现代社会中的灵性

灵性(the spiritual)与世俗(the secular)在欧美现代性中同时被构建成为与制度性宗教(institutionalized religion)相关联的两个替代物.灵性的概念存在着矛盾,即:它既被视为具有普遍性的概念,又与民族认同相关联.再者,灵性的概念在全球传播的同时,被植入不同的历史进程中,它的发展轨迹在各个地方是不同的.本文认为:印度和中国的现代性是两国与西方]帝国现代性互动后的产物.灵性在印度的相对成功与其在中国的相对失败不能简单地归结为中国共产主义的兴起.从更深层次上讲,有一个普遍观点,即中国的传统必须被西方的科学所取代,这在建国前早已被描绘成中国现代性的特征.而在印度,各类传统被当作反抗帝国主义斗争的资源,其所反抗的是从文化和政治上使印度从属于西方强权的物质现代化.

Spirituality in Modern Society

The argument of this paper is that the spiritual and the secular are produced simultaneously as two connected alternatives to institutionalized religion in Euro-American modernity.The paper also argues that a central contradiction in the concept of spirituality is that it is at the same time seen as universal and as tied to conceptions of national identity.Moreover,while the concept travels globally,its trajectory differs from place to place as it is inserted in different historical developments.The focus of the paper is on India and China in recognition of the fact that Indian and Chinese modernities are a product of interactions with imperial modernity.The relative success of "spirituality" in India and its relative failure in China cannot merely be explained by the rise of communism in China.More deeply it is the conviction that Chinese traditions had to be replaced by Western science that has characterized Chinese modernity long before the Communist take-over,while in India traditions were made into resources in the anti-imperialist struggle against a material modernization that culturally and politically subjected India to Western power.