Action,Technology, and the Homogenisation of Place: Why Climate Change is Antithetical to Political Action

According to Hannah Arendt, the concept of ‘political action’ is a fundamental component of the human condition because it encapsulates how the uniqueness of each human being intersects to create unpredictable political initiatives and effects. Recently, despite being one of the most daunting political challenges ever faced by humanity, there has been a noted collective action failure, or inaction, concerning the global threat of anthropogenic climate change. Why? This article seeks to explain this political inaction in a new way: by examining the metaphysical role that technology plays in disclosing the climate as a thinkable and global object. After applying the philosophy of Martin Heidegger to the complex mathematical general circulation models (GCMs) used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this article details how the metaphysics underlying GCMs manifests the perceivable world by ‘enframing’ it, or by implicitly representing subjects, objects, and Nature itself, as a predictable, calculable, and orderable relation of static forces. When this metaphysical and mathematical uniformity constructs the climate as a calculable object that is globalised through the IPCC, it is ultimately found to be contradictory to the distinctness and unpredictability necessary for distinct human action to occur. Paradoxically, therefore, political action is argued to be metaphysically antithetical to the technologically enframed science, politics, and discourse, of global climate change itself. The importance of distinct and plural human places, when filtered through GCMs, becomes subsumed by the climate as a homogenous, calculative, and politically inactive, global object.     

超越自在:论阿伦特的自由观

阿伦特的自由观是阿伦特政治思想的重要组成部分,其最重要特色或许就是对政治自由的强调。在阿伦特看来,自由并非是人天然存在的某种本质,而是、也只能是政治自由,离开政治以及政治实践得以展开的公共空间,自由就不可能存在,而离开自由的政治也不是真正的政治。从生活必需品和物质必然性的束缚中解脱出来的过程只是解放,而非自由。自由作为政治概念不仅不能停留在物质解放的层次,而且必须以实践的方式进入公共空间;也就是说,自由只存在于行动和言说领域,而不存在于思想王国或哲学王国,所谓主观自由、内在自由等等,都不是真正的自由。自由也并不意味着安全、舒适、富足,恰恰相反,它需要付出勇气、代价,收获的则是尊严和光荣。     

阿伦特人权现象学探微

古典人权理论的本质主义立场将人权归结为人所固有的权利,而忽略了人权得以实现的条件,从而使人沦为没有任何身份的赤裸生命,最终导致人权在现实中很难得到有力的保障。阿伦特从现象学的视角出发,以其富有争议的方式对当代的自明之理提出了挑战,反对用固有的理论范畴来解释人类历史的经验,强调采用新的方式朝向实事本身,重新考虑人权的条件,也即共同体的基础性作用。这种对当代自明之理的尖锐挑战,为我们反思人权问题提供了新的可能性。     

并非在伯仲之间--马克思与阿伦特关于资本主义意识形态批判的比较

马克思和阿伦特都对资本主义意识形态问题提出了尖锐的批判。马克思指出资本主义意识形态具有“虚假性”特征,其“虚假性”根源在于实践意义的失落,他批判的旨归是唯物史观的确立;阿伦特以“行动”出发的两种政治生活对比,通过意识形态批判揭露现代资本主义“虚假政治”问题,并指出意识形态问题是造成极权主义的重要原因之一。对于如何超越资本主义意识形态问题,马克思走的是一条更为深刻的“变革生产方式”的道路,而阿伦特将希望寄托于回归“行动”意义以重塑“真正的政治”。相比之下,马克思的批判更为彻底。     

古典还是现代——汉娜·阿伦特的共和主义思想研究

作为20世纪重要的政治哲学家,汉娜.阿伦特是日渐式微的共和主义阵营的忠实捍卫者。共和主义是西方政治思想传统中最悠久的观念之一,相继经历了古典共和主义和现代共和主义两个发展阶段。阿伦特既承袭古典共和主义理论,主张不受支配、积极行动的政治自由观,又和现代共和主义理论一样,强调分权制衡、法律帝国、商谈等宪政原则。阿伦特的思想体现了古典和现代的某种融合。     

Cosmopolitanism and violence: difficulties of judgment

This paper addresses the difficult relation of cosmopolitan ideas to the existence of war and violence. It explores the ambivalences within the cosmopolitan outlook as it seeks to reconcile its attentiveness to the actuality of violence in the modern age with its normative vision of perpetual peace. I address these ambivalences through a discussion of a) what it is to learn from the catastrophes of the twentieth century; b) the contribution Kant's theory of cosmopolitan law to the solution to contemporary problems of violence; c) the reconstruction of cosmopolitan thinking in the wake of the Holocaust as an attempt to take atrocities seriously; d) the application of cosmopolitan criteria to the justification and authorization of humanitarian military intervention; and e) the attempt on the part of Habermas and Derrida to address the ambivalence involved in reconciling cosmopolitanism and violence in Kosovo and Iraq. While cosmopolitanism is usually understood as a reference to a worldly legal and institutional order, the cosmopolitan outlook is also a mode of understanding the world, an ethic of responsibility and an ongoing exercise of political judgment in the face of violence.     

理解“奥斯维辛”:论沃格林与阿伦特之争

20世纪50年代发生在沃格林与阿伦特之间这场由《极权主义的起源》所引发的争论,隐约地透露出日后双方思考的走向,并在各自的思想旨趣上推进了对极权主义问题的理解与反思。沃格林与阿伦特在极权主义的研究方法、人性问题以及现代性困境的根源上存在思想分歧。重启沃格林与阿伦特之争的价值就在于,挖掘时代危机背景下两种不同思考方式的碰撞。     

Virus interruptus: An Arendtian exploration of political world‐building in pandemic times

Building upon a series of blog posts and conversations, two feminist scholars explore how political community, trust, responsibility and solidarity are affected by the COVID‐19 pandemic. We explore the ways in which we can engage in political world‐building during pandemic times through the work of Hannah Arendt. Following Arendt’s notion of the world as the space for human togetherness, we ask: how can we respond to COVID‐19’s interruptions to the familiarity of daily life and our relationship to public space? By extending relational accounts of public health and organizational ethics, we critique a narrow view of solidarity that focuses on individual compliance with public health directives. Instead, we argue that solidarity involves addressing structural inequities, both within public health and our wider community. Finally, we suggest possibilities for political world‐building by considering how new forms of human togetherness might emerge as we forge a collective ‘new normal’.     

作为第一哲学的实践哲学及其实践概念

实践哲学的现代复兴是在哲学普遍危机的大背景下发生的。实践哲学不仅指示了哲学的出路,还体现了它的根本性质。要确立实践哲学作为第一哲学的地位,首先要明确规定“实践”概念的哲学含义。实践不同于生产劳动,它涉及人生的意义和价值,而后者只是满足人的欲望和需要。马克思正确地把生产方式看作是人一定的活动方式和生活方式,却没有充分说明这种生产方式本身的前提。非经济的实践不是从生产劳动中派生出来的,而是相反。亚里士多德将理论作为最高的实践的结果,他的第一哲学是形而上学,而不是实践哲学。因此,作为第一哲学的实践哲学必须超越亚里士多德,而不是回到亚里士多德。     

阿伦特眼中的马克思——思想史语境中的重读与误释

从政治哲学传统出发,阿伦特认为马克思的哲学颠覆了柏拉图以来的西方政治思想传统,以哲学的政治实现取代了形而上的思辨。马克思哲学中对劳动的历史观意义的论证、对暴力的颂扬和对自由的强调,体现了马克思思想的核心主题。出于对古希腊公共政治的推崇,阿伦特认为马克思虽然颠覆了柏拉图以来的传统,但又处于这一传统之中,并没有真正地回到前柏拉图的思想与政治世界。