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选刊曹天予新书《权力与理性 – 世界史中的马克思主义与自由主义》序言及第一章。马克思主义和自由主义及其关联只有放在世界史的语境中才能得到恰当的理解。为什么？

  MacIntyre on moneyJOHN CORNWELL   20th October 2010  —  Issue 176 The influential moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has long stood outside the mainstream. Has the financial crisis finally vindicated his critique of global capitalism?Alasdair MacIntyre argues for a single, shared view of the good lifeThe man in a modest dark suit and grey shirt could be mistaken, save for the presence of his wife of 33 years, for an off-duty Benedictine abbot. We’re dining in the elegant ambience of the Cambridge Catholic university chaplaincy; the conversation is animated, but the man, an 81-year-old philosopher, contents himself with a glass of water, leaving the dishes and vintage claret untouched. Self-effacing, a trifle austere, he nevertheless exudes a benign humanity from the top of his monkish haircut to his scuffed toe-caps.Alasdair MacIntyre is one of the world’s most influential living moral philosophers. He has written 30 books on ethics and held a variety of professorial chairs over the past four decades in North America. Blending ideas from ancient Greece and medieval Christendom (with an admixture of Marxism), MacIntyre writes and lectures on the failings and discontents of “advanced modernity.” This summer he accepted an invitation from Prospect and Jesus College, Cambridge to talk to a group of academics on the economic disaster that capitalism has inflicted on itself and the world.MacIntyre has often given the impression of a robe-ripping Savonarola. He has lambasted the heirs to the principal western ethical schools: John Locke’s social contract, Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative, Jeremy Bentham’s utilitarian “the greatest happiness for the greatest number.” Yet his is not a lone voice in the wilderness. He can claim connections with a trio of 20th-century intellectual heavyweights: the late Elizabeth Anscombe, her surviving husband, Peter Geach, and the Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, winner in 2007 of the Templeton prize. What all four have in common is their Catholic faith, enthusiasm for Aristotle’s telos (life goals), and promotion of Thomism, the philosophy of St Thomas Aquinas who married Christianity and Aristotle. Leo XIII (pope from 1878 to 1903), who revived Thomism while condemning communism and unfettered capitalism, is also an influence.MacIntyre’s key moral and political idea is that to be human is to be an Aristotelian goal-driven, social animal. Being good, according to Aristotle, consists in a creature (whether plant, animal, or human) acting according to its nature—its telos, or purpose. The telos for human beings is to generate a communal life with others; and the good society is composed of many independent, self-reliant groups.There are strong, albeit derivative, echoes of these ideas in the policies of Phillip Blond, David Cameron’s “Red Tory” guru. In the US, policy wonk Lew Daly pays tribute to MacIntyre and papal social teaching as he advises Barack Obama on how to create a national health service without state domination. MacIntyre differs from all these influences and alliances, from Leo XIII onwards, in his residual respect for Marx’s critique of capitalism.MacIntyre begins his Cambridge talk by asserting that the 2008 economic crisis was not due to a failure of business ethics. The opener is not a red herring. Ever since he published his key text After Virtue in 1981, he has argued that moral behaviour begins with the good practice of a profession, trade, or art: playing the violin, cutting hair, brick-laying, teaching philosophy. Through these everyday social practices, he maintains, people develop the appropriate virtues. In other words, the virtues necessary for human flourishing are not a result of the top-down application of abstract ethical principles, but the development of good character in everyday life. After Virtue, which is in essence an attack on the failings of the Enlightenment, has in its sights a catalogue of modern assumptions of beneficence: liberalism, humanism, individualism, capitalism. MacIntyre yearns for a single, shared view of the good life as opposed to modern pluralism’s assumption that there can be many competing views of how to live well.In philosophy he attacks consequentialism, the view that what matters about an action is its consequences, which is usually coupled with utilitarianism’s “greatest happiness” principle. He also rejects Kantianism—the identification of universal ethical maxims based on reason and applied to circumstances top down. MacIntyre’s critique routinely cites the contradictory moral principles adopted by the allies in the second world war. Britain invoked a Kantian reason for declaring war on Germany: that Hitler could not be allowed to invade his neighbours. But the bombing of Dresden (which for a Kantian involved the treatment of people as a means to an end, something that should never be countenanced) was justified under consequentialist or utilitarian arguments: to bring the war to a swift end.While utilitarianism flourished in Anglophone moral philosophy in the second half of the 20th century, there were doubts about its integrity—and the critique was led by the late Bernard Williams and MacIntyre. Williams attempted to expose utilitarianism’s limitations with a famous anecdote. A brilliant chemist is unemployed with five children to feed and an unpaid mortgage. There’s a job going at Porton Down, the British centre for chemical warfare. The chemist hates these weapons—but if he doesn’t take the job, another person will, who would pursue the research more ardently. Williams argues in his book Utilitarianism: For and Against (co-written with JJ Smart) that a utilitarian would say the man should definitely take the job. But, Williams argues, that does not take into account the man’s “whole life project”: in more popular terms, his ability to look at himself in the mirror.For MacIntyre, Williams’s “whole life project” is a thin and uncertain principle. MacIntyre seeks to oppose utilitarianism on the grounds that people are called on by their very nature to be good, not merely to perform acts that can be interpreted as good. The most damaging consequence of the Enlightenment, for MacIntyre, is the decline of the idea of a tradition within which an individual’s desires are disciplined by virtue. And that means being guided by internal rather than external “goods.” So the point of being a good footballer is the internal good of playing beautifully and scoring lots of goals, not the external good of earning a lot of money. The trend away from an Aristotelian perspective has been inexorable: from the empiricism of David Hume, to Darwin’s account of nature driven forward without a purpose, to the sterile analytical philosophy of AJ Ayer and the “demolition of metaphysics” in his 1936 book Language, Truth and Logic.*****When it comes to the money-men, MacIntyre applies his metaphysical approach with unrelenting rigour. There are skills, he argues, like being a good burglar, that are inimical to the virtues. Those engaged in finance—particularly money trading—are, in MacIntyre’s view, like good burglars. Teaching ethics to traders is as pointless as reading Aristotle to your dog. The better the trader, the more morally despicable.At this point, MacIntyre appeals to the classical golden mean: “The courageous human being,” he cites Aristotle as saying, “strikes a mean between rashness and cowardice… and if things go wrong she or he will be among those who lose out.” But skilful money-men, MacIntyre argues, want to transfer as much risk as possible to others without informing them of its nature. This leads to a failure to “distinguish adequately between rashness, cowardice and courage.” Successful money-men do not—and cannot—take into account the human victims of the collateral damage resulting from market crises. Hence the financial sector is in essence an environment of “bad character” despite the fact that it appears to many a benevolent engine of growth.This rift between economics and ethics, says MacIntyre, stems from the failure of our culture “to think coherently about money.” Instead, we should think like Aristotle and Aquinas, who saw the value of money “to be no more, no less than the value of the goods which can be exchanged, so there’s no reason for anyone to want money other than for the goods they buy.” Money affords more choices and choice is good. But when they are imposed by others whose interest is in getting us to spend, then money becomes the sole measure of human flourishing. “Goods are to be made and supplied, insofar as they can be turned into money… ultimately, money becomes the measure of all things, including itself.” Money can now be made “from the exchange of money for money… and trading in derivatives and in derivatives of derivatives.” And so those who work in the financial sector have become dislocated from the uses of money in everyday life. One symptom of this, MacIntyre contends, is gross inequality. In 2009, for instance, the chief executives of Britain’s 100 largest companies earned on average 81 times more than the average pay of a full-time worker.*****MacIntyre’s diagnosis of, and remedy for, the woes of “advanced modernity” invokes the history of his philosophical journey through six decades. Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre was born in 1929 in Glasgow, the only child of two doctors. “They left Scotland three weeks after I was born and went to work in the east end of London.” But his father died when he was still a boy, and his mother went to live in south Belfast, where he would spend his holidays from Epsom College, an independent secondary school mostly for sons of physicians. At 16 he enrolled at Queen Mary College in east London to specialise in classics. (Perhaps out of nostalgia for the east end he is now a senior research fellow at London Metropolitan University up the road.) He went on to Manchester University as a graduate student at the age of 21, and after three years was appointed to a lectureship in philosophy, followed by teaching stints at Leeds and Oxford. He was drawn early to Karl Marx and his first book was a defence of Marxism, although like many other intellectuals he changed his opinion of the Soviet Union after its suppression of the 1956 Hungarian uprising.Through his twenties he probed mainstream philosophy in search of a life view: to find “something that he wanted to say.” He rejected utilitarianism and its greatest happiness calculation because it appeared to provide no place for genuinely unconditional commitments, and Kantianism because, while recognising that some actions are morally required or prohibited, it offers no motivation based on our desires. “The hard work of morality,” MacIntyre insists, “consists in the transformation of desires, so that we aim at the good and respect the precepts of the natural law.”Although baptised a Presbyterian, from his early twenties MacIntyre abandoned religion for a quarter of a century. He appears to have shared for a time AJ Ayer’s assertion that the only significant propositions are those that can be empirically or scientifically verified. MacIntyre’s conversion to Catholicism in his fifties, he tells me, occurred as a result of being convinced of Thomism while attempting to disabuse his students of its authenticity. Aquinas combined Aristotle’s account of a universe knowable through observation with Christian philosophy, arguing that such a world still required God’s existence as its sustaining creator. An Aristotelian-Thomistic view of society and the world, as set out in After Virtue, offered the best philosophical underpinning for human flourishing, and the only alternative to the fragmentation of modern moral philosophy.MacIntyre argues that those committed to the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition of the common good must begin again. This involves “capturing the double aspect of the globalising economy and its financial sector, so that we understand it both as an engine of growth and as such a source of benefits, but equally as a perpetrator of great harms and continuing injustices.” Apologists for globalisation, he argues, treat it as a source of benefits, and only accidentally and incidentally a source of harms. Hence, the view that “to be for or against globalisation is in some ways like being for or against the weather.”MacIntyre maintains, however, that the system must be understood in terms of its vices—in particular debt. The owners and managers of capital always want to keep wages and other costs as low as possible. “But, insofar as they succeed, they create a recurrent problem for themselves. For workers are also consumers and capitalism requires consumers with the purchasing power to buy its products. So there is tension between the need to keep wages low and the need to keep consumption high.” Capitalism has solved this dilemma, MacIntyre says, by bringing future consumption into the present by dramatic extensions of credit.This expansion of credit, he goes on, has been accompanied by a distribution of risk that exposed to ruin millions of people who were unaware of their exposure. So when capitalism once again overextended itself, massive credit was transformed into even more massive debt, “into loss of jobs and loss of wages, into bankruptcies of firms and foreclosures of homes, into one sort of ruin for Ireland, another for Iceland, and a third for California and Illinois.” Not only does capitalism impose the costs of growth or lack of it on those least able to bear them, but much of that debt is unjust. And the “engineers of this debt,” who had already benefited disproportionately, “have been allowed to exempt themselves from the consequences of their delinquent actions.” The imposition of unjust debt is a symptom of the “moral condition of the economic system of advanced modernity, and is in its most basic forms an expression of the vices of intemperateness, and injustice, and imprudence.”So what is his answer? His principles involve “issues of deserving,” “responsible risk-taking,” and “setting limits to the burdens of debt.” Deserving is an issue, he argues, when the consequences of debt are inflicted on those who played no part in incurring it, such as children. Those who expose others to risk in the financial markets must spell out in public and in advance the risks that they are distributing in intelligible terms. And when risk-taking goes wrong, the consequences for those who made the decisions must be made as bad as they are for their worst-off victims. Finally, he argues that limits should be set to the burdens imposed by debt on individual and family lives, so that they are not disproportionate—this may involve caps on interest rates, as in Germany, or even forgiving debt. Despite such principles, MacIntyre does not advocate bank nationalisation, preferring it seems a return to the paternalistic style of bank manager represented by Captain Mainwaring in Dad’s Army.*****Yet there is evident creativity in finance through the role of maturity transformation—borrowing short, lending long. MacIntyre does not acknowledge this, nor is he prepared to accept accounts of the positive benefits of money creation, or the use of derivatives in offsetting risk. In the face of such points he tends to adopt the stance of the intransigent prophet. Moreover, he denies that regulation or breaking up the banks can resolve the problems of the finance sector, since regulations merely “have as their aim the prevention of further large-scale crises.” When asked, then, whether his perspective is a counsel of despair, he responds that there are evils in the world that one “simply has to live with for the time being.” It does not appear that he means by this an acceptance of original sin so much as a prelude to major change or revolution. But to what?MacIntyre appears to have entered an endgame position involving a hybrid of Marx and Aquinas, with Marx as the prime influence. His version of Aquinas, meanwhile, stresses the medieval Christian opposition to usury. John Milbank, founder of the Cambridge school of radical orthodoxy, which has influenced Blond’s Red Toryism, complains: “We are given an Aquinas that no historical scholar any longer believes in, an Aquinas without the theology. Where is Aquinas’s emphasis on the supernatural light of charity? For Aquinas there is no full justice without it, just as there is no genuinely good state without the church.” Blond echoes the objections: “It looks as if Aristotle and Aquinas have been made to conform to a Marxist materialism and collectivism. The Aristotelian virtues are simply posited as a kind of natural law.”Nevertheless, since the formation of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition, Blond has been seeking and finding connections between MacIntyre, Aquinas, GK Chesterton’s “distributism” of the 1920s, and Jo Grimond’s plea for civic groups in the 1950s. Are these not the antecedents of David Cameron’s big society? The link between Aquinas and the 20th century is distributism, a philosophy which repudiated usury, communism and capitalism in equal measure for an economy based on guilds, specialist associations, self-sufficiency and barter. MacIntyre made wistful reference in hisProspect talk to one of distributism’s principal architects—Father Vincent McNabb. Distributism as a political party collapsed in the 1930s, and Father McNabb was last heard from his soap box at Hyde Park Corner complaining of apartment blocks (which lack sufficient land to graze a cow) and advocating the use of one’s natural skin oils as a substitute for boot polish. Distributist and subsidiarist ideas, encouraging guilds and associations, flourished for a time in 1920s Italy in the form of Mussolini’s early corporatism.If MacIntyre’s ethics of finance raises more questions than it settles, he still beguiles with his illustrations from history. For example, he entertained his listeners with the story of the founding of a diesel engine factory in which an investor and engineer came together to create an ideal small-scale business for their mutual benefit and that of the local community. Later, demonstrating the ways in which globalised “bad character” can be resisted by “virtuous risk taking,” he cited four narratives: the 18th-century Guaraní Indians (depicted in the film The Mission) who chose a collectivised future under “proto-Leninist” Jesuits rather than slavery; the early founders of the kibbutzim at odds with competing visions of collectivisation; the Kerala leaders of the Marxist Communist party of India in 1957, who placated landowners and government while helping the poor; and the small farmers of Donegal in the 1960s who chose to establish a co-operative that sustained their Gaelic-speaking community rather than emigrate.Such stories are fascinating, but contribute little to the larger woes he had set out in his lecture, the solutions to which demand, as he acknowledges, “social structures of an economy… very different from those of either a wholly free market economy or the state-and-market economies of present-day Europe.” Other than telling us that “it would be an economy in which… deference to wealth would be recognised as a vice,” he does not enlarge. His micro-models of a proto-Leninist theocracy—a kibbutz, a Marxist Indian state, and an Irish farming co-operative—do not lead one to believe that his ideal replacement for western-style democracy and the global economy would be realistic let alone desirable.  （译文未校对，多少有点粗糙，仅供参考，请自行对照英文） 吴万伟 译著名伦理学家阿拉斯代尔·麦金泰尔（Alasdair MacIntyre）长期以来一直处于主流思想之外。金融危机是否最终证明了他对全球资本主义的批判是正确的呢？阿拉斯代尔·麦金泰尔主张单一的共同的幸福生活观。如果不是33岁的妻子【人文与社会：应该是结婚33年的】在身边，这个身穿浅黑色西装和灰色衬衣的人可能被错误地当作退休的本笃会修道士。我们在剑桥大学天主教牧师餐厅的优雅环境中进餐，谈话非常热烈，但这个81岁的哲学家只喝了一杯水，桌子上的酒菜一点儿都没动。虽然谦逊，甚至稍微有些严厉，但无论是从上面修道士式的发型还是到下面磨损了的皮鞋尖，他都还是流露出慈祥的人性。阿拉斯代尔·麦金泰尔是当今在世的伦理学家中影响最大的一位。他写了30本伦理学著作，在过去40年里在北美很多大学担任讲座教授。在其著作和演讲中，麦金泰尔把古希腊和中世纪基督教会的思想结合起来（还夹杂着马克思主义），揭露“发达的现代性”的失败和引起的不满。今年夏天，他接受《展望》杂志和剑桥大学耶稣学院的邀请为一群学者做有关经济危机的报告，谴责资本主义给自身和世界带来的苦难。麦金泰尔常常给人以脱掉长袍的萨沃那洛拉的印象（Savonarola，意大利宗教政治改革家，抨击罗马教廷和暴政，起义失败后被教皇处死---译注）。他激烈攻击西方主要伦理学派继承人：约翰·洛克的社会契约、伊曼努尔·康德的绝对律令、杰里米·边沁的“为最大多数人的最大幸福”的功利主义思想。但他的批判不是荒原上孤独的呐喊，可以说，他和20世纪思想界大师的三重唱有密切联系：已经去世的伊丽莎白·安斯康姆（Elizabeth Anscombe）、仍然健在的丈夫彼得·吉奇（Peter Geach）和2007年邓普顿宗教促进奖（Templeton）得主，加拿大哲学家查尔斯·泰勒（Charles Taylor）。这四个人的共同点是天主教信仰、对亚里士多德的“telos”（人生目标）的着迷、对托马斯主义（Thomism）的热情传播。托马斯主义是圣托马斯·阿奎那（St Thomas Aquinas）的哲学，把基督教和亚里士多德结合起来。当然，曾经推动复兴托马斯主义同时谴责共产主义和自由资本主义的教皇列奥13世（1878-1903）也是产生来了积极影响。麦金泰尔的主要政治和道德观点是，人要成为受亚里士多德目标驱使的社会动物。在亚里士多德看来，善体现在生物（植物、动物、人）按照本性，即他的人生目标生活的过程中。人的生活目标就是创造一个与他人共存的社会生活，一个由许多独立的、自立的群体所组成的美好社会。这些观点在戴维·卡梅伦（David Cameron）的‘红色保守主义’思想家菲利普·布朗德（Phillip Blond）的政策中有强烈的回响，虽然可能是派生性的。在美国，政策学者卢·戴利（Lew Daly）对麦金泰尔和教皇的社会教导表示敬意，建议奥巴马创建一个并非国家主导的全国医疗保健服务体系。麦金泰尔和所有这些影响力或同盟者以及教皇列奥13世的追随者都不同，因为他仍然保留着对批判资本主义的马克思的尊敬。在剑桥大学的报告中，麦金泰尔首先认定2008年经济危机并非企业伦理学的失败。其演说的开场白不是用来转移人们注意力的东西。自从他1981年出版主要著作《德性之后》以来，就一直强调道德行为开始于拉小提琴、理发、砌砖、讲授哲学等无论艺术、职业、还是行业的良好行为规范。他认为，通过这些日常的社会行为，人们养成适当的美德。换句话说，人类繁荣所需要的美德不是抽象的伦理原则自上而下的应用结果，相反，是日常生活中良好行为发展的结果。《德性之后》实际上是对启蒙的失败的攻击，揭示了善行的一系列现代假设如自由主义、人道主义、个人主义和资本主义。麦金泰尔反对现代多样化的假设：即幸福生活可以多种多样。他认为人们应该有单一的共同的幸福观。在哲学中，他攻击结果主义，即对一个行为来说最重要的是看它的结果，这往往与功利主义的“最大幸福”原则一致。他也反对康德主义，即辨认出建立在理性基础上的普遍伦理原则，并自上而下地应用在具体情景中。麦金泰尔的批评通常引用二战中同盟国使用的矛盾的道德原则。英国在对德宣战时求助于康德的理性：不允许德国入侵邻国。但在轰炸德莱斯顿（在康德看来是把人作为达到目的的手段来对待，这是决不应该支持的做法）时却用结果主义或功利主义理论为自己辩护：它加快了战争的结束。虽然功利主义在20世纪下半叶英美的道德哲学界繁荣发展，但仍然存在对其完整性的怀疑。在已去世的伯纳德·威廉斯（Bernard Williams）和麦金泰尔的领导下，人们发起了对功利主义的批判。威廉斯试图用一著名的故事暴露功利主义的局限性。一个优秀的化学家失业了，他有5个孩子要养活，还要支付房屋按揭贷款。这时波登当（Porton Down）英国化学武器研究中心有个工作岗位。该化学家讨厌这些武器，但如果他不接受这个工作，另外一个人会接受，并兴致勃勃地进行研究。威廉斯在《功利主义：赞成还是反对》（与斯马特（JJ Smart）合著）一书中说，功利主义者会说此人当然应该接受这个工作。但威廉斯认为，这是没有考虑此人的“整个人生工程”：用更通俗的说法，他从镜子中观看自己的能力。对麦金泰尔来说，威廉斯的“整个人生工程”是个贫瘠的、不确定的原则。麦金泰尔反对功利主义是因为人们被善良的本性所召唤，而非仅仅去从事可以被解释为善的行动。在麦金泰尔看来，启蒙造成的最具破坏性的后果是传统观念的衰落，即个人欲望应该受到美德的束缚。这意味着人们要受到内在的善而非外在的善的指导。所以，成为优秀足球运动员的关键是漂亮地踢球和更多的进球这些内在的善，而非赚取更多金钱的外在的善。背离亚里士多德视野的趋势是不可阻挡的：从大卫·休谟的经验主义到达尔文的无目的进化论描述再到艾耶尔（AJ Ayer）乏味的分析哲学和他1936年“摧毁形而上学”的著作《语言、真理和逻辑》。在谈到金融家的时候，麦金泰尔用决不妥协的坚定力量运用其形而上学途径。他认为，有些技能如盗贼的技巧对美德是有危害的。那些从事金融的人尤其是金钱交易者在麦金泰尔看来就像老练的窃贼。给这些经纪人讲授伦理学是没有意义的，这就像给狗讲授亚里士多德。经纪人水平越高，其道德品质就越可鄙。在这点上，麦金泰尔求助于经典的黄金分割：他引用亚里士多德的话说“勇敢的人在鲁莽和懦弱之间保持平衡，如果出了差错，他将是失败者。”但麦金泰尔说，老练的金融家希望尽可能地把风险转嫁给他人，同时不告诉人家真相。这就导致人们无法充分辨别“鲁莽、懦弱和勇气”。成功的金融家不能或者不愿考虑市场危机给受害者带来的连带危害。因此，金融界实质上是“坏蛋”的大本营，虽然事实上它好像是经济发展的有益引擎。麦金泰尔说，经济学和伦理学之间的矛盾来自于我们的文化不能“连贯地思考金钱”。相反，我们应该像亚里士多德和阿奎那那样思考，他们把金钱的价值看作“能够交换的商品的价值，既不多也不少，任何人都没有理由去拥有更多的钱，够买东西就行了。”金钱提供更多的选择，而有选择当然好。但当选择是那些从我们的消费中获得利益的人强加给我们时，金钱就变成了衡量人生成功与否的唯一标准。“只要能赚钱就不停地生产商品，供应商品，最终金钱成了衡量一切的标准，包括它本身。”现在金钱变成了“为金钱而交换金钱，交易金钱的衍生物进行交易，甚至交易衍生物的衍生物。”因此，那些在金融界工作的人已经脱离了日常生活中金钱的使用。麦金泰尔认为，这种现象的症状是巨大的不平等。比如在2009年，英国100家最大公司的主管的平均工资是全职工人平均工资的81倍之多。麦金泰尔对“发达的现代性”的诊断和治疗其危害的药方动用了他60多年的哲学探索历程。阿拉斯代尔·麦金泰尔1929年出生于格拉斯哥，父母都是医生，他是独子。“我出生后三星期，他们就离开苏格兰到伦敦东区工作了。”但在他小时候，父亲去世，母亲到贝尔法斯特南部生活。他在主要招收医生子弟的爱普森学院（Epsom College）读书，假期时回到母亲那里。16岁时他考入伦敦东区玛丽女王学院，专修古典文学（或许是出于怀旧心理，他现在担任伦敦城市大学高级研究员）。21岁本科毕业后，他到曼彻斯特城大学读研究生，三年后担任哲学讲师，后来在里兹大学和牛津大学任教。早期他受到马克思的影响，他的第一本著作就是为马克思主义辩护的，虽然像其他许多知识分子一样，在1956年匈牙利起义后他改变了对苏联的看法。在20多岁的时候，为寻找人生观他探索主流哲学观点，渴望找到“他想说的东西”。他抛弃了功利主义及其大多数人最大幸福的算计，因为它似乎没有为真正的无条件的承诺留下空间。而康德主义虽然承认某些行动是在道德上被要求的或被禁止的，但没有为我们提供欲望的动机基础。麦金泰尔坚持说“道德的艰苦工作包括改造人们的欲望，这样我们就能以善为目标，尊重自然法的规律。”虽然是受洗的圣公会信徒，麦金泰尔在20岁出头开始曾经放弃宗教20多年。曾经有个时期，他似乎赞同艾耶尔的观点，只有那些能够被经验和科学证明的观点才是真正重要的观点。麦金泰尔告诉我，他是在50多岁时皈依天主教的，起因是他在试图去除学生对权威的幻想时，自己却被托马斯主义说服了。阿奎那把亚里士多德通过观察对已知宇宙的描述和基督教哲学结合起来，认为这样的世界仍然需要上帝的存在作为永久的创造者。正如在《德性之后》中描述的，亚里士多德和阿奎那式社会观和世界观提供了人类繁荣的最好哲学基础，这是已经支离破碎的现代道德哲学的唯一替代物。麦金泰尔认为，那些献身于亚里士多德和阿奎那式公共善的传统的人必须再次行动起来。这意味着“认识到全球化经济及其金融领域的两面性，一方面认清它是经济发展的引擎和利益的源头，另一方面要认识到它是带来巨大危害和持续造成不平等的罪魁祸首。”他认为，那些全球化的辩护士把它视为利益源头，只是偶尔或碰巧造成一些危害。因此出现了“赞成还是反对全球化在某种程度上就像赞成还是反对气候一样荒谬”的观点。不过，麦金泰尔认为我们必须从其危害尤其是债务的角度来理解全球化体系。资本的所有者和经营者总是想尽可能地压低工资和其他开支。“但只要他们成功了，他们就为自己创造重复出现的问题。因为工人也是消费者，资本主义要求消费者拥有购买其商品的购买力。因此在压低工资的需要和保持高消费的需要之间就存在紧张关系，”麦金泰尔说。资本主义通过大规模扩张信贷，把未来的消费拿到现在进行解决了这个问题。他继续说，信贷扩张伴随着风险的分配，千百万人遭遇风险，但他们根本不知道自己可能面临的灭顶之灾。所以，当资本主义再次过分膨胀之后，巨额信贷变成了更庞大的债务，“变成了失业和工资削减、企业倒闭、抵押房产被收回、爱尔兰的破产、冰岛的破产、加利福尼亚州和伊利诺斯州的三分之一破产。”资本主义不仅让最无力承担者承担发展或缺乏发展的代价，而且这些债务很多是不公平的。曾经从中获得巨额利益的“债务炮制者被允许逃避了为自己的过失行为承担后果的责任。”强加的不平等债务是“发达的现代性经济体制的道德”的症状，其最基本表现形式就是无节制、不公正、厚颜无耻等罪恶。那么，他的答案是什么？其原则涉及到“应得的奖赏或惩罚”、“负责任的冒险”、“确立债务负担的边界”等。他认为，当债务的后果殃及无辜者如孩子时，应得的奖赏或惩罚就成了问题。那些让他人在金融市场上遭遇风险的人必须公开和提前告知风险，用人们听得懂的话告诉人们交易中的风险。一旦冒险失败，决策者承担的后果必须和最大受害者的后果一样大。最后，他认为个人和家庭承担的债务应该设定一个界限，这样不至于是过分悬殊的：比如在德国，利率有限制，甚至免除债务。虽然有这些原则，麦金泰尔并没有建议银行国有化，更愿意它似乎回到《老爸上战场》中的梅因沃林上尉（Mainwaring）所代表的家长式银行经理的风格。但是，期限转换（maturity transformation）---银行借短放长的手段的作用在金融界存在明显的创造性。麦金泰尔没有承认这点，他也不愿意接受货币创造的利益描述或者使用衍生品抵消风险。在这些方面，他倾向于采取不妥协的先知的立场。而且，他否认对银行的管理或拆分能够解决金融业的问题，因为监管“的目标不过是避免大规模的危机而已”。当被问道他的观点是否在一切失败后所采取的行动时，他回答说世界上有一些邪恶“人们暂时必须忍受。”这似乎并不意味着他像在重大变革或者革命的前奏那样把这当作原罪来接受，不过，那是什么前奏呢？麦金泰尔似乎进入立场的最后阶段，涉及到马克思和阿奎那的结合，马克思的影响最大。与此同时，他对阿奎那的理解强调了中世纪基督教反对高利贷。给布朗德的红色保守主义产生影响的剑桥激进正统派创始人约翰·米尔班克（John Milbank）抱怨说“我们看到了一个历史学家都不再相信的阿奎那，一个没有神学的阿奎那。阿奎那对慈善的超自然光明的强调在哪里？在阿奎那看来，没有了这个光明就没有充分的正义，正如没有教堂就不可能有真正好的国家。” 布朗德附和了这个反对意见，“似乎亚里士多德和阿奎那被拿来与马克思主义的唯物主义和集体主义保持一致。亚里士多德的美德不过是一种自然法的假设。”但是，自从保守派和自由民主派结成联盟后，布朗德一直在寻求和发现麦金泰尔、阿奎那、1920年代切斯特顿（GK Chesterton）的“分配主义”、1950年代乔·格里蒙德（Jo Grimond）的公民群体的呼吁之间的联系。这些难道不是卡梅伦大社会的先驱吗？阿奎那和20世纪的联系是分配主义，一种既谴责高利贷又谴责共产主义、资本主义的哲学，主张建立在基尔特、专业联盟、自给自足、易货贸易基础上的经济。麦金泰尔在《展望》演讲中充满深情地提到分配主义的主要设计师之一牧师文森特·麦克纳伯（Vincent McNabb）。分配主义政党在1930年代垮台了，最后一次听到麦克纳伯牧师的演讲是他站在海德公园角落的肥皂箱子上指控公寓街区（缺乏足够的土地无法养牛），鼓吹使用天然润肤油取代鞋油。分配主义者和补贴主义者的观点鼓励了基尔特和协会的发展，在1920年在意大利曾经以墨索里尼的早期社团主义的形式非常繁荣。如果麦金泰尔的金融伦理学提出的问题比解决的问题多，他仍然以历史故事引起人们的兴趣。比如，他用柴油发动机工厂创立的故事让读者很开心，投资者和工程师聚会共同创造一个对当地社区和对双方都有利的理想的小规模企业。后来，他引用了对抗全球化“坏品质”的四种“高尚的冒险”的叙述：18世纪瓜拉纳印第安人（在电影《使命》中描述的）在“亲列宁”的耶稣会士领导下选择集体化的未来而不是奴隶制；与集体化竞争性版本冲突的集体农场基布兹（kibbutzim）的早期创造者；1957年印度马克思主义政党的喀啦啦邦人领袖安抚地主和政府，同时帮助穷人；1960年代多尼戈尔（Donegal）的农民选择成立合作社以维持他们说盖尔语的社区的存在而非远走他乡。这些故事引人入胜，但对他在演讲中确定的更大灾难没有多少贡献。正如他承认的，这些问题的解决办法要求“非常不同于完全自由的市场经济或者当今欧洲的政府加市场的经济体的社会结构。”除了告诉我们“那将是一个对财富的崇拜被认为是罪恶的经济外”，他并没有再说出什么东西来。他赞同列宁的神权政体微观模式如基布兹、马克思主义印第安国家、爱尔兰农业合作社并不能说服人们相信他的代替西方民主和全球经济的理想模式是切实可行的，更不要说是令人渴望的了。但在《德性之后》的末尾，他指出我们已经进入类似于罗马帝国衰落时的“黑暗和野蛮”的新时代。“但这次野蛮人不是在边界之外等待，他们已经控制我们一段时间了。我们对其缺乏认识正是困境的一部分。”他暗示，高尚文明的生存不是依靠革命的世界而是依靠坚持类似于修道院的孤立社区来抗拒黑暗时代的蹂躏。他在《德性之后》的末尾说“我们不是在等待戈多（爱尔兰剧作家塞缪尔·贝克特的荒诞派戏剧---译注），而是等待另一个（当然是非常不同的）圣本笃。”但此人是谁，长什么样？他并没有说。作者简介：约翰·康威尔（John Cornwell）剑桥大学耶稣学院科学和人文项目主任。http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/201 ... sdair-macintyre-on-money/

相对于Postmodernism那种历史虚无观点,我们所强调的了解历史,并不是要你知道某年某年发生什么事情。我们所谓的历史就是每个民族自己的议题...一个先进的知识分子,一个思想家,一定要继承你自己的议题加以发展,这才是重要的

本文从三个不同方面论述当代中国的代表性危机。第一，代表性断裂是当代世界的普遍政治危机，其核心是政党政治的危机；第二，代表性危机是中国社会主义体制危机的政治后果，其核心是阶级政治的衰落；第三，现代中国革命中的理论辩论和群众路线既是中国代表性政治的历史前提，又包含了超越这种代表制的要素。在思考"后政党政治"的语境中，重新思考这一政治传统有助于探索政治的未来。

看待问题、尤其是政治问题要从历史的角度和具体的政治现实的历程去看，而不能仅仅去追求一些口号。这个对于我们当今的现实是非常有启发意义的。因为我们现在的学界也好、传媒也好，基本上都是一些对于简单的口号和理念的追求。

唐代有名的诗人李商隐，写了一首诗，题为《贾生》，其诗云：“宣室求贤访逐臣，贾生才调更无论，可怜夜半虚前席，不问苍生问鬼神。”此诗隐含对汉文帝的讽刺。表面上求贤，实际上只是求神问仙。其实李商隐有一点错怪了……

在大多数讨论香港收入分配不平等的研究中，关注点一般放在初始市场收入的分配上。这是可以理解的，然而，仅仅把研究停留在初始市场收入分配上是不够的。

鲁迅去世后不久，在家人朋友亦或学生同志撰写的回忆文章中，往往都会将他与魏晋文章以及风度并提。

那篇文章为更有力地论证钓鱼岛是中国的固有领土，我们拿出了日本历史上所谓"琉球处分"来做旁证。把钓鱼岛和"琉球处分"联系起来，是为了说明当时的中日关系和东亚局势，以及晚清外交的颓势和对日关系的失败。日本是在一个积极对外侵略的态势中，强行吞并一个独立的王国琉球的，也借着甲午战争，攫取了钓鱼岛，把钓鱼岛划归冲绳管辖。

我隐约感觉到，"现代"，"后现代"和"多元现代性"之争，是和一个更深层的哲学问题联系在一起的，这个哲学问题就是"普遍"，"特殊"和"无限"的关系。

中国与世界的未来，将取决于中国与西方世界谁能协调好经济自由主义和政府干预主义的关系，取决于自由主义治理的合理性和社会主义治理的合理性之间的融通，取决于"为市场而治理"和"因为市场而治理"之间的平衡。

美国人类学学者巴菲尔德的《危险的边疆--游牧帝国与中国》一书于1989年出版。他结合人类学考察成果，提出一种"游牧帝国"的理论和中原王朝与游牧民族关系的全新解释模式--"两极世界"模式。他的观点对于中国边疆史研究和游牧文明史研究的视域具有一定的拓宽意义，但其在史料使用、理论建构等方面仍有不足，需客观辩证的思考与再探讨。

描述美国华尔街金融资本的基本运作状况，并指出为实体产业提供融资和咨询服务早已只占金融资本业务收益的微不足道部分，金融资本的主体工作是投机性交易。没有任何经验论据支持大多数金融创新具有社会价值。

底层话语早已被研究者视为当代文学批评不可或缺的观念视野，但深究起来，这种话语乃是一个并未被充分理论化的概念系统。事实上，这种话语实践的困境早就潜藏在其文学起源--小说《那儿》之中。在这篇小说中，曹征路无力对工人阶级底层化的命运做出真正的历史分析，缺乏节制的现实愤怒和偏于一隅的历史判断，都限制了他对于主人公反抗意识的构造，劳动尊严的呈现以及身份政治的透视，由此陷入阶级想象的危机之中。而要再造底层话语的阶级意识，就必须重新审视底层在市场社会中特定的身心状态，并由此回到当代社会主义实践转折的历史脉络，寻求重塑其理论想象的话语空间。

妙的是陈映真在这篇小说中用了一个音乐典故――萧斯塔可维奇的第三交响乐，又名《五月一日》（劳动节）。

一些公共卫生与人口数据

讲述中国黑客的形象、组成和行为变化：从反传统反商业、带着理想主义和政治热情的红客占主流到近年，非法牟利的毒客横行。21世纪，中国的木马产业链堂而皇之形成。“这是个比房地产来钱还快的暴利产业！”熊猫烧香病毒的贩卖者王磊落网时，一语道破其中的玄机。据了解，“熊猫烧香”的程序设计者李俊，每天入账收入近1万元，被警方抓获后，承认自己已经获利上千万元。

友情提示：请安装杀毒软件与防火墙，杀木马可用spybot search and destroy 和adaware。经常重装系统。

弗朗哥的法西斯主义，主张唯一的天主教、唯一的西班牙语（其实是卡斯蒂利亚语）、主张彻底消灭共产党人和无政府主义者、主张大西班牙主义。所以等到弗朗哥一命呜呼，西班牙迎来了民主化，半岛上每一个角落的语言都立即复苏了。在巴斯克甚至出现了铁血的分离主义，大名鼎鼎的ETA数十年一日用炸弹和手枪，搅得西班牙狼狈不堪。法西斯主义招致了全面的报复

改革开放三十年，中国经济普遍增长，在给社会相当多数的人带来了收入的提高、生活水平改善的同时，其实进一步让我们感觉到生活意义的丧失，这是我们此刻面临的一个重大的问题。经济的增长和生活程度的普遍改善同时伴随着收入分配的不公的出现，包括基尼系数，在当今世界已经排到了第一，由此迫使我们反思财富的公平分配、社会正义如何实现。这是牵涉到我们每一个人如何过好生活，什么样才是理想生活的重大问题。

本文聚焦于阿里吉《亚当·斯密在北京》一书，对国内外中国经济史学界有关斯密型动力的问题进行了深入的批评与讨论，对阿里吉与加州学派有关斯密分工理论及其在中国的表现所做的解读提出强烈质疑，并通过阅读斯密、马克思的原典，力图还原一个真实的斯密，即强调"社会分工"的斯密，并引入吴承明"没有（社会）分工的市场"概念，主张将两者（即真假斯密）结合起来，用历史的眼光对明清以来中国小农经济的演变做出重新解释，进而为中国乡村经济的未来发展提供一条不同于主流认识的新思路。