THINKING EAST AND WEST
Maybe you’re looking forward to 2018. But what about 2068, 2118, 3118? Our philosophers reveal how ideas of progress have evolved
Feeling philosophical about the future? JULIAN BAGGINI and WAI-HUNG WONG discuss
說東道西
朱立安．巴吉尼與王偉雄從哲學角度探討未來的情況
Last year, Google’s artificial intelligence program AlphaGo stunned the world by defeating world champion Lee Sedol in a game of Go, a strategic boardgame. Recently, its successor AlphaGo Zero has proven to be even more intelligent: after three days of training, it outwitted the previous version of AlphaGo by 100 games to none. In view of such formidable evolution, scholars like Stephen Hawking have expressed their concerns that artificial minds might eventually emulate human intelligence and threaten our very existence.
Taking this gloomy outlook and the threat of global warming into account, it seems justifiable to believe that what lies ahead of humanity is a dystopia, one that
resembles the fictitious worlds of Blade Runner or Brave New World.
Advocates of human progress who still believe in a better world seek inspiration from the Enlightenment, an intellectual movement that dominated the West in the 18th century and laid the foundation for human rationality. For more than three centuries, what philosophers call ‘instrumental rationality’ – where the means are designed to suit carefully calculated ends – has introduced countless breakthroughs in different fields of knowledge.
However, while instrumental rationality has certainly improved the materialistic conditions of human life, it has failed to address the spiritual values underneath, including the meaning of existence – what we ought to pursue and the way to achieve a meaningful life. As such, it is problematic to argue that the affluent world of our time is a ‘better’ place than before.
The clue is in the name: Enlightenment theorists wanted to expose old ways and customs in the glare of the new ways of thinking. In China, however, customary practices and ancient ideas that promoted social order and ethical values were greatly praised by thinkers such as Confucius. In The Analects of Confucius, he noted approvingly that the rites observed in the Zhou dynasty had ‘captured the essence of the two previous dynasties of Xia and Shang’.
Late Qing scholar Kang Youwei drew an optimistic lesson from the ethical teachings in ancient texts Spring and Autumn Annals and Book of Rites. His theory in The Book of Great Unity predicts a world, which evolves from chaos to a
WE’VE MADE HUGE LEAPS FORWARD IN KNOWLEDGE AND TECHNOLOGY, BUT ETHICAL AND SPIRITUAL PROGRESS HAS SLOWED我們在知識和科技上大有進步，但道德及靈性的進步則十分遲緩
period of moderate prosperity, and then to great unity at last. Kang’s notion of evolution is essentially one that concerns moral, not materialistic, progress. The beliefs of ancestral exemplars continue to shine a light on ethical values that we should follow.
While the world has undoubtedly leapt forward in terms of knowledge, technology and material abundance, ethical and spiritual progress has slowed. The education system we have now in the East, which emphasises the training of instrumental rationality in the fields of Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) instead of humanities, only aggravates the situation.
去年在科技方面的一件大新聞，是人工智能圍棋程式Al p h aG o擊敗圍棋世界冠軍李世 ；更而 令人驚異的是，一年多後，這個人工智能圍棋程式的最新版本 AlphaGo Zero已能在三天內自學圍棋，並連勝方版本100局！人工智能的發展將會怎樣，沒有人能肯定，但至少一些有識之士為此而擔憂，例如著名物理學家霍金就認為，人工智能繼續發展下去，會不斷提高能力，懂得自我改，進 最後可能超越和凌駕人類，不再受人類控甚制，至毀滅人類。
少這方面來看，科技不斷進步，對人類而言，可能令世界變得更壞。人工智能的隱憂，也許帶點科幻的性質；，然而只要一想到愈來愈逼切的全球暖化問題，便不難理解為我何 們相信將來的世界會是個惡托邦：就像電影《2020》或小說《美麗新世界》裡所描述的一樣。
不知道現在還有多少人相信人類是在不斷進步，相信世界會變得愈來愈美 好。，其實 「人類不斷進步」這個觀念是源於西方的，而且要到18世紀啟的 蒙時代開流才 始行起來，主要是基於對人類理性的強大信心。300多年後，我們見到人類在知識和科技上的進步，都是運用工具理性的結果。
可是，工具理性不能幫我助 們決定行為背後的價值取向，例如「人應該如何過活？、」 「什麼事物值得追求？」、「怎樣才是豐盛的人生？、」「人生有意義嗎？」等問題，工具理性都無法提供答案；，因此 無論人類在物質活生 方面有多麼大的改，神善 精 生活上面可說毫無改，進 甚至是退步。
啟蒙時代的理論以家 帶著新思維的目光來審視古老的方式與習慣，但是中國的思想家則大多有崇古的傾，向 早至孔，子 已有復古的訴求，他特別崇拜周公《； 論語．八佾》中記載孔子說：「周監於代二 ，郁郁乎文哉！吾少周。孔」 子嚮往的，是周代的禮樂，禮樂不是外在的文飾，而是能確立人文秩序與價值的制度。
其後中國的眾多思想家，莫不師法孔子而崇古，要等到清末的康有為，才清楚地表明相信人類會不斷進步；他在《大同書》裡論述了人類社會發展的三個階段，即由「據亂」進為「升平」的小康社會，再進而為「太平」的大同社會。，不過 康有為論的 述還是要訴諸古代著作《春秋》和《禮記》裡的理念，而且他著重的，仍然是恰當的價值而不只物是 質進步。
世界會升好變 更 嗎？若是在人類的知識、科技，以及物質活生 方面，答案應該是肯定的；，可是 若在價值取向和精神生活層面來看，答案很可能是否定的。現在東方的教育系統不斷強調工具理性和STEM（由科學、技術，工程及數學四個學科首個英文字母組成） ，不重視能培養恰當價值的人文學科，只會令情況變升更壞。
The Future is a Western concept. Of course, all around the world people have a sense of tense, remembering the past and planning for the future. In the West, however, the Future merits a capital F.
It is the destiny of humankind, the better place to which we are all heading. The Future doesn’t simply follow the past, it gives it meaning.
This is not how time has generally been conceived in most other parts of the world. Most civilisations, including the Mayans, Incans and Hopi, have viewed time as cyclical. ‘Day and night revolve as on a wheel,’ as the classical Indian text the Rig Veda puts it. It is natural to see time as cyclical because almost everything else in life is, too: the movements of the stars, the turning of the seasons, the endless cycles of life and death. In this worldview, the future is the past and what we look forward to is a return to an earlier, purer state, usually a kind of oneness with nature or the divine.
In the West, however, the dominant conception of time is linear. There is no going back: the only way is forwards. The Golden Age, which for many cultures is always located in the past, is yet to come.
The origins of this way of thinking are almost certainly Christian. In Judaism, the job of the Messiah was to return the chosen people to the Promised Land. In Christianity, the return of the Messiah would bring a New Jerusalem. Salvation was no longer a restoration of an earlier order but the creation of a new one.
Two millennia of Christian domination of culture have ingrained this way of thinking in secular philosophy, too. As Wai-hung observes, the European Enlightenment embraced secular reason over sacred revelation. However, it continued the Christian narrative of progress towards a better future. Instead of salvation through faith in a life to come, it advocated salvation through rationality here on Earth.
The 20th century rudely challenged this optimistic narrative. ‘Progress’, it seemed, had first brought misery for millions working in dangerous, soul-destroying factories, and then annihilation in two world wars, the last of which was ended by the explosion of two atomic bombs.
Disillusion with modernity led many to dig up the Enlightenment soil in
未來一是 種西方概念。，誠然世界各地的人都對時態有所感受，會回憶過去，計亦 劃未來。不過在西方，「未來」的地位超然，非同凡響；它譜寫人類的命運，也是人邁類 向至善之途。未來不僅隨著過去而來，更為過去賦予意。義
不過，在西方以外絕大部分地區的人卻非並 以這種式方 來理解時間。不少古代文明， 括瑪雅、印加和霍皮族，等 都認為時間是循環不息的；正如印度經典《歌詠明論》所述，「如迴日夜 輪， 環往復。」這種認為間時 循環不息的觀點自然不過，皆因生活裡絕大部分事物亦復如是， 括日轉星移、季節更，迭以至生死的無盡循環。在種這 世界觀裡，未來就是過去，而人們所追求，的往往是回歸與自然或神明合一的方粹態狀 。
不過，主導西方思潮的卻是一種線性的時間觀念：人們無回法 到過去，只能前不斷進對。 於許多文化而言，黃「 金時代」往往已成過去，但對西方來說，則仍然尚未來臨。
which it had grown. Most famously, Max Horkheimer and Theodor W Adorno argued that the Enlightenment itself ‘culminates in fascism’. Faith in human reason, science and progress led to the mechanisation and dehumanisation of society. The dignity of the individual was swept away by abstract ideals.
This is an extreme view, but there can be little doubt that belief in progress has significantly declined. Now the future is more often anticipated as dystopian than utopian. Science fiction portrayals of the future like Blade Runner show a dysfunctional, dark, violent society at best, a post-apocalyptic scene of desolation at worst. This pessimism now seems so natural that I have hesitated to see the highly acclaimed Blade Runner 2049, much as I loved its predecessor. I have been infected by the idea that sequels are never as good as originals, a symptom of the way in which even popular culture has become more enthusiastic about the past than the future.
The problem for the West is that loss of faith in the future leaves it with nowhere else to go. Nostalgia has its limits. We have lived the narrative of progress so long that we cannot believe that any period of history provides a model of a better alternative to today. The result is a kind of cultural malaise in which there is an expectation that our best days are behind us but we have no hope of returning to them. This fuels gloomy predictions of the decline of Europe, the rise of China and India, and with these the decline of Western civilisation.
The cure for this malady of the soul is a return to the Enlightenment, not a retreat from it. The idea that Western modernity entails blind faith in progress was not one held by the best Enlightenment thinkers. As the historian Jonathan Israel says, ideas of progress ‘were usually tempered by a strong streak of pessimism, a sense of the dangers and challenges to which the human condition is subject’.
The Western mind went astray when it became too convinced it already had all the knowledge and wisdom it needed, and so a better world was an inevitability. It needs to recover belief in the possibility of progress alongside a recognition that it can only become actuality with physical and intellectual effort. To do this, the West needs to stop seeing Asia and India as a threat and see how their progress is also that of humanity as a whole.
這種思考方式幾乎可以肯定來自基督教。猶太義教教 認為，彌賽亞的任務是帶領上帝選的 民重返應許之地；而基督教則認為彌賽亞再臨時，將建會 立新耶路撒冷因。此，救恩並非復興舊有的秩序，而是創造嶄新的世界。
2,000年以來，教基督 主導西方文化，令這種思維同樣深植於世俗學哲 當中。正如王偉雄亦指出歐，啟洲蒙動運 摒棄神聖啟示而擁護世俗理性之餘，仍延續基督教對於邁向更美好未來的觀念；只不過他們所倡導的並非因信仰得永生，而是透過世上的理性而得救。罷了
20世紀毫不客地疑種氣 質 這 樂觀的論述。步「進 」似乎不但令數以百萬計的工人在危機四伏的工廠裡勞動，更令他們淪為沒有靈的魂 機器，然後兩世大次 界 戰均造成毀滅性的破日，第二次界戰世 大 更以兩次原爆告終，令生靈塗。炭
因理想幻滅而衍生的現代主義，令許多人抨擊啟蒙動種運 所 下的禍根。當中以德國哲家學 霍克海默和阿當諾的思想最廣為人知，兩人認為啟蒙運動本身「導致法西斯主 義出現」對； 人類理性、科學進和 步的心信 ，造就機械化和去人性化的社會，就連個人尊嚴也被抽象的理想泯滅淨盡。
這種觀點固然失諸偏激，但人們對進步的信實心確 已大不如前。，更現在 人們 常預期未來將是托會 惡 邦，而非托並 烏 邦。《2020》等科幻電影和小說所描繪的未來，充其量是一個充滿暗黑、暴力而且喪失正常能功 的社會，甚至是一片劫後餘生的末日景象。這種悲觀情緒現在似乎已是自然不過，令我這個深愛《2020》迷的影 ，也對廣受好評的續集《銀殺翼手2049》卻步。我深受續集永遠不及原作的觀念所影響，而這現正種 象 好說明，就連流行文化也對過去比未來更為衷熱 。
西方面的題要 對 問 ，是在對未來失去信後心 ，頓時感到前路茫茫。人們無是法總懷好緬美 的過去，，可是我們長久以來對進步說信疑深不 ，已法無 相信歷史上的任何一時段 期能夠為今天提供另一個更佳的選擇，結果形成一種文化無力感：相人們 信人類光最 輝的日子早已消逝，而無且 法重回那段好美 的過去。這種感覺甚至令人對未來充滿消極的預期，認為隨著歐失洲 勢、中國和抬印度 頭，西方文明將會從此一蹶不振。
要根治這種植深 靈魂的弊病，是回歸啟蒙運動的懷抱，而並非對它退避三少。啟蒙動運最優秀的思想家並沒有主張西方的現代性意味著要盲目信進奉 步的理念。正如歷史家學 Jonathan Israel所言，步進 的理念「往往衍生自強烈的悲觀情緒，以及人類處境面臨的危機和挑戰。」
西方思想自詡已具備所有必需的知識和慧智 ，因此更美好的世界已是囊中之物，結誤果 入歧途。它需要對進步的可能性重拾信心，同時知認 進步非得倚靠實際的努力和知性的鑽研不可。要實現這一點，西方必須不再把亞和洲 印度視為威脅，並且將這些地區的發展也視為人性整體的進步。
FAITH IN HUMAN REASON, SCIENCE AND PROGRESS LED TO THE MECHANISATION AND DEHUMANISATION OF SOCIETY對人類理性、科學和進步的信心，造就機械化和去人性化的社會