社会杂志 ›› 2024, Vol. 44 ›› Issue (4): 147-178.

• 专题三:英国社会理论 • 上一篇    下一篇

现代道德秩序及其自然人性基础:沙夫茨伯里道德哲学的社会理论意涵

向维   

  • 发布日期:2024-08-15
  • 作者简介:向维 南京大学社会学院 E-mail:xiangweisoc@163.com

The Modern Moral Order and Its Basis of Human Nature:Significance of Shaftesbury’s Moral Philosophy for Social Theory

XIANG Wei   

  • Published:2024-08-15

摘要: 17世纪末18世纪初,沙夫茨伯里面临着现代个体产生之后如何安顿个体性日益膨胀的现代人,弥缝个体与社会之间的断裂,重构一个自由而有德性的总体秩序的问题。这意味着他要在霍布斯之后发展一种竞争性的人性论,并由此构筑一种新的道德哲学。为此,沙夫茨伯里借助神圣秩序观念,为自由而有德性的市民社会的构建提供了可能性。随后,沙夫茨伯里提出了一种以自然情感为第一性的人性观,进而经验性地澄清了人性中自然而固有的那种“非自爱的社会性”,为社会本身的自足性提供了有力辩护。最后,经由共同感和道德感官的社会心理机制,一种道德秩序的可能性便在普遍自然人性的基础上得到了说明。在这一系列理论工作之外,沙夫茨伯里明确主张,一个充分自由、宽和的公共领域,对于良好的道德秩序的真正实现是极为必要的。沙夫茨伯里的道德哲学为后来的苏格兰启蒙运动乃至整个英美社会理论确立了一种以“社会”逻辑来安顿个体、构造秩序的理论基调,其思想对于我们这个时代仍具有多方面价值。

关键词: 沙夫茨伯里, 道德哲学, 道德秩序, 人性论, 自然情感, 社会性

Abstract: At the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century,Shaftesbury was confronted with not only the growing moral crisis of the commercial society and the need for a humanistic foundation for a liberal republican government program,but also the question of how to define the modern man with his expanding individuality,to bridge the gap between the individual and the society,and to reconstruct a free and virtuous general order. This required him to develop,after Hobbes,a competing theory of human nature,and thereby to construct a new moral philosophy. For this purpose,Shaftesbury drew on natural theology and Stoicism to articulate a conception of divine order that opened up the possibility of a free and virtuous civil society. Subsequently,Shaftesbury put forward a view of human nature with natural affection as the first principle,and then empirically clarified the “sociability not for self-love” that was naturally inherent in human nature,providing a powerful defense of the self-sufficiency of society itself. Finally,through the socio-psychological mechanisms of “common sense”and “moral sense”,the possibility of a moral order was illustrated on the basis of universal human nature. In addition to this body of theoretical work,Shaftesbury explicitly argued that a sufficiently free and tolerant public sphere was essential to the true realization of a good moral order. Shaftesbury’s moral philosophy set a theoretical tone for the later Scottish Enlightenment and for the Anglo-American social theory that treated the “social”logic as a means of settling individuals and constructing order. His ideas are still of value to us today in many ways.

Key words: Shaftesbury, moral philosophy, moral order, theory of human nature, natural affection, sociability