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编者按： “‘历史’意味着拓荒的悲壮，‘历史的终结’则意味着耕种的枯燥。”这是刘瑜在《重读福山》中让我回味良久但又甚觉晦涩的一句话。在政治学术前沿领域，65岁的美籍日裔学者，美国政治科学家，斯坦福大学民主、发展与法治中心主任弗朗西斯·福山（Francis Fukuyama）在1992年以一本《历史的终结与最后的人》让世界为之躁动，他结合政治学、历史哲学、社会学乃至心理学等相关理念，试图回答历史走向和人类社会命运等终极问题。今年，他的新作《身份：对尊严的需求和怨恨的政治》（Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment）出版，把“我们是谁”的问题重新抛回台面，对现代身份政治的起源、影响以及在国家乃至世界层面的意义进行了深入探究。那么书到底如何，我们先来看书评。 （原载于伦敦标准晚报2018年9月27日刊） 翻译：Roy 校译：Sandy、Shane 统稿：Roy It is doubtful whether any author better encapsulates the optimism of liberal democrats after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 than Francis Fukuyama. His book, The End of History and the Last Man (1992), was an unexpected international phenomenon, sparking whiggish debates about the direction of history, from Harvard to LSE to Tokyo. 很难说是否会有其他作者能将1991年苏联解体后自由民主党的乐观主义概括得比福山更好。他的著作《历史的终结与最后的人》（1992年出版）出乎意料地在国际上掀起轩然大波，引发了从哈佛到伦敦政经再到东京的对于历史发展方向的辉格式讨论。 That he has now published this verdict on the health of liberal democracy, is in itself an indictment of the perilous times we live in today. 如今他已经向世人公布了这份对自由民主运行状况的分析论断，其本身也是对我们眼下所处的危机时代的控诉。 While The End of History celebrated the triumph of liberal democracy over the alternatives, Fukuyama’s new book Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, focuses on the threat to the system today. 尽管《历史的终结》对自由民主制完胜其他制度进行了一番庆祝，但这次福山的新书又把焦点落在了对当今体系构成威胁的因素之上。 The book is centred on an inherent contradiction within our need for self-worth, for which Fukuyama uses the Greek thymos. We crave to be seen as both equal and superior to others. While the modern era, through democracy and international law, has brought about universal dignity for individuals, this achievement is a poisoned chalice. 此书主要阐述的是人类自我价值需求中与身俱来的内在矛盾，对此福山使用了希腊语“thymos”（指意气、血气、激情——译注）一词。我们既渴望被平等对待，又渴望被认为高人一等。虽然现今时代通过民主和国际法则，给个人带来了普世性的尊严，但是这种成就可谓是金杯毒酒。 If the thesis of our era is individualism, then its antithesis has returned with a vengeance: collective identities, often aggressively exclusive, now threaten western democracy. Call it Hegel’s dialectic if you wish, but the two forces, secular individualism and fervent communitarianism, appear inseparable. 如果说我们这个时代的命题是个人主义，那么它的反命题已经带着报复心回归：集体身份，通常具有强烈的排他性，如今已经威胁到西方民主。你可以将其称之为黑格尔辩证法，但是世俗的个人主义和狂热的社群主义这两股力量似乎是不可分割的。 Fukuyama references the example of a Saxon villager, whose entire life is defined by the identity of his community. When the man moves to a cosmopolitan city to work in a factory, he hates the anonymity and lack of solidarity, and so embraces die Volksgemeinschaft: German nationalism. 福山提到了一个撒克逊村民的实例，他的一生被其族群身份所定义。当进入到大城市里的工厂工作，他讨厌自己只是个无名之辈以及那里缺少团结的氛围，因而无比信奉民族共同体——德国民族主义。 The old political establishment, proposes Fukuyama, was built around an argument between liberty and equality. The Left looked to use the state to ensure that everyone got a fair deal, while the Right secured individual and economic freedoms. However, as the two principles converged into “middle-way” policies at the end of the 20th century, immigration and identities began to take centre stage in politics. 福山指出，旧的政府体制是在自由和平等两者长期的争论中建立起来的。左派指望通过国家来确保每个人都得到公平对待，而右派则坚决维护个人和经济的自由。然而，当20世纪末期这两种准则合并转变成“折中政策”后，移民与身份认同开始成为政治关注的焦点。 On both left and right, politics has begun to pivot on identity issues. The Left has fallen into arguments over minority rights, such as those of a tiny minority who change their sex, while the Right has, more seriously, used nationalism to harness anger at inequality and deprivation. A resentment of indignity could thus explain why rural English voters chose to “take back control” and reject modern Europe and London in the European referendum. 不管是左派还是右派，无一不是转向了身份政治。左派陷入了针对少数人权利问题的争端，例如那些极少数的变性者；而右派则更谨慎地利用民族主义来平息因不平等和贫困而引发的怨愤。因尊严受辱而产生愤懑情绪，这就可以解释为什么英国乡村选民会选择“夺回控制权”并在欧洲公投上拒绝接受现代化的欧洲和伦敦。 The shift towards identity politics threatens to fragment society by dividing people into zealous tribes. If people no longer vote according to their values, such as an attachment to liberty, but by their identities, such as their faith, then democracy ceases to function. 这种向身份政治的转变，通过将人们划分成各个狂热的族群，有分裂社会的威胁。假如人们不再根据自己的价值标准进行投票（比如心系自由），而是根据他们的身份观念（比如他们的信仰），那么民主将停止运转。 In this light, society doesn’t appear far from Michel Houellebecq’s dystopian vision of France in Submission, where divisions between liberals and Muslims on one hand and “real French” voters on the other, leads to the collapse of secular democracy. 就这个角度来说，社会便离米歇尔·维勒贝克的《臣服》中法国的反乌托邦式景象不远了。那幅场景中一方面是介于自由主义者和穆斯林之间的各类派别，另一方面是“真正的法国选民”，两者间的分歧导致了世俗民主分崩离析。 Fukuyama ends his book with a brief set of recommendations on how to overcome the danger of identity politics. Just as they can be used to divide, the solution is to create broad, inclusive identities to bring people together: British patriotism rather than English nationalism, for example. 福山在书的结尾对怎样克服身份政治危机给了简短的建议。正如身份认同可以用来区分人群，解决办法就是创建更广泛、更综合的国族身份把人们团结到一起，例如可以推崇大不列颠爱国主义的身份而不是英国民族主义的身份。 Some of his proposals, such as introducing national service and enforcing state sovereignty, betray his background as an American neoconservative. Others, like creating a European legal identity, are more utopian. 他的一些建议，比如推行国民服役制度和加强国家主权，都与他作为美国新保守主义者的身份背道而驰。此外，像建立一套欧洲合法身份这样的建议则更不切合实际。 How has social media affected how people see themselves? How do information wars affect our understanding of the world? How will identities evolve as we spend more and more of our lives online? The role of the Internet and technology deserve a more central position in today’s identity crisis than Fukuyama grants them. 社交媒体是如何对人们的自我认知产生影响的？信息战争又是如何影响我们的世界观的？当我们在网上花费越来越多的时间，身份将会如何发生演化？在今日的身份危机中，互联网和科技所扮演的角色理应有一个比福山所认为的更加核心的地位。 This debate, and its ramifications, serve as an example of how history, with a capital ‘H’, continues to move forward. Liberal democracy is not a fixed concept, and these challenges mean it will continue to evolve in ways we cannot yet foresee. 这种争论及其衍生话题，可以看作是探讨历史如何持续向前推进的例证。自由民主不是一个既定的概念，而这些面临的挑战也意味着它会以我们无法预见的方式不断地发展进化。 As Andrea concludes, in Bertolt Brecht’s Life of Galileo: “There’s a lot of things we don’t know yet. Really, we’re just at the beginning”. 正如在贝尔托·布莱希特的《伽利略传》一书中安德里亚所断言的：“世上有很多事物我们至今仍不知晓。事实上，我们还只是站在起点。” |
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