从意识到良知 --对轴心时代的思考

在轴心时代发展过程中,人类迈了一大步,走向了道德意识的新的深度.同时在许多文化中,在哲学、艺术和宗教领域,人类发现了新的方法去探索过失的意义和在道德过错中人类共罪性的意义.从孟子到苏格拉底等哲学家都开辟了新的方式来思考良知是如何促使人们感知到值得为之赴死的价值的.在古希腊的艺术中,通过悲剧形式创造了表达和推崇个人的痛苦的新的方式.在犹太人的宗教中,约伯和其他人对受苦的罪恶和过失的罪恶间的古老联系提出了挑战.当这种联系被打破时,其下一步就是从人类意识的大萌发时期进入到被称为良知的个人源泉时期.人类历史上这一丰富时期引导了人类意识从耻辱发展到负罪并且从共有责任发展到个体责任.在犹太人的宗教和古希腊人的哲学中,西方文明道德意识的建构部件出现了.

From Consciousness to Conscience Reflections on the Axial Age

In the course of the axial age humans crossed the threshold into a new depth of moral consciousness. Simultaneously in many cultures,in the arenas of philosophy,art and religion, humans discovered novel ways to explore the meaning of fault and their complicity in moral wrongdoing. Philosophers from Mencius to Socrates examined new ways to think abou how conscience alerts humans to values that are worth dying for. In the art of ancient Greece,the new form of tragedy created the means to voice and honor personal suffering. In the religion of the Jews,Job and others challenged the ancient bond between the evil of suffering and the evil of fault. When this bond was broken,the stage was set for the flowering of human consciousness into that personal resource called conscience. This fertile era in human history charted a journey in human consciousness from shame to guilt and from communal responsibility to personal culpability. In both the religion of the Jews and the philosophy of the Greeks,the building blocks of the moral consciousness of Western culture emerged.