This little essay was scribbled down when I had an itch to comment on a recent post by Professor Wu; see:
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_51fdc0620100bi39.html#cmt_1382340
Since the issues involved are rather important, I am not recording this passage in the usual “repost—archive” way, but tentatively pasting it here again. Since this passage is both rough and hasty, there is plenty of room for questions.
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Science and democracy can be said to be of the same origin and current, with their roots in ancient Greece, their modern versions in the Enlightenment, and their contemporary forms both taking the United States as a model. And their contemporary forms both differ markedly from ancient Greece. Professor Wu often discusses the similarities and differences between ancient Greek science and modern science, but the similarities and differences between ancient and modern democracy are just as important. Modern science has run into problems, but modern democracy has run into problems as well. Just as modern science cannot solve the predicament of modern democracy, introducing modern democracy probably cannot solve the predicament of modern science. More crucially, I believe the predicament of modern science and that of modern democracy stem from the same source.
If we put democracy and science together, we see that ancient Greek democracy and science both have one most important idea as their common foundation: the idea of “freedom.” Yet looking at modern democracy, this core idea has already been displaced, that is, “equality” has replaced “freedom” and become the core idea of modern democracy.
As Professor Wu often says, compared with ancient Greek science, modern science has lost the idea of “freedom.” But beyond the factor of the prevalence of pragmatism and utilitarianism—an element common to both modern science and democracy—I think this is also precisely related to this replacement of “freedom” by “equality.” Modern science is not unsympathetic to “equality”; on the contrary, just like modern democracy, it is precisely waving this banner of “equality” high (of course, just like modern democracy, what it seeks is formal equality, equality of innate rights rather than equality derived from rational freedom). Why pursue “oneness”? Because only under a single standard can formal equality be achieved; if multiple standards coexist, formal equality cannot be realized. Why pursue universality and reject locality? Again, to guarantee equality. In any case, it is only by “standardization,” “formalization,” “proceduralization,” and “unification” that equality can be guaranteed.
The idea of “freedom” is anti-authoritarian and anti-utilitarian—if I talk my own talk and you talk your own talk, that already counts as freedom; there is no need for another authority or some practical thing to confer freedom upon us. If it were done that way, then we would all be unfree. But “equality” or “equal rights” is different. Whether my rights or power and your rights or power are equal always requires appealing to some public authority or standard to adjudicate; at the very least, “equality” does not exclude a third party. If both you and I depend on some other as authority, then even if we depend on the same authority, we are both “unfree”; yet if we depend on the same authority, then we can say that we are “equal.” This is the most important difference between “freedom” and “equality.”
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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