摘要
“社会有机体”概念在英国维多利亚时期众多理论家的阐述中,呈现了丰富的意涵和多样的解释路径,并因此成为一个有力的修辞工具,介入了有关英国社会改革的政治辩论。在此过程中,主要由英国思想家赫伯特·斯宾塞所阐释的与个人主义的自由竞争和消极政府理念相结合的“社会有机体”概念,最终被由新自由主义者提出的与福利、社会改革和国家干预相契合的“社会有机体”概念边缘化,丧失了原有的意义和语境。本文采用昆廷·斯金纳所倡导的概念史研究方法,对“社会有机体”概念在维多利亚时期的这段变迁过程予以考察,以期反映当时英国政治和社会观念的变迁,对19世纪英国自由主义思想的革新给出更加历史化的叙述。
Nourished in the tradition of Hegelian Idealism and Comtean Positivism,the concept of“social organism”became an important part in the Victorian political and social thoughts.Through the articulation of numerous theorists,not only was it endowed with rich meanings and explanatory potentials,but was also employed as a powerful rhetorical tool in the Victorian political debate on social reform at the end of the 19th century.The concept of“social organism”first entered the discourse of Herbert Spencer and his disciples to defend their individualistic notion of natural rights and free competition against the power of the state.Later,Spencer’s critics formulated more authoritarian interpretations of the concept,paving the way for the institutionalization of public education,charity,urban governance and other public affairs.This eventually led to the re-conceptualization of“social organism”by new-liberalists into a concept that justified social reform,welfare system and state intervention.In the meantime,“social organism”gradually lost its multiple and fluid meanings,ending with a dominant form of explanation that marginalized others.This intellectual event had been successful in introducing the concept of“social organism”,previously alien to liberalism,to the nineteenth-century liberal effort of imagining a more cohesive,mutually-dependent society,while also enabling its intellectual participation in the transformation of British society from an industrial kind glorifying laissez-faire principles and individualsim,to a welfare society laying more emphasis on equity and the state’s duty for the well-being of the citizens.This study adopts Quentin Skinner’s“Cambridge School”method of conceptual history to examine the evolution of the concept of“social organism”during the Victorian period.It serves the purpose of providing a historical narrative of the shifts in the 19th century British liberal political and social ideas.
作者
关依然
GUAN Yiran(Department of History,Fudan University)
出处
《社会》
CSSCI
北大核心
2021年第5期117-152,共36页
Chinese Journal of Sociology
作者简介
关依然,E-mail:guanyiran1992@163.com。
