重新建構古典傳說：美國的城都文化

Reconstituting a Classical Heritage: The Civic Culture of the United States

本文透過探討一特殊案例，闡述現代生活中古典傳統理念的持續力量，以及它在建立美國城都文化與尋找新形式時所扮演的角色。現代化的改革風潮曾對古文物的適切性提出質疑，本文對此將作檢討。美國短而充滿活力的歷史在這方面最為明顯不過。以古希臘、羅馬及基督教傳統與根基的教育課程；作為「有用知識」，已被實際需求及科學經濟發展的道德意涵所取代。但美國茁壯持久的城都文化是以曾經重建古代共和理念的光榮歷史為基礎，這使我們體會到，透過維護以提升教化的途徑，源自傳統的根基可以重新建構。因此，我們在尋求重新恢復傳統學識的途徑時，應該避免將新與舊作太明顯的劃分，以免忽略了曾不斷使古典傳統歷久長新的變通力量。

The paper argues for the continued validity and strength of the concept of a classical heritage in modem life by exploring a particular example, its role in shaping--and finding new form in--the civic culture of the United States. It examines the challenges that modernity and its cult of revolutionary change have posed to the age-old equation of legitimacy with antiquity. Nowhere has this been more evident than in America's short and exceptionally dynamic history. An educational curriculum rooted in the heritage of the ancient world--Greek, Roman, and Christian--has been supplanted as 'useful knowledge' by the practical demands and moral ambiguities of scientific and economic development. Yet the strong and enduring civic culture of the United States, rooted in a heroic past that reformulated the concept of classical republicanism, reminds us that the authority derived from tradition can be reconstituted in ways that sustain and heighten its power to educate and inform. As we seek ways to reinvigorate traditional learning, therefore, we should avoid assuming too sharp a divide between old and new lest we overlook the creative adaptations that have continued to give the classical heritage its enduring appeal and value.