十八世纪以降文明与文化辨析

文化和文明都是18世纪以后成熟起来的关键词。两者分分合合,关系亲密却又微妙。史密斯认为文明近年崛起成为学界关注的焦点,首先归因于冷战突然终结,新的多极化国际秩序呼之欲出,特别是亨廷顿的文明与宗教冲突论,成为后冷战时代竞争的所谓结构原则。伊格尔顿等人以文明为法国传统,文化为德国传统的概括未必全面,但文化对于文明的所谓"俄狄浦斯情结",也不失为当年两者分道扬镳的一个写照。即便如此,我们仍然愿意企盼理想主义的文化理念不是与文明割裂,反之在文明的层面上普及下来。唯其如此,世界共同体的理念,或将不仅仅是弥赛亚式的乌托邦梦想。

Distinctions between Civilization and Culture since the Eighteenth Century

Both culture and civilization have been keywords achieving maturity since the 18 th century.The two ideas have experienced integration and separation,but the relationship is at once intimate and delicate.Smith believes that the rise of civilization in recent years has become the focus of academic attention.It can be firstly attributed to the sudden end of the Cold War,the looming of a new multipolar international order,especially Huntington’s theory of conflict between civilization and religion,which has become the so-called structural principle of competition in the post-Cold War era.Eagleton and others have been inadequate by taking civilization as the French tradition and culture as the German tradition,but the so-called"Oedipus complex"of culture for civilization is also a reflection of the separation between the two.Even so,we are still willing to hope that the idealistic cultural ideal is not separated from civilization;instead,it should be universalized at the level of civilization.Only by doing so,the concept of the shared world community may go beyond a Messianic utopian dream.