變遷社群中的個人－－發展廖文奎哲學以調和社群主義和個人主義的對立

Individuals in a Changing Community: Reconciling the Opposition between Communitarianism and Individualism by Developing Liao Wen-Kwei’s Philosophy

1980年代間政治哲學的社群主義對於自由主義的自我觀提出批評；科學哲學也有個人主義與社群主義的爭辯。台灣哲學家廖文奎在1933年出版《個人與社群》，論證「個人在本質上是社群的產物，偶然卻能成為社群的指引。」這個論點似乎能調和社群主義與個人主義的對立。本文發展廖文奎的個人與社群哲學，再連結孔恩的科學社群概念，企圖重探個人與社群的關係，調和社群主義與個人主義的對立。本文區分community的兩個核心涵義：一個涵義是指「由許多個人所構成的群體或共同體」；另一個涵義是指「把這些個人總括在一起的共同特性」。根據這兩個涵義，我論證：許多個人構成了社群的群體而且社群的共同特性也塑造了個人，但有的個人偶然能引導社群的改變。

Liao Wen-Kwei was a Taiwanese philosopher in the period of Japanese rule over Taiwan, and published The Individual and the Community in 1933. The monograph argues that the individual is essentially a product of the community, and yet may by chance become a guide of it. Liao’s inquiry into the relationship between individual and community is earlier than the debate between communitarians and liberalists/individualists in the 1980s, providing reconciliation to the debate. However, Liao did not consider the issue of changing communities. In this paper, I first examine the opposition between communitarians and liberalists about individual (self) and community, discuss Liao’s proposition and argument, connect the issue with Thomas Kuhn’s notion of scientific community, and develop a dynamics of changing community based on Liao’s theory. I discern two ontological meanings of the term“community”: One refers to a social group consisting of individuals who share a communal identity; the other means some communal features that are shared by all individuals in the group and that can connect these individuals as a whole. According to the analysis, I argue that individuals constitute a community, and the communal features of the community in which an individual grows shape her/his self; however, an individual may by chance also change the community.