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  3. The American tradition has found this view of human history repugnant and fal

The American tradition has found this view of human history repugnant and fal

游客2025-03-30  0
问题    The American tradition has found this view of human history repugnant and false. 【T1】This tradition sees the world as many, not as one. These empirical instincts, the preference for fact over logic, for deed over dogma, have found their most brilliant expression in the writings of William James and in the approach to philosophical problems which James called "radical empiricism". Against the belief in the all-encompassing power of a single explanation, against the commitment to the absolutism of ideology, against the notion that all answers to political and social problems can be found in the back of some sacred book, against the deterministic interpretation of history, against the closed universe, 【T2】James stood for what he called the unfinished universe — a universe marked by growth, variety, ambiguity, mystery, and contingency — a universe where free men may find partial truths, but where no mortal man will ever get an absolute grip on Absolute Truth, a universe where social progress depends not on capitulation to a single, all-consuming body of doctrine, but on the uncoerced intercourse of unconstrained minds.
   Thus ideology and pragmatism differ radically in their views of history. They differ just as radically in their approach to issues of public policy. The ideologist, by mistaking models for reality, always misleads as to the possibilities and consequences of public decision. The history of the twentieth century is a record of the manifold ways in which humanity has been betrayed by ideology.
   Let us take an example from contemporary history. 【T3】It is evident now, for example, that the choice between private and public means, that choice which has obsessed so much recent political and economic discussion in underdeveloped countries, is not a matter of religious principle. It is not a moral issue to be decided on absolutist grounds, either by those on the right who regard the use of public means as wicked and sinful, or by those on the left who regard the use of private means wicked and sinful. It is simply a practical question as to which means can best achieve the desired end. It is a problem to be answered not by theology but by experience and experiment. Indeed, 1 would suggest that we might well banish some overloaded words from intellectual discourse. They belong to the vocabulary of demagoguery, not to the vocabulary of analysis.
   So, with the invention of the mixed society, pragmatism has triumphed over absolutism. As a consequence, the world is coming to understand that the mixed economy offered the instrumentalities through which one can unite social control with individual freedom. But ideology is a drug; no matter how much it is exposed by experience, the craving for it still persists. That craving will, no doubt, always persist, so long as there is human hunger for an all-embracing, all-explanatory system, so long indeed as political philosophy is shaped by the compulsion to return to the womb.
   The oldest philosophical problem, we have noted, is the relationship between the one and the one and the many. Surely the basic conflict of our times is precisely the conflict between those who would reduce the world to one and those who see the world as many — between those who believe that the world is evolving in a single direction, along a single predestined line, toward a single predestined conclusion, and those who think that humanity in the future, as in the past, will continue to evolve in diverse directions, toward diverse conclusions, according to the diverse traditions, values, and purposes of diverse peoples. It is a choice, in short, between dogmatism and pragmatism, between the theological society and the experimental society.
   Ideologists are afraid of the free flow of ideas, even of deviant ideas within their own ideology. They are convinced they have a monopoly on the Truth. Therefore they always feel that they are only saving the world when they slaughter the heretics. 【T4】Their objective remains that of making the world over in the image of their dogmatic ideology. The goal is a monolithic world, organized on the principle of infallibility — but the only certainty in an absolute system is the certainty of absolute abuse.
   The goal of free men is quite different. Free men know many truths, but they doubt whether any mortal man knows the Truth. Their religious and their intellectual heritage join in leading them to suspect fellow men who lay claim to infallibility. They believe that there is no greater delusion than for man to mistake himself for God. 【T5】They accept the limitations of the human intellect and the infirmity of the human spirit. The distinctive human triumph, in their judgment, lies in the capacity to understand the frailty of human striving but to strive nonetheless. [br] 【T4】
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答案 他们的追求仍然是根据他们意识形态的教条概念去改造世界。他们的目标是按照确定无误的理论，建造一个庞大而僵化的世界——然而，绝对的体制必然导致权力的滥用。
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