【文章】James Lindsay - Man With Three Faces: Politics, Pathology, and the Modern Selves

連結

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原文及個人翻譯

When I was doing the primary research for my 2019 book with Peter Boghossian, How to Have Impossible Conversations, I took the time to read a fascinating volume from the Harvard Negotiations Project called Difficult Conversations (Peter and I chose the title for our book before we knew of this book’s existence). One point it raised has always stuck with me in a profound way. Simplifying to the extreme, it’s that conversations take place on three levels at once: “what’s happening,” emotional, and identity. Given the title of the book, the authors’ point is about how these different levels of conversational phenomena lead to conversational breakdowns and how to fix them.

Their point is simple enough. Most of the time, everyone believes they’re talking about the facts, the “what’s happening” level of conversation, but sometimes they’re really talking about something deeper. Emotions are deeper than facts in human relationships (so, indeed, it is that feelings don’t care about your facts), and identity is even deeper still—imagine the effect “Woke” identity politics has here, then. They make the case that when conversations or negotiations are going awry, it’s often playing out on the “what’s happening” factual level when the real issue is emotional hurt or a challenge to one or both parties’ senses of identity. The solution is to step back and drill down to where the deeper issue is, take time to resolve it, and then come back up to the facts when that’s addressed.

Basically, deeper level disruptions completely derail conversations, they argue, making them impossible until those disruptions are dealt with, and deepest of all are issues that challenge someone’s identity. If you challenge someone’s sense of self or their capacity to evaluate themselves as a person of some standing in communities and within other social milieux they esteem, there’s no hope of hashing it out over the facts. An incredible amount of the sociopolitical dysfunction we have experienced over the last highly polarized and insane decade (and beyond) can be attributed to this fact—and that everything is identity now, and every identity is political now too.

在為我和Peter Boghossian共同撰寫的2019年書籍《如何進行不可能的對話》（How to Have Impossible Conversations）進行初步研究時，我花時間閱讀了哈佛談判項目的一個引人入勝的文集，名為《困難的對話》（How to Have Impossible Conversations）（我們在知道這本書的存在之前，就選擇了這個標題給我們的書）。 其中一個觀點一直以深刻的方式影響著我。 簡而言之，它指出，對話同時發生在三個層次： 「正在發生的事情」、「情感」和「身份」。 根據書籍的標題，作者的重點是，這些不同的對話現象如何導致對話破裂，以及如何解決它們。

他們的觀點非常簡單。 大部分時間，每個人都認為他們是在討論事實，也就是對話的「正在發生的事情」層次，但有時候他們實際上是在談論更深層的東西。 在人際關係中，情感比事實更深刻（因此，確實是說感受不在乎你的事實）。 身份更是更深一層——想像一下，「覺醒」身份政治在這裡產生的影響。 他們認為，當對話或談判出現問題時，往往是在「正在發生的事情」的事實層次上進行，但真正的問題可能是情感上的傷害或對一方或雙方身份認同的挑戰。 解決方案是退一步，深入探究更深層的問題，花時間解決它，然後在這些問題得到解決後，再回到事實層面。

基本上，他們認為，更深層次的干擾會完全破壞對話，使對話變得不可能，直到這些干擾得到處理。 而最深層的，是那些挑戰某人身份的問題。 如果你挑戰了某人的自我認同感或他們在社區以及其他受到重視的社會環境中評價自己作為一個有地位的人的能力，那麼就沒有任何希望能夠通過討論事實來解決問題。 我們在過去這十年（以及更久）經歷的許多社會政治功能障礙都可以歸因於這個事實——而且現在一切都與身份有關，而每一個身份也都是政治性的。

The Person in the Political / 政治中的個人

We have the feminists to thank for that sociocultural catastrophe, though as much as I’d love to ride my “‘the personal is political’ is the most toxic doctrine in the universe” hobbyhorse for a whole essay, a brief word will suffice. When you make your personhood an object of politics, you will define yourself in terms of your politics too. Every political disagreement becomes a challenge to identity, and every political conversation is doomed to go off the rails. If you wonder what this looks like, ladies and gentlemen (itself a controversial statement that challenges identity in threatening, intolerable ways now too), it looks like the twenty-first century in the West.

Recently, I’ve realized this sword cuts the other way too, though. While it is only slightly true that the personal is political, it strikes me that it may be much more important how the political is personal. What I mean by this statement is that our political dispositions at their very deepest levels very likely stem from deep-seated views held about our identities—that deep who are we? lurking in every human heart—and much that goes awry in our social and political discourse and philosophy may well stem from this fact.

我們應該感謝女性主義者，他們為這場社會文化災難做出了貢獻。 雖然我很想就「個人就是政治」這個觀點寫一篇長篇大論，但我認為簡要說明一下就足夠了。 當你將你的個體性作為政治的對象時，你也將以你的政治立場來定義自己。 每一次政治分歧都變成了一種對身份的挑戰，而且每一次政治對話都註定會偏離正軌。 如果你想知道這看起來是什麼樣子（各位女士們、先生們——這本身也是一句有爭議的話，因為它現在也以令人不安和無法容忍的方式挑戰了身份認同），那麼看看西方的二十一世紀吧。

最近，我意識到這個問題也有另一面。 雖然「個人就是政治」的說法只有部分正確，但我認為更重要的是如何將政治融入個人生活。 我所指的意義是，我們最深層次的政治傾向很可能源於我們對身份認同的深刻看法——也就是潛藏在每個人心中的那個關於「我們是誰？」 的問題。 我們的社會和政治討論以及哲學中許多出現的問題，很可能都源於這個事實。

One Plus One Plus One Equals Two / 一加一加一等於二

Speaking of philosophy, another idea I often think about comes from my philosopher friend Stephen Hicks, who is a remarkable thinker in many ways, not just for his unbelievably categorical account for how we ended up with postmodernism in the first place (Explaining Postmodernism, spoiler: it’s those damned Marxists). Hicks has been quite eloquent and articulate on the deepest problem of philosophical dichotomies: when we think there are two positions in opposition, there are usually three.

Take, for example, the idea that our political spectrum is “Left” and “Right.” Where are Liberals on that spectrum? The Right will tell us they’re Left; the Left will tell us they’re Right; and Liberals themselves will tell you we’re neither and that both Left and Right are lunatics. Hicks could step in and explain this easily, even if the example is simple. “Left and Right” isn’t an adequate model for describing political reality because where we think there are two sides there are actually three positions that have fundamentally different commitments, not just on political views but also on fundamental, deep issues of philosophical orientation like epistemology and metaphysics.

Hicks brilliantly engages this problem from the perspective of underlying philosophical commitments and exposes the error—or even the fraud. People have surprisingly different relationships to reality sometimes. Conservatives have a traditionalist-tilted Burkean epistemology not shared by others. Leftists have social constructivism, which doesn’t just play with epistemology but with ontology as well (it’s anti-realist!). What are we to make of this? Gratefully, Hicks has provided a bright lamp to shine through this fog.

說到哲學，我經常思考的一個想法來自我的哲學家朋友Stephen Hicks，他是一位非凡的思想家，不僅僅是因為他對我們如何一步步走向後現代主義的解釋非常詳細（《闡釋後現代主義》（Explaining Postmodernism），簡而言之：都是那些該死的馬克思主義者）。 希克斯在闡述哲學二元對立最深層的問題時，表達得非常出色和清晰：當我們認為存在兩種相互對立的立場時，實際上通常有三種。

例如，考慮一下我們的政治光譜是「左」和「右」的想法。 那麼自由主義者在這個光譜上屬於哪一方？ 右派會告訴你他們是左派；左派會告訴你他們是右派；而自由主義者自己則會告訴你我們既不屬於其中任何一方，而且左右兩派都是瘋子。 希克斯可以很容易地解釋這個問題，即使這個例子很簡單。「左」和「右」並不能充分描述政治現實，因為當我們認為存在兩個方面時，實際上存在三個根本不同的立場，不僅在政治觀點上不同，而且在哲學導向的基本、深層問題（如認識論和形而上學）上也不同。

Hicks巧妙地從潛在的哲學承諾的角度探討這個問題，並揭示了錯誤——甚至可能是欺騙。 有時，人們對現實的看法出人意料地不同。 保守派具有一種傳統主義傾向的伯克式認識論，這種認識論並非所有人都持有。 左派則持有社會建構主義，這不僅影響了認識論，還影響了本體論（它是一種反現實主義）。 我們應該如何看待這一點呢？ 值得慶幸的是，希克斯提供了一盞明燈來照亮這片迷霧。

（從上面哲學二元對立最深層的問題抄來的圖）

Does Something Human Precede Our Philosophies? / 人類的本性是否先於我們的哲學？

Philosophy, indeed, and it’s in light of this quandary that maybe half a year ago (I’ve been chewing on this one for a while) I was listening to an old interview with my friendly acquaintance Patrick Deneen, one of those arch-evil “post-liberal” conservatives and a philosopher at Notre Dame. Deneen is famous for his books Why Liberalism Failed and Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future, the titles of which pretty clearly expose his political views. In and around those books he gives an argument that is as common on the “New Right” (Woke Right) as it is irksome and just plain wrong (and he should know better!). From Deneen’s perspective, in my oversimplified wording that will make sense to you very soon, Liberalism failed because it is Leftism, which is also to say that it is not Conservatism.

He gives a very curious argument about Liberalism that, as a fairly highly self-aware Liberal, I find absolutely unrecognizable, not just about the political philosophy (though that too) but more importantly about who Liberals are. See, Deneen characterizes Liberalism in a way that I had never considered before, and it’s therefore with my gratitude to him that I can present this much clearer and better discussion to you after much thought. He says Liberals have subscribed to some philosophy of self that he has called the “Self-defined Self.” That is, Liberals, in his telling, are defined by the will to define themselves absent anything grounding, including tradition, clan, community, and even reality.

I can only assume—though I do not know—that Deneen got this completely mistaken idea from Carl Trueman and his incredibly frustrating treatise (also popular on the “New Right”) The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, the very concept (Begriff) of which lends itself to my present thesis. Why would I call this book frustrating, you might ask. I asked myself, at least. The answer is because it’s clearly wrong and very hard to tell why it’s wrong, at least if you’re reading it as a Liberal. Deneen is frustrating in precisely the same way for precisely the same reason. So are the post-liberals in their wake, namely the duly named “Woke Right.”

But what if these guys are pointing at something deep without realizing it? What if it’s the case that our politics are extensions of who we see ourselves to be and, more to the point, who we—and others—should be? Now, that’s a question.

哲學，的確如此。 考慮到這個難題，大約半年前（我一直在思考這個問題），我聽了一段與我的朋友Patrick Deneen的舊訪談。 他是那些「後自由主義」保守派中的一位，也是南達美大學的一位哲學家。 迪尼恩以他的著作《為何自由主義失敗》（Why Liberalism Failed_）和《政權轉變：邁向後自由主義未來》（Regime Change: Toward a Postliberal Future__）而聞名，這些書名清楚地表明瞭他的政治觀點。 在這些書籍中，他提出了一個觀點，這個觀點在「新右翼」中非常常見，但同時也令人惱火且完全錯誤（而且他應該知道）。 從迪尼恩的角度來看（我用一種過於簡化的方式來表達，以便你很快就能理解），自由主義失敗是因為它實際上是左翼主義，也就是說，它不是保守主義。

他提出了一個關於自由主義的非常奇怪的論點，作為一個相當有自我意識的自由主義者，我認為這個觀點完全無法辨認，不僅在政治哲學方面（雖然這也是如此），更重要的是，它與自由主義者的身份認同相去甚遠。 迪尼恩以一種我從未考慮過的方式來描述自由主義，因此，我很感謝他，因為經過深入思考，我可以向你呈現一個更加清晰和更好的討論。 他說，自由主義者已經接受了一種關於自我的哲學，他稱之為「自我定義的自我」。 也就是說，根據迪尼恩的說法，自由主義者是由一種意志來定義自己，這種意志不依賴於任何基礎，包括傳統、氏族、社區，甚至現實。

我只能假設（雖然我不知道）Deneen是從Carl Trueman和他那本令人難以置信地令人沮喪的著作《現代自我的興起與勝利》（The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self_）中獲得了這個完全錯誤的觀點（這本書在「新右翼」中也很受歡迎），而這本書的概念本身就與我現在的論點息息相關。 你可能會問，為什麼我會稱這本書為令人沮喪？ 我自己也曾問過這個問題。 答案是，因為它顯然是錯誤的，而且很難判斷它為什麼是錯誤的，至少如果你以自由主義者的身份閱讀它的話。 迪尼恩以完全相同的方式和原因令人沮喪。 後自由主義者也是如此，他們就是那些名副其實的「覺醒右翼」。

但是，如果這些人指出了一個深刻的事實而沒有意識到呢？ 如果是這樣，我們的政治是否只是我們如何看待自己的延伸，更重要的是，我們以及其他人應該是什麼樣子的？ 現在，這是一個問題。

Clearing Away Error to Develop the Thesis / 消除錯誤以發展論點

To begin by clearing away the gross error in Trueman, Deneen, and the “New/Woke Right,” Liberals do not define themselves or subscribe to a “Self-defined Self” philosophy of selfhood. Leftists do that. Any Liberal who knows the difference knows this immediately and is probably equally frustrated that Conservatives don’t and, seemingly, can’t. This got me wondering: what is the Liberal philosophy of self, then, if we had to give it a name like that?

The answer is that Liberals believe in something I decided to call a Discovered Self, which is very different to the self-definition of Leftists (NB: see the final appendix to this essay for a complication I’ll ignore throughout). Liberals believe there’s a self and that there are true things that can be known about it, even if that’s somewhat open-ended, so as we look around the world and experience some things for ourselves, we discover who we are, sometimes by experiment and sometimes by observation and most frequently by unconsidered intuition operating on autopilot as it tends to do. The unexamined life is not worth living, it has been said, and Liberals would generally believe whoever we are, we find it out through living and examining.

It would be easy here, by the way, to lump in “I think, therefore I am” as another expression of this same concept, this time from Rene Descartes. That’s incorrect. Descartes did not express a fundamental realism and sense of discovery, even though his skeptical quest took the form of discovering what the self is, in a way. Descartes was radically skeptical of all that, even famously postulating a hypothetical “demon” who tricks humanity into believing in a reality that isn’t there—a seventeenth century version of “we live in a simulation.” His radical skepticism orients him with Leftism, not Liberalism, because all that’s certain is that there’s a thinker who must exist and therefore is left only with the task of defining himself from that bare beginning. Much else in Descartes confirms this hypothesis, but it is a long digression.

爲了消除Trueman、Deneen和「新/覺醒右翼」中存在的明顯錯誤，自由主義者並不定義自己或訂閱一種「自我定義的自我」的自我認同哲學。 左翼人士是這樣做的。 任何瞭解區別的自由主義者都知道這一點，並且可能同樣沮喪於保守派不瞭解這一點，而且似乎也無法理解。 這讓我開始思考：如果我們要給自由主義的自我哲學一個這樣的名稱，那麼它是什麼？

答案是，自由主義者相信我決定稱之為「發現的自我」，這與左翼人士的自我定義截然不同（注意：請參閱本文的最後附錄，其中包含我將在整個過程中忽略的一個複雜問題）。 自由主義者認為存在一個自我，並且可以瞭解關於它的真實事物，即使這在一定程度上是開放式的。 因此，當我們環顧世界並親身體驗一些事情時，我們發現自己是誰，有時是通過實驗，有時是通過觀察，最常見的是通過一種未經思考的直覺，這種直覺傾向於自動執行。 就像有人說的那樣，「未經審視的生活是不值得過的」，而自由主義者通常認為，無論我們是誰，我們都是通過生活和審視來發現自己的。

順便說一句，很容易將「我思故我在」視為對這個概念的另一種表達，這次是來自勒內·笛卡爾（Rene Descartes）。 這是不正確的。 笛卡爾並沒有表達一種根本的現實主義和發現感，儘管他的懷疑論追求採取了一種發現自我的形式。 笛卡爾對所有事物都持極端懷疑態度，甚至以一種著名的方式假設了一個虛構的「惡魔」，這個惡魔欺騙人類相信一個不存在的現實——這是17世紀版的「我們生活在模擬中」。 笛卡爾的極端懷疑論使他與左翼主義聯繫在一起，而不是自由主義，因為唯一確定的是存在一個思考者，因此只剩下定義自己的任務，從這個最基本的起點開始。 笛卡爾的其他許多觀點也證實了這種假設，但這是一個漫長的離題。

Who, Then, Are Conservatives? / 那麼，保守派是誰？

This level of exploration raises another pair of questions immediately. First, what philosophy of self do Conservatives hold? And second, why can’t Conservatives see the difference between discovery of self and definition of self? Maybe, I thought, the answers lie deep within how each of these political dispositions or moods views selfhood in the first place. In fact, maybe it is that our political dispositions are at first dispositions about what it means to be someone in this wide, confusing world.

Anyone who is even cursorily familiar with the father of philosophical Conservatism, Edmund Burke, immediately knows who the Conservative Self is. It’s the Received Self. Man—because it has to be grander for conservatives—is the product of a vast system of people, place, and tradition, none of it of his choosing, and it is up to him to receive this selfhood and grow into its duties and expectations. What matters most to who he is are, in some order or another, his God, his faith, his family, his clan, his community, and his nation, to all of which he owes his life and very existence (and some ordo amoris that prioritizes them). In fancy Modernist language, Man is a product of his historicity, and this is right and good. Contrast this with the belief in Leftism that people are the products of their historicities, and this is oppressive and bad.

這種深入的探討立即引發了另外兩個問題。 首先，保守派持有什麼樣的自我哲學？ 其次，為什麼保守派看不到自我發現和自我定義之間的區別？ 我想，答案可能在於這些政治傾向或情緒最初如何看待自我認同。 事實上，也許我們的政治傾向首先是對在浩瀚而混亂的世界中成為一個人的意義的看法。

任何對哲學保守主義（philosophical Conservatism）之父Edmund Burke略有了解的人都知道保守派的自我是什麼。 它被稱為「傳承的自我」。 人類——因為對於保守派來說，必須更加宏大——是龐大的人群、地點和傳統系統所產生的結果，而這些都不是他自己選擇的，他需要接受這種自我認同，併成長為承擔其職責和期望。 對他而言最重要的，無論順序如何，都是他的上帝、信仰、家庭、氏族、社區和國家，他對所有這些都負有生命和存在（以及一種優先考慮它們的愛秩序）的責任。 用華麗的現代主義語言來說，人類是其歷史性的產物，這是正確且好的。 與左翼人士認為人們是其歷史性的產物，而這是一種壓迫和不好的信念形成鮮明對比。

Why the Confusion, Then? / 那麼，為什麼會產生混淆？

But in answering the first question, we also immediately answer the second, after which the world opens up to us in a new way. Why is it that Conservatives can’t distinguish a Discovered Self Liberal from a Self-defined Self Leftist? Because, to the Conservative, both commit the same cardinal sin against selfhood itself: they reject tradition. For my friend, if I might make so bold, Patrick Deneen, the rejection of tradition is the acceptance of self-definition. The self is either defined by tradition or it is not, so this fallacy of affordance goes, and since “liberals” all reject tradition, all that’s left is to define themselves. Put another way, either your a product of your community or you think you can go it alone, and the “liberals” have aligned themselves with Karl Marx and declared themselves capable of self-definition (or, at least, self-re_definition). In other words, Deneen thinks the problem with Liberals is that they’re Leftists, like I said—_which they are not!

So why is Deneen wrong here? Because, first of all, neither Liberals nor Leftists reject tradition, shocking as that will be to the Conservative sensibility. Liberals don’t reject tradition. They consider tradition (and the ordo amoris and that which it orders) and accept what they deem reasonable from it according to other measuring sticks than the weight of tradition itself. Tradition is one of those features of reality so far as being a self is concerned—as are faith, family, clan, community, and nation—that might at times and in ways be arbitrary, flexible, or unnecessary. Or not. It depends. That’s the Liberal view. They choose from traditions, but they don’t reject it out of hand.

但是，在回答第一個問題時，我們同時也立即回答了第二個問題，然後世界以一種新的方式向我們敞開。 為什麼保守派無法區分「發現的自我」的自由主義者和「自我定義的自我」的左翼人士？ 因為，對於保守派來說，兩者都犯了對自我認同本身的同一項根本罪行：他們拒絕傳統。 對於我的朋友，如果我冒昧地說，Patrick Deneen認為，拒絕傳統就是接受自我定義。 這種謬誤是這樣說的：自我要麼由傳統定義，要麼不定義，而由於「自由主義者」都拒絕傳統，因此剩下的唯一選擇就是自我定義。 換句話說，要麼你是一個社區的產物，要麼你認為你可以獨自行動，而「自由主義者」已經與卡爾·馬克思（Karl Marx）結盟，並宣佈自己有能力進行自我定義（或者至少是自我重塑）。 換句話說，Deneen認為自由主義者的問題在於他們是左翼人士，就像我所說的——但事實並非如此！

那麼，為什麼Deneen在這裡是錯誤的呢？ 因為，首先，既沒有自由主義者也沒有左翼人士拒絕傳統，這對於保守派的意識來說可能會令人震驚。 自由主義者不拒絕傳統。 他們會考慮（以及它所秩序的愛秩序）傳統，並根據比傳統本身更重要的標準，接受他們認為合理的那些內容。 在談到自我認同時，傳統是現實的一個特徵——就像信仰、家庭、氏族、社區和國家一樣——這些特徵有時可能具有任意性、靈活性或不必要性。 或者不是。 這取決於具體情況。 這是自由主義者的觀點。 他們會從傳統中進行選擇，但他們不會一概拒絕它。

Leftists also don’t reject tradition. They rebel against it, and they do so because they see it as an imposition against the “potentiality” of their selves; that is, as a prison. The difference between rejection and rebellion is subtle but important. Rejection implies breaking away from; rebellion means doing the opposite to, which therefore keeps them bound to the original through the act of inversion. As it turns out, Leftists can feel similarly about reality too, though when it occurs that is what they mostly reject (“I reject your reality and substitute my own”), which no Conservative misses about them, ever. So, Liberals see tradition and social location as factual but potentially arbitrary, or not, and Leftists see them as intolerable and oppressive limitations on their would-be unlimited selves that they can’t break away from but can deconstruct through grotesque parody. Those aren’t the same thing.

Funnily enough, I must add, Leftist commit the same sin against discernment in the opposite direction. Leftists see Liberals as “the Right” or Conservatives, allegedly because they uphold the “status quo,” which is oppressive. Both Liberals and Conservatives find this confusing, but it’s straightforward. Deneen, wrong about “liberals,” has Leftists’ number here. Both Liberals and Conservatives reject the idea of self-definition. So, from the perspective of the Left, they’re the same, and evil. It’s different in each case though, isn’t it?

Conservatives and Liberals both reject self-definition because they believe there are profound limitations on the self, but each sees the matter differently. The Conservative, as the Received Self, limits the self through tradition, and the Liberal, as the Discovered Self, limits the self to reality. These aren’t the same, but from the position of the Self-defined Self, they’re both just rejections of the limitless “potentialities of being,” as Michel Foucault had it.

左翼人士也並不拒絕傳統。 他們反抗傳統，因為他們認為這是對他們「自我潛能」的一種強加，即一種監獄。 拒絕和反抗之間的區別是微妙但重要的。 拒絕意味著脫離； 反抗意味著做相反的事情，因此通過顛覆的行為，他們仍然與原始事物保持聯繫。 事實證明，左翼人士也可能對現實產生類似的感覺，但當這種情況發生時，他們通常會拒絕（「我拒絕你的現實，並用我的現實來代替」），而保守派永遠不會錯過這一點。 因此，自由主義者認為傳統和社會環境是客觀存在的，但可能是任意的，或者不是，而左翼人士則認為它們是對他們無限自我的無法容忍和壓迫性的限制，他們無法擺脫，但可以通過怪誕的模仿來解構。 這兩種情況並不相同。

有趣的是，我必須補充說，左翼人士也同樣在辨別（discernment）上犯了相反方向罪行。 左翼人士將自由主義者視為「右派」或保守派，聲稱是因為他們維護「現狀」，而這種現狀是壓迫性的。 無論是自由主義者還是保守派都對此感到困惑，但這是顯而易見的。 Deneen雖然對「自由主義者」的看法是錯誤的，但他卻準確地理解了左翼人士。 無論是自由主義者還是保守派都拒絕自我定義的想法。 因此，從左翼的角度來看，他們是一樣的，而且都是邪惡的。 但在每種情況下，情況都是不同的，不是嗎？

保守派和自由主義者都拒絕自我定義，因為他們認為存在對自我的深刻限制，但他們看待這個問題的方式不同。 像「傳承的自我」一樣，保守派通過傳統來限制自我，而像「發現的自我」一樣，自由主義者將自我限制在現實之中。 這兩種情況並不相同，但從「自我定義的自我」的角度來看，它們都只是對米歇爾·福柯（Michel Foucault）所說的「存在的無限潛能」的一種拒絕。

Liberals Don’t Get a Free Pass Here / 自由主義者在這裡不能免於批評

For their part, Liberals do a similar smashing and flattening of the political universe, though with slightly more nuance. They see both Right and Left as defining themselves arbitrarily, though because they’re not flattening in a single direction they can see the difference. That is, they see the infamous horseshoe. They know there’s a fundamental difference between Left and Right, even at the most extreme ends, thought they get very close together in extremism, radicalism, authoritarian tendencies, and even totalitarianism as you get way out to the edges. Tradition, they know, is at best only partially arbitrary. Self-definition, they tend to recognize, is often whimsical or even psychotic. Arbitrary power is eventually required to enforce arbitrary selfhood, they understand, because, being arbitrary in its basis, it’s ultimately the only way to deal with the people who refuse the program.

從自由主義者的角度來看，他們也對政治領域進行類似的破壞和簡化，但略微更具細緻性。 他們認為左右兩派都在任意地定義自己，但由於他們沒有朝著單一方向進行簡化，因此他們能夠看到其中的區別。 也就是說，他們看到了臭名昭著的「馬蹄鐵」現象。 他們知道左翼和右翼之間存在根本的區別，即使在最極端的邊緣也是如此，儘管隨著走向極端、激進、專制甚至極權主義，它們會非常接近。 他們知道，傳統至少在部分程度上是任意的。 自由主義者傾向於認識到，自我定義通常是異想天開的，甚至是精神錯亂的。 他們理解，爲了強制執行任意的自我認同，最終需要採取任意的權力，因為，由於其基礎是任意的，這是處理那些拒絕該計劃的人的唯一方法。

The Point, Which Is About Self-centered Politics in a Literal Sense / 重點在於，這是一種字面意義上的以自我為中心的政治

To summarize and state my thesis, then, it is this. Political identity is preceded by deeper philosophies of self that vary across at least the three major political dispositions, namely Conservatism, Liberalism, and Leftism (Libertarians are in the appendix, like usual). People who land clearly in each of these broad political camps do so, I insist, at least partly because they understand themselves accordingly first. That is, Conservatives are Conservatives because they believe the self, itself, is a Received Self; Liberals are Liberals because they believe the self, itself, is a Discovered Self; and Leftists are Leftists because they believe the self, itself, is a Self-defined Self.

Put another way that’s even more to the point, I’m claiming Conservative politics is what you get from people whose philosophy of self is a Received Self, which they extend to others in the name of proper social ordering for people like themselves. Liberal Politics is what you get from extending a Discovered Self philosophy of selfhood as the proper organizing principle of society for everyone. Leftism is what you get when the philosophy of selfhood abandons reality for self-definition, proceeding from a Self-defined Self, as Deneen partly rightly shudders at. Nearly everything else proceeds from there, and from this picture most of the world opens up to us with unprecedented clarity.

總而言之，我的論點是：政治認同源於更深層次的自我哲學，這些哲學在至少三種主要的政治立場中有所不同，即保守主義、自由主義和左翼（自由意志主義者通常被放在附錄中）。 我堅持認為，那些明確地屬於這三種主要政治陣營的人，至少部分原因是他們首先以相應的方式理解自己。 也就是說，保守派之所以是保守派，是因為他們相信自我本身是一種「傳承的自我」； 自由主義者之所以是自由主義者，是因為他們相信自我本身是一種「發現的自我」； 而左翼人士之所以是左翼人士，是因為他們相信自我本身是一種「自我定義的自我」。

換句話說，我聲稱保守政治是那些以「傳承的自我」為自我哲學的人所產生的，他們將這種哲學擴充套件到他人，以實現對像他們這樣的人來說適當的社會秩序。 自由主義政治是當你將「發現的自我」作為自我哲學的組織原則擴充套件到整個社會時所產生的結果。 當自我哲學的概念放棄現實而轉向自我定義時，就會出現左翼思想，這種自我哲學是從一個「自我定義的自我」出發的，正如Deneen部分正確地感到恐懼的那樣。 幾乎所有其他方面都由此衍生而來，並且從這個視角來看，世界的大部分以前所未有的清晰度展現在我們面前。

Politics as Extension of Self / 政治是自我延伸的體現

For example, the fact that there are these three fundamental positions and that from each it is deemed that there are only two fundamental positions (theirs and other) and all the discord this causes is immediately clarified. That is, the unjust collapses of position can be understood and pulled back from. Liberals can be distinguished from Leftists when looking from their Right and from Conservatives when looking from their Left, and Leftists and Conservatives aren’t just both crazy post-liberal lunatics who get everything wrong, especially about Liberals. So we can see in a new light the cause of so much political dysfunction and talking past one another. Not only do we see that there are three positions posing as two, but we also see why each of the three positions thinks there’s only really one other and therefore misses a great deal that’s important.

Also clarified is the parallelism in the “horseshoe theory.” Both Conservatives and Leftists feel that the self is defined—one for good, one in evil—in terms of the contingencies of our historicity and positionality in own society. That Liberals reject this is also clarified, as is the fact that they sometimes bend “Right,” when they see the value in tradition, family, faith, or nation, for example, and at other times bend “Left,” as when they go looking for themselves to see what they might find or resist attempts to prevent them from doing so.

例如，存在這三種根本立場的事實，以及從每一種立場來看，都認為只有兩種根本立場（自己的立場和其他立場），並且由此產生的各種衝突立即變得清晰。 也就是說，可以理解並避免這些立場的錯誤崩潰。 當從右翼的角度觀察時，可以區分自由主義者和左翼人士；當從左翼的角度觀察時，可以區分自由主義者和保守派。 而且，左翼人士和保守派並非僅僅是那些對一切都錯誤的、瘋狂的后自由主義分子，尤其是對自由主義者的看法。 因此，我們可以以新的視角看到如此多的政治功能失調以及彼此誤解的原因。 我們不僅可以看到存在三種立場卻假裝只有兩種，而且我們還可以瞭解為什麼這三種立場中的每一種都認為實際上只有另一種立場，因此錯過了許多重要的事情。

「馬蹄鐵理論」中的平行性也得到了澄清。 保守派和左翼人士都認為，自我是由我們的歷史性和在自身社會中的地位等偶然因素所定義的——一種是出於善意，一種是出於邪惡。 自由主義者拒絕這種觀點也是很清楚的，而且他們有時會「向右」傾斜，例如，當他們看到傳統、家庭、信仰或國家的價值時；而在其他時候，他們會「向左」傾斜，例如，當他們試圖尋找自我以瞭解自己可能發現什麼，或者抵制阻止他們這樣做的一切嘗試。

Curiously, this model may also explain why the enigmatic and evil Aleksandr Dugin, purported to be the philosopher to Vladimir Putin, though that’s doubtful, proposes that there have been in the Modern Era only three political theories: Liberalism, Communism, and Fascism, each acting like stages a country must pass through. These three correspond to the three political selves, though at least two of them in pathological, disordered form. Dugin proposes as an answer to this problem a so-called Fourth Political Theory (pdf) that is supposed to aufheben the three and move forward. It’s completely schizophrenic, of course, and yet again we can see why. If these political orientations of selfhood are in fact primal and precede political organization, rather than following from it, all we can expect is different presentations of these models in different eras of history. Perhaps it is the case that we’re in Postmodernity now, but no amount of deconstruction or Deleuze can weld together three fundamentally different dispositions about who we are in a way that gives over to mass movement politics, which are by definition deranged by excess.

We could go on and on, but particularly relevant to my own work is an explanation for why the generally Gnostic disposition arises so clearly in Leftism. Consider Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and her exploration of what it means to be woman. She was seeking self-definition, not yet detached from reality, a woman absent her comparison to man and absent her role in so-called “patriarchy.” Frau an sich, we might have it: the self-defined woman, in herself. Obviously, a Leftist with a Self-defined Self behind her eyes, had to invent self-defined woman. She wasn’t quite ready to leave the boundaries of reality, of sex, to be fair, but her ideological progeny got there in the end. Michel Foucault did the same with “the homosexual” in virtually the same way, giving birth to Queer Theory, though with much less concern for reality. In both cases the result was the same: “the personal is political,” and the political self became, well, political about it, at least on the Left.

有趣的是，這種模型也可能解釋了為什麼神秘而邪惡的亞歷山大·杜金（Aleksandr Dugin），據稱是弗拉基米爾·普京（Vladimir Putin）的哲學家（儘管這令人懷疑），提出了一個觀點：在現代時代，只有三種政治理論：自由主義、共產主義和法西斯主義，每一種都像一個國家必須經過的階段。 這三種對應於三種政治自我，但至少其中兩種是病態和失調的形式。 杜金提出了一種所謂的「第四政治理論」（PDF），旨在克服這三種理論並向前發展。 當然，這完全是精神分裂的，但我們再次可以理解原因。 如果這些自我認同的政治傾向實際上是原始的，並且先於政治組織，而不是由此產生，那麼我們所能期望的是在不同的歷史時期出現這些模型的不同表現形式。 也許現在正處於後現代時代，但無論有多少解構或Deleuze，都無法將三種關於我們是誰的根本不同的觀念融合在一起，從而形成一種能夠帶來大規模運動政治的形式，而這種政治本身就因過度而變得瘋狂。

我們可以繼續討論下去，但與我自己的工作特別相關的是，它解釋了為什麼通常具有諾斯底傾向的意識形態在左翼中如此明顯地出現。 考慮西蒙娜·德·波伏娃的《第二性》（The Second Sex ），以及她對「成為女性」意味著什麼的研究。 她正在尋求自我定義，尚未完全脫離現實，一個沒有與男性比較和沒有在所謂的「父權制」中的角色的女性。「Frau an sich_」，我們可以這樣說：自我的女性，本身就是女性。 顯然，一個擁有自我定義的自我的左翼人士必須發明自我定義的女性。 她雖然不太願意放棄現實的邊界，即性別，但她的意識形態後代最終做到了。 米歇爾·福柯（Michel Foucault）以幾乎相同的方式創造了「同性戀」，從而誕生了酷兒理論，但對現實的關注要少得多。 在這兩種情況下，結果都是一樣的：「個人是政治的」，而政治自我本身也變得……在政治上有所表現，至少是在左翼中。

So, Who Are We? / 那麼，我們是誰？

The fact is, and this is part of my essential thesis, none of these selves is totally right or totally wrong. All three, in fact, are aspects of a healthy human existence, and many people may wander through each them at different times for different reasons. Testing boundaries with self-definition can actually be liberating from tradition that has become sclerotic or relations that are toxic or stifling. Reality always matters. Tradition, family, and faith bring us home and integrate us into the places we actually are. Wisdom, it has been said, is knowing when to break the rules, but this implies knowing when not to and remembering that reality always bats last and is the thing you run into when you get it wrong. Maybe wisdom, then, lies in knowing when to prioritize which aspect of a more integrated selfhood.

So long as we stay sane, that is…

事實上，這是我核心論點的一部分：這三種自我並非完全正確或完全錯誤。 實際上，它們都是健康的人類存在的一個方面，而且許多人可能會因為不同的原因而在不同的時間穿梭于其中。 通過自我定義來測試界限實際上可以從僵化的傳統、有毒或壓抑的關係中獲得解放。 現實始終很重要。 傳統、家庭和信仰將我們帶回家，並將我們融入到我們實際所處的地方。 如人們所說，智慧在於知道何時打破規則，但這意味著知道何時不應該這樣做，並記住現實總是會佔據主導地位，並且當你出錯時，你會撞上它。 也許，智慧在於知道何時優先考慮更整合的自我認同的哪個方面。

只要我們保持理智……

Pathologies of the Modern Selves / 現代自我的病理學

Understanding politics as an extension of selfhood this way also gives us insights into how each of these views of self can go pathological, which they will in the hands of people who are themselves pathological. Alongside the three political selves, we arrive at the three pathological political selves, each of which pursues its own brand of tyranny.

We should start by acknowledging a simple point from Jordan Peterson that is somehow far more controversial than it has any right to be. Crazy people—or, more fairly and less personally, psychopathologies—can exist anywhere in the political universe. Narcissism, particularly, is everywhere, and psychopathy gravitates to anything that gives it a path to power and domination.

In other words, Leftism, contrary to popular opinion, has no more monopoly on antisocial behavior than Conservatism has a monopoly on the so-called authoritarian personality. And what is psychopathology? Well, in at least one way of viewing it (which also simplifies drastically), it is a derangement of the self. It stands to reason, then, that there are derangements of our political selves that give rise to deranged and authoritarian politics, if my basic thesis is correct (that political disposition follows from the basic philosophy of the self).

將政治理解為自我認同的延伸，也讓我們瞭解瞭如何看待這些自我觀會變得病態，而當由本身就存在病理的人來掌握時，它們就會如此。 在這三種政治自我之外，我們還出現了三種病態的政治自我，每一種都追求其自身的暴政形式。

我們應該首先承認一個來自Jordan Peterson的簡單觀點，這個觀點似乎比它本該有的還要有爭議。 精神病患者——或者更公平、不那麼個人化的說法是，心理疾病——可以在政治宇宙中的任何地方存在。 特別是自戀無處不在，而精神病傾向於一切能夠為它提供通往權力與支配的途徑的事物。

換句話說，與普遍觀點相反的是，左翼並沒有對反社會行為擁有壟斷權，就像保守主義沒有對所謂的「專制人格」擁有壟斷權一樣。 那麼什麼是心理疾病呢？ 嗯，至少從一種看待它的方式（這也會大大簡化）來看，它是一種自我認同的扭曲。 因此，可以推斷出，存在我們政治自我的扭曲，從而導致扭曲和專制的政治，如果我的基本論點是正確的（即政治傾向源於自我的基本哲學）。

Going too far into self-definition obviously becomes a problem. It is possible to lose connection with ourselves if we get a little too “just the facts.” Rigidity in tradition really is stifling. These pathologies slide down slopes toward new monstrous selves, the Mister Hydes to our usual Doctor Jekylls, and they produce political systems that are, in the Modern Era, the worst nightmares of human existence.

The Self-defined Self can see reality itself as an oppressive social construct and become what we could call Liberated Self. The overemphasis of a Discovered Self can lose everything numinous and aesthetic and become Positivistic Self. Our good Conservative can get so fixated and rigid in his Received Self that he transforms into Theodor Adorno’s monster projected unfairly from his Leftism onto all Conservatives, the Obeisant Self, with his authoritarian personality. (Notice this is the same mistake Deneen makes in the reverse direction.) All three selves, in other words, can go toxic. These are, of course, our Marxists, our Technocrats, and our Fascists, respectively, when they push for an equally toxic and sweeping program of political rule by their selves and no others.

過度沉迷於自我定義顯然會成為問題。 如果我們過於「只關注事實」，就可能失去與自己的聯繫。 傳統中的僵化確實令人窒息。 這些病態傾向會沿著斜坡滑向新的可怕的自我，它們是我們的通常的德古爾醫生（Doctor Jekyll）對應的弗蘭肯斯坦怪物（Mr. Hyde），併產生政治體系，這些體系在現代時代，是人類存在的最可怕噩夢。

過度強調自我定義可能會將現實本身視為一種壓迫性的社會建構，併成為我們所說的「解放的自我」。 過度強調發現的自我可能會失去一切神聖和美學的東西，並變成「實證主義的自我」。 我們的好保守派可能會過於執著和僵化於他的「接受的自我」，從而轉變為西奧多·阿多諾（Theodor Adorno）所描述的怪物，他錯誤地將這種怪誕從他的左翼思想投射到所有保守派身上，即「順從的自我」，擁有專制的人格。（請注意，這是Deneen以相反的方向犯下的同樣的錯誤。） 換句話說，這三種自我都可能變得有毒。 當然，這些分別是我們的馬克思主義者、技術官僚主義者和法西斯分子，當他們推動一種同樣有毒且徹底的政治統治計劃時，這種計劃只服務於他們的自我，而不是其他任何人。

Psychopathology and Tyranny / 心理疾病與暴政

Tyranny in this light, then, could be characterized as the attempt by the pathological few to force everyone in society tightly into a single mode of political selfhood, and it is trimodal under the Modern Selves. In Marxism, it is the enlightened few who truly understand liberation who must rule over everyone else until they believe in it too. Then it will work this time. In Fascism, it is those who understand the necessity of what the Nazis called the Führerprinzip, a pyramidal top-down structure of absolute authority, to the right ordering of society and its progress into an ideal future. Under technocracy, the scientists—or the artificial intelligence—must rule all because it’s the only thing logical enough. All three are doomsday projects for the overwhelming majority in their societies.

My case, though, is that these modes of tyranny and evil proceed not from the ideologies that define them. Ideologies are just the carriers for mind viruses. These modes of tyranny extend from the views of selfhood that underlie them in both pathological and normal forms. Nazis and Fascists adopt the Führerprinzip because they regard themselves as the Obeisant Self with many Received Selves as sympathizers. Communists, Theosophists, New Agers, New Thought cultists, and so on, do what they do because they are Liberated Selves who believe it can only work when enough people believe in and enact the reality-defying and self-defining terms of “liberation.” Obviously, the Self-defined Selves out there aren’t hard to bring along for the ride. Finally, the technocrats are so positivistic because they are Positivistic Selves, and a damn-sight too many Liberals lose the plot and go along with “rigorous” methods of societal organization because they are Discovered Selves who believe the best methods on the largest scale will produce the best results for the largest number of people.

因此，從這個角度來看，暴政可以被定義為少數病態者試圖迫使社會中的每個人嚴格地融入單一的政治自我認同模式，並且在現代自我的框架下，這有三種表現形式。 在馬克思主義中，是那些真正理解解放的少數人，他們必須統治所有人，直到其他人也相信它為止。 然後這次就會成功。 在法西斯主義中，是那些理解納粹所說的「領袖原則」（Führerprinzip）——一種金字塔式的自上而下的絕對權威結構——對於社會秩序和其走向理想未來的必要性的人。 在技術官僚制下，科學家（或人工智慧）必須統治一切，因為這是唯一足夠理性的事物。 這三種模式都是對他們各自社會中絕大多數人的末日計劃。

然而，我的觀點是，這些暴政和邪惡的模式並非源於定義它們的意識形態。 意識形態只是思維病毒的載體。 這些暴政的模式源於它們背後的自我認同觀，無論這些自我認同是病態還是正常的。 納粹和法西斯主義者採用「領袖原則」，是因為他們將自己視為「順從的自我」，並且有許多「接受的自我」作為同情者。 共產主義者、神智學派、新時代運動者、新思想邪教徒等等，之所以做他們所做的事情，是因為他們是「解放的自我」，他們相信只有當足夠多的人相信並實踐那些否認現實和定義自我的「解放」原則時，才能奏效。 顯然，那些「自我定義的自我」很容易被拉入其中。 最後，技術官僚主義者之所以如此實證主義，是因為他們是「實證主義的自我」，而且太多自由派已經迷失了方向，並同意採用「嚴謹」的社會組織方法，因為他們是「發現的自我」，他們相信最好的方法在最大規模上會為最多的人帶來最好的結果。

Riddles of History / 歷史之謎

Helpfully, this approach answers another riddle for us. Is Fascism “Right-wing” or “Left-wing,” and is the controversy the result merely of Communist propaganda and Liberal confusion? The approach tells us we’re asking the wrong question. The correct answer is that Fascism is pathological, but it is a pathological extension of the Conservative view of self—it’s the Right-wing that forgot what it means to be Right-wing at all in its madness for power and control. Schizophrenic, then, becomes an ideal word for it (NB: today’s young neo-Fascists project “schizophrenia” onto their ideological opponents at almost every turn). In its own descriptions of itself, Fascism is romantic, idealistic, and progressive (hence the eugenics), but it is “we” under complete obeisance who will collectively self-define all together as One under the identity we receive from Dear Leader and the Fascist State.

It also clarifies the fundamental, parallel, inverted paradox of Communism, which everyone simply understands to be Left-wing even though its primary obsession is recovering the State of Nature of Man. Marx himself characterized Communism as “a complete return of man to himself as a social, i.e., human, being” (pdf).

幸運的是，這種方法為我們解答了另一個謎題。 法西斯主義是「右翼」還是「左翼」，而這場爭議僅僅是共產主義宣傳和自由派困惑的結果嗎？ 這種方法告訴我們，我們在問一個錯誤的問題。 正確的答案是，法西斯主義是一種病態現象，但它是一種對保守主義自我觀的病態延伸——在追求權力與控制的瘋狂中，右翼忘記了成為「右翼」的真正含義。 因此，「精神分裂癥」是一個理想的詞來形容它（注意：當今年輕的新法西斯主義者幾乎在每一個轉折點都將「精神分裂癥」投射到他們的意識形態對手身上）。 在其自身的描述中，法西斯主義是浪漫的、理想主義的和進步的（因此有優生學），但只有當我們完全順從時，我們才能集體地自我定義為一體，這種身份來自我們敬愛的領袖和法西斯國家。

它也闡明了共產主義的基本、平行的、顛倒的悖論，每個人都簡單地認為它是左翼，儘管它的主要執念是恢復人類的自然狀態。 馬克思本人將共產主義描述為「人完全迴歸到自己作為社會、即人類的存在」（pdf）。

Whether it’s a problem of my nomenclature or a subtlety of necessity because “liberation” cannot and will not ever arrive, certainly not from reality and almost as certainly not from social norms, hierarchy, and history, there’s a progressive subtype nested between “Self-defined Self” and “Liberated Self,” the latter of which is just an idealized vision anyway. It is “(Socially) Constructed Self.” (The parallel midway points between sanity and psychopathy would be something like the Puritanical or maybe Nationalistic Self for the Conservatives and the Managerial or Administrative Self for the Liberals.) The paradox of “Liberation,” or as Frank Dikötter called it, it’s tragedy, is that the closest reality can provide is forcing everyone to pretend in whatever it’s supposed to constitute as hard and long as they can, on threat of unimaginable horror and pain if they don’t play along.

Communism, therefore, the ideal of the “Liberated Self,” is not only impossible but generates by necessity exactly the opposite condition. Rather than self-definition leading to liberation of any type, it leads to and absolute totalitarianism where every mind has to be transformed to believe what cannot be already is. Adopting a (Socially) Constructed Self ironically does not liberate anyone but instead makes every man a complete and total slave to what everyone else is willing to—or can be forced to—believe through paralogical and paramoral social constructions that uphold the fundamental idealism and pathology of the whole project as a basic condition for personhood. The “tragedy of liberation,” then, is that it is not only absolute tyranny but, in its complete break from reality, absolute collapse.

無論是因為我的術語使用不當，還是因為「解放」無法實現，而且幾乎肯定不會從現實、社會規範、等級制度和歷史中獲得，在「自我定義的自我」和「解放的自我」之間，存在一種進步的亞型，而後者僅僅是一種理想化的願景。 它是「(社會)建構的自我」。 (在理性和精神病態之間的中間點是，對於保守主義者來說可能是「清教徒的自我」或「民族主義的自我」，而對於自由派來說可能是「管理的自我」或「行政的自我」。) 「解放」的悖論，或者正如弗蘭克·迪科特稱之為，是悲劇，在於現實所能提供的最接近的是迫使每個人在儘可能長時間地假裝，並且必須以難以想像的恐怖和痛苦為威脅，如果他們不配合。

因此，共產主義，即「解放的自我」的理想，不僅是不可能的，而且必然會產生完全相反的情況。 與其說自我定義會導致任何形式的解放，不如說它會導致絕對的極權主義，在這種極權主義中，每個人的思想都必須被改變，以相信那些實際上並不存在的事物。 諷刺的是，採用「(社會)建構的自我」並不能解放任何人，而是使每個人都完全和徹底地成為其他所有人都願意——或者可以被強迫去——相信的東西的奴隸，這些東西是通過非邏輯和非道德社會建構來維持整個專案的基本理想和病態狀態，作為人格的基本條件。 因此，「解放的悲劇」在於，它不僅是絕對的暴政，而且由於其與現實的完全決裂，最終會導致絕對的崩潰。

They’re the Same, Differently / 它們本質上一樣，只是表現形式不同

Here, then, we come to understand the “horseshoe” as well in a deeper way. Both Communism and Fascism are in their pathology pointed at what we should call “Omega Man,” the Last Man, the one who exists only at the prophesied End of History. The Communist will liberate him to be his original State-of-Nature self (Alpha Man) who somehow retains all the benefits of his Fall and toil in the divided, Manichean world. The Fascist will discipline him to the optimal state of human development, which, ironically, the Communist will be forced to do as well. In both cases, everyone will be of one mind—we will all return to being One—and we will maximize human development and flourishing. The picture of the End of History and of the Last Man (not pathological “Liberal” Fukuyama’s, but Hegel’s) differs in the details, and the path differs in its mechanisms, but in abstract generality they’re the same. The real divide is in how much Hermeticism motivates the program.

Even more ironically, the undeniably progressive project of Fascism not only operates by regressive means, like we discussed, but will spiral into ever deeper regression in its relentless march forward (Avanti!). The Fascist Obeisant Self mind conceives of the failure of society as having deviated from the ideals of a more glorious past, which it has romanticized into Socrealist absurdity. Man isn’t to “self-define” in Fascism. He’s supposed to define himself according to the ridiculous romantic vision of who he used to be, according to the ridiculous Fascist imaginary. One might recognize this as self-definition by other means, but we’re presently discussing the spiral. The issue there is that you can’t return to what never existed, and so when Fascism eventually fails to deliver because it runs out of neighbors to loot and plunder or meets resistance, the only direction it can look is further backwards. The last point, wherein Man will optimize his future, the Fascist Omega Man, will be realizable only when he models himself off his original State of Nature again (Alpha Man re-enters the chat), yet again at a higher level of organization arrived and extended through the Total State under a fully integrated Führerprinzip. Where Communism is regression by progressive means, we find Fascism is progression by regressive means. Both seek the final form of Alpha-and-Omega Man (God Man, Homo Deus) by different organizational principles and with different views as to what that perfected state of Man is.

因此，我們在此更深入地理解了「馬蹄鐵」的含義。 共產主義和法西斯主義在它們的病態之處都指向了我們應該稱之為「終極之人」，即最後一人，即只存在於預言的歷史盡頭的人。 共產主義者將解放他，讓他恢復到最初的自然狀態（阿爾法人），而這種人某種程度上保留了他所獲得的因墮落和在分裂、二元世界中的辛勤勞動的成果。 法西斯主義者將約束他，使其達到人類發展的最佳狀態，諷刺的是，共產主義者最終也會被迫這樣做。 在這兩種情況下，每個人都會擁有相同的思想——我們將再次成為一體——我們將最大限度地提高人類的發展和繁榮。 歷史終結和最後一人（不是病態的「自由派」福山所說的，而是黑格爾所說的）的圖景在細節上有所不同，而實現路徑也因其機制而異，但在抽像的一般性方面，它們是相同的。 真正的分歧在於，多少神秘主義驅動著這個計劃。

更諷刺的是，法西斯主義這一無疑進步的專案不僅採用倒退手段（如我們所討論的），而且在它不斷前進的過程中（Avanti！），會螺旋式地陷入越來越深的倒退。 服從的法西斯自我意識認為，社會失敗是因為偏離了更加輝煌過去的理想，而這種理想已經被浪漫化為社會主義寫實主義（socrealism, Socialist realism）的荒謬。 在法西斯主義中，人不能「自我定義」。 他應該根據他曾經是誰的荒謬浪漫願景來定義自己，即根據荒謬的法西斯想像。 也許可以認為這是通過其他方式進行自我定義，但我們目前正在討論螺旋式發展的問題。 問題在於，你無法回到從未存在過的事物，因此當法西斯主義最終未能實現其目標時，因為它耗盡了要掠奪和搶劫的鄰居，或者遇到了抵抗，它唯一能做的就是向後退。 至於最後一點，即人類將優化他的未來，法西斯主義的終極之人，只有在他以他最初的自然狀態為榜樣時才能實現（阿爾法人再次出現），並且在完全整合的元首原則下，通過一個完全整合的國家來實現更高水平的組織和擴充套件。 共產主義是通過進步手段進行倒退，而我們發現法西斯主義是通過倒退手段進行進步。 兩者都尋求通過不同的組織原則和對人類完美狀態的不同看法，來實現阿爾法與歐米伽人（上帝之子、智神）的最終形式。

Pathology Points Toward Utopia / 病態往往指向烏托邦

To simplify that discussion a bit, the Communist and the Fascist both believe that the project of History itself is for Man to reenter into his inheritance in the Kingdom of God, from which he has been wrongly alienated. Their visions of the Kingdom are different, however, and therefore the methods for achieving return to it are also different. Relevant here is that both of these visions extends from the senses of political self each holds taken to idealization through psychotic pathology.

The Communist views Heaven, which it calls Communism—a stateless, classless society where everything is in plenty, culture is high, and everyone is perfectly equal, liberated from toil and necessity—as a perfectly egalitarian place where everyone can be exactly as they want to be without restriction or further judgment. Heaven is one big happy family in which we are all One with each other and One with God in that We are God and realize it. Obviously, this is the universalized and idealized extension of the Self-defined Self through (Socially) Constructed Self into Liberated Self, positing a complete and universal liberation of all of mankind who know realizes who he really is: Liberated Self.

爲了簡化一些討論，共產主義者和法西斯主義者都認為，歷史的目的是讓人重新進入上帝之國的遺產，而他被錯誤地與此分離。 然而，他們對上帝之國的願景是不同的，因此實現迴歸的方法也不同。 與此處相關的是，這兩種願景都源於每種政治自我意識所持有的觀點，並通過精神病態的理想化而擴充套件。

共產主義者認為天堂（它稱之為共產主義）是一個沒有國家、沒有階級的社會，在這個社會中一切都很豐富，文化很高，每個人都是完全平等的，擺脫了辛勤勞動和必要性——這是一個完美平等的地方，每個人都可以按照他們想要的方式存在，沒有任何限制或進一步的評判。 天堂是一個大家庭，我們彼此相連，並且與上帝相連，因為我們是上帝，並意識到這一點。 顯然，這是將自我定義的自我通過（社會）建構的自我擴充套件到解放的自我，它假設了對所有人類的完全和普遍解放，他們知道自己是誰：解放的自我。

The Fascist, by contrast, views Heaven as not just highly ordered but perfectly ordered and hierarchical. It is also a land of milk and honey and absolute abundance, but this is because of its organizational principle, which is ultimately a deified Führerprinzip. God is on top, absolute Führer. The Hosts of Angels are beneath God in a perfect and inflexible hierarchy, and they are all totally obeisant to God without freedom of will, which was alone reserved for humans—that they might emulate angels, that art in Heaven. Man’s role is to receive this order and actualize it on Earth, as it is in Heaven. The Führer is the Lord of Hosts in Fascism, and plenty flows through the absolute imposition and reception of order. Heaven is when every man knows precisely who he is and lives up to it: Obeisant Self.

The Liberals aren’t off the hook here. The two tyrannical models are not the only tyrannical models. They too are obsessed with Omega Man, who arrives at the End of History, beyond what has been called the “Omega Point” by French Jesuit nutjob Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. They’re just going to construct it—it being Skynet—_positivistically through the most ordered and logical society possible, run by advanced artificial intelligence as soon as may be. Its Heaven is _Star Trek, but forgetting that Commanders Spock and Data don’t captain the Enterprise, nor does “Computer.” Captains James Tiberius Kirk and Jean-Luc Picard are emphatically not Positivistic Self, nor even strictly Discovered Self. They’re far more human than that, and even the advances of the twenty-fourth century cannot override the need for the integrated human being who understands there’s more to life than data and math. Theirs, too, is a tyrannical vision based on pathology pointing at utopia.

與此相反，法西斯主義者認為天堂不僅是高度有序的，而且是完美有序和等級森嚴的。 它也是一個牛奶和蜂蜜之地，擁有絕對的富足，但這歸功於它的組織原則，最終是一種神化的元首原則。 上帝在頂端，是絕對的元首。 天使群在上帝之下，形成完美的、不可改變的等級制度，他們完全順從上帝，沒有自由意志，而這種自由意志只保留給人類——以便他們可以模仿天使，這是天堂中的藝術。 人的作用是在地球上接受這種秩序並將其實現，就像在天堂一樣。 在法西斯主義中，元首是天使之主，而秩序的絕對強加和接受會帶來繁榮。 當每個人都清楚地知道自己是誰並且努力做到時，那就是天堂：順從的自我。

自由主義者也無法免責。 這兩種暴政模式不是唯一的暴政模式。 他們同樣癡迷於終極之人，他將在歷史的盡頭出現，超越法國耶穌會狂熱分子Pierre Teilhard de Chardin所說的「歐米伽點」。 他們只是要通過儘可能有序和邏輯的社會來構建它——即天網——一旦可能就由先進的人工智慧來執行。 他們的天堂是《星際迷航》（Star Trek），但他們忘記了指揮官Spock和Data並沒有駕駛企業號，也沒有「計算機」。 James Tiberius Kirk和Jean-Luc Picard船長絕對不是實證主義的自我，甚至也不是嚴格意義上的發現的自我。 他們比這更人性化得多，即使是二十四世紀的技術進步也無法取代對理解生命中不僅僅是數據和數學的人的需求。 他們的也是一種暴政願景，這種願景基於病態指向烏托邦。

Conclusion / 結論

Humorously, for all his schizophrenia and malice, Aleksandr Dugin is almost right here, in roughly the same way Patrick Deneen is almost right, perhaps through a glass, darkly. In fact, he points us to two truths, both of which discredit him completely. First, the pathological, tyrannical modes given over to mass-movement politics, are all unified in their desire for a complete ordering of human existence through their favorite flavors of authority, and thus they can share, one to another. In fact, since they all point at the Omega Point, though by different means and with different conceptions of what it implies, they must converge as they trend further into tyranny and pathology. Thus, a “Fourth Political Theory” that tries to draw from each while inspiring mass movements and hoping to drag them back to sanity is merely a schizophrenic and inverted project whose underlying motivations and impossibility become visible this way.

Secondly, what Dugin inadvertently points to is, in fact, the need for an integrated and tolerant politics that understands the trimodal Self and its Modern expressions. It is pathology, and pathocracy, we must reject, and that cannot be found in any of the three dispositions alone but in an expression that admits some of each while gatekeeping their unhealthy and pathological modes.

Therefore, a politics of limited tolerance and understanding is revealed to be a resolving factor between the deep realities of politics as an extension of self and self-understanding—exactly the opposite of what Dugin demands. It is sanity in our politics, and a gatekeeping against all of these pathologies in governance, that we must cleave to. Within the boundaries of sanity, whatever Michel Foucault had to say about it, lies the path to peace and prosperity.

幽默的是，儘管亞歷山大·杜金（Aleksandr Dugin）患有精神分裂癥和惡意，但他在這裡幾乎是正確的，就像Patrick Deneen幾乎正確一樣，也許是通過模糊的玻璃。 事實上，他指出了兩個真理，這兩個真理都完全否定了他自己。 首先，所有奉行大眾運動政治的病態、暴政模式都統一在他們對通過他們最喜歡的權威形式來完成人類存在的秩序的渴望中，因此它們可以相互分享。 事實上，由於它們都指向歐米伽點，儘管是通過不同的方式和對它所暗示的內容的不同理解，因此隨著它們進一步走向暴政和病態，它們必須匯聚在一起。 因此，一種「第四政治理論」，試圖從每種理論中汲取靈感，同時激發大眾運動並希望將它們拉回理智，僅僅是一個精神分裂和扭曲的專案，其潛在動機和不可能性會通過這種方式變得可見。

其次，杜金無意中指出了，實際上，我們需要一種整合和寬容的政治，這種政治能夠理解三模自我及其現代表現形式。 我們必須拒絕病態和病態統治，而這不能僅僅體現在三種傾向中的任何一種，而應該體現在一種既包含其中一些，又限制其不健康和病態模式的表達中。

因此，一種有限的寬容和理解的政治被揭示為解決政治深層現實的關鍵，即作為自我延伸和自我理解的一種方式——這與杜金所要求的完全相反。 我們必須堅持在政治中的理智，以及對所有這些治理病態的限制，這才是在理性的邊界內（不論Michel Foucault說了什麼）通往和平與繁榮的道路。

Postscript / 附錄

由於這個模型有些複雜和令人困惑，我想提供一組非常簡單的圖表，以說明在自我認知模式中從理智到瘋狂的範圍。

左翼：自我定義的自我 → (社會上) 構建的自我 → 解放的自我 → 終極之人

自由主義：發現的自我 → 管理型自我 → 實證主義的自我 → 終極之人

保守主義：接受的自我 → 清教徒/民族主義的自我 → 順從的自我 → 終極之人

我認為這個模型的正確構建是一個三角形，其中三個健康的表達方式沿著一條線定義其底部，而這些線條匯聚在頂部形成「終極之人」。

這些模型所提供的社會組織模式將如下所示：

左翼：社會經濟上自由進步的 → 社會主義 → 共產主義 → 烏托邦

自由主義：古典自由主義 → 管理型/行政狀態 → 天網/1984 → 烏托邦

保守主義：傳統社會 → 順從/壓迫性社會 → 法西斯主義 → 烏托邦

我提出這個模型，希望能夠為我們所處的環境提供更多更好的討論途徑，而這些環境越來越令人不快，也許是因為我們對大局的理解不足以及傾向於部落主義的崩潰。