Wang Fansen: School of Contemporary Western Thought History and Its Criticism

Author introduction: Wang Fansen, a famous contemporary historian, his main research field is the intellectual history of the Ming and Qing Dynasties and modern times. "Fu Sinian: The Individual Life in Modern Chinese History and Politics", "The Capillary Action of Power: The Thought, Academics, and Mindset of the Qing Dynasty", etc., have had a profound impact on related research at home and abroad.

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From the History of Ideas: Representative Lovejoy

The representative figure in the history of ideas is Arthur O. Lovejoy. His main point of view is to discuss the idea unit of the history of ideas (Idea Unit), taking the unit of thought as the subject of discussion. The book "The Great Chain of Being" has been published (now there is also a Chinese and Indian version), this book should be a copy of both professors and students among Western humanities and social science students. This book is quite difficult, and the way to get started is to be pure, Plato-related Being.

Since Plato, Westerners have discussed the matter of being as an idea unit throughout history. His influence is very great. Anthony Grafton, who wrote "An Interesting History of Footnotes" a few years ago, traced the rise of American intellectual history, of which Lovejoy was always the first.

He proposed a research method at that time, and after he completed his work, he was not paid much attention in the Department of Philosophy, but attracted attention in the Department of History and the Department of History of Science. A careful comparison of the early published intellectual histories of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries shows a different style from the intellectual history of this century. The understanding of each era changes.

A History of Mindsets in the Yearbook School

At the time of my studies, it was the practice of the history of thought that was most prevalent in the French yearbook school. The Yearbook School was heavily influenced by Durkheim. Sociologist Durkheim always emphasizes collective performance when discussing things. But in the later period, Fernand Braudel was influenced by the Structuralism popular in France at the time.

The most important thing in the history of mentality is collective. The French yearbook school attaches great importance to the affairs of ordinary people, and it is the history of life, old age, illness and death of ordinary people. What he valued was not the great thinkers. In one sentence, he described it as "from Caesar to his soldiers, all share the mentality of thought". For example, George Dolby's three social classes believe that the West has formed three social orders from a very early point of view. Some people's work is to pray for everyone, some people are farming and raising these people, and some people are fighting wars. This idea didn't start with Dolby, and even some linguists since Greece and Rome put forward this idea very early. But Dolby is looking at it from the perspective of the history of mentality: from high to low in the Middle Ages, from elites to ordinary people, there is a common mentality, which is to believe that the order of these three people is innate.

During the Republic of China, everyone from Sun Yat-sen to his driver knew what was going on in society. Before the 20th century, society was not what it means now, but a kind of meaning like the God-fighting Games. Some of the ideas shared by the collective masses, they call it a "history of mentality."

The most famous yearbook school, a master of mental history is Lucian Febvre, one of the first generation founders of the yearbook school. We are familiar with Marc Bloch, in fact another key figure in the yearbook school is Lucian Febvre. He was far more successful than Bloch in reality.

Bloch, I think he is pitiful. Lucien Pfeiffer took away all the fruits of his victory. Bloch travels thousands of miles every year to choose the academician of the French Academy, but he dare not offend Lucien Fei. Foer, who often gave him an empty promise: I'll be picking you in very soon next year. Bloch spent more than a decade choosing French academicians. Looking back now, Bloch was at least as great as Lucien Pfeiffer, but Lucien Pfeiffer was so successful in those days.

Many people have bad views on Lucien Pfeiffer, but in fact he has made great contributions to historiography, and his several historiography works have had a great influence. One of them is related to the history of mentality, such as the issue of "unbelief in the 16th century", which is to say that a person is anti-belief. The word "anti-belief" did not exist in the mentality of the 16th century, and it was only later. This kind of history of mentality, whether there is a mentality in an era, whether there is a tool for mentality, and whether there is a tool for the mind, this kind of view is in "The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century - Rabelais' Religion". Typically, as in The Three Hierarchies ("The Three Social Orders"), written by Georges Duby of the French Yearbook School, showing three social orders, as written by Jacques Le Goff "The Birth of Purgatory" originally did not have the idea of "purgatory". Later, after "The Divine Comedy" came out, I believed in purgatory, and my mentality changed. The history of mentality has also received a lot of criticism, mainly for the lack of individuals in it.

The history of thought under the influence of "new cultural history"

The "New Cultural History" has a wide influence on the history of thought. There is a point of view that language is opaque, and it is inherently problematic to use language to express ideas, and it is to express with a conventional thing. Language precedes human existence, and human existence is manipulated by language. So there is no way to express your thoughts so clearly. Thought and culture is a semiotic network, which is not something that individual thinkers can manipulate. The language used by Mozi was also the language shared by his time.

I just mentioned these two points. First, the notation network of history has its own rules of operation, and thinkers are those who use the rules. Second, language is not transparent, especially after the "turn in linguistics" in the 20th century, people believed that language had its own rules, and language preceded the existence of thinkers and manipulated thinkers, who used the network to express ideas. It is difficult for thinkers to reconstruct the original meaning of language.

"Cambridge School of Political Thought History"

Today I would like to point out that the fourth one is the British "Cambridge School of Political Thought History". In the past two days, I took Teacher Lu Yang's "Qingliu Culture and the Tang Empire" and found that he was also deeply influenced by it.

In 1969 Quentin Skinner wrote an article called "Meaning and Understanding In The Intellectual History", which was published in History Of Theory, an old book on intellectual history and historiography. Journal of Theory. This article challenged many schools of thought history at the time, including Lovejoy and Levy Strauss, and presented many of his new views at the time. He discussed how to understand meaning and how to grasp the key points of intellectual history. The article now seems rather unreadable, rather long, a manifesto written by a young and hot academic that has since become one of his most pivotal essays.

I personally see from his manifesto that he was clearly influenced by three currents of thought at the time, such as Robin George Collingwood. Including his Visions of Politics. Then he made a visit to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and then wrote that he wrote "The Foundations of Modern Political Thought" (The Foundations of Modern Political), which is to implement the method proposed in the famous 1969 declaration of war in the history of thought. in the writing.

When I was a college student, under the influence of Mr. Yu Yingshi, I read all the Collingwood books that NTU could find. Mr. Yu was the first to introduce him to the Chinese-speaking world. At that time, it was very difficult for Taipei to buy the original book. There was a West Wind Bookstore that actually had Collingwood's Autobiography, and I read it from beginning to end. All of Collingwood's important ideas are in his autobiography, because he died too early, and his most famous "Idea of History" would not have been visible if his most loyal students had not sorted out his lectures. . This book was not published during his lifetime, and those students had the opportunity to spell it out and put together unfinished works into one book, so that book made many readers feel wrong. When I reread it in school, I learned a little about his writing habits at that time. He once spent two days writing a little book, and he was on vacation for those two days, so of course he would die early.

It is repeatedly mentioned in his autobiography that to understand the true mind, it must be placed in context. So he was in the British Intelligence Service at the age of 20, specializing in deciphering the intelligence that the US Intelligence Service did not see. He looked at very ugly statues and began to wonder how a good artist could carve a statue so ugly. He later understood that to understand the statue, how could he understand this work without reconstructing its meaning and recreating its historical context? The same is true of history. Collingwood also talked about it in his autobiography. Every concept must be explained in the context of history. It keeps changing with time, and the meaning of historical context to it changes. The judgments he described in his autobiography dealing with consciousness, thinking, and ideas, although not very deeply practiced, have a wide range of implications.

Collingwood puts a lot of emphasis on Austin. Austin was a master of the English language analysis school at that time, with very few books and very few books. Among them is a book "How to Act with Words", which is now translated into Chinese. The book distinguishes between two languages: one is called "locutianal language", a "descriptive" language, which uses language to do things; one It is an "illocutional" language. A language can be both descriptive and actionable. For example, you suddenly shout to a child, "There is ice on the lake!" You are not just describing the ice on the lake, you Or tell him to run away. This sentence is both a description and an action. After Austin got a big name, because of a lot of criticism and criticism from various aspects, he later revised it into three types. The third one I personally guess, Austin is naturally also influenced by Wittgenstein. It is believed that language itself is also a kind of convention, and the meaning of this usage law is the convention of that era. Just like "society" in the Ming Dynasty may mean burning incense and meeting, but in 1902 Liang Qichao answered that society is "a group with laws": a group with its own laws and a group with laws. Society at the time was not the same as today's society. Language is conventional.

Skinner's "Meaning and Understanding in the History of Ideas" said that at that time, many thought histories did not put ideas in the context of history, thinking that ideas transcended time and space, and that each era was the same, thinking that they could be discussed beyond time and space. Yes, his teacher Laslett (Peter Laslett), who was later a representative of the Cambridge School of Demography, compiled a book of Locke's Treatise on Government in his early years. This book deeply influenced his research.

Lasslater found that the publication of the Treatise on Government was not after the Glorious Revolution, and many people thought Locke’s Treatise on Government was to justify the Glorious Revolution. However, when Lasslater was editing the Cambridge edition of Locke's Treatise on Government, he found that he had already written it around the 1870s. It can be seen that this work was one of the factors that contributed to the success of the "Glorious Revolution", rather than being used after its success. to rationalize the "Glorious Revolution". The research on this historical context determines the nature of this text. I think this real-world instance also has a deep impact on Skinner et al. Unfortunately, Lasslater is no longer in this field.

The example just now shows that the understanding of political thought is different whether it is placed in the historical context or not. Locke repeatedly scolded a man, Sir Robert Filmer, in his Treatise on Government. If that book was written after the Glorious Revolution, he scolded Filmer for mentioning patriarchy, so Without any meaning, the revolution has become, and there is no meaning. If before 1870, when the revolution had not yet succeeded, people were still attacking the Aristotelian doctrine of Firmais in the service of the Stuarts. I think this book is very good evidence that the Cambridge School of Political Thought is putting ideas in the historical context.

In recent years, however, I have sensed that another person in the history of Cambridge intellectuals is on the rise, Pocock. He doesn't have such a clear ideology. But there are four steps to his practice over the years. One of his disciples named Tully (James Tully) once wrote a book "The Pen is a Mighty Sword" (The Pen is a Mighty Sword), which describes Skinner's political thought. He summarized several steps: First, Skinner thought to find out the convention of language at that time. Take Machiavelli's "On the King" as an example, there were many texts like the monarchy at that time. Look at this type of book, what most of the conventions are about, and then look at what is beyond the convention (convention) in "The King's Treatise". There is a sentence in chapter 16 of The King, "A king must know when to be immoral". This is different from the commentary of the society at the time, when all writings were persuading kings to have morals. In his little book Machiavelli, Skinner said that the theory of kings should be put into the historical context, and the historical context of the theory of kings should be seen at that time.

Because at that time the Medici family not only had a pope, but also had local power in Italy. The Medici family had a chance to unify Italy. Machiavelli said this sentence to use the opportunity to persuade the king and provide a basis for the realistic requirements of unifying Italy at that time.

It can also be seen what is the relationship between the texts of the folk stage at that time and the convention at that time, is it the same or different? Next, let’s see, what is the relationship between such ideology and political power at that time? In Skinner's work, there is a chapter on the religious revolution, why Martin Luther fled to the petty princely region of Germany to be protected, because the princes saw a ideological leader who could compete with the Pope, so they were willing to hide Martin Luther , so that he was protected, and since then it has also helped to spread the ideas of Martin Luther.

The interaction of ideas with political forces allows him to be protected and developed, and at the same time to spread ideas. So there is a step, the relationship between ideology and actual power. Next, look at the evaluative nature of this thought. Martin Luther's thought itself has an evaluative nature. Those who conform to this evaluation are good, and those that do not conform to this evaluation are not good. So he could gradually change the political reality of the time.

There is also a time point (Moment). Environmental awareness is very popular in Taiwan. Politicians in many places, regardless of whether they understand environmental protection or not, must write environmental protection in their political opinions, so that the new idea of environmental protection has a contemporary nature and changes the policy of reality. In such a step, find out his context, find out the language convention, and see where the possible new ideas are; then it depends on the relationship between it and the actual policy, how it spreads, and how it becomes a theory for evaluating political ideas; What kind of realistic establishment has allowed the ideology to continue, including printing, and how did the non-governmental organization group publicize this ideology, so that this ideology can be continued.

Summarizing the Cambridge School of Political Thought History, in one sentence, an important political thought. To understand its history, you must understand what it wants to do and what it wants to do. Only by understanding what this thought wants to do can you truly understand its ideological meaning. .

For example, it is mentioned in one document that in the 14th century there was a Bartolus (Bartolus) who, when interpreting Roman law, once preached that when the law is contrary to the fact, the law must be subordinated to the fact. After this declaration, a school of commentaries on Roman law was formed. To truly understand his ideas, if you did not understand the context at that time, in fact, in order to cut off the influence of Roman law in the reality of the time, you could not really understand its meaning.

Criticism of the Cambridge School of Political Thought History

After decades of the school's popularity, people are slowly getting impatient, and I bring this topic up because there are always critics of him.

One of Tully's criticisms of him is mainly in his old paradigm. Another criticism pointed out that he paid too much attention to the real part and ignored the virtual part. These criticisms were all influenced by Benjamin and Heidegger. They believed that Skinner took the context too real, and there was still falsehood in political thought. part. And language is opaque. In addition, even if he is not influenced by the postmodern ideas of language, he is considered to be overly controlled by the context, thinking that ideas cannot be found in the void, but must be found in the political context.

Peter Gordon's criticism of Skinner

Gordon's critique states:

First, how can ideas be spoken for only one era, one context, and one specific audience? Thoughts can speak to many potential, vast, and even infinite generations to come, not just in one thread. He believes that Skinner takes the context of a specific moment too much, and believes that meaning is mostly limited to this context, that meaning cannot be explained from the void, and that the moment in a specific context is too systematized and substantiated .

Second, Skinner's methodology of political thought cannot deal with subjects that are too large. He originally predicted that he would write after the French Revolution, but he didn't, and he couldn't write transnational content, and transnationality would leave a specific context. For example, regarding the government military system, Chen Yinke talked about the formation of the "Guanlong Group" in the struggle against others in his "Draft on the Origin of the System in the Sui and Tang Dynasties". This is a bit like Austin's theory, produced in a specific context. However, Mr. Qian Mu emphasized that this system was formed in a specific context within the group, not only for specific struggles, but also for broader institutional considerations. As Gordon said, it's not just a matter of context, he may also be countless potential listeners or leaders.

Gordon argues that, according to Skinner, it seems that meaning is only true in the first moments. Skinner seems to be too limited to one first moment, like Machiavelli's 16th chapter of the Prince, to limit it to a single moment, and there should be many more such moments, the meaning of which is just as valuable of. He also said that there should be ideas for imagining potential possibilities that have yet to be implemented.

A thought itself, in addition to noting that it is in the context, must also think about where it has not yet been implemented, or where it might be potentially implemented. Like the "public domain" mentioned by Habermas, although this one cannot be implemented, it does not mean that it is meaningless. The text also has intentions beyond the author's consciousness. As I am about to say this passage, I actually have several potential meanings. Like tradition, tradition has also been moving forward. Void, not the scene seen on the spot, but a virtual scene, even if there is a marginal factor in the corner, these will affect not only the context.

I think Gordon may have taken Skinner's view a little too far. In my opinion, the specific historical context and the grand future development should be combined to look at the literature in detail. A Dutch historical theorist, he said that Tolstoy's "War and Peace" depicts the war untrue, no matter how the war is planned and detailed, it is impossible to be in a panic during the battle. Don't believe what is written in the political history. Don't believe those things written by political ideology. Tolstoy said that when Napoleon attacked, the Russian marshal famously said that the most important thing as a military leader is to wait patiently and watch the opportunity. The marshal said that there is a huge invisible force in the development of history, we wait patiently for that force, use that force, let it decide us, not us decide it, dissolve that force, use that force. But in fact, people can't hold back in the end, and they still have to make a decision with their will.

Reinhart Koselleck, Criticism of the German School of Conceptual History

Koselleck (Reinhart Koselleck), the German school of conceptual history and a representative, they were in the 1960s. Koseleck mainly compiled an eight-volume dictionary, "The Dictionary of Concept History" and "Basic Concepts of History - A Dictionary of German Political and Social Language History". After the Second World War, Germany was very difficult, and Koselek's theory was also being explored, and it lived on the fringes of Western academia. In the 1960s, he was invited to edit the Great Dictionary, during which he came up with the famous concept of the "Saddle Period". He believes that this is the most critical content that determines modern Western politics. He was heavily influenced by Carl Schmitt. Schmidt was a Nazi. After World War II, he was not allowed to attend classes due to being too inflammatory, but many students secretly listened to the lectures, and Koselek was one of them.

In Europe, more and more people pay attention to the conceptual history of Kosseleck, which is more difficult than Skinner.

Saddle period: 1750-1850 was the saddle period of European thought. During a special period of time, many new political ideas and many new concepts affecting life are formed at this time. Like a saddle, it is saddle-shaped. This is a key factor. The eight major dictionaries he compiled are the saddle-shaped bodies of European thought. The saddle body concept has several features. First, historicization, many concepts in the concept itself indicate a certain course of time development; second, democratization, the concept of saddle body is no longer limited to aristocratic elites, but also common people; third, politicization, resulting in various doctrine. Fourth, it is ideological.

Saddles take time into account when dealing with concepts. In layman's terms, among the concepts defined by Koselek, each concept has a layer of time, as if there is a clutch of a car, which can accelerate, brake or reverse. Each of its concepts is not a simple concept, and behind each concept there are layers of time, and there are several layers of time. For example, the concept of democracy, there are concepts from Roman times, concepts from the 17th and 18th centuries, and concepts after World War II in the 20th century, all of which are aggregated into one concept. And when concepts are used, all these layers come to the same point.

There is another important feature in the concept before the French Revolution. He said that the concepts generated during the saddle period include past, present, and future, not only to describe one thing, but also to hope for one thing, and the future is hope. So the concept generated by the saddle period is not just a concept, not just a description of a phenomenon, it also has an expectation. The saddle-shaped body concept itself has a clutch, and the distance between the future and the past in the concept itself is of great significance.

So, history doesn't just happen in time. If each concept is very futuristic, it will have a different impact. The utopian thinking of the French Revolution made many concepts highly futuristic. The concepts themselves were different from before and were influenced by many layers of time. If the distance between the future part and the past part of the concept is very long, then the concept itself has a strong conflict. If there is no stability in the past, present, and future like the Chengping period in ancient China, the concept will be very stable. It does not represent such strong expectations and future collisions. Therefore, history is through time, and time becomes an important parameter of the concept. History not only occurs in time, but also occurs through time. Concepts are inventories, if you think of concepts as structures. Time is an important item and an important element of the concept, and this is influenced by Heidegger. After World War II, due to the Nazis, Heidegger was not allowed to attend classes for a period of time. Koselek took time very seriously. The wings of the concept are time. If the future and the process are compressed very closely in this concept, Koselek cites an example, the Nazis are the very close relationship between the present and the future. Koselek mentioned in a short article that the classics are not applicable in all eras, they have tension in the past, present and future.

Therefore, even the important concepts that originated in the West very early have undergone great changes from 1750 to 1850, which cannot be seen literally. When discussing concepts, time must be taken into account. Koseleck was deeply influenced by Karl Schmidt. Concept systems are all in the process of struggle, and concepts themselves are in a state of competition and struggle, which is not a peaceful thing in itself. The concept is an inventory of past and future time levels. A concept is also the definition of it at different times from ancient times, and these will apply to that time and now. In time, time witnesses this concept.

This one is very important. It reflects the ideas and opinions of the Germans and is becoming more and more convincing. Kosseleck's writings are not many, but many people tell me that Kosseleck has a very high status in German intellectual circles. From his writings one sees the depth of time, how time is related differently, how time can make a concept complete, and so on.

However, some people criticized him, and his criticism mainly came from two aspects.

One is Pocock. Regarding Gibbon's book "The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", I told my students last semester that six volumes were written in "The History of Decline and Decline", and Pocock's research on this book was also written in six volumes. He is using a group of concepts, a group of vocabulary, a group of formal concepts, especially to discuss changes after the business era and so on. He is thought to have captured more history than Skinner. People found that what Skinner had caught was something from the outside world and exaggerated history, while Pocock's thinking methodology was so delicate and clear.

Pocock's criticism of Kosseleck is mainly on two points: he does not agree with the establishment of the "saddle period" period, he believes that in England, the saddle period should be 1500-1800, and Koselek established the saddle period. Types are based on French standards. But I think Koselek will definitely answer this: The French Revolution was the most influential period during this period.

Second, Pocock raises objections to another view of Koselek's theory of conceptual history. Koselek has an important point, that concepts form a semantic field, which is like a dynamo around which a semantic network can be formed. Pocock agrees with this view, but believes that Koselek's imagination is still too fixed and isolated. He believes that all concepts are constantly reshaping their structures and meanings with historical changes, rather than being categorically divided into definite temporal levels.

There is also a larger critic, Hans Blumenberg, who studies metaphors. I thought he mainly studied the Age of Enlightenment and mythology, and some domestic scholars also noticed his writings. I also read some and regarded him as a mythologist, but since then he has written a lot of thought.

But that's not what I'm going to talk about. Another area of Blumenberg's research is metaphor. In 1960, he was going to write an article on metaphor, "A Paradigm of Metaphor," which was extremely difficult to understand. Why did he say that he was critical of Koselek? Because he wrote an article "non-conceptuality" in the later period, he put forward the idea of focusing on "non-concept" and directly aimed at the research on the history of concepts. He believes that the concept history school takes concepts too real and is too influenced by Descartes, as if only abstract concepts are the only way of expressing the world of human thought. In his view, there is another metaphorical world, such as "truth is light", "the world is an open book", "life is a dark and silent forest", and "the face of the world" that Montaigne said , these metaphors actually tell more history than concepts. There are things in the world that refuse to be abstracted and manifest not through concepts, but through themselves. He thinks that twentieth-century thought was too influenced by linguistics, while ignoring such representations as metaphors, which is a major lack. He believes that there is a part of the world of ideas that cannot be said, such as images, such as things. He lost the poetic thing in the formation of cognitive certainty. There are things in the world that are not revealed by concepts, but manifested by the self. Presents the existence of "non-conceptualized ideas". The conceptual history school lacks the exploration of the virtual side and the possibility side. In my opinion, this criticism has its profound truth, but it cannot be regarded as a substitute for the method of conceptual history, but should be used to expand the world of intellectual history and highlight different aspects of history.

Criticism of Textual Research by Song School in Chinese Intellectual History

Finally, I want to talk about Fang Dongshu's "Shang Dui in Sinology", and I want to discuss the criticism of the history of the largest school of thought in the 20th century. This article is the first of my book The Genealogy of Modern Thought and Scholarly. There are many people who think this book is nonsense and has no roots. However, this book had a great influence in the late Qing Dynasty and represented an important criticism of the Song School on textual research.

He said, why when discussing ideological concepts, such as Dai Zhen and others, think that they can only be obtained through exegesis and textual research? Fang Dongshu believes that in addition to textual research, isn't there a way of using the principles of justice? Regarding many ideas in ancient books, he said that textual research is not necessarily more profound than Song Confucianism's grasp of ideas and principles. For example, the concept of "Qin Ming Wen Si An An" in the "Dian of Yao" can be more accurately grasped from the perspective of righteousness.

I must first emphasize that textual research reconstructs ancient moral thought. The textual research and reconstruction of people are completely different from the Neo-Confucianism of the Song and Ming Dynasties. He said that people have the nature of a community, not an individual's inner state, and research starts from the community. Textual research is a community state, unlike Song and Ming Neo-Confucianism, which focuses on the inner state of an individual, which is still different. But these two methods, they are both methods of guidance. One is that Ruan Yuan, Dai Zhen and others believe that only through language can we reconstruct moral vocabulary and thoughts.

And Fang Dongshu believes that this is not the case, I have to grasp and adjust from the empty place. To grasp this thing through the inner world of justice. This is of course not exactly the same as Skinner and Koseleck's theory in the previous book, but it reflects somewhat.

Koseleck and Skinner believed that there was a definite relationship between language and thought, while Blumenberg and Gordon believed that there were larger factors beyond the belief that language was definite, To grasp from a broad, even a little imaginary place. This part is strictly speaking, and this part should be added here. Although Fang Dongshu also agrees with the textual research of exegesis in Sinology, he believes that the textual research should also add to the human mind's grasp of righteousness and the world of heaven. These two add up to reflect the thought.

(Thanks to Mr. Zhao Xun and Wang Er of the History Department of Peking University for their contributions to the editing and revision of this article.)

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