有关历史哲学的笔记 （一）：从美国的金融危机看历史的终结

有关历史哲学的笔记 （一）：从美国的金融危机看历史的终结

福山以一本名为历史的终结和最后的人的书，将西方的资本主义政治制度推到了一个新的神学地位。

可是美国近来的金融危机，银行倒闭潮，以及美国政府开启对富人的挽求福利政策，让美国的市场经济的神话破灭。事实胜于雄辩，福山的历史终结远没有马克思的理论对西方资本主义的认识与判断来得深刻而有效。

当福山写他的历史的终结的时候，已经是上升到一个历史哲学的范畴，以为找到了历史的规律，正是这种规律的确定才带来了一种对历史与未来走向的决定性判断。历史哲学对历史发展的规律的推断与归纳，其目的也还是用之来预见未来，从而解释现实，并指导和管理人类事务。

很多大哲学家大都会涉足历史哲学，因为这是哲学最富有挑战性的领域，其原因是历史长河中的某一天，人们会说瞧今天发生的事，某某早在很久前就预见了这一切。这种神谕式的预言，对一个哲学家来说，就好像一个伟大的梦想，是他们作为思想者的成就之最好背书。相反，历史发展提供的证伪，时时刻刻给后来的哲学家提供了新的素材，前人对现实判断的不足变得显而易见。那么前人的思想体系为什么不能大致准确地判断历史发展的轨迹呢，新一代的智者由此看到了机会，并为这些问题而着迷。
我以前读哲学书，很少看有关历史哲学方面的东西。后来去欧洲旅行，对意大利文艺复兴时代的许多历史感兴趣。这才涉及知道一些有关意大利哲学家维柯的观点（Giambattista Vico，　１６６８－１７４４）。开始觉得历史哲学的奥妙。

最近的中国三鹿奶粉事件与美国华尔街的金融危机，让我觉得是中西历史上具有象征性意义的事件。将会开启中国知识分子对中国三十年改革的反省，同时华尔街的金融危机也促进我们深思中国未来有没有可能走一条比美国制度更多的路。写这个历史哲学的笔记系列，就是为深化这样一些思考提供一些素材与前人的思想。

其中有段话我觉得很有启发的是：It is the organization of the past that makes the past valuable, just as it is the organization of phenomena in scientific formulas that makes the study of nature valuable.

首先要引入的一个观点，如何看待前人写的历史。一种较普遍的说法是每一代都会重写历史。

The cliché that history must be rewritten every generation should therefore run somewhat differently: the past cannot help being reconceived by every generation,but the earlier reports upon it are in the main as good and true as they ever were. The revisionism of historians, rightly considered, does not substitute, it subtracts a little and adds more.

另一位学者则说：　The major changes in historical interpretation do not, as the layman often imagines, arise from the discovery of new evidence-the chest full of ussuspected documents…. What is most likely to happen is that the historian will find what he is looking for, namely, the documents which will explain and illustrate his own point of view. But what is he looking for? Surely he is looking for the truth-for what really happened. It is his job as a scholar to form as exact an idea of past events as he can from the surviving evidence. But the instrument with which he looks at the past is modern. It was made, and shaped, and it operates, in the present. It is his own mind. And however much he bends his thoughts toward the past, his own way of thinking, his outlook, his opinions are the products of the time in which he lives. So that all written history…. is a compound of past and present. (C.V.Wedgwood, The Present in the Past, page 235).

这个观点很重要，所有写就的历史是过去与现在的复合物。