新美学·每日翻译 | 面向对象的本体论 | 第七章
Object- Oriented Ontology in Overview | Chapter 7 Object- Oriented Ontology in Overview | Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything | Graham Harman
面向对象的本体论概观 | 第七章 面向对象的本体论概观 | 面向对象的本体论：新万物理论 | 格雷厄姆·哈曼
（注：以上依次为内容标题 | 章节标题 | 书名| 作者）
翻译者：Lu Fengfeng
Chapter 7 Object- Oriented Ontology in Overview
第七章 面向对象的本体论概观
You have now reached the end of the first comprehensive book on OOO aimed at a wide general readership. Even if you do not yet feel like a master of all the ideas presented so far, you can safely say that you know more on the topic than most of its critics. There are several different ways to view the meaning of OOO in historical terms, depending on which seems most interesting to the individual reader. One way is to treat OOO as a revival of the covertly object-oriented trend that has intermittently arisen to oppose the excesses of undermining and overmining methods, with some of the key moments being Aristotle’s substances, Leibniz’s monads, Kant’s things-in-themselves, Whitehead’s and Latour’s flat ontologies of entities/actors, and the object-oriented impetus in the works of Husserl (intentional objects) and Heidegger (the thing). Another way to look at OOO is that it takes the other fork in the road after Kant than the one taken by German Idealism (Hegel, Fichte, Schelling): which eliminated Kant’s things-in-themselves while affirming his prejudice that philosophy must talk primarily about the interplay between thought and world, leaving any object–object interactions apart from humans to the mathematizing methods of natural science. By contrast, OOO endorses the things-in-themselves and asks instead why Kant treated them as the sole and tragic burden of human beings, rather than as the ungraspable terms of every relation, including those between fire and cotton or raindrops and tar. Third, the interdisciplinary suc- cess of OOO allows us to view it instead as an extremely broad method in the spirit of actor-network theory, but one that rescues the non-relational core of every object, thus paving the way for an aesthetic conception of things. In dif- fering moods, I favour each of these conceptions in turn, and the reader is free to do likewise.
您现在已经到达了面向广大读者的面向对象的本体论的第一本综合性图书的末尾。即使你还没有掌握到目前为止提出的所有观点，你也可以放心地说，在这个问题上，你比大多数批评者知道得更多。从历史的角度来看面向对象的本体论的含义有几种不同的看待方式，具体取决于哪一种方式对个别读者来说最有趣。一种方法是将面向对象的本体论视为一种隐蔽的面向对象趋势的复兴，这种趋势不时出现，以反对潜挖和超采方法的过分行为，其中一些关键时刻是亚里士多德的物质，莱布尼茨的单子，康德的物自体，怀特海和拉图尔的实体/行动者的平面本体论，以及胡塞尔(意向对象)和海德格尔(物)的作品中面向对象的原动力。另一种看待面向对象的本体论的方式是，它走的是康德之后的另一个岔路口，而不是德国唯心主义(黑格尔、费希特、谢林)所走的岔路口：在肯定他的偏见的同时，即哲学必须主要讨论思想与世界之间的相互作用，消除了康德的物自体，把任何对象-对象的相互作用，从人类中分离出来，归到自然科学的数学方法。相反，面向对象的本体论认可物自体，并且问为什么康德把它们当作人类唯一和悲惨的负担，而不是作为每一种关系的难以把握的术语，包括那些火与棉花或雨滴与焦油之间的关系。第三，面向对象本体论的跨学科成功使我们可以将其看作是一种非常广泛的方法，具有行动者网络理论的精神，但它拯救了每一个对象的非关系核心，从而为事物的审美观念铺平了道路。在不同的心情下，我依次赞同这些概念中的每一个，读者也可以自由地这样做。
It may now be useful to finish this book with a brief survey of some of the main principles of OOO as covered above. A number of these contributions were first made by others, and I will try to indicate the cases in which this is so.
现在，用对上面所述面向对象的本体论的一些主要原则的简要概述来结束本书可能是有用的。这些贡献中有一些是首先由其他人作出的，我将试着指出这种情况的例子。
Flat Ontology (Chapter 1). This is the idea that philosophy must begin by casting the widest possible net in aspiring to talk about everything. The chief enemy of flat ontology is the taxonomical prejudice which assumes in advance that the world must be divided up between a small number of radi- cally different types of entities. Medieval philosophy orbited around the difference between God on one side and every- thing else on the other. Modern philosophy simply exchanged God for human thought, without giving up the notion that one extra-important type of being was so vastly different from everything else that it deserved to occupy half of ontology. This modern taxonomy continues today in the work of lead- ing European philosophers such as Žižek, Badiou and Meillassoux. This is why OOO, using Latour’s term, calls itself a ‘non-modern’ philosophy, since we have no wish to return to the pre-modern era and merely reject thought/world or human/ non-human as a purportedly basic distinction that wrongly cuts the universe in half. It is DeLanda who inspired OOO’s use of the term ‘flat ontology’, though the tendency this phrase describes can be found throughout the history of philosophy, especially in Aristotle’s claim that while humans, animals and plants may be different, a human is not more a human than a plant is a plant. That is to say, both are equally substances.
平面本体论(第一章)。这是一种这样的理念，即哲学必须从撒开尽可能广泛的网开始，以渴望谈论一切。平面本体论的主要敌人是分类法上的偏见，这种偏见预先假定世界必须被划分为几个完全不同类型的实体。：中世纪哲学围绕着上帝和其他一切事物之间的差异展开。现代哲学只不过用人类的思想替代了上帝，但同时又不放弃这样一种观念，即一种特别重要的存在类型与其他任何事物都截然不同，它理应占据本体论的一半。这种现代分类方法在今天的领导性的欧洲哲学家的工作中仍在继续，例如齐泽克,巴迪欧，梅尔索克斯（Meillassoux）。这就是为什么面向对象的本体论哲学，用拉图尔的话说，称自己为“非现代”哲学，因为我们不希望回到前现代时代，而只是拒绝思想/世界或人类和非人类，作为一个错误地将宇宙一分为二的基本区别。是德兰达启发了面向对象的本体论使用术语“平面本体”， 虽然这个短语所描述的趋势可以在哲学史上找到，特别是在亚里士多德的观点中，虽然人类，动物和植物可能是不同的，与其说人是人，不如说植物是植物。也就是说，两者都是同样的物质。
Anti-mining (Chapter 1). An object is whatever cannot be reduced to either of the two basic kinds of knowledge: what something is made of, and what it does. Too many philoso- phies in the West have tried to claim that it is simply one of these, the other, or both. Another way of saying it is that OOO is strongly committed to an anti-literalist view of objects, meaning the notion that we can paraphrase an object, as if it were truly equivalent to a sum total of qualities or effects and nothing more. In terms of contemporary philosophy, the model of a swirling, dynamic whole that only temporarily gives rise to transient objects (Henri Bergson, Jane Bennett) counts for OOO as a form of undermining, since its treats individual entities as shallow by comparison with an under- lying unity. On the other side of the coin, OOO cannot endorse philosophies of actions or events, since these merely overmine objects. This criticism holds good in different ways of Latourian actor-network theory, of Foucault’s theory that discursive events precede objects, and of Derrida’s view that nothing is identical to itself (a.k.a. ‘self-presence’) but that everything exists in dissemination. A few days ago I saw another variant of such theories on an internet comment thread, where an anonymous critic of OOO praised Karen Barad and Donna Haraway instead, due to their defence of ‘relations without relata’.1 While there is much of value in the writings of Barad and Haraway, I do not see how the idea of relations that generate their terms out of nothing is feasi- ble: as if a marriage generated both partners out of thin air, rather than joining and changing them. It is hard to imagine a more severe form of overmining, which as we have seen has the problem of not being able to explain change.
反对采挖（第一章）。对象是不能归结为两种基本知识中的任何一种的东西: 什么东西是由什么组成的，它做什么。西方有太多的哲学试图声称，这只是其中一种，另一种，或者两者兼而有之。另一种说法是面向对象的本体论坚定地坚持反写实主义的对象观，意思是我们可以转述一个对象的概念，就好像它真的等同于一个性质或效果的总和，仅此而已。就当代哲学而言，一个旋转的、动态的整体模型只会临时产生暂时的对象(亨利•柏格森Henri Bergson、简•班纳特Jane Bennett)，这被认为是面向对象的本体论一种潜挖形式，因为与潜在的整体相比，面向对象的本体论将个别实体视为肤浅的。另一方面，面向对象的本体论不能支持行动或事件的哲学，因为这些只是对对象的超采。这种批评都适用于拉图尔式的行为者网络理论，福柯的事件先于对象的理论，以及德里达的观点，即没有任何事物与自身相同(即“自我存在”)，而是一切都存在于延异之中，的各个方面。几天前，我在一个网络评论帖上看到了另一种类似的理论，在那里一个匿名的面向对象的本体论的评论家表扬了凯伦·巴拉德（Karen Barad）和唐娜·哈拉维（Donna Haraway），因为他们的对“没有被关系者的关系”的辩护。[i]虽然巴拉德和哈拉维的著作有许多价值，但我不认为凭空产生它们的条件的关系概念是可行的: 就好像婚姻凭空产生了双方，而不是加入并改变他们。很难想象还有比这更严重的超采形式，正如我们所看到的，它的问题是无法解释变化。
OOO is not a form of materialism (Chapter 1). Any new theory will tend to attract a number of different misunder- standings. By far the most common mistake pertaining to OOO is the claim that it is a form of ‘materialism’. In fact, OOO has no interest whatsoever in the concept of ‘matter’, let alone materialism. The notion of matter as unformed physical stuff in which forms can be stamped has no basis in experience, and is simply unhelpful in theoretical terms. The difference between a horse, an imaginary horse and a unicorn is not that the former ‘inheres’ in matter and the latter two do not. Instead, the difference is that the real horse has a dif- ferent form from the imaginary horse, and certainly a differ- ent one from the unicorn. One of the implications of this is that we cannot ‘extract’ a form from a thing and express this form in mathematical or other directly knowable terms; or rather, we can do this, but only by paying the price of chang- ing the form into something else. There is no translation of anything without energy loss, and hence it is impossible to grasp anything perfectly.
面向对象的本体论不是唯物主义的一种形式(第一章)。任何新理论都会引起许多不同的误解。面向对象的本体论的最常见的错误是声称它是“唯物主义”的一种形式。事实上,面向对象的本体论对“物质”的概念毫无兴趣，更不用说唯物主义了。物质是未成形的物理物质，在这种物质中，形式可以被印上印记，这一概念在经验中是没有根据的，在理论上是毫无用处的。马、假想的马和独角兽之间的区别并不在于前者在物质上是“内在的”，而后者则不是。相反，真正的马和想象中的马有不同的形式，当然也不同于独角兽。这其中的一个含义是，我们不能从一个事物中“提取”一个形式并用数学或其他直接可知的术语来表达这个形式; 或者更确切地说，我们可以做到这一点，但必须付出代价，把形式变成其他形式。任何事物的翻译都有能量损失，因此不可能完美地把握任何事物。
Objects withhold themselves not just from human access, but from each other as well (Chapter 1). This is the important way in which OOO differs from Kant, and from important Kantian heirs such as Heidegger. Most post-Kantian philoso- phies have accepted some version of the German Idealist cri- tique of Kant: it is impossible to think a thing outside thought, and therefore the concept of a thing-in-itself beyond thought is incoherent. By contrast, OOO fully accepts the Kantian thing-in-itself, and merely denies that it is something that haunts human thought alone. Fire and cotton are also opaque to each other even if they are not ‘conscious’ in the same way as humans or animals. If we con- sider two great recent philosophers who masquerade as sociologists (Latour and Luhmann), we will see that commu- nication is not quite as easy as Latour holds. Relations are inci- dental in the life of things, rather than the stuff of which they are constituted; furthermore, not all relations leave a lasting trace on the relata that enter them. Conversely, communica- tion is not as difficult as Luhmann holds. Humans can interact with and affect their societies and political systems, though here too not all such interactions leave any trace. Communication between objects is neither easy nor impos- sible, but both possible and difficult.
对象不仅不让人类接近它们，而且也不让对方接近它们(第一章)。这就是面向对象的本体论与康德和重要的康德的继承者，如海德格尔的不同之处，最后后-康德哲学接受了德国唯心主义对康德的批判: 我们不可能去思考思维之外的事物，因此，超出思维之外的事物的内在概念是不连贯的。相比之下，面向对象的本体论完全接受康德的“内在”，而仅仅否认它是单独困扰人类思想的东西。火和棉花彼此之间也是不透明的，即使它们不是与人类或动物一样具有“意识”。我们来看看最近两位伪装成社会学家的伟大哲学家(拉图和卢曼), 我们会发现沟通并不像拉图尔所认为的那么容易。关系在事物的生命中是偶然的，而不是构成它们的东西; 此外，并不是所有的关系都能在进入它们的被关系者中留下持久的痕迹。相反，沟通并不像卢曼认为的那么困难。人类可以与他们的社会和政治体系相互影响，尽管这里也不是所有的交互都留下任何痕迹。对象之间的通信既不容易也不可能，但既可能又困难。
The fracture in things (Chapter 2). Most debates about realism obsess over the single gap between reality and our representations of it. Along with broadening this question so that thinking humans are no longer the sole locus of these representations, OOO adds another twist to the problem. There is also a gap within things, and we call it the object/ qualities rift. Neither the sensual object nor the real one is just a bundle of qualities. Instead, the object precedes its qualities despite not being able to exist without them. In combination, these two separate axes of the world (withdrawn/present and objects/qualities) yield a fourfold structure (as shown in Figure 1) that is the basis of the OOO method in every field where it has found relevance.
事物的断裂(第二章)。大多数关于现实主义的争论都围绕着现实和我们对现实的描述之间的单一鸿沟。随着这个问题的扩展，思考的人类不再是这些表征的唯一轨迹，面向对象的本体论给这个问题增加了另一个转折。事物之内也有裂痕，我们称之为对象/性质裂痕。无论是感官对象还是真实对象都不是一堆品质。相反，对象先于它的性质，尽管没有它们就无法存在。结合起来，这两个独立的世界轴 (撤回/呈现和对象/性质)产生一个四重结构(如图1所示)，这是面向对象的本体论方法在其发现相关的每个领域的基础。
Aesthetics as first philosophy (Chapter 2). Aesthetic experi- ence is crucial to OOO as a form of non-literal access to the object. It occurs when sensual qualities no longer belong to their usual sensual object, but are transferred instead to a real object, which necessarily withdraws from all access. For this reason, the vanished real object is replaced by the aes- thetic beholder herself or himself as the new real object that supports the sensual qualities. Thus we can speak of the necessary theatricality of aesthetic experience, despite the art critic Michael Fried’s forceful condemnation of theatre.
美学为第一哲学(第二章)。审美体验是面向对象的本体论作为非写实访问对象的一种形式的关键。它这时发生——当感官性质不再属于他们通常的感官对象时，而是被转移到一个真实的对象，这个对象必须从所有访问中撤回。因此，消失的真实对象被审美观照者自己所取代，成为支持感官性质的新的真实对象。因此，尽管艺术批评家迈克尔·弗里德(Michael Fried)对戏剧进行了强烈的谴责，但我们仍然可以说，审美体验的戏剧性是必要的。
Objects act because they exist, rather than existing because they act (Chapter 3). Social theory must be based on the real- ity of objects, not on their actions, since the latter can only overmine the objects themselves. Of the countless relations into which a thing enters during its lifespan, only a small number of them are pivotal, and these are the ones we call symbiotic. Symbioses are often non-reciprocal, meaning that thing A can relate to thing B without the reverse being true. And all symbioses are asymmetrical in the same way that metaphors are: wine-dark sea is not sea-dark wine.
对象的行为是因为它们的存在，而不是因为它们的行为而存在(第三章)。社会理论必须以对象的现实为基础，而不是以对象的行为为基础，因为后者只能过度挖掘对象本身。在一个事物在其生命周期中所进入的无数关系中，只有少数关系是关键的，而这些关系就是我们所说的共生关系。共生体通常是不可逆的，这意味着A和B可以相互关联，而反过来又不成立。所有的共生体都是不对称的，就像隐喻一样:酒暗之海不是海暗之酒。
There is no political knowledge (Chapter 3). Political theory cannot be based on a claim to knowledge: whether it be the supposed knowledge of what the best polity is, or merely the cynical claim that it’s all just a struggle for power. Along with the need to recognize itself as a non-knowledge, political theory must give a much larger role to non-human entities than has previously been the case.
没有政治知识(第三章)。政治理论不能建立在对知识的要求之上:不管它是关于什么是最好的政体的假定知识，还是仅仅是一种愤世嫉俗的要求，即一切都只是一场权力斗争。随着承认自己是非知识的需要，政治理论必须给予非人类实体比以前更大的作用。
OOO is still a living theoretical movement, and thus we certainly hope that it continues to make new discoveries. My hope for this book is that it has succeeded in giving the reader a vivid sense of the substantial progress already made by this school of thought.
面向对象的本体论仍然是一个活生生的理论运动，因此我们当然希望它能继续有新的发现。我对这本书的希望是，它已经成功地让读者生动地感受到这一学派已经取得的实质性进展。
注释：
[i] 凯伦·巴拉德，《与宇宙中途相遇》，唐娜·哈拉维，《猿猴，机器人和女人》。
