The Renaissance of Francis Bacon

The program of intervening, manipulating, constructing and creating is central to natural and engineering sciences. A renewed wave of interest in this program has emerged within the recent practices and discourse of nano-technoscience. However, it is striking that, framed from the perspective of well-established epistemologies, the constructed technoscientific objects and engineered things remain invisible. Their ontological and epistemological status is unclear. The purpose of the present paper is to support present-day approaches to techno-objects (“ontology”) insofar as they make these hidden objects epistemologically perceivable. To accomplish this goal, it is inspiring to look back to the origin of the project of modernity and to its founding father: Francis Bacon. The thesis is that everything we need today for an adequate (dialectic-materialist), ontologically well-informed epistemology of technoscience can be found in the works of Bacon—this position will be called epistemological real-constructivism. Rather than describing it as realist or constructivist, empiricist or rationalist, Bacon’s position can best be understood as real-constructivist since it challenges modern dichotomies, including the dichotomy between epistemology and ontology. Such real-constructive turn might serve to promote the acknowledgement that natural and engineering sciences, in particular recent technosciences, are creating and producing the world we live in. Reflection upon the contemporary relevance of Bacon is intended as a contribution to the expanding and critical discussion on nano-technoscience.     

极权主义和政治现代性--读《极权主义的起源》

阿伦特的《极权主义的起源》是要揭示一种特殊的现代政治现象的起因和条件,探讨极权主义这个现代特有的现象的深层历史原因及其结构因素。正因为如此,她的许多观点和分析至今仍有重要的意义。极权主义是反犹主义、民族国家的衰落、种族主义、为扩张而扩张、资本和暴徒联盟结合在一起的产物。极权主义就是从根本上消灭人性,它反映了“我们世纪的危机”,揭示了西方文明及其价值体系的崩溃。     

Exhaustion and the Pathologization of Modernity

This essay analyses six case studies of theories of exhaustion-related conditions from the early eighteenth century to the present day. It explores the ways in which George Cheyne, George Beard, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, Sigmund Freud, Alain Ehrenberg and Jonathan Crary use medical ideas about exhaustion as a starting point for more wide-ranging cultural critiques related to specific social and technological transformations. In these accounts, physical and psychological symptoms are associated with particular external developments, which are thus not just construed as pathology-generators but also pathologized. The essay challenges some of the persistently repeated claims about exhaustion and its unhappy relationship with modernity.     

在传统与现代之间——凡特胡拉·古莱恩苏非主义思想简论

凡特胡拉·古莱恩是土耳其当代著名的学者和宗教活动家,其苏非主义思想既继承了新苏非主义的部分主张,又进行了适度变革,使苏非主义在内容、组织形式等方面具有一些新的特点.中间主义是古莱恩苏非思想的核心之所在,为穆斯林正确认识传统与现代以及二者的关系提供了新的视角.     

现代性和虚无主义

西方文化语境中的虚无主义是一种精神世界的价值虚空状态,是现代性的特征。列斐伏尔彰显现代性的虚无主义本质,从虚无主义切入现代性,从虚无中看到了希望,认为现代既是虚无主义的时代,也将是新生的时代。这对于我们认清自己的现代性建构道路及目标具有重要启迪意义,当代中国以人为本、和谐社会等核心价值理念能帮助人摆脱虚无主义。     

现代化与现代性——历史·理论·关系

现代性是从中世纪末萌芽的,在其发展中取得了普世意义的理性形式:科学精神、人文精神、法治精神和自由、平等、民主的理念。现代化的出生比现代性稍晚,它由三个层面组成:物质层面、制度层面和精神层面。现代性与现代化是我们这个时代的主导精神和各民族皆追求的事业。现代性与现代化不是同一事物,但它们在历史背景上、精神源泉上和构建现代国家上存在着同一又有差别的关系。     

Modernity and rural religion in the Philippines

The present paper concerns religious beliefs and practices— relating to the national hero of the Philippines Jose Rizal—of a religious community that calls itself Ciudad Mistica de Dios (the Mystical City of God). In the late 1950s, Mistica established its headquarters on the lower slopes of the holy mountain, Mount Banahaw. The paper commences by reading a selection of ‘nationalist’ constructions of the life and death of Jose Rizal through Bauman's conception of ‘modernity’ as ‘cultivating action’ and Foucault's notion of ‘pastoral power’. This is juxtaposed with Mistica's reading of Rizal—a reading that constructs Rizal's life and death as a mirror to the life and death of Christ, and that emerges as a critical engagement with modernity and the state. The paper concludes by suggesting that local religious beliefs and practices must be interpreted in terms of the historical experiences of particular peoples and places.     

审美现代性与日常生活批判

一、问题的提出从历史角度说 ,艺术作为人类文化一个不可或缺的重要组成部分 ,是与社会生活密不可分地联系在一起的。审美发生学的研究已经证实 ,艺术的基本社会功能就是协同功能 ,通过艺术活动来教化社会成员 ,协调社会关系 ,传递文化、道德和行为方式 ,沟通社会成员之间的情感联系。这种功能我们可以在原始艺术、古典艺术甚至一切前现代艺术中清楚地看到。在前现代 ,艺术与社会的功能关系基本上是协调一致的。虽然在传统文化中不乏反抗现存社会的艺术 ,特别是面临巨大变迁的时代的艺术 ,但从总体上说 ,艺术和社会成员的日常生活及其意识形…