in the Times Literary Supplement discussing this. He argued that the sudden rise in Western interest in Hegel since the late 1960s can be attributed to four reasons: because Hegel's thought is inherently fascinating; because for the Anglo-American philosophy dominated by positivism, Hegel represents an alternative path; because, following student movements, students began to take an interest in Hegel; and because the entire Western intellectual world had a strong interest in Marx. In 1977, another American philosopher, Richard J. Bernstein, argued that Kaufmann's "reasons" were merely descriptive and did not explain why these phenomena occurred. Bernstein pointed to three vibrant areas of contemporary philosophy: the philosophy of science, epistemology, and action theory, noting that Hegel offered fundamental, important, and novel insights in all three fields, not only aligning with the orientation of contemporary philosophers but often providing timely inspiration for their explorations. Furthermore, Bernstein observed from the perspective of intellectual history and broad knowledge sociology that Hegel had once again become a focal point of Western thought because the problems he cared about were, in fact, taking on different forms in the modern world. As a result, his ideas and works were inevitably of interest to modern people. Bernstein's explanation is clearly an excellent way to demonstrate Hegel's modern significance; and in fact, this approach has also been one of the main orientations of Hegel studies over the past decade.