Comments on Rosenthal's "The Escape from Hegel"

Author(s): Paul Diesing

Source: Science & Society, Vol. 64, No. 3 (Fall, 2000), pp. 374-378

對羅森塔爾“逃離黑格爾”的評論

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【374】

????????在過去的兩個世紀里，對黑格爾和馬克思的各種解讀層出不窮。特別是在過去的三十年中，解讀馬克思的方式的數(shù)量與日俱增。每種解讀都部分地或在一開始基于解讀者的思維方式、視角和關(guān)注點。這又反過來得到了其他具有相同思維方式的解讀者的支持和確認。這種確認是相互的，具有相同思維方式的人們組成了一個學派，或者說是一個由志同道合的解讀者組成的“影子學院”，他們確信自己的思維方式顯然是正確的，而其他人的思維方式是錯誤的、膚淺的或愚蠢的。

????????羅森塔爾在他的文章中將黑格爾的辯證法解讀為一種非常壞的思維方式，一種生產(chǎn)十足謬論的不合邏輯的神秘化方法。馬克思陷入了這種思維方式，并寫下了大量蠢話，但他設法逐漸地逃離了這種思維方式，轉(zhuǎn)而進入了另一種更好的、康德的思維方式。

????????我對黑格爾—馬克思辯證法的解讀與此完全不同。我認為辯證法是一種非常好的思維方式，而且是馬克思取得重大成就的基礎(chǔ)。我想總結(jié)一下我對黑格爾—馬克思辯證法的觀點，并將其與羅森塔爾的觀點相比較（更完整的闡述，見Diesing, 1999）。

????????辯證法有兩個對立的方面。其一就是黑格爾所稱的“辯證法本身”("the dialectic it has in it")，也就是經(jīng)濟與其他社會制度的動力——供給與需求、資本與勞動、男性與女性、個體與社會等等，以及它們的相互關(guān)系。動力包括人們所做出或可能做出的對立、沖突、支持、主導權(quán)的轉(zhuǎn)移、崩潰以及修復。這些動力在社會中產(chǎn)生持續(xù)的變革。第二個方面則是研究者試圖理解并描述第一辯證法時的思維。因此【375】研究者的辯證法同樣也有兩個方面，一個是試探性探索的研究過程，而另一個則是對結(jié)果的體系化敘述。

????????研究者的試探性探索是一組幫助定位其本質(zhì)的可能行動，即部分地產(chǎn)生混亂、周期性、背離甚至是雜亂材料、表象的底層結(jié)構(gòu)。當然，研究者和記錄者也在一定程度上通過他們的期望和各自的敏銳感覺來塑造表象。我在這里列舉一個可能的研究行動的例子：如果材料具有短周期性，那么就要尋找在兩個對立者之間主導與從屬的交替。接著嘗試看看這個主導要素是如何使它的對立者開始運動并使它自己開始衰落的。接著尋找長期的背景要素。周期性的變革暗示了其他背景要素的存在。

????????研究過程在試探性探索與材料之間來回切換，Mavroudeas (1999, 322)對這一點進行了很好地總結(jié)：“抽象辯證發(fā)展與具體歷史現(xiàn)實之間存在著連續(xù)的辯證振蕩(oscillation)，這一辯證振蕩是通過一種連續(xù)的螺旋過程，且每一次都在更加復雜的層次上（假設有更多的規(guī)定的話）將以上兩者聯(lián)系起來的?！?/p>

????????在哲學家繪制出預設的社會結(jié)構(gòu)之后，就有必要以這樣一種方式來呈現(xiàn)出這一結(jié)構(gòu)，以表明各部分之間的相互聯(lián)系。黑格爾從一組簡單、抽象的對立者出發(fā)，描述它們，接著引入另一組對立者，且后者是前者經(jīng)驗內(nèi)容的一部分，以此類推?！斗ㄕ軐W原理》就是從抽象的自由意志與不自由的物出發(fā)的，后者——通過，例如，在其上進行的勞動——轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)樗接胸敭a(chǎn)。人們通過私有財產(chǎn)來貫徹自己的意志。但人們也必須有能力通過贈與或出售來自由支配自己的私有財產(chǎn)，這就要求其他人與訂立合約的存在。訂立合約反過來需要法律與法律體系。最終，整個復雜結(jié)構(gòu)得到了呈現(xiàn)。

????????這一結(jié)果可能會被誤解為一個草率的演繹過程，就像羅森塔爾所誤解的那樣。奧爾曼(Oliman, 1979, 177)(1)對辯證法的敘述方面進行了總結(jié)：“馬克思的目的在于將他解釋中的要素結(jié)合在一起，因為它們在現(xiàn)實中是相互關(guān)聯(lián)的，并且是以一種似乎屬于演繹體系的方式相互關(guān)聯(lián)的。……[馬克思評論道：]‘呈現(xiàn)在我們面前的就好像是一個先驗的結(jié)構(gòu)’。(2)”

????????但這并非一個先驗的演繹過程，它既是邏輯的又是描述性的：它解釋了當代社會復雜的相互影響，有的人可能會將之稱為多元決定。這一表述表明了各種過程之間的相互聯(lián)系；例如它可以表明，與農(nóng)業(yè)地區(qū)相比（截止1820年），城市中的青少年在獨立與非獨立之間的矛盾行為是如何在大量崗位需求與商業(yè)機會下而被推向獨立的。數(shù)據(jù)顯示，人們在城市中具有更強的獨立性，例如核心家庭(3)，而在農(nóng)村地區(qū)則具有更強的依賴性，例如父權(quán)制家庭。【376】它可以反映。它還可以表明社會的短期時間維度：停滯的舊制度、不斷增長的財富、貧困與失業(yè)、農(nóng)業(yè)工業(yè)化與農(nóng)奴解放（這些例子全都來自于黑格爾）。

????????相反，羅森塔爾的思維方式將邏輯論證與經(jīng)驗研究完全區(qū)分開來。他的辯證法的概念是康德的；他想要一個非經(jīng)驗的演繹過程。例如，他斷言：“我在這里提出的是，這條規(guī)律可以……進行先驗論證” (306)；“馬克思應當被看作經(jīng)濟科學領(lǐng)域的康德……馬克思的論證最好理解為康德意義上的‘先驗’論證”(303)。因此，他將關(guān)注點放在了黑格爾的邏輯學上，因為它就是黑格爾辯證法最清晰的例證。我將邏輯學視為一種優(yōu)秀的試探性探索，一組可用于經(jīng)驗的思想運動。我贊同d'Hondt (1988)(4)的觀點，他注意到邏輯學將社會變革的動力變成了一場概念的枯燥舞蹈：它“將生命轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)榧兯嫉幕覡a”。

????????當羅森塔爾將他的邏輯論證概念應用于黑格爾上時，他找到了隨意的神秘化與雙關(guān)語。他從馬克思這里發(fā)現(xiàn)，馬克思還沒有逃離黑格爾的影響。

????????例如，羅森塔爾將注意力放在馬克思的斷言上：“我們在貨幣上已經(jīng)看到，作為價值而獨立化的價值……除了量上的變動，除了自身的增大外，不可能有其他的運動?！?296)他將其視為論證的結(jié)論，并說明這一論證是多么似是而非。馬克思沒能證明貨幣在量上應當是無限的(297)。假設存在著這樣一種驅(qū)動力，為什么它在邏輯上不是趨向減少而非遞增的(299)？如何才能從貨幣概念中“推導出”資本概念？

????????但馬克思是在描述一個辯證的歷史過程。最初，特定的物品只是簡單地交換。后來，當交換越來越復雜時，貨幣——貝殼或碎金屬塊——備用來衡量交易物品的價值。價值是所有具有可交換性的商品所共有的普遍，而這一普遍使它們具有可交換性；但不同的商品具有不同的價值。貨幣就像是衡量價值的標準度量衡，所以它必須是中立的、可計量的。當價值逐漸具有可度量性時，人們就能夠按照等價交換的原則交換各種具有不同價值的物品了，或是能夠接受用貝殼補足差價。

????????后來，城鎮(zhèn)中的一些人專門從事交換；他們整日進行買賣。要做到這一點，他們當然需要大量的貨幣來便利他們的長期交換。貨幣數(shù)量持續(xù)發(fā)生變化?，F(xiàn)在，貨幣量，價值，已經(jīng)獨立化；商人可以將其看作一個獨立實體，并能夠看著它發(fā)生變化。當然，這種變化只是數(shù)量上的變化：貨幣量變得更多或更少?，F(xiàn)在，商人會試圖【377】推動哪種變化呢？逐漸減少的貨幣量會對未來的交換造成麻煩，而逐漸增加的貨幣量則會便利交換。所以商人會試圖增加他們的貨幣量。但隨著貨幣數(shù)量的擴張，交換也會擴張并多樣化，商人就必須雇傭職員并支付工資。于是，增加貨幣——現(xiàn)在變成了利潤——就成為了商人的緊要目標。貨幣已經(jīng)轉(zhuǎn)變?yōu)榱速Y本，其可以用來雇傭其他人并賺取更多的貨幣。對于一個為存款支付利息并將其以更高利率貸出的銀行家來說，他的主要目的就變成了增加貨幣供給。這位銀行家將全部精力放在了貨幣上，放在了賺取貨幣上。

????????今天同樣的動力也依然存在。企業(yè)的利潤必須越來越多，否則企業(yè)股票的價值就會下降，帶寬成本將變得越來越高，科研將會削減，杠桿收購或其他的麻煩將會發(fā)生。隨著企業(yè)為了生存而規(guī)模越來越大，企業(yè)的資產(chǎn)價值也永無止境地增長。因此，幾個世紀以來，增加貨幣的壓力與日俱增。同時，貨幣也不再是貝殼或金幣，而變成了數(shù)據(jù)庫中的數(shù)字。

????????羅森塔爾正在尋找某種邏輯論證來證明貨幣應當擴張，而且貨幣可以推導出資本。當然，他并沒能找到；這并非論證，而是對辯證過程的歷史描述。因此，他將馬克思的“一派胡言”、似是而非且神秘化的論證歸咎于黑格爾。

????????另一個例子：羅森塔爾對黑格爾最喜歡的普遍—特殊—個別辯證法進行調(diào)侃(292-4)。羅森塔爾將此視為一種演繹；而我相信黑格爾是在對一個非常常見的社會過程進行抽象，并指出它的動力作為未來研究的指引。現(xiàn)在我們思考一個案例：政策制定與執(zhí)行。假設你是一名政治學家。由行政部門制定和決策的政策是一般性的；它適用于一整套實例。但要想成為現(xiàn)實，它就必須在某個地方實施。普遍建立在特殊之上，反之亦然?！吨x爾曼反托拉斯法》制定了禁止企業(yè)合謀的政策，因為它阻礙了自由競爭；但當里根政府悄無聲息地停止實施時，這一政策就暫時消失了。每一次實施都是特殊的，因此不同于其他所有實施。實際上，它可能與政策制定者最初的抽象意圖相當不同(Pressman and Wildavsky, 1973)。但每一次實施都提供了一個可以模仿的案例，并根據(jù)不同情形而有所改變。如果整個一系列實施都圍繞著一組與政策的適用性相關(guān)的復雜條件——且其他條件被排除在外——而逐漸融合，那么該政策就被確立為具體的規(guī)定性。這就是個別性，且在美國的政策制定中極少發(fā)生。更多的時候【378】，由于實施流程的多變性，政策變得模糊不定；沒有人知道下一次它會如何實施。普遍已經(jīng)消失，被特殊所毀滅，“政策”成為高薪律師的戰(zhàn)場?；蛘咦兂梢环N象征性的偽裝，就像20世紀70年代美國國家環(huán)境保護局的政策一樣，這個機構(gòu)假裝正在實施自己的政策，以避免遭到環(huán)保主義者的起訴。

????????羅森塔爾將這種普遍—特殊—個別辯證法稱為“目的論的”。我不清楚他在說什么。政策當然是要被實施的；如果不被實施，它就不會存在。（這是目的論嗎？）任何實施都必須考慮到政策制定者沒有考慮到的特殊情況，因此特殊性確實背離了概念。但任何實施都是由政策確認的，并因此從屬于它。反過來，政策的實際含義只有在它的實施中才變得清晰；這項在華盛頓的政策在奧克蘭(292)開始“在它的另一種存在中認識它自己”。也就是說，政策制定者會找出他們的既定政策在實踐中會產(chǎn)生什么結(jié)果。羅森塔爾(292)認為，“如果這沒有多大意義的話”，人們“也不應當對此感到沮喪”。

????????以上總結(jié)的兩種思維方式是完全互斥的，以至于在它們之間做出任何溝通都是不可能的。溝通的一個先決條件是自己意識到自己的思維方式背后所預設的東西，以及這些預設如何與相對立的預設形成對立。在這之后，人們必須試著學會如何換另一種方式思考。

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Paul Diesing

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380 Springdale Drive

Bradenton, FL 34210-3023

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????????譯者注：

????????(1) 柏爾特·奧爾曼，美國馬克思主義哲學家，也是一位與許多學派有過接觸的辯證法學者（但并非體系辯證法或所謂的“新辯證法”學者，至少克里斯多夫·阿瑟并非將其視作體系辯證法學者）。奧爾曼的主要著作包括《異化：馬克思關(guān)于資本主義社會中的人的概念》（有中譯本）、《辯證法探究》和《辯證法的舞蹈：馬克思方法的步驟》（有中譯本），另有曾德華著的研究性著作《奧爾曼對馬克思辯證方法的解讀》。

????????(2) 《馬克思恩格斯全集》中文第二版第44卷第22頁。

????????(3) 即現(xiàn)代社會中常見的、由一對夫婦及其子女組成的小家庭，這一家庭結(jié)構(gòu)形式區(qū)別于多偶制家庭以及大家庭。

????????(4) 雅克·董特，法國著名哲學家，也是著名的黑格爾研究學者，著作包括《黑格爾傳》（有中譯本）等。

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REFERENCES

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????????d'Hondt, Jacques. 1988. Hegel in His Time. Peterborough, Ontario: Broadview Press.

????????Diesing, Paul. 1999. Hegel's Dialectical Political Economy: A Contemporary Application. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.

????????Mavroudeas, Stavros. 1999. "Regulation Theory: The Road from Creative Marxism to Postmodern Disintegration." Science & Society, 63:3 (Fall), 310-337.

????????Oilman, Berteli. 1979. The Social and Sexual Revolution. Boston, Massachusetts: South End Press.

????????Pressman, Jeffrey, and Aaron Wildavsky. 1973. Implementation: How Great Expectations in Washington Are Dashed in Oakland. Berkeley, California: University of California Press.

????????Rosenthal, John. 1999. "The Escape From Hegel." Science àf Society, 63:3 (Fall), 283-309.

Comments on Rosenthal's "The Escape from Hegel"

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????????Interpretations of Hegel and Marx have multiplied steadily in the last two centuries. In particular, interpretations of Marx have proliferated in the last three decades. Each interpretation is based partly, or initially, on a reader's way of thinking, perspective, focus of attention. These in turn are supported and confirmed by other readers who think the same way. The confirmation is mutual, and those who think the same way form a school, or "invisible college" of like-minded interpreters, convinced that their way of thinking is obviously correct and others are wrong, superficial, or silly.

????????In his article Rosenthal interprets Hegel's dialectic as a bad way of thinking, a method of illogical mystification producing utter nonsense. Marx got entrapped in this way of thinking and produced a lot of foolishness, but managed gradually to escape from it into a better, Kantian way.

????????My interpretation of the Hegel-Marx dialectic is very different. I believe the dialectic is a good way of thinking and is the basis for Marx's major achievements. I wish to summarize my view of Hegel-Marx dialectic and contrast it with Rosenthal's (see Diesing, 1999, for a more complete account).

????????There are two opposite aspects of the dialectic. The first is what Hegel calls "the dialectic it has in it," the dynamics of the economy and other social institutions - supply and demand, capital and labor, masculine and feminine, individuality and community, etc., and their interrelations. Dynamics include tensions, conflicts, supports, shifts of domination, breakdowns, and repairs which people make or could make. These dynamics produce continual changes in a society. The second aspect is the researcher's thinking in trying to understand and then describe the first dialectic. Thus the researcher's dialectic also has two aspects, a heuristic research process and a systematic presentation of the results.

????????The researcher's heuristic is a set of possible moves to help locate the essence, the underlying structure that partly produces the messy, cyclical, diverging, even chaotic data, the appearance. Of course researchers and journalists also shape the appearance somewhat by their expectations and varied sensitivities. An example of possible research moves: if the data are short-run cyclical, look for alternations of domination and submission between two opposites. Then try to see how the dominating factor activates its opposite and produces its own downfall. Then look for long-run contextual factors. Changes in the cycles suggest other contextual factors.

????????The research process moves between heuristics and data in a way that Mavroudeas (1999, 322) has summarized nicely: "There is a continuous dialectical oscillation between abstract dialectical development and concrete historical reality, relating them through a continuous spiral pattern, each time at more complex levels (assuming more determinations)."

????????After the philosopher has worked out the presumed structure of the society, it is necessary to present this structure in such a way as to show the interconnections among the parts. Hegel begins with a simple, abstract pair of opposites, describes them, then brings in another pair that is part of the empirical context of the first pair, and so on. The Philosophy of Right begins with abstract free will and not-free things, which become property, for instance by performing labor on them. One uses property to carry out one's decisions. But one must also be able to get free of one's property, by gift or sale, and that requires other people and contracts. Contracts in turn require a legal enforcement process, which requires laws and a legal system. Eventually the whole complex structure is laid out.

????????The result can be misinterpreted as a sloppy deductive process, as Rosenthal does. Oilman (1979, 177) summarizes the presentation aspect of the dialectic: "Marx's goal is to bring together the elements of his explanation as they are related in the real world and in such a manner that they seem to belong to a deductive system. . . . [Marx comments:] 'It may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori construction.'"

????????But it is not an a priori deductive process. It is both logical and descriptive: it brings out the complex mutual influences of a contemporary society, the overdeterminations, one might say. The description shows the interconnections among various processes; for instance it can show how teenagers' ambivalent moves between dependence and independence are nudged toward independence in cities by the context of available jobs and business opportunities, in contrast with farming areas (as of 1820). The data will show more independence of various kinds in cities, such as nuclear families, and more dependence in farming areas, such as patriarchal families. It can also show the short-term temporal dimensions of society: stagnant old institutions, increasing wealth and poverty and unemployment, the industrialization of agriculture and freeing of serfs. (The examples are all from Hegel.)

????????Rosenthal's way of thinking, in contrast, makes a sharp distinction between logical argumentation and empirical research. His conception of the dialectic is Kantian; he wants a non-empirical deductive process. For example, he asserts: "What I am proposing here is that this law can be demonstrated transcendentally . . ." (306); "Marx should be regarded as the Kant of economic science . . . Marx's arguments are best understood as 'transcendental arguments in the Kantian sense'" (303). Consequently he focuses on Hegel's Lógicas the clearest example of Hegel's dialectic. I regard the Logic as an advanced heuristic, a whole series of movements of thought that could be used empirically. I agree with d'Hondt (1988) who observed that the Logic changed the dynamic of social change into an arid dance of concepts: it "transformed life into the ashes of pure thought."

????????When Rosenthal applies his conception of logical argument to Hegel he finds capricious mystification and pun-making. He finds that in Marx, too, in places where Marx had not yet escaped from Hegel's influence.

????????For example, Rosenthal focuses on Marx's assertion: "We have seen, in the case of money, how value, having become independent as such ... is capable of no other motion than a quantitative one: to increase itself (296). He treats this as the conclusion of an argument, and shows how wildly specious the argument is. Marx doesn't prove that money ought to be quantitatively unlimited (297). And supposing there were such a drive, why couldn't it logically move toward diminishing rather than increasing itself? (299). And how can one "derive" the concept of capital from the concept of money?

????????But Marx is describing a dialectical historical process. Originally particular goods were simply exchanged. Later, when exchanges got more complex, money - clamshells or pieces of metal - was used to measure the value of objects being exchanged. Value was the universal shared by all exchangeable commodities, making them exchangeable; but different commodities could have different values. Money was like a yardstick for measuring value, so it had to be neutral, quantitative. When value gradually became measurable, one could exchange various objects of different value that added up to equal values, or could receive clamshells to make up the difference.

????????Later some people in towns became specialists in exchange; they bought and sold all day long. To do this they of course needed a stock of money to facilitate their constant exchanges. The stock varied in size continually. Now the stock, value, had become independent; the grocer could see it as a separate entity, and could watch it change. Of course the changes were quantitative: the stock got bigger and smaller. Now, what sort of change would the grocer try to help along? A diminishing stock would make trouble for future exchanges, and an increasing stock would facilitate exchanges. So the grocer would try to increase the stock. But as the stock of money expanded, exchanges could be expanded and diversified, and assistants had to be hired and paid. Now the goal of increasing money, now profit, would become urgent to the merchant. Money had become capital, the stock that could be used to hire people and make more money. And for a banker, who paid interest on deposits and loaned them for usury, the main purpose was to increase the money supply. The banker's whole focus was on money, that is on making money.

????????The same dynamic continues today. Corporate profits must get ever larger, or corporate stock value will decline, loans will become more costly, research will be cut back, and a leveraged buyout or other trouble will occur. The asset value of corporations increases endlessly as corporations get ever larger in order to survive. Thus over the centuries the pressure to increase one's money has intensified. Also money is no longer clamshells or gold coins, but numbers in a data bank.

????????Rosenthal is looking for some sort of logical argument to prove that money ought to expand, and that money implies capital. Of course he can't find it; it isn't an argument, but a historical description of a dialectical process. So he blames Hegel for Marx's "utter nonsense," his specious and mystifying argument.

????????Another example: Rosenthal pokes fun at Hegel's favorite universalparticular-individual dialectic (292-4). Rosenthal treats this as a deduction; I believe Hegel was abstracting a very common social process and bringing out its dynamics, as a guide for future research. Now think of an instance: policy-making and implementation. Pretend you're a political scientist. A policy, as constructed and decided by an executive branch, is general; it applies to a whole set of instances. But to be actual it must be implemented somewhere. The universal depends on the particular, and vice versa. The Sherman Antitrust Act established a policy forbidding business collusion, because this inhibits free competition; but when the Reagan administration quietly stopped enforcement, the policy disappeared temporarily. Each implementation is particular, and thus different from all others. Indeed, it may be quite different from the original abstract intentions of the policymakers (Pressman and Wildavsky, 1973). But each implementation also provides an example which can be imitated, with changes adapted to different circumstances. If a whole series of implementations gradually coalesces around a complex set of conditions that are deemed relevant to the applicability of the policy, and other conditions are excluded, then the policy has become established as specifically determinate. That's individuality, which rarely happens in U. S. policymaking. More often a policy becomes vague and shifting because of the wide variety of implementation procedures; nobody knows how it will work in the next case. The universal has vanished, destroyed by the particulars, and the "policy" becomes a battleground for high-paid lawyers. Or it becomes a symbolic pretense, as with EPA policies of the early 1970s, which pretended to be implemented to avoid lawsuits by environmentalists.

????????Rosenthal calls this universal-particular-individual dialectic "teleological." I don't know what he means. A policy is intended to be implemented, of course; without implementation it doesn't exist. (Is that teleology?) And any implementation must take account of particular circumstances that policymakers didn't have in mind, so particularity does diverge from the concept. But any implementation is justified by the policy, and so is subordinate to it. Conversely, the actual meaning of the policy becomes clear only in its implementations; the policy, in Washington, comes to "know itself in its other being," in Oakland (292). That is, the policymakers find out what their intended policy comes to in practice. One "should not be dismayed if this does not make much sense" to Rosenthal (292).

????????The two ways of thinking summarized above are so incompatible that any dialog between them would seem to be impossible. One precondition for dialog would be a self-awareness of the assumptions underlying one's own way of thinking, and how they contrast with opposite assumptions. After that, one must try to learn to think the other way as well.

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Paul Diesing

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Bradenton, FL 34210-3023