解魅、分化与现代性

在前现代社会里,由于人们对生活采取一种一体化的、富有意义的态度,一元论的世界观产生了。在那个时代,人们不能清楚地区分不同的行动和不同的领域。随着世界的“解魅”,这种整体性的“世界图景”开始消解,行动的模式和标准出现分化,与行动相关的制度和系统也相应地分立,这便是现代社会的本质。并且,由于客观的价值秩序消亡了,我们的时代目睹了价值多元论的趋势,而这与自由主义的价值中立的原则紧密相关。     

马克思思想与后现代性

马克思与后现代都致力于实现从实体主义和本质主义的思维方式向实践的和关系性的思维方式的转变,但马克思思想中蕴含的历史自我意识则与后现代主义的历史相对主义形成了一种批判性的对话。后现代性语境下的马克思思想提醒我们反思当代西方思想的人类性价值以及当代精神的过渡性状况。作为马克思核心论阈的社会与社会化的人给后现代哲学所关注的核心问题主体间性提供了一种有效的反省与治疗价值。     

Let’s Make Things Better: A Reply to My Readers

This article is a reply to the three reviews of my book What Things Do: Philosophical Reflections on Technology, Agency, and Design (Verbeek 2005) in this symposium. It discusses the remarks made by the reviewers along five lines. The first is methodological and concerns the question of how to develop a philosophical approach to technology. The second line discusses the philosophical orientation of the book, and the relations between analytic and continental approaches. Third, I will discuss the metaphysical aspects of the book, in particular the nature and value of the non-modernist approach it aims to set out. Fourth, I will discuss the social and political relevance of the book. Fifth, this will bring me to some concluding remarks about how the postphenomenological perspective developed in the book relates to liberalism, focusing on its suggestions to deliberately design our material environment in terms of mediation.

Lacking <Emphasis Type="Italic">lack</Emphasis>: a reply to Joldersma

First I would like to thank Clarence Joldersma for his review of our Poststructuralism, Philosophy, Pedagogy (Marshall, 2004-PPP). In particular, I would thank him for his opening sentence: “[t]his book is a response to a lack.” It is the notion of a lack, noted again later in his review, which I wish to take up mainly in this response. Rather than defending or elaborating our particular contributions to PPP—the latter would be a great indignity to my colleagues as I would not write over them—I will take the opportunity to develop the theme of a lack, as I believe that Joldersma has raised a very important issue. But first I will respond briefly to some of Joldersma’s general and opening statements about the book, and my philosophical position in particular.

Expiation,Substitution and Surrender: Levinasian Implications for Psychotherapy

This essay will build on Emmanuel Levinas’s rejection of ontology as foundational and draw out the implications for psychotherapy. We will explore Levinas’s concept of substitution (in both his more Jewish writings and his philosophical treatises) and consider its meaning in relationship to the role of a psychotherapist. Levinas understands the Other as a calling for substitution of the self and of a taking on of responsibility. We explore the notion of surrender in the work of the psychoanalyst Emmanuel Ghent and argue that his position is ultimately lacking in ethical injunction; requiring nothing of the self in relationship to the Other. It remains within the confines of the conventional, self-reflexive models that Levinas critiques. Following Levinas, we suggest that the therapist bear the burden of ethical responsibility by being exposed to the client’s ethical call and by responding out of a kenotic self-emptying.

Church and Culture: Protestant and CatholicModernities

This article reviews the church and culture relationship developed in Gaudium et Spes and Lumen Gentium and proposes a Catholic account of modernity as a way in which the contemporary mission of the church in today's culture can be creatively and faithfully carried forward. After an initial outlining of the definitions of church and culture proposed by the Vatican documents, I then go on to position my proposal of a Catholic modernity in relation to some important current accounts of the church and culture relationship that tend towards a rejection of secular culture. I argue that Protestant accounts of modernity have dominated in philosophical and sociological theories and draw on my previous work on Max Weber to illustrate the significance of this for developing a Catholic account of modernity. I conclude by sketching some of the important issues which would need to be addressed in formulating a systematic account of a Catholic modernity.     

Islam and modernity: Islamist movements and the politics of position

With the advent of modernity in the West and the resulting progress that has made Western countries more ‘civilized’ than their counterpart in the Muslim world, Muslim and Arab intellectuals have triggered the debate over the utility of religion in the development of the West. Some intellectuals think that it is only by rejecting religion that the West has achieved astounding progress, while others believe that progress has no connection whatsoever with religion. By implication, Islam is not against progress and will never be if it is properly understood. Islamist movements, with their different positions towards the West and its modernity, differ as well in their conception of Islam in this changing world that is dominated in their views by the West.

走向实践的共同体——论现代性的反思性重建

现代性的基本矛盾是由其运作机制反思性唯我主义所导致的人类生存的具体性与抽象的客观体系的矛盾。重建现代性就需要克服反思性唯我主义。黑格尔的承认的辩证法、哈贝马斯的交往行动理论和马克思的实践的共同体,是现代性重建的三种不同路径。实践共同体就是马克思为之奋斗终生的人类理想社会自由人联合体的哲学表达。     

佛教文化的社会价值与影响

佛教文化在推动文明进步和发展的历史长河中,创造出举世瞩目的文化成就,发挥着重要的社会功能。在现代社会走向成熟的过程中,物文化的严重弊端也开始显现。现代性危机归根到底是一场"人类自我认识的危机",是物文化无法超越自身局限性的必然结果。只有我们的文化精神超越物文化、达到新的层次,才有可能从根本上消除这场危机。文化精神的向内超越,必须借助于丰富深刻的智慧见地。在东方文化的土壤中,这种内向的心灵智慧发展得尤其充分,东方圣哲们的智慧结晶共同构成了"心文化"的主要内容。这场朝向内心的伟大进军势必开启人类社会的第三次伟大变革。     

The scandal of ecstasy: communication, Sufi rites, and social reform in 1930s Morocco

Modern Islamic reformists in Morocco condemned ecstatic Sufi trance rites as heterodox spectacles. But if the heterodoxy of these rites remains self-evident, the still common reformist critique of spectacle begs historical explanation. This article proposes that a main theme of post-1930 nationalist reformism in Morocco was communication and its containment. In this period, new reformists – “Young Moroccans” and “New Salafis” – fixated upon the power of ecstatic rites to connect and coalesce the urban underclasses and to elicit recognition from the colonial state and an emergent global audience. Just as new reformists sought to use technologies of mass communication, including the newspaper and camera, to speak to and for “the People,” they chafed at the global renown these same media lent to public Sufi spectacles. Examining Moroccan print media in 1930s Fez, I show that anti-Sufi critiques were primarily neither doctrinal nor anti-colonial; new reformists aimed, rather, to domesticate the popular connective force of ritual as well as the enhanced power of these picturesque rites to speak for the nation.