Page 155 - 《社会》2024年第4期

社会·2024·4

Shaftesbury was confronted with not only the growing moral crisis of the commercial
society and the need for a humanistic foundation for a liberal republican government
program，but also the question of how to define the modern man with his expanding
individuality，to bridge the gap between the individual and the society，and to
reconstruct a free and virtuous general order. This required him to develop，after
Hobbes，a competing theory of human nature，and thereby to construct a new moral
philosophy. For this purpose，Shaftesbury drew on natural theology and Stoicism to
articulate a conception of divine order that opened up the possibility of a free and
virtuous civil society. Subsequently，Shaftesbury put forward a view of human nature
with natural affection as the first principle，and then empirically clarified the
“sociability not for self鄄love” that was naturally inherent in human nature，providing
a powerful defense of the self鄄sufficiency of society itself. Finally，through the socio鄄
psychological mechanisms of“common sense”and“moral sense”，the possibility of
a moral order was illustrated on the basis of universal human nature. In addition to
this body of theoretical work，Shaftesbury explicitly argued that a sufficiently free
and tolerant public sphere was essential to the true realization of a good moral order.
Shaftesbury’s moral philosophy set a theoretical tone for the later Scottish
Enlightenment and for the Anglo鄄American social theory that treated the“social”
logic as a means of settling individuals and constructing order. His ideas are still of
value to us today in many ways.
Keywords：Shaftesbury，moral philosophy，moral order，theory of human nature，
natural affection，sociability

一、 引言：《赫丘利的抉择》与美德的复苏

17 至 18 世纪的西欧， 传统秩序已经失去其不容置疑的天然正当
性，随之产生的现代个体如何构成一种新的秩序形态，成了那个时代的
思想家必须面对的基本问题。 当时应对这一问题的不同思想方案，实际
上成为后世诸多理论流派乃至政治实践的思想源头。 而随着越来越实
质性的世界历史进程的展开， 这一西学的重要关节也越来越成为思想
史上令人无法忽视的一个篇章。 因此，对于现代早期阶段思想家们在秩
序之可能性问题上曾经进行过的各种探索， 今天无疑仍有必要进行重
访，尤其对于仍处在重要历史转变阶段的中国人而言。 在现代早期对这

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