龔鵬程對話海外學者第五十八期：在后現代情境中，被技術統治的人類社會，只有強化交談、重建溝通倫理，才能獲得文化新生的力量。這不是誰的理論，而是每個人都應實踐的活動。龔鵬程先生遊走世界，并曾主持過“世界漢學研究中心”。我們會陸續推出“龔鵬程對話海外學者”系列文章，請他對話一些學界有意義的靈魂。范圍不局限于漢學，會涉及多種學科。以期深山長谷之水，四面而出。

詹姆斯·辛普森教授（Professor James Simpson）

哈佛大學英語教授

龔鵬程教授：您好。您的著作《錘下：英美傳統中的反偶像運動》（ Under the Hammer: Iconoclasm in the Anglo-American Tradition”）討論了英美文化中反偶像運動的歷史。反偶像主義，是啟蒙運動的必要組成部分，還是英美文化的典型特征？您了解其他文化，尤其是東方文化中反偶像主義的例子嗎？

詹姆斯·辛普森教授：龔教授，您好。我在20世紀90年代中期開始研究反偶像運動時，我錯誤地認為反偶像運動是一種受限制的現象，尤其是北歐改革時期的特征。在某些司法管轄區，新教文化確實在未經許可的情況下進行，然后是經過許可的反偶像運動。路德教的歐洲在某種程度上也是如此，但加爾文主義的政體更是如此，比如16世紀中葉的英國。可以肯定的是，英國的反偶像運動與眾不同，因為從1538年到1644年，一個多世紀以來，所有宗教形象的破壞都是立法規定的。這也以某種方式對新英格蘭的藝術和建筑文化產生了強大的影響，從1620年歐洲在新英格蘭的第一個定居點開始，就對后來的美國產生了巨大的影響。所有這些都證實了我對英美文化中的反偶像主義現象有十分 強大的感覺；這也擴展了我對英美傳統中反偶像主義持續影響的理解，因為宗教形象的破壞，必然會對所有藝術文化產生強大影響（不僅是宗教和世俗的繪畫和雕塑，而且還會對建筑產生巨大影響，更不用說詩歌和戲劇等其他藝術了）。例如，如果沒有反傳統的前提，人們就無法理解英美博物館文化。

然而，我錯誤地認為反傳統主義僅限于新教文化。2001年2月塔利班對巴米揚佛教雕像（Bamiyan Buddhist statues）的轟炸敲響了警鐘。我很快意識到，反傳統主義是通向許多世界歷史的一條道路，都是革命性的。

例如，殖民主義歷史的特點是伴隨著侵略性的反偶像運動（如16世紀拉丁美洲的西班牙反偶像運動）。所有一神論宗教的歷史，不僅僅是福音派基督教，都與反偶像運動密不可分：希伯來圣經堅持要求摧毀迦南土地上所有的祭祀場所和相互競爭的宗教形象，更不要說禁止在希伯來實踐中制作形象；最近在中東發生的塔利班和伊斯蘭國的反偶像運動，也說明了類似的情況。幾乎所有革命政治運動的歷史，至少從十八世紀開始，都涉及到對被推翻的秩序的象征的非常積極的破壞（例如，1789年的法國大革命和中國的文化大革命（1966-1976））。

于是反偶像運動成了世界歷史主要運動中的一條主線。在《永久革命導論》（Permanent Revolution）（2019）中，我試圖從革命運動的人類學入手。所有這些運動，

都展示了一系列文化習俗，包括反偶像主義，它們以驚人的一致性在歷史和空間中復制著。

When I began working on iconoclasm in the mid-1990s, I did so under the mistaken persuasion that iconoclasm was a restricted phenomenon, characteristic of the Reformation moment in Northern Europe especially. Protestant cultures in certain jurisdictions did indeed practiced unlicensed, and then licensed iconoclasm. This was true in Lutheran Europe to a certain degree, but much more so in Calvinist polities, such as, from the mid-sixteenth century, England. To be sure, iconoclasm in England was distinctive, since destruction of all religious images was legislated for more than a century, from 1538 to 1644. This also had powerful effects, one way or another, on the artistic and architectural culture of New England, and then of what became the United States, from the first European settlement in New England in 1620. All this confirmed my sense of just how powerful a phenomenon iconoclasm was in Anglo-American culture; it also extended my understanding of how powerful were the ongoing effects of iconoclasm in the Anglo-American tradition, since destruction of religious images cannot but have powerful effects on all artistic culture (not only painting and sculpture, both religious and secular, but also on architecture, not to speak of other arts, such as poetry and theater). One cannot understand Anglo-American museum culture, for example, without its iconoclastic premise.

How wrong I was, though, to imagine that iconoclasm was restricted to Protestant cultures. The Taliban bombing of the Bamiyan Buddhist statues in February 2001 was a wake up call. Iconoclasm, I came quickly to realize, was a pathway into many world histories, all revolutionary. The history of colonialism, for example, is characteristically accompanied by aggressive iconoclasm (e.g. Spanish iconoclasm in Latin America in the sixteenth century). The history of all monotheistic religions, not only evangelical Christianity, is inseparable from iconoclasm: the Hebrew Scriptures insistently urge the destruction of all cultic places and images of competing religions in the Land of Canaan, not to speak of prohibiting image-making within Hebrew practice; the recent iconoclasms of the Taliban and then of Isis in the Middle East tell an analogous story. And the histories of almost all revolutionary political movements, from at last the eighteenth century, involve very aggressive destruction of the icons of the repudiated order (in, for examples, the French Revolution of 1789 and the Cultural Revolution in China (1966-1976)).

Iconoclasm, then, turns out to be a constant thread in major movements of world history. What’s needed, and what I tried to start in on in the Introduction toPermanent Revolution(2019) is anthropology of revolutionary movements. All such movements exhibit a set of cultural practices, including iconoclasm, that replicate across history and space with remarkable consistency.

龔鵬程教授：您近期的著作《永久革命：改革與自由主義的非自由根源》（Permanent Revolution: The Reformation and the Illiberal Roots of Liberalism）談及英國的宗教改革有著不自由和不寬容的開端，而啟蒙運動是關于自由意志、良心自由、宗教寬容等觀點。請問宗教改革是如何推進啟蒙運動的呢？

詹姆斯·辛普森教授：啟蒙運動源于新教。啟蒙運動否定了新教。永久革命的論點，旨在證明這兩種相互矛盾的說法的真實性。我認為，歷史的特點是矛盾。

然而，這本書的論點首先不得不面對英美歷史上占主導地位的歷史傳統（所謂的“輝格黨”(Whig)傳統）。近500多年來，輝格黨一直準備只承認我的第一個開場白（即“源自新教的啟蒙(The Enlightenment derived from Protestantism)”）。因此，這本書的一個重要但次要的項目是，澄清輝格黨傳統為何對自身有如此驚人和徹底錯誤。

看看在眾多可能的錯誤例子中的一個，人類在宗教改革和啟蒙運動中的優點。通過作品有力地否定和詆毀人類的價值，是早期現代新教神學所有種類的中心。十六世紀和十七世紀的新教徒在救贖問題上，賦予了上帝所有的主動權，因此他們居住在一個嚴格決定論的宇宙中：上帝從一開始就注定了所有人的救贖或詛咒。

與此形成鮮明對比的是，通過作品積極評價價值是自由秩序的一個關鍵特征，它源于啟蒙運動。十六世紀和十八世紀之間，新教文化發生了180度的逆轉。

這是怎么發生的呢？

革命是不可持續的。他們殘酷的紀律集中了權力和權威，從而引發了反動。這就是英國宗教改革所發生的情況。首先是重新引入了一種經過修改的自由意志形式，然后是對自由意志的全面接受。我們最終處于與開始時相反的位置。歷史產生矛盾。

輝格黨簡化了傳統，將英國改革的原始自由主義結束與開始保持一致。整個故事更加矛盾和有趣。為了理解自由主義的DNA，有必要了解整個故事。

從具體案例中退一步，可以提出更廣泛的主張。可以說，早期現代新教徒最積極地反對的，不是天主教而是其自身的先前形式，因為早期現代新教徒在不同的革命背景下使用埃德蒙·伯克（Edmund Burke）的表述：“違背原則（rebels from principle）”

The Enlightenment derived from Protestantism. The Enlightenment repudiated Protestantism. The argument of Permanent Revolution aims to demonstrate the truth of both these contradictory statements. History, I argue, is characterized by paradox.

The argument of the book was obliged first to confront, however, the dominant historical tradition of Anglo-American history (the so-called “Whig” tradition), which for more than almost 500 years has been prepared to recognize only the first of my opening statements (i.e. “The Enlightenment derived from Protestantism”). A significant but secondary project of the book was, therefore, to clarify why the Whig tradition was so spectacularly and determinedly wrong about itself.

Look, for just one of many possible examples of error, to the profile of human merit in the Reformation and in the Enlightenment. Vigorousrepudiation and denigration of human merit via works sits at the generative heart of all varieties of early modern Protestant theology. Sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Protestants invested God with all initiative in the matter of salvation, whereby they inhabited a rigorously determinist universe: God predestined all humans to salvation or damnation from the beginning of time. Positive evaluation of merit via works is, by the starkest contrast, a key feature of the liberal order, derived from the Enlightenment. There is a 180° reversal, within Protestant cultures, between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries.

What happened? Revolutions are unsustainable. Their ferocious disciplines centralize power and authority in such a way as to provoke counter movements. This is what happened to the Reformation in England, first with the reintroduction of a modified form of, and then with a wholesale acceptance of, free will. We end up in theopposite position from the one in which we started. History produces paradox. Whigs simplify the tradition by taking the proto-liberal end of English Reformation as consistent with its beginning. The whole story is much more paradoxical and interesting. And to understand the DNA of liberalism, it’s necessary to understand that whole story.

Stepping back from the particular case, one might formulate a broader claim. Early modernProtestantism, it could be argued, most actively repudiated not Catholicism but, rather, prior forms of itself, since early modern Protestants were, to use Edmund Burke’s formulation in a different revolutionary context, “rebels from principle.”

龔鵬程教授：在您的一門課上，您提到“文學文本不容易參與革命秩序（literary texts do not participate easily in the revolutionary order）”。你能解釋一下其含義嗎？您認為文學文本在中國五四文化運動（ May Fourth Cultural movement）中產生了怎樣的作用？五四文化運動是如何導致了現代中國的文學和社會變革？

詹姆斯·辛普森教授：革命有多種形式，自上而下和自下而上。然而，他們有許多共同的文化特征，包括關于文本性的姿勢。革命要求新的文本規范，并摒棄舊規范；它需要更簡單的文本協議，經常關注白話和字面意義的直接簡單性，對未學習者開放；最重要的是，這場革命是一個總的（更不用說極權主義）時刻，要求在文化的每個領域都統一遵守嚴格而懲罰性的紀律。嚴格遵守黨的路線是最好的。

這些條件不利于文學話語。為什么呢？文學話語本質上是模棱兩可的。經典的作品是并且仍然是經典的，正是因為偉大的藝術作品從來沒有明確地表達過一種封閉的立場。這種無止境的自我分裂正是他們持續偉大的條件。一部偉大作品更具地方特色的，將是間接的形式：例如，典故、寓言、反諷、內涵。字面意義（一直是文學的潛在敵人）否認了這些語言資源。總之，我們不會為了意識形態的純潔，而去讀偉大的文學作品；相比之下，我們閱讀這些作品是為了沉浸在復雜而模棱兩可的豐富經驗中。

我認為這一點是關于16世紀的英國。當加爾文(Calvin)是英國最暢銷的作家時，很難找到偉大的文學作品，這是偶然的嗎？在莫爾(More)的《輝煌的烏托邦》(brilliant Utopia)（1516）和1580年代的文學繁榮之間，幾乎沒有什么可以展示的。1580年代的繁榮只有在一個特別不穩定和暴力的改革階段（讀作“革命”）平息之后才出現。

我不能回答你關于中國文學和革命的問題。當然，文化大革命以四位老人（風俗、文化、習慣和思想）為目標，不利于古代文學的生產或研究。

正如我所寫的，分裂的美國正在經歷自己的文化革命。進步左派和民族主義右派的理論家都希望，如革命者一直希望的那樣，建立一個新的文本規范；這兩個組織都在積極審查文學書籍。

Revolutions come in many forms, top-down and bottom-up. They all share, however, many cultural features, including postures with regard to textuality. The revolution demands a new textual canon, and repudiation of the old canon; it demands simpler textual protocols, frequently focusing on the direct simplicities of the vernacular and the literal sense, open to the unlearned; above all, the revolution is a total (not to say totalitarian) moment demanding that strict and punishing disciplines be uniformly observed in every sphere of culture. Strict adherence to the party line is best observed.

These conditions are not conducive to literary discourse. How so? Literary discourse is by nature equivocal. Canonical works are and remain canonical precisely becausegreat works of art never speak with an unequivocal voice for one, closed position. That open-ended self-division is the very condition of their ongoing greatness. The more local features of the great work will be forms of indirection: allusion, allegory, irony, connotation, for example. The literal sense (always a potential enemy to literature) disowns these linguistic resources . We do not, in sum, go to great literature for ideological purity; we read such works, by contrast, for immersion in the complex and equivocal richness of experience.

I argued this point with regard to the sixteenth century in England. Is it any accident that, when Calvin was the best-selling author in England, great literature is hard to find?: between More’s brilliantUtopia (1516) and the great literary efflorescence of the 1580s, there is little to show. The efflorescence of the 1580s occurs only after one especially unstable and violent phase of the Reformation (read “revolution”) has subsided.

I am not competent to answer your question about literature and revolution in Chinese contexts. Certainly the Cultural Revolution’s targeting of the four olds (customs, culture, habits, and ideas) was not conducive to the production of, or study of, ancient literature. The Disunited States of America is undergoing a cultural revolution of its own, as I write. Ideologues on both the progressive left and the ethno-nationalist right wish, as revolutionaries always wish, to institute a new textual canon; both groups are in the active business of censoring literary books.

龔鵬程教授：英國宗教改革導致了《圣經》的翻譯，許多人認為這是走向啟蒙的重要一步。然而，在您著作《為閱讀而燃燒》(Burning to read)中，您認為宗教改革期間的圣經閱讀行為是原教旨主義和暴力的根源。為什么會這樣？21世紀的原教旨主義閱讀有哪些例子，我們應該擔心嗎？

詹姆斯·辛普森教授：對這個問題的回答，我要先作一番補充，以便在早期現代信息技術的大背景下對其進行分析。

15世紀中葉，可移動式信息（最終來自中國）被引入歐洲。書籍的大量增加，改變了一切。文化史通常用凱旋主義和烏托邦主義的術語來描述這一現象，這很對。是的，但也有反烏托邦的另一面，這一點很少被討論：新信息技術的引入之后，伴隨著150年非同尋常的早期現代歐洲暴力。

在我看來，這種暴力在一定程度上是新的閱讀方式的結果。當我們經歷著自身變革性信息技術帶來的反烏托邦痙攣時，我們能夠更好地理解早期現代歐洲信息技術革命的反烏托邦方面。在16世紀，暴力的大幅上升部分源于對圣經閱讀的新信念。

一、蘇拉腳本(Scriptura sola)；二、只有圣經中所寫的內容才能決定教會學（教會的定義），三、只有字面上的意義，這是明確規定的。這三種閱讀勸導，在1517年至1700年間顛覆并成倍分裂了西方教會（當然，分裂的故事在那時還沒有結束）。

出于多種原因，暴力是不可避免的。一是讀者不可避免地會對“字面意義”的含義產生分歧。另一個原因是，將公元前六世紀迦南的道德價值觀應用于2000多年后的歐洲政治，將會受到傷害。例如，1650年，英國革命議會對通奸判處死刑。

當我們審視啟蒙運動的改革源頭時，我們確實應該關注印刷業和廣大讀者的矛盾歷史；我們還應該考慮制定旨在減少暴力的閱讀協議。

在我看來，《圣經》閱讀本身并不是啟蒙思想的來源。宿命、反偶像、通奸死刑：這些都是來源于圣經的強加于人，都不是啟蒙思想的特征。

為什么圣經原教旨主義現在很危險？任何生活在美國的人都知道“保守派”（即革命派）福音派游說團的強大力量。

Response to this question requires me to back up just for a moment, in order to frame it within the larger picture of early modern information technology. Moveable type was introduced (ultimately from China) to Europe in the mid-fifteenth century. The massively increased availability of books changed everything. Cultural history has usually, and with good reason, described this phenomenon in triumphalist, utopian terms. Yes, but there is also a dystopian flip side, which is less frequently discussed: the introduction of a new information technology was followed by 150 years of extraordinary, early modern European violence.

In my view, that violence is in part the result of new ways of reading. As we undergo the dystopian convulsions of our own transformative information technology, we are better placed to understand the dystopian aspects of the information-technology revolution of early modern Europe. In the sixteenth century the huge uptick in violence derives in part from new persuasions about Bible reading.Scriptura sola; only what is written in the Bible determining ecclesiology (the definition of the Church); and only the literal sense, what is explicitly commanded: these three reading persuasions upend and multiply split the Western Church between 1517 and 1700 (though of course the story of splitting is by no means ended then).

The violence is inevitable, for many reasons. One is the fact that readers inevitably disagree about the meaning of the “literal sense.” Another is that application of the moral values of sixth-century BCE Canaan to European polities more than 2,000 years later is going to hurt. In 1650, the revolutionary English Parliament statuted, for example, the death penalty for adultery.

When we look to Reformation sources of the Enlightenment, we should indeed look to the paradoxical histories of printing and vastly extended readership; we should also look to the formulation of reading protocols designed to reduce violence. Bible reading itself does not seem to me to be a source of Enlightenment thinking. Predestination, iconoclasm, the death sentence for adultery: these are Biblically sourced impositions, none of which is especially characteristic of Enlightenment thinking.

Why is Biblical fundamentalism dangerous now? Anyone who lives in the United States knows the mighty power of the “conservative” (read revolutionary) evangelical lobby.

龔鵬程，1956年生于臺北，臺灣師范大學博士，當代著名學者和思想家。著作已出版一百五十多本。

辦有大學、出版社、雜志社、書院等，并規劃城市建設、主題園區等多處。講學于世界各地。并在北京、上海、杭州、臺北、巴黎、日本、澳門等地舉辦過書法展。現為美國龔鵬程基金會主席。