Part One Early Ideals and Context
One Cultural Context
第一部分 早期观念与语境
第一章 文化语境
THE TWILIGHT OF THE ENLIGHTENMENT
启蒙的黄昏
The 1790s in Germany, the decade when Hegel and the romantic generation came of age, was a time of extraordinary intellectual upheaval and ferment. This has been the view of most historians; but even contemporaries saw their decade in these terms. Thus, K.L. Reinhold, a prominent philosopher and shrewd observer of the Zeitgeist, wrote in 1790:
德国的18世纪90年代是一个思想上超乎寻常的动荡和发酵的时期。在这十年间，黑格尔与浪漫的一代成年了。这已经是多数历史学家的共识了，但即便是同时代人也有同样的观感。于此，莱因霍尔德（K. L. Reinhold）——一位杰出的哲人和时代精神（Zeitgeist）的敏锐观察者，在1790年写道：
The most conspicuous and characteristic feature of our age is the convulsion of all hitherto familiar systems, theories, and manners of thinking, a convulsion the breadth and depth of which the history of the human mind can show no example.1
我们时代最显著和最独特的特征是：迄今为止所有熟悉的体系、理论和思维方式发生了动荡，动荡的广度和深度在人类精神史上是史无前例的。1
The main source of this cultural cataclysm was a crisis in the Aufklärung, the German Enlightenment. The Aufklärung had dominated German intellectual life for most of the eighteenth century; but now its days were numbered. What had seemed so certain at the dawn of the century now seemed doubtful at its dusk. The crisis could not fail to affect Hegel and the young romantics, who had grown up under the tutelage of the Aufklärung. Athough they would later rebel against it, they were still deeply in its debt. They were all, so to speak, Kinder der Aufklärung.
这一文化巨变的主要源头是德国启蒙运动（Aufklärung）的危机。18世纪的大部分时间里，启蒙运动支配着德国的智识生活；但现在它的时日屈指可数了。世纪之初看来如此确定的东西，如今，在世纪末看起来疑窦丛生。危机不可能不影响到黑格尔和年轻的浪漫主义者，他们是在德国启蒙运动的监护下成长的。尽管他们后来将反抗它，但还是深受其惠。可以说，他们都是德国启蒙运动的孩子。
The crisis of the Aufklärung affected no one more than Hegel. For what so deeply separates him from other thinkers of the romantic generation is his attempt, beginning in his mid-Jena years (1803– 6), to preserve the legacy of the Aufklärung against the criticisms of his contemporaries. Hegel too was very critical of the Enlightenment, subjecting it to almost scornful treatment in one notable chapter of his Phenomenology of Spirit.2 Yet there were aspects of the Enlightenment legacy that he never abandoned, and which he grew to appreciate the more they were imperilled. Chief among these was the Enlightenment faith in the authority of reason. Hegel’s mature philosophy was first and foremost an attempt to rescue and rehabilitate the authority of reason after all the criticisms of the Aufklärung in the 1790s. Its aim was both to accommodate and surpass these criticisms, to preserve their rightful claims and to cancel their exaggerated pretensions. Hegel’s grand achievement was to synthesize the Aufklärung with some of the currents of romanticism, creating a romanticized rationalism or a rationalized romanticism.
德国启蒙运动的危机对黑格尔的影响比任何人都深。因为将黑格尔和浪漫的一代其他思想家如此深刻地区分开来的，是他始于耶拿中期（1803-1806）的、对抗同时代其他批评者以保护德国启蒙运动遗产的尝试。黑格尔对启蒙运动也是极力批判的，在其《精神现象学》的一个著名章节中对它进行了几乎是轻蔑的处理。2然而，有一些启蒙运动的遗产是他决不会抛弃的，它们越是陷入危险，他对它们的激赏就越是增长。其中首要的，是启蒙运动对理性权威的信仰。在经历过18世纪90年代对德国启蒙运动的所有批判之后，黑格尔的成熟哲学首先和主要是一种营救和修复理性权威的尝试。其目标是既容纳又超越这些批判，既保存它们的正当要求，又取消它们的过度自负。黑格尔的重大成就是把德国启蒙运动和一些浪漫主义的潮流综合起来，创造了一种浪漫化的理性主义或理性化的浪漫主义。
So, to understand Hegel’s philosophy, we first need to know something about the crisis of the Aufklärung in the 1790s. It was this crisis – the attack upon the authority of reason by the critics of the Aufklärung – that posed the fundamental challenge for Hegel’s philosophy.
因此，为了理解黑格尔哲学，我们首先需要对18世纪90年代德国启蒙运动的危机有所了解。正是这一危机——德国启蒙运动的批评者对理性权威施加的攻击——为黑格尔哲学设置了基础性的挑战。
How, in a few words, are we to characterize the Enlightenment? Aptly, the Enlightenment had often been called ‘the age of reason’ or ‘the age of criticism’, not only by historians but also by contemporaries themselves. Here is the definition that Kant himself gave to his age in the preface to the first edition of his Critique of Pure Reason:
我们如何精简地来描述启蒙运动的特征呢？启蒙运动过去经常被恰当地称为“理性的时代”或“批判的时代”，不仅历史学家如是说，启蒙运动的同时代人也同样如此。下面是康德在其《纯粹理性批判》第一版序言中给他的时代所下的定义：
Our age is, to a preeminent degree, the age of criticism, and to criticism everything must submit. Religion through its sanctity, and the state through its majesty, may seek to exempt themselves from it. But then they arouse just suspicion against themselves, and cannot claim the sincere respect which reason gives only to that which sustains the test of free and open examination. (A xii)
我们的时代作为一个批判的时代达到了如此突出的程度，一切都必须服从于批判。宗教凭借其神圣性，而国家凭借其威严，或许会寻求免除批判。但这样一来，它们就激起了对它们自身的怀疑，而不能要求诚挚的敬意，理性仅仅会把这种敬意给予那经受住自由而公开的检验所测试过的事物。（A xii）3
The Enlightenment was the age of reason because it made reason into its highest authority, its final court of appeal, in all intellectual questions. Its central and characteristic principle is what we might call the sovereignty of reason. This principle means that there is no source of intellectual authority higher than reason. Neither scripture, nor divine inspiration, nor ecclesiastical and civil tradition have the authority of reason. While reason judges the legitimacy of all these sources of authority, none of them stands in judgment of it.
启蒙运动是理性的时代，因为它在所有的智识问题上，赋予理性以最高的权威，将理性作为上诉的终审法庭。其核心和特有的原则，我们或许可以称之为理性的统治（sovereignty of reason）。这一原则意味着没有比理性更高的智识权威的来源。《圣经》经文也好，神圣的灵感也罢，抑或是基督教会和民间的传统，都不具有理性的权威。当理性对所有这些权威性来源的合法性做出裁决时，它们没有谁能够经受得起这种裁决。
Paradoxically, the crisis of the Enlightenment arose from within, and indeed from its most cherished principle. The problem is that this principle is self-reflexive. If reason must subject all beliefs to criticism, it must also subject its own tribunal to criticism. To exempt its tribunal from scrutiny would be nothing less than ‘dogmatism’, accepting beliefs on authority, which is the very opposite of reason. The criticism of reason therefore inevitably became the meta-criticism of reason. If the Enlightenment was the age of criticism, the 1790s were the age of meta-criticism. All the doubts about the authority of reason, which are so often said to be characteristic of our ‘post-modern’ age, were already apparent in late eighteenth-century Germany.
吊诡的是，启蒙运动的危机是从内部产生的，事实上来自它最珍视的原则。问题在于这个原则是自反性的。如果理性必须把所有的信念都列为批判的对象，那么它也必须把自己的法庭列为批判的对象。让它自己的法庭免于仔细审查就将是不折不扣的“独断论”，亦即接受对权威的信仰，这恰恰是理性的对立面。因此，理性的批判必然变成理性的元批判（meta-criticism）。如果启蒙运动是批判的时代，18世纪90年代则是元批判的时代。所有关于理性自身权威的怀疑，这一经常被称之为我们“后现代”时代特征的东西，在18世纪晚期的德国已经出现。
When the critics of the Aufklärung began to examine the tribunal of criticism itself, they quickly found that its legitimacy rested on several questionable assumptions. All these assumptions came under intense scrutiny in the 1790s. Anti-foundationalism, the pantheism controversy, nihilism, the rise of historicism, and the theory–practice dispute – these were the crucial developments in undermining faith in reason and in provoking the crisis of the Enlightenment. Hegel’s philosophy directly grew out of his response to these developments. Each therefore deserves closer examination.
当德国启蒙运动的危机开始考查理性自身的法庭时，他们发现理性的合法性是以几个成问题的假设为根据的。所有这些假设在18世纪90年代都被置于严格的审查之下。反基础主义、泛神论论争、虚无主义、历史主义的兴起，以及理论—实践之争——这些都是破坏理性信仰和激起启蒙运动危机的至关重要的进展。黑格尔的哲学直接从对这些进展的回应中成长起来。因此，每一个方面都值得做更进一步的考查。
ANTI-FOUNDATIONALISM
反基础主义
The Enlightenment faith in the authority of reason rested first and foremost on the possibility of providing a firm foundation for knowledge. The alternative to a firm foundation seemed to be the abyss of skepticism. The search for a foundation appears in both the empiricist and the rationalist traditions of the Enlightenment. While the empiricist tradition discovered that foundation in the simple ideas of experience, the rationalist tradition sought it in selfevident first principles. Despite their opposing ideas about where to place it, both shared a belief in the possibility, and indeed necessity, of some foundation.
启蒙运动对理性权威的信仰首先和主要地建基于为知识提供坚实基础的可能性之上。坚实基础的替代物似乎是怀疑主义的深渊。基础的寻求同时出现在启蒙运动的经验论和唯理论传统中。当经验论传统在经验的简单观念中发现这一基础时，唯理论传统则在自明的第一原理中寻找这一基础。且不论它们的观点在关于基础应该放在何处上的对立，二者都分享对某种基础的可能性及其必要性的信念。
Starting in the early 1790s in Jena, a host of young thinkers began to criticize foundationalism, and more specifically the attempt of Reinhold and Fichte to base Kant’s critical philosophy on self-evident first principles. Because it focussed on the possibility of these first principles or Grundsätze, their critique of foundationalism has sometimes been called the Grundsatzkritik. In the forefront of this critique were some leading students of Reinhold and Fichte, among them Johann Benjamin Erhard, Immanuel Niethammer, Carl Immanuel Diez, Friedrich Carl Forberg, Carl Christian Schmid, A.W. Rehberg, Friedrich Heinrich Weißhuhn, and Paul Johann Feuerbach. Of no less importance for the critique were some of the young romantics, Hölderlin, Friedrich Schlegel, and Novalis.3
发端于18世纪90年代早期的耶拿，一大群年轻的思想家开始批判基础主义，更确切地说是批判莱茵霍尔德（Reinhold）和费希特将康德的批判哲学奠基于自明性的第一原理之上的努力。因为基础主义聚焦于这些第一原理（Grundsätze）的可能性，所以，他们对基础主义的批判有时也被称为公理批判（Grundsatzkritik）。处于这一批判前沿的是莱茵霍尔德与费希特的一些领头的学生，其中包括约翰·本杰明·艾哈德（Johann Benjamin Erhard）、伊曼纽尔·尼特哈默尔（Immanuel Niethammer）、卡尔·伊曼纽尔·狄兹（Carl Immanuel Diez）、弗里德里希·卡尔·弗尔贝格（Friedrich Carl Forberg）、卡尔·克里斯汀·施密德（Carl Christian Schmid）、雷伯格（A. W. Rehberg）、弗里德里希·亨利希·魏斯休恩（Friedrich Heinrich Weiβhuhn），以及保罗·约翰·费尔巴哈（Paul Johann Feuerbach）。对这一批判来说同样重要的，是一些年轻的浪漫主义者，荷尔德林、弗里德里希·施莱格尔和诺瓦利斯（Novalis）。4
Although Hegel arrived in Jena only in 1800, after the Grundsatzkritik had subsided, he knew well its central tenets and basic criticisms, which had an important and under-appreciated influence on the development of his own methodology.4 Hegel’s rejection of first principles, his emphasis on systematicity, and his mistrust of the mathematical method in philosophy, were only some of the more obvious effects of the Grundsatzkritik. Yet Hegel was as much challenged by the Grundsatzkritik as influenced by it. He could not accept its fundamental anti-foundationalist conclusion: that the philosophia prima is only an ideal, a goal for the infinite striving of enquiry.
尽管黑格尔1800年才到耶拿，在公理批判（Grundsatzkritik）偃旗息鼓之后，但他很清楚它的核心原则和基本的批评，这些对黑格尔自己方法论的发展具有重要而没有得到足够重视的影响。5黑格尔对第一原理的拒斥、对系统性的强调，以及对哲学中运用数学方法的不信任，只不过是公理批判的一些更为明显的效果。然而，黑格尔受到公理批判的挑战和受到它的影响一样多。他不能接受它的根本的反基础主义的结论：第一哲学仅仅是一个理想，一个可供无限努力探寻的目标。
It is difficult to summarize the richness and complexity of the Grundsatzkritik, a development lasting nearly a decade and involving many thinkers. Here we can only hint at some of the main lines of its criticism, some of the basic reasons for its doubts about the possibility of beginning philosophy with self-evident first principles. (1) The first principle would have to be analytic (of the form ‘A is A’) or synthetic (of the form ‘A is B’). If it were analytic, it would be trivial and without consequences; if it were synthetic, it would be deniable and so subject to skeptical doubt. (2) It is impossible to justify a first principle by appeal to immediate experience, some self-evident intellectual intuition, because it is always possible for someone else to appeal to a contrary intuition. (3) The first principle cannot be merely formal, a law of logic, because that is not sufficient to determine material truth; but if it has some content, it must be very general to encompass the great variety of truths subsumed under it; and such generality is insufficient to derive the specific truths of experience. (4) Even if the first principle were sufficient to derive an entire system, it would not follow that it is true; we can determine its material truth only by consulting experience itself. But experience too is no final arbiter: we can conceptualize, systematize or interpret the same facts in incompatible ways. (5) Reinhold and Fichte have confused Kant’s distinction between mathematical and philosophical method. The mathematical method is synthetic: it begins with self-evident principles and constructs its objects in intuition; the philosophical method is analytic: it begins with concepts given in ordinary discourse and only then arrives at its general principles.
公理批判的发展进程持续了近十年，包括了许多思想家在内，要概述出它的丰富性和复杂性洵非易事。这里我们只能提示这一批判的某些主线，它质疑哲学以自明的第一原理开端的某些基本理由。（1）第一原理必将是分析的（其形式为“A是A”）或者综合的（其形式为“A是B”）。如果是分析的，它将是琐碎而无结果的；如果是综合的，它将是可拒绝的，因而易受怀疑论的质疑。（2）不可能通过诉诸直接经验、某些自明的智性直观来证明第一原理，因为对另一些人而言，总是可能诉诸相反的直观。（3）第一原理不能仅仅是形式的，逻辑的法则，因为那不足以确定质料的真理性（material truth）；但如果它包含某些内容，它就必须十分普遍（general）以容纳许许多多从属于它的真理；而这种普遍性（generality）是不足以推导出经验的具体真理的。（4）甚至即使第一原理足以推导出整个体系，也并不等于说它是真的；我们只能通过向经验自身求教以确定其质料的真理性。但经验也不是最后的权威：我们能够以互不相容的方式概念化、系统化或解释相同的事实。（5）莱茵霍尔德和费希特混淆了康德对数学方法和哲学方法的区分。数学方法是综合的，它从自明的原理出发并在直观中建构其对象；哲学的方法是分析的，它从日常会话提供的概念出发，并只有这样才能达到它的普遍原理（general principles）。
As a result of these criticisms, thinkers like Niethammer, Novalis, Schmid, Schlegel and Feuerbach attempted to return to a more Kantian position. They insisted that first principles, and the system of reason, would have to be conceived only as regulative ideals, as goals that we can approach but never attain through an infinite striving. For this reason, the main result of the Grundsatzkritik has been called a ‘re-Kantianization’ of epistemology.5
作为这些批判的结果，尼特哈默尔、诺瓦利斯、施密德、施莱格尔和费尔巴哈等思想家试图返回更为康德化的立场。他们坚持认为，第一原理和理性的体系，必将仅仅被构想为调节性的理想，被构想为我们能够接近但决不能通过无限的努力来达到的目标。因此之故，公理批判的主要结果被称为认识论的“再康德化”。6
THE PANTHEISM CONTROVERSY
泛神论论争
Crucial to the Enlightenment faith in the authority of reason was its belief in a natural religion and morality. The Aufklärer and philosophes held that natural reason alone – independent of revelation – had the power to demonstrate all our fundamental moral and religious beliefs. A natural religion or morality would be one established according to reason alone, such that it held for everyone alike, simply as an intelligent being. Only if reason had such a power would it be possible to dispense with competing forms of intellectual authority, such as the Bible, ecclesiastical tradition and inspiration. In the late 1780s, the Enlightenment faith in natural religion and morality came under attack in the most dramatic and spectacular manner in the famous ‘pantheism controversy’ between F.H. Jacobi and Mendelssohn.6 In his 1786 Letters on the Doctrine of Spinoza Jacobi argued that reason – if it is only thorough, honest and consistent – does not support but undermines morality and religion. It is fair to say that Jacobi’s sensational attack on reason had a more powerful impact on his age than Kant’s sober criticisms in the first Critique.
对启蒙运动的理性权威信仰至关重要的，是它关于自然宗教和道德的信念。启蒙者和哲学家认为，自然理性单独——不依赖于启示——就有能力证明我们所有基本的道德和宗教信念。自然宗教或道德将仅仅依据理性而建立，因此它为每一个单纯作为智力存在者的人所同样享有。只有当理性具有这种能力的时候，它才可能排除与其他形式的理智权威（例如《圣经》、教会传统和灵感等）之间的竞争。18世纪80年代晚期，启蒙运动对自然宗教和道德的信仰，在耶可比（F. H. Jacobi）和门德尔松（Mendelssohn）之间著名的“泛神论论争”中，以一种最富戏剧性和壮观的方式遭到抨击。7耶可比在他1786年的《关于斯宾诺莎学说的书信》（Letters on the Doctrine of Spinoza）中认为，理性如果真正彻底、诚实和一贯的话，非但不能支撑反而会暗中破坏道德和宗教。公正地说，耶可比对理性的耸人听闻的攻击，比起康德在“第一批判”中有节制的批评，对他的时代发挥了更强有力的影响。
The core of Jacobi’s attack on reason rests on his identification of rationalism with a complete scientific naturalism, and more specifically with the mechanistic paradigm of explanation. Jacobi saw Spinoza as the paragon of this new scientific naturalism, because Spinoza had banished final causes and held that everything in nature happens according to mechanical laws. The fundamental principle of Spinoza’s philosophy, Jacobi argued, is nothing less than the principle of sufficient reason. Spinoza is to be praised because he, unlike Leibniz and Wolff, had the courage to take this principle to its ultimate conclusion: a complete scientific naturalism. This principle means that there must be a sufficient reason for any event, such that given that reason, the event must occur and cannot be otherwise. If this principle holds without exception, Jacobi reasoned, then there cannot be (1) a first cause of the universe, a God who freely creates it, and (2) freedom, the power of doing otherwise. For Jacobi, the first result means that Spinozism leads to atheism, the second implies that it ends in fatalism. By identifying Spinoza’s rationalism with his naturalism rather than with his geometric method, Jacobi succeeded in reviving at once both the relevance and the danger of Spinozism. If Spinoza’s geometric method had fallen victim to Kant’s criticisms, his naturalism seemed to be confirmed by the progress of the sciences.
耶可比对理性的抨击，其核心在于将理性主义等同于一种彻底的科学自然主义，更确切地说，等同于一种机械论的解释范式。耶可比将斯宾诺莎视为这种新兴科学的自然主义的典范，因为斯宾诺莎废黜了终极原因，并认为自然万物都是按照机械法则发生的。耶可比认为，斯宾诺莎哲学的根本原则就是充足理由的原则。斯宾诺莎值得称赞，是因为他和莱布尼茨与沃尔夫不同，他有勇气将这个原则贯彻到底：一种彻底的科学的自然主义。这一原则意味着每一事件的发生一定有充足理由，因此，有了这一原因，事件必然发生，否则不能发生。耶可比推论说，如果这一原则没有例外，那么（1）不可能有宇宙的第一因，亦即自由地创造宇宙的上帝，（2）不可能有自由，亦即以其他方式行动的能力。对耶可比来说，第一个结果意味着斯宾诺莎主义导向了无神论，第二个结果意味着它终止于宿命论。通过将斯宾诺莎的理性主义等同于他的自然主义而不是他的几何学方法，耶可比立刻成功地恢复了斯宾诺莎主义的相关性及其危险。如果说斯宾诺莎的几何学方法已经沦为康德批判的牺牲品，他的自然主义看起来却被自然科学的进展证实了。
The net effect of Jacobi’s attack was to challenge the Enlightenment with a dramatic dilemma: either a rational atheism and fatalism or an irrational leap of faith, a salto mortale. There was no middle path: a rational justification for our most important moral and religious beliefs. In sum, Jacobi was saying that the search for a natural morality and religion is futile.
耶可比的抨击所造成的根本效果，是对启蒙运动提出了一个戏剧性的两难困境的挑战：或者是理性的无神论和宿命论，或者是信仰的非理性跳跃、致命的跳跃（a salto mortale）。没有这样一条中间道路：理性地证明我们最重要的道德和宗教信念。总之，耶可比的意思是说，对自然道德和宗教的探索是徒劳无益的。
Like so many thinkers of his generation, Hegel was deeply disturbed by Jacobi’s challenge to the Enlightenment. On several occasions, he devoted much space and energy to discussing Jacobi’s critique of reason.7 Indeed, he regarded Jacobi’s critique as more important than Kant’s (EPW §62R). The chief purpose of Hegel’s philosophy was to find a middle path between the horns of Jacobi’s dilemma. Hegel wanted to reestablish rationalism, to provide it with the means to justify our most important moral and religious beliefs; but he wanted to do so without relapsing into the problematic rationalism of the past, whether that was Spinoza’s naturalism, Kantian-Fichtean idealism or the old Leibnizian– Wolffian dogmatism.
像许多同时代的思想家一样，黑格尔也由于耶可比对启蒙运动的挑战而深感不安。在好些场合，他投入了许多篇幅和精力来讨论耶可比对理性的批判。8事实上，黑格尔认为耶可比的批判比康德的批判更重要（EPW§ 62R）。黑格尔哲学的主要目的是在耶可比左右为难的处境之间寻找中间道路。黑格尔想要重建理性主义，并以之为手段来证明我们最重要的道德和宗教信念；但他希望这样做的同时，不会滑入过去那种成问题的理性主义，无论是斯宾诺莎的自然主义，康德—费希特的唯心主义，还是旧的莱布尼茨—沃尔夫的独断论。
THE BIRTH OF NIHILISM
虚无主义的诞生
It was already in the early 1800s that nihilism, ‘that most uncanny of guests’,8 came knocking at the door. This specter first raised its ugly head during the discussion of Kant’s philosophy in the late 1780s. In 1787 the mystical hermit J.H. Obereit, friend of Fichte, Goethe and Schelling, had insinuated in a series of polemical writings that Kant’s philosophy, and indeed all rationalism, is guilty of ‘nihilism’.9 Kant’s philosophy was the epitome of rationalism, Obereit argued, because it had taken criticism to its ultimate limits; yet it had limited all knowledge to appearances, which are really only representations in us. Nihilism was Obereit’s term for the doctrine that we cannot know anything beyond our consciousness, so that our ultimate values and beliefs have no rational basis. Nowhere was the horror of nihilism expressed with more power and passion than in the extraordinary anonymous work Nightwatches – By Bonaventura (1804). Its hero, an asylum inmate, preaches the gospel of nothingness, basing his black moods and psychotic ravings on the doctrine of recent philosophy that ‘everything is only in ourselves and outside us there is nothing real’.10 His despair culminates in his belief that all values and beliefs ultimately collapse into the abyss of nothingness.
当虚无主义这个“最可怕的客人”9前来敲门时，时间已经是19世纪初期。而这一幽灵首次抬起它丑陋的头颅，是在18世纪80年代后期关于康德哲学的讨论中。1787年，费希特、歌德和谢林的朋友，神秘隐士奥伯赖特（J. H. Obereit）在一系列挑衅性的著作中，含沙射影地说康德哲学以及事实上所有的理性主义都犯了“虚无主义”的罪过。10奥伯赖特认为，康德哲学是理性主义的化身，因为它把批判发挥到了极限；然而它又将所有的知识限制于现象，事实上这些现象仅仅是我们的表象。奥伯赖特用“虚无主义”这个术语指这样一种学说：超出意识之外，我们不能对任何事物有知识，因此，我们的终极价值和信念并没有理性的基础。对虚无主义的憎恶，没有什么地方比《守夜人——波拿文图拉所作》（1804）这部非凡的匿名著作表达得更有力和更富激情的了。它的主角，一位精神病院的患者，传播“虚无”的“福音”，把他阴郁的情绪和精神病的狂言奠基于最近的哲学教义之上：“万物只存在于我们之中，在我们之外无物实在。”11他的绝望在其如下的信念中达到顶峰：所有的价值和信念最终都崩溃为虚无的深渊。
It was above all Jacobi who made nihilism such a disturbing issue for German philosophy in the early 1800s. After his first assault on reason in the late 1780s, Jacobi pressed home his attack in the late 1790s, now making Kant’s and Fichte’s philosophy his main target. In his 1799 Letter to Fichte he argued that rationalism must end in a complete ‘egoism’ or solipsism, or what he called ‘nihilism’ (Nihilismus). According to Jacobi, the nihilist is someone who doubts the existence of everything: the external world, other minds, God, and even his own self. The nihilist follows his reason to the bitter skeptical end, doubting the existence of anything outside the immediate contents of his own mind. The transcendental idealism of Kant and Fichte ends in this abyss, Jacobi argues, because its paradigm of knowledge is that we know only what we create or what we produce according to the laws of our activity. We are then forced to admit that we know either ourselves or nothing.
正是耶可比首次把虚无主义变成了一个对1800年代德国哲学来说十分头疼的问题。于1780年代晚期对理性进行首次攻击之后，耶可比在1790年代以康德和费希特的哲学作为主要目标，把他的攻击发挥到了极致。在其1799年的《致费希特的信》中，他认为理性主义必然终结于完全的“自我主义”（egoism）或者唯我论（solipsism），或者他所说的“虚无主义”（Nihilismus）。按照耶可比的理解，虚无主义者怀疑一切存在：外部世界，他者之心，神，甚至怀疑者自己。虚无主义者放任他的理性去追逐痛苦的怀疑论的目标，质疑除了他自己心灵的直接内容之外任何事物的存在。耶可比认为，康德和费希特的先验唯心主义就终结于这一深渊之中，因为这种唯心主义的知识范式就是：我们认识的仅仅是根据我们自己的活动法则所创造或制作的。由此我们被迫承认：要么是认识自己，要么是一无所知。
Again, Jacobi’s polemic proved remarkably successful in disturbing his contemporaries. He made nihilism the inevitable result of Kant’s philosophy, and indeed the entire ‘way of ideas’ of modern philosophy. In Jacobi’s usage, the term ‘nihilism’ already had the connotation later associated with it in the nineteenth century: the Christian’s despair that life is meaningless because there is no God, providence or immortality. But Jacobi gave the problem of nihilism a much deeper dimension by connecting it with the classical challenge of skepticism, with the skeptic’s thesis that we have no reason to believe in the existence of everything beyond our own passing impressions. He read Hume’s closing statement in the first book of the Treatise of Human Nature as the confession of a nihilist. With Jacobi, then, the problem of nihilism is not only a moral crisis of the Christian’s lack of faith; it involves the fundamental skeptical challenge to all our beliefs. It was in this form that Hegel first confronted the problem. We shall see in Chapter Six how he addressed it in the famous ‘Lordship and Bondage’ chapter of the Phenomenology.
再者，结果表明，耶可比的论辩在困扰他的同时代人方面是极为成功的。他使得虚无主义成为康德哲学不可避免的结果，并且实际上成为现代哲学整个的“思想方式”。在耶可比的用法中，“虚无主义”已经包含着后来在19世纪才与这个词关联起来的内涵：基督徒的绝望——生活是无意义的，因为没有了上帝、天意和不朽。但耶可比为这个问题提供了一个更深的维度，通过把它同怀疑主义的经典挑战，同怀疑论的如下论题连接起来：我们没有理由相信超乎我们自己不断消逝的印象之外的任何事物的存在。他把休谟《人性论》第一卷的结语读作是虚无主义者的自白。于是，对耶可比来说，虚无主义的问题就不仅是一个基督徒信仰缺失的道德危机，它还包含着对我们所有信念的基础性的怀疑论挑战。黑格尔正是在这一形式中遭遇虚无主义问题的。我们将在第六章中看到，《现象学》关于“主奴关系”的著名篇章是如何处理它的。
THE RISE OF HISTORICISM
历史主义的兴起
The Enlightenment faith in the universality and impartiality of reason was badly shaken by the rise of historicism in the late 1770s and 1780s. The leading thinkers behind the growth of historicism in Germany were J.G. Hamann, Justus Möser and J.G. Herder.11 Their views about history grew out of their reaction against the historiography of the Enlightenment, and more specifically the tendency of the Aufklärer to judge the past according to their contemporary moral principles. They made two chief criticisms against such historiography: first, it abstracts from context; and, second, it judges past cultures in terms of its own.
对理性之普遍性和公正性的启蒙信仰，被18世纪70年代后期和80年代兴起的历史主义严重动摇了。德国历史主义成长背后的领衔思想家，是J. G.哈曼（J. G. Hamann）、尤斯图斯·莫泽（Justus Möser）和J. G.赫尔德（J. G. Herder）。12他们关于历史的见解，脱胎于对启蒙运动史料编纂学的反动，更具体地说，脱胎于对启蒙者以其当代道德标准评判过去这一趋向的反动。他们对这种历史编纂学提出了两种主要批评：首先，它脱离语境进行抽象；其次，它以自己为标准评判过去的文化。
What, more precisely, was historicism? Although the term ‘historicism’ has acquired many different meanings, we need here only to focus on its meaning in the late 1790s and early 1800s. We can best summarize that meaning in three methodological points. (1) History. Everything in the social and political world has a history. All laws, institutions, beliefs and practices are subject to change, and each is the result of a specific historical development. Hence nothing in the social and political world is eternal. (2) Context. We should examine all human beliefs, practices and institutions in their historical context, showing how they arose of necessity from their specific economic, social, legal, cultural and geographic conditions. We must see them as parts and products of a wider whole. (3) Organicism. Society is an organism, an indivisible whole, whose politics, religion, morality and legal system are inextricably intertwined. Like all organisms, it undergoes a process of development, having a birth, a childhood, maturity and decline.
更精确地说，什么是历史主义呢？尽管“历史主义”一词已经具有多种不同的含义，但我们这里需要关注的仅仅是它在18世纪90年代后期和19世纪初的含义。我们可以把这一含义最好地概括为三种具有方法论意义的要点：（1）历史。社会政治世界的所有事物都有一部历史。所有的法律、制度、信念和惯例既易于变化，又都是特殊的历史发展的结果。（2）背景。我们应当在其历史背景中检查所有人类信念、惯例和制度，展示它们是如何兴起于它们特殊的经济、社会、法律、文化和地理等条件的必然性的。我们应当把它们视为更大整体的部分和产物。（3）机体论。社会是一个有机体、一个不可分割的整体，其政治、宗教、道德和法律体系密不可分地交织在一起。像所有的有机体一样，它经历着一个包括出生、纪年期、成熟和衰老在内的发展过程。
To appreciate the challenge of historicism, we only have to consider the consequences of these methodological principles for the Enlightenment faith in reason. The philosophes and Aufklärer regarded the principles of reason as universal and impartial, as holding for people in all times and places simply as intelligent beings. But the historicist warns us that these principles are only apparently universal and eternal. Once we place them in their context and see how they arose in history, they show themselves to be the product of a specific culture at a specific time; they express only the selfconsciousness of their age. In believing in the universality of certain principles the philosophes and Aufklärer suffer from amnesia. They fail to see the origin of their principles, the conditions under which they arose, and so they generalize the ideals of their own age as if they were the ideals of all mankind.
为了体会历史主义的这一挑战，我们只需考虑一下这些方法论原则之于启蒙理性信仰的后果。哲学家和启蒙者认为理性的原则是普遍和公正的，是所有时间和地点的、作为智性存在者的人所共同具有的。但历史主义者警告我们说，这些原则仅仅表面上是普遍而永恒的。一旦我们把它们放到它们的背景中来看它们是如何在历史上兴起的，它们就将表明自身是特殊时期特殊文化的产物；它们仅仅表达它们时代的自我意识。由于对某些原则之普遍性的信仰，哲学家和启蒙者患上了健忘症。他们看不到这些原则的起源，以及它们兴起背后的条件，并由此将他们时代的观念一般化，仿佛它们是全人类的观念一样。
The danger of historicism for the Enlightenment therefore came from its implicit relativism. The historicist views all values as equally legitimate, as the necessary response of a people to specific circumstances. Since that response is necessary, we should not presume to judge it, for that just falsely presupposes that we could have done something better in the same circumstances. All putative universal values are ultimately ethnocentric, invalid generalizations beyond our own specific time and place. There is no such thing as an ideal system of laws suitable for all people and valid for all times and places; the proper constitution for a people depends on its specific circumstances and history.
因此，对于启蒙运动来说，历史主义的危险来自它所隐含的相对主义。历史主义者平等看待所有价值的正当性，认为它们都是某个民族对特殊环境的必要回应。由于回应是必要的，我们就不应当擅自以为可以对此作出评判，因为这种判断恰恰错误地预设了“我们能够在相同的环境下把事情做得更好”这一前提。所有推定的普遍价值归根到底都是种族中心的、超越于我们自己特殊时空的无效的一般化。没有什么适合一切民族和对所有时空都有效的、理想的法律体系；对某个民族来说，合适的宪法取决于它特殊的环境和历史。
Hegel was both influenced and challenged by historicism. Some of his early writings reveal how he had absorbed its fundamental tenets. Hegel is often given credit for introducing historicism into philosophy, for making it integral to epistemology.12 It is very important to see, however, that, for all his historicism, Hegel refused to accept its relativist consequences. One of the main aims of his political philosophy, as we shall soon see, was to reestablish the natural law tradition while still doing justice to historicism (pp. 208–9).
黑格尔既受到历史主义影响，也面临着历史主义的挑战。部分早期著作表明他是如何吸收历史主义的基础原则的。将历史主义引入哲学，使之成为认识论不可或缺的一部分，这一点经常被归功于黑格尔。13然而，非常重要的是，要看到不管黑格尔有多么“历史主义”，但他拒绝接受其相对主义的后果。正如我们即将看到的那样，黑格尔政治哲学的主要目标之一，是在公正对待历史主义的同时，重建自然法传统（第208–209页）。
THE THEORY–PRACTICE DEBATE
“理论—实践”之争
Nothing more shook the Enlightenment faith in reason than that grand cataclysmic event of 14 July 1789 and its aftermath: the French Revolution. To many people, the French Revolution seemed to be the apotheosis of the Enlightenment. All of society and the state were to be reconstructed according to rational principles, and all historical institutions and laws were to be swept away if they failed to pass the test of reason. It was the great promise of Enlightenment that if we only follow reason in social and political life there will be heaven on earth.
没有什么比1789年7月14日发生的那场巨大的灾难性事件及其余波——法国大革命——更能撼动启蒙对理性的信仰了。对很多人来说，法国大革命似乎就是启蒙运动的典范。社会和国家的一切都要根据理性的原则进行改造，一切历史制度和法律如果不能经受理性的考验都要被废黜。启蒙的伟大承诺是，如果我们在社会和政治生活中遵循理性，那么就会出现地上的天国。
Rather than heaven, there was hell. The more the philosophes tried to force a rational constitution upon France, the more it slid into bloodshed, chaos and terror. All the constitutions of reason were like so many assignats: their value was only on paper. What had gone wrong? Some critics contended that reason is inherently anarchic. If everyone follows their reason, always questioning their superiors, there will be no authority at all. Each individual will judge differently. Society and the state will be like the first days of the French revolutionary army, when enlisted men had the right to question the orders of their officers. Other critics stressed that there was an insurmountable gap between theory and practice. Assuming that reason can determine the fundamental principles of the state, people still do not act according to them. They are moved more by passion (the September massacres), self-interest (the speculators) or tradition (the Vendée revolt).
出现的并非天堂，而是地狱。哲学家（the philosophes）越是试图把理性的宪法强加给法国，它就越是陷入流血、混乱和恐怖之中。理性宪法与指券（assignats）是如此相似：其价值只在纸面上。到底出什么错了呢？有些批评家认为，理性内在地是无政府主义的。如果每个人遵循自己的理性，总是质疑他们的上司，就根本不会有什么权威存在。每个个体将做出不同的判断。社会和国家将处于类似法国大革命初始时期军队的状况，其时现役军人有权质疑他们长官的命令。另一些批评家强调在理论与实践之间存在不可逾越的鸿沟。即便理性可以决定国家的根本原则，人们也仍然不能遵照执行。他们过于受激情（九月大屠杀）、私利（投机者）和传统（旺代叛乱）的影响。
Some of these criticisms of the Enlightenment were voiced in a famous controversy that took place in the 1790s in Germany, the so-called ‘theory–practice’ debate. The focus of the debate was Kant’s moral and political philosophy, which had attracted the ire of conservative critics because it seemed to provide a rationale for Jacobin policies in France. Kant seemed to have the same unbounded faith in the practical powers of reason as the Jacobins. In the Critique of Practical Reason Kant had argued that reason is practical in two senses: first, it provides a sufficient justification for the principles of our actions; and, second, it provides a sufficient incentive or motive for moral action. In his famous ‘Theory–Practice’ essay Kant had pushed his argument further, contending that reason is also practical in the political sphere. He contended that reason has the power to determine not only the general principles of morality but also the specific principles of the state. From his categorical imperative he derived a constitution consisting in the principles of liberty and equality, much like those already established in revolutionary France. Against Hobbes and Machiavelli, he argued that these moral principles are also binding in politics.
关于启蒙运动的这些批评中的部分观点，是在德国18世纪90年代发生那场著名的“理论—实践”之争中表达出来的，争论的焦点是康德的道德和政治哲学。这一哲学惹恼了保守的批评家们，因为它似乎为法国雅各宾派的政策提供了基本原理。康德似乎同雅各宾派一样对理性的实践能力抱有无限的信任。康德在《实践理性批判》中论证说，理性在两种意义上是实践的：首先，它为我们的行为原则提供充足的理由；其次，它为道德行为提供充分的动力或动机。在其著名的有关“理论—实践”的文章中，康德进一步推进了他的论证，主张理性在政治领域也是实践的。他认为理性不仅有能力确定道德的一般原则，而且有能力确定国家的特殊原则。从他的“绝对命令”，康德推衍出一部由自由和平等原则构成的宪法，很像在革命中的法国建立起来的那些东西。同霍布斯和马基雅维利相反，康德认为这些道德原则和政治也是绑定在一起的。
There were several replies to Kant’s essay, the most important by Justus Möser, Friedrich Gentz and A.W. Rehberg.13 They argued three points. (1) Even if reason were a sufficient foundation for our moral obligations, it still cannot provide a basis for the state. The principles of morality are simply too general, compatible with all kinds of different social and political arrangements. The only way to determine the specific principles of the state, the proper constitution of a people, is to consider its history and traditions. (2) Even if it could provide specific principles of the state, reason still could not provide a sufficient incentive or motive for action. The main motives for human action were not reason but tradition, imagination and passion. (3) If he is to remain in power and to uphold law and order, it is impossible for a statesman to act on the principles of reason; for in doing so he would simply make himself vulnerable to others who are not so scrupulous.
有几种针对康德文章的回应，其中最重要的是Justus Möser-Friedrich Gentz以及A. W. Rehberg等人的观点。14他们论证了三个要点：（1）即使理性是我们道德义务的充分根据，它也仍然不能为国家提供一个基础。道德的原则简直是太过一般化了，能够和各种不同的社会和政治安排相容。确定一个国家的特殊原则，确定特定民族的恰当宪法，其唯一途径是去深入思考它的历史和传统。（2）即使理性能够提供国家的特殊原则，它也仍然不能提供行动的充足动机或动力。人类行为的主要动力不是理性，而是传统、想象力和激情。（3）如果一位政治家一直掌权并且维护法律和秩序，那么对他而言，按照理性原则去行动就是不可能的；因为当他这么做的时候，只会使其自身易于受到其他那些不循规蹈矩的人的伤害。
The theory–practice debate revealed two antithetical positions about the role of reason in politics. Kant and Fichte stood for a leftwing rationalism. They argued that practice should follow theory in politics because the principles of morality, which are determined by pure reason, are also binding in politics. Their critics represented a right-wing empiricism. They maintained that theory should follow practice in politics because the principles of reason are too formal to have any bearing on constitution or policy, and that to determine what to do in politics we need to consult experience, ‘the accumulated wisdom of our ancestors’.
围绕理性在政治中的作用，“理论—实践”之争揭示了两个正相反对的立场。康德和费希特站在左派理性主义一边。他们主张，在政治领域，实践应当追随理论，因为由纯粹理性确定的道德原则，也是和政治绑定在一起的。他们的批评家代表了一种右翼经验主义。他们坚持认为在政治领域，理论应该追随实践，因为理性的原则太过形式而不能对宪法或政策施加影响，并且认为，为了确定在政治中去做什么，我们需要求教的是经验，“祖祖辈辈世代相传的智慧”。
We will see later how Hegel’s own political philosophy grew out of his attempt to find a middle path between the rationalists and empiricists in the theory-practice debate (pp. 220–3).
后面我们将看到，黑格尔自己的政治哲学，是如何从他试图在“理论—实践”之争的理性主义者和经验主义者之间寻找一条中间道路的努力中生长出来的。
