Huntington’s clash
亨氏冲突
Dec 30th 2008
From The Economist print edition
One of America’s great public intellectuals died on Christmas Eve
美国伟大的公共知识分子–塞缪尔.亨廷顿于圣诞前夜与世长辞
Illustration by KAL
IN THE early 1990s America’s opinion-makers competed to outdo each other in triumphalism. Economists argued that the “Washington consensus” would spread peace and prosperity around the world. Politicians debated whether the “peace dividend” should be used to create universal health care or be allowed to fructify in the pockets of the people or quite possibly both. Francis Fukuyama took the optimists’ garland by declaring, in 1992, “the end of history” and the universal triumph of Western liberalism.
上世纪九十年代初，美国的舆论制造者们对”必胜主义”的鼓吹甚嚣尘上，经济学家们主张”华盛顿共识”[1]必将在全世界播撒和平和繁荣，政治家们则 就”和平红利”[2]的用处争论不休–是建立全民医疗体系还是充实百姓荷包？或者两者兼顾也完全有可能？1992年，弗朗西斯•福山（Francis Fukuyama）高呼”历史的终结”（”the end of history”）和西方自由主义的绝对胜利，并因此赢得了乐观者的花环。
Samuel Huntington thought that all this was bunk. In “The Clash of Civilisations?” he presented a darker view. He argued that the old ideological divisions of the Cold War would be replaced not by universal harmony but by even older cultural divisions. The world was deeply divided between different civilisations. And far from being drawn together by globalisation, these different cultures were being drawn into conflict.
而塞缪尔•亨廷顿却认为这一切纯属无稽之谈。在《文明的冲突？》一文中，他提出了更加悲观的观点，他认为冷战中意识形态的分歧最后并不会达到和谐统 一，取而代之的将是更加古老的文化差异。世界被不同的文明所分割，而这种文明的分界线又是根深蒂固的，文化差异并不会被全球化所淹没，恰恰相反，不同的文 化将会引发冲突。
Huntington added another barb to his argument by suggesting that Western civilisation was in relative decline: the American power-mongers who thought that they were the architects of a new world order were more likely to find themselves the victims of cultural forces that they did not even know existed. The future was being forged in the mosques of Tehran and the planning commissions of Beijing rather than the cafés of Harvard Square. His original 1993 article, in Foreign Affairs, was translated into 26 languages and expanded into a best-selling book.
亨廷顿还尖刻地指出，西方文明正处在相对衰落时期：自认是”世界新秩序的建筑师”的美国权力掮客，将更有可能发现自己其实是文化力量的受害者，而之 前他们甚至不知道文化力量的存在。未来正在德黑兰的众多清真寺和北京的诸多规划部门中悄然孕育着，而并不停留在哈佛广场的小咖啡馆里。《文明的冲突？》一 文最早于1993年刊登在《外交》（Foreign Affairs）季刊上，现已被译成26种语言，后又在此文基础上扩充成书，跻身畅销书之列。
The “Clash of Civilisations?” was only the most famous of numerous exercises in goring sacred cows. In “The Third Wave: Democratisation in the Late 20th Century” (1991), he argued that democratisation might have more to do with the Second Vatican Council, which had unleashed a wave of democratisation across the Catholic world, than with the spread of free-markets. In “Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity” (2004) he challenged the reigning orthodoxy of multiculturalism, pointing out that American civilisation is the product of Anglo-Saxon Protestant culture, and warning that the huge influx of Latinos threatened to unmoor it from its roots.
最知名的《文明的冲突》仅是亨廷顿无数如椽巨著中的惊鸿一瞥。在《第三波-20世纪后期的民主化浪潮》（The Third Wave: Democratisation in the Late 20th Century）（1991）中，他认为第二次梵蒂冈大公会议在天主教世界掀起了民主化的浪潮，它之于全球民主化浪潮的作用更甚于自由市场的蔓延。在之后 的《我们是谁：美国国家特性面临的挑战》（Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity）（2004）中，他对主流的多元文化主义（multiculturalism）正统观念提出质疑，指出美国文化是盎格鲁-撒克逊新教文 化的产物，并警告说拉丁裔新移民的大量涌入会将美国文化连根拔起，直至消亡。
Huntington’s last book earned him a reputation as a crusty old reactionary. He certainly became a hate figure to the left and a hero to many conservatives. But his politics were altogether more complicated. He was a lifelong Democrat, a representative of that dying breed, the hard-headed cold war liberal. He wrote speeches for Adlai Stevenson and acted as a foreign-policy adviser to Hubert Humphrey. He briefly served in the Johnson and Carter administrations (he was a particularly close friend of Zbigniew Brzezinski, one of Barack Obama’s early backers). He was a fierce opponent of the neoconservatives who thought they could transplant American values into Mesopotamia.
亨廷顿最后的著作给他带上了”顽固守旧的保守主义者”的帽子，顺理成章的，左翼开始视他为眼中钉，很多保守主义者则将他奉为英雄。但他的政见远没有 如此简单。他是民主党的终身党员，是那些行将消退的老式民主党人的代表，是冷静的冷战自由主义者。他曾为阿德莱.史蒂文森（Adlai Stevenson）起草竞选演说稿，曾时任休伯特.汉弗莱（Hubert Humphrey）的外交政策顾问，在约翰逊和卡特政府中都曾短暂任职（他还是兹比格涅夫.布热津斯基–奥巴马早期的支持者尤为亲密的朋友）。他是那些认 为自己可以将美国价值观移植于美索不达米亚（Mesopotamia）（主要包括今伊拉克以及土耳其、叙利亚的部分地区，译者注）之上的新保守主义者们的 劲敌。
But he believed that it was vital to mix liberal idealism with a pessimism rooted in a conservative reading of history. He rejected the economic reductionism that drove the Washington consensus, and insisted instead on seeing people as products of culture rather than as profit-and-loss calculating machines. He also rejected the beguiling idea (some say it has beguiled The Economist) that all good things tend to go together-that free markets go hand in hand with pluralism, democracy and the American way. He felt that America was a living paradox: America’s culture turned it into a universal civilisation but those values were in fact rooted in a unique set of circumstances.
但是他认为，在自由理想主义中融入根植于保守主义历史观的悲观主义是至关重要的。他反对促成华盛顿共识的经济简化论，认为人是文化的产物，而不是计 算利益得失的机器。他也反对具有蒙蔽性的假想（有人认为《经济学人》已被蒙蔽），后者认为所有美好的事物往往会走到一起–多元化、民主、美国方式都将伴随 着自由市场一同到来。他感觉美国就是一个活生生的悖论：美国文化正试图成为普世文明，但这些价值观事实上却根植于独特的环境之中。
For all his long career and prodigious energy-Huntington was on the Harvard faculty for 54 years and wrote 17 books on a wide variety of subjects-he will always be associated with the phrase “the clash of civilisations”. How well does his argument hold up 15 years after he first penned it?
亨廷顿在哈佛任教长达54年之久，并发表了17部专著，涉及题材广泛。漫长的执教生涯和过人的精力将使他永远和”文明的冲突”这一表述联系在一起。距其观点首次发表15年之后的今天，我们再回头看它是否还站得住脚。
Both well and badly. Huntington came as close as anybody to predicting September 11th and the “war on terror” with his strictures about Islam’s “bloody borders”. He also came as close as anybody to predicting America’s agonies in Iraq by pointing out that democracy is the product of very specific cultural processes. His argument that modernisation does not necessarily entail Westernisation also looks prescient: why should the Chinese embrace the American economic model when it seems to produce such economic havoc? And why should authoritarian regimes in the Middle East embrace democratisation when it might mean handing power to Islamists? The master emerges better than his pupil, Mr Fukuyama.
可以说是对错参半。亨廷顿指责伊斯兰拥有”血腥边界”[3]，几近精准地预测了美国911恐怖袭击和”反恐战争”（war on terror）；他指出民主是非常特定的文化进程之产物，从而又同样精准地预测了美国的伊拉克之痛。而其”现代化”不必牵涉”西化”的观点也颇具远见：既 然美国经济模式可能导致这样一场经济浩劫，中国人又为何非得走美国的老路呢？既然民主化可能意味着权力会落入伊斯兰主义者手中，中东的独裁政权又为何非要 奉行民主化呢？作为福山先生的导师，亨廷顿确实要比他的学生高明。
Right up to a point 质疑亨廷顿
But the corrective itself has needed correcting. Huntington defended his taste for the broadest of brushes on the grounds that, without one, you are left with what William James called “a bloomin’ buzzin’ confusion”. But his pronouncements often distorted reality rather than imposed order on it. He skated over the fact that many of the nastiest clashes take place within civilisations rather than between them: more Muslims die at the hands of their fellow Muslims than die at the hands of “Jews or Crusaders”; and Europeans fought the 20th century’s bloodiest conflicts among themselves. He also downplayed the extent to which the American model attracts people the world over: the Chinese business elite are much more interested in Silicon Valley than in their Confucian past. His arguments can produce policies that are just as naive as those he excoriated: policies that drive Muslims together into a single angry mass, rather than prising them apart, for example, and policies that
encourage Western self-doubt just as surely as do the hand-wringing of the multiculturalists.
但是纠正本身亦需要纠正。他为自己在最广范围内对世界进行梳理的研究方法进行辩护，他的理由是如果没有这样的梳理，你将陷入威廉.詹姆斯所言的”一 片极度模糊、嘁嘁喳喳的混沌”（a bloomin’ buzzin’ confusion）[4]之中。但在他公开发表的文章和著作中歪曲的事实常常取代了理顺的秩序。他忽略了很多激烈冲突都发生在同种文明之内而不是不同的 文化之间这一事实–更多的穆斯林死于他们的穆斯林兄弟之手，而不是”犹太教徒或十字军战士”（Jews or Crusaders）[5]手中；20世纪最血腥的战争也爆发于欧洲人与欧洲人之间。同时，他也忽视了美国榜样对全世界的吸引力–对中国的商业精英们来 说，比起他们的儒家传统，他们对美国硅谷（Silicon Valley）更有兴趣。依照他的观点制定出的政策正如他所批评的那些政策一样天真–比如说，那些使所有穆斯林变成单一暴民群体，而不是将他们拆散开来的 政策，还有那些使多元文化主义者绝望也必然会使西方产生自我怀疑的政策。
Huntington was a remarkable figure for all sorts of reasons, but most importantly because he was willing to question the excessive liberal optimism of the 1990s. Perhaps the best tribute that can be paid to him now is to question the excessive Huntingtonian pessimism that is now threatening to replace it.
我们有很多种理由认为亨廷顿是杰出的，但最重要的原因莫过于，在20世纪90年代自由主义者的乐观泛滥之时，他乐于提出质疑。目前，亨式悲观铺天盖地而来，大有取代前者之势，也许目前对他最好的致敬方式就是对亨式悲观提出质疑。
注释：
[1] Cf:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Consensus
[2] 所谓”和平红利”，主要是指由军用转向民用的那部分财政资金及其可能带来的收益。据估计，冷战结束后10年间，由于美国的国防费用占GDP的比重由 5.2%下降到不足3%，美国共获得10000亿美元的”和平红利”。Cf：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki /Peace_dividend
[3] 见《文明的冲突与世界秩序的重建》第十章
[4] 威廉•詹姆士（William James，1842-1910）曾提出”one great blooming, buzzing confusion”描述世界在婴儿大脑中的印象。
[5] 见《文明的冲突与世界秩序的重建》第十章
附：亨廷顿主要作品下载地址：
变革社会中的政治秩序
http://ishare.iask.sina.com.cn/cgi-bin/fileid.cgi?fileid=4642553
难以抉择-发展中国家的政治参与
http://ishare.iask.sina.com.cn/cgi-bin/fileid.cgi?fileid=4494977
第三波–20世纪后期民主化浪潮
http://ishare.iask.sina.com.cn/cgi-bin/fileid.cgi?fileid=4642185
文明的冲突与世界秩序的重建
http://ishare.iask.sina.com.cn/cgi-bin/fileid.cgi?fileid=4705259
民主的危机
http://ishare.iask.sina.com.cn/cgi-bin/fileid.cgi?fileid=4705728
我们是谁：美国国家特性面临的挑战
http://www.rayfile.com/zh-cn/files/29ccf6d1-cd5a-11dd-a3f4-0014221b798a/
现代化–理论与历史经验的再探讨
http://www.rayfile.com/files/29cf78d1-cd5a-11dd-8c00-0014221b798a/
译者：Bender.Z http://www.ecocn.org/bbs/viewthread.php?tid=16417&extra=page%3D1
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