Allegory is a literary genre that uses metaphorical stories to convey meaningful truths and inspire people. The rhetorical device used is metaphor, Hegel believes that "allegory is an art of metaphor in the final analysis". Hypotheses are speculations and explanations of natural and social phenomena and their regularities based on known facts and principles, and a provisional but acceptable explanation is obtained. An allegorical hypothesis is a certain hypothesis that expresses one's own ideology in the form of a fable. Here, the so-called "a certain hypothesis" is usually the expression of the author's core concept, which is holistic, systematic and innovative. Because of its abstract, profound and incomprehensible doctrines, the image intervention of fables makes the ideas and viewpoints to be expressed easy to understand and achieves a positive rhetorical effect. Here, we introduce the stories of several western thinkers' allegorical hypotheses.
In Plato's "Republic", states should be ruled by philosophers, because philosophers can see the truth of the world - ideas. The core concept of Plato's philosophy is "idea", so his philosophy is also called "ideology". The so-called idea is an idea that can represent a certain kind of thing or idea. It has three characteristics: one is transcendental abstraction, the idea represents the commonality of things, and it is a generalization and abstraction of actual things. Archetype, it is the most perfect, real, eternal essence. The second is that it does not depend on concrete things to exist, it exists both before things come into being and after they die out. The third is that the idea originally existed in the spiritual principle with the highest harmony. Such as bed, table, bridge, big, small, truth, goodness, beauty, etc. These concepts exist before birth, and acquired learning and cognition are just memories of these innate concepts. Ideas are the truth of the world, but ideas are so profound that most people don't realize it, so it is difficult for them to see the truth of the world and things. What they see is only the shadow of things. In order to illustrate this truth, in Plato's "Republic", there is such a famous cave metaphor to explain "ideology":
Those who lack philosophical ideas can be compared to prisoners in caves, who can only look in one direction because they are chained; a fire burns behind them and a wall in front of them. There was nothing between them and the wall; all they saw were the shadows of themselves and of what was behind them, cast on the wall by firelight. They inevitably see these shadows as real, and have no idea of what makes them. Finally, a man escaped from the cave and came into broad daylight. He saw reality for the first time, and realized that he had been deceived by illusory images. If he were a philosopher fit to be a defender, he would feel his duty to go back to the cave, to his former fellow prisoners, to teach them the truth, to show them the the way. However, he had difficulty convincing them, because without the sunlight, he could not see the shadows as clearly as others. (Bertrand Russell: A History of Western Philosophy)
Reiter? Harding (1915-2003) was a well-known American ecologist. He founded the world's first "Ecological Law" and became famous for his paper "The Tragedy of the Common Ground" published in the journal Science in 1968. The article reveals a collective dilemma of human commons, Harding points out: "In a society where the commons are shared, everyone, that is, everyone, pursues their own best interests. This is where the tragedy lies. Everyone is locked in. In a system that compels him to increase his livestock without restraint within limits. Destruction is the destination to which all men run. For in a society that believes in the liberty of the commons, each pursues his own best interests."Finally" The freedom of the commons brings destruction to all." This is the so-called "tragedy of the commons", or "Harding's tragedy", also known as the "collective trap" and "zero-sum game". The collective trap, or "zero-sum game", has three basic assumptions: (1) All actors involved are rational people. (2) Rational people pursue the maximization of personal interests in their actions. (3) Pursuing the maximization of individual interests will eventually lead to the loss of collective interests.
The ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle once said: "The public things that belong to the largest number of people are often the things that are least cared for. People care about what they own and ignore the public things." In order to illustrate this abstract truth problem , Harding "fabricated" such a story in "Tragedy of the Commons":
“There is a lush public pasture that the government has opened up to a group of herders who can freely graze their cattle on the pasture. As the number of cattle grazing on the public pasture gradually increases, the public pasture is saturated with cattle One more cow at this time may reduce the profitability of the entire pasture, because it will lead to a decrease in the average amount of grass per cow. But every herdsman still wants to have one more cow, because raising one more cow increases the amount of grass The income of the cow belongs to the owner of the cow, and the loss of each cow due to insufficient grass due to the addition of one cow is distributed to all the herdsmen grazing on this pasture. Therefore, for each herdsman, an increase of one cow The cattle are more cost-effective for him. After the situation is out of control, each herdsman will continue to increase the number of cattle grazing. Eventually, due to the continuous increase of the cattle herd, the public grassland will be over-grazed and degraded, so that the food intake of the cattle cannot be satisfied. And cause all the cattle to die of starvation, so it becomes a tragedy."
Harding's allegorical tragedy reveals that in a society where everyone seeks to maximize personal interests, the outcome must be tragic. The profound thing is that this kind of disaster is a group rather than an individual. It can be seen by everyone, but it is unavoidable. It is universal, not just a partial case. For example, the global warming and the intensifying smog phenomenon.
Another example is Lippmann's point in "Public Opinion" that news and public opinion is a "mimic environment". For a variety of reasons, it is difficult for us as ordinary readers to directly "see" the truth. News reports constitute a "virtual environment" that shapes the "images" of the external world in our minds and influences our perception of the external world. Know. He points out: “Looking back, how indirect we know about the environment we still live in. We can see that news about the real environment reaches us sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly; however, we always To think of ourselves as real situations as the real environment itself.... In all these instances we must pay particular attention to a common element, that of the interposition between man and his virtual environment. His behavior It is a reaction to the virtual environment.... But at the level of social life, the so-called adjustment of the environment by people is of course carried out through various fictions as a medium. By fiction here, I do not mean lying, I'm referring to the environment depicted to varying degrees by people themselves. Because the real environment is generally too large, too complex, and changing too fast to understand it directly. We are not equipped to deal with so many elusive, so many A synthesis of so many kinds of transformations. Yet we have to act in that environment, and we have to conceive of it as a simpler pattern before we can grasp it." To illustrate this, Lippmann wrote in The book "Public Opinion" "makes up" a story:
"In 1914 there were some English, French and Germans living on an island. There was no telegraph from that island, and the British mail ships came every sixty days. In September, the mail ships had not yet arrived, and the inhabitants of the island were still talking about it. Not long ago, the newspapers reported about the impending trial of Mrs. Kerroux for the shooting of Gaston Calmert. So, one day in mid-September, the inhabitants of the island were gathered on the pier, more eager than usual to get a message from the captain They knew about the verdict. But what they learned was that Britain had entered into a holy alliance with France and had been at war with Germany for more than six weeks. During these incredible six weeks, the British and French residents of the island and the German inhabitants were practically enemies, but they were still friends. . The old understanding to deal with things. Everyone has a period of time still adapting to the environment, and in fact the environment has changed.”
Another example is Desmond, a famous British zoologist and human behaviorist. Morris' masterpiece "The Human Zoo". In the book, the author critically examines modern urban life and modern human behavior from a zoological point of view, and compares human society to a sprawling zoo. Its cloud:
"As the pressures of modern life become heavier and heavier, beleaguered urbanites often compare the crowded world they live in to a 'concrete jungle. Indeed, it's wonderful to use this as a metaphor for dense urban buildings. But in terms of lifestyle, anyone who has studied true jungle life will surely say that this analogy is very inaccurate. … We should compare urban dwellers not to wild animals, but to them as Animals in cages. Modern human animals no longer live in the natural environment suitable for this species. They have been imprisoned. It is not the zookeepers who imprison them, but their own ingenuity. They themselves Created a gigantic and noisy 'zoo' and placed themselves in it. There, they were always in danger of dying from overstretching."
The primary problem of "human zoos" is crowding, and what counts as crowded, there are no fixed objective criteria. Crowding and density are two different concepts. Density refers to the number of people in a certain area, while crowding is largely a subjective feeling. Research has shown that crowding affects people's ability to work in complex ways, and it also has a negative impact on social behavior, such as affecting people's proximity to people and providing help. Crowding causes high physiological arousal. The psychologist Evans did an experimental study in 1979, in which ten people were crowded into a small room for 3. 5 hours. It was later found that the subject's pulse rate increased and blood pressure increased. Psychologist Epstein et al. also conducted an experimental study in 1981, which made the test subjects in a crowded state three times in three weeks, and they all reported feeling nervous, irritable, and physiologically aroused. In this regard, Morris made a zoological analogy in the book "Human Zoo": "A large group of animals of the same kind are kept in a small space, and then there will be serious problems, and there will be mutual Strife, hurt each other, and kill each other; of course, insanity can also occur. But in reality, even a zoo run by the most inexperienced people is not as crowded as a modern city. Any zookeeper knows that, Overcrowding can make animals behave erratically, so if someone suggested that he put a group of monkeys -- or a group of carnivores, or a group of rodents -- in a small cage to save space, he would shake his head in surprise and say, Such advice is simply stupid. Yet humans do it voluntarily. They crowd into small urban spaces in large groups, struggling with the hustle and bustle every day, and hardly anyone really wants to get out of there." . Besides being crowded, there is also loneliness. Crowded is in terms of the "human zoo" as a whole; loneliness is in terms of each individual. Morris points out: "In a real zoo, an animal finds itself in a cage in solitude, where it can see or hear other caged animals but cannot really interact with them. Ironically, Yes, the social environment of human urban life is almost identical to the zoo environment. Urban life makes people feel lonely, and this danger is well known. In large, impersonal groups, people can easily feel lost, family-based Natural groupings and tribal personal relationships are easily deformed, divided and even collapsed. In a village, people are either acquainted friends or acquaintances, and there are no strangers anyway. However, in the city, many People don't even know the surnames of their neighbors. But for most of the 'human zoo' members, this personal isolation in the hustle and bustle of urban life makes them unexpectedly Tension and pain."
It is not the purpose of this book to compare people to animals, the essence of human society—the city to an overcrowded zoo. In this metaphor, the author actually wants to reveal a paradox that plagues human beings—what we call The progress of the A higher and higher price, and we will always find clever ways to pay it, no matter how high the price. In short, the stakes are higher and the stakes higher in this game of man versus nature , the speed is getting more and more amazing, and both sides are a little out of breath. But anyway, this is still the most exciting gambling game in the world. Of course it would be stupid to blow the whistle to end it, but We can play this game in a different way. Besides, by better understanding the nature of the contestants, we may benefit ourselves, and we may avoid the risk and avoid the extinction of the human species."
"Human Zoo", "The Naked Ape" and "Intimacy" are known as "The Naked Ape Trilogy". They mainly study human behavior from the perspective of ethology, revealing the drawbacks and defects of human society. There is some irony in the critical perspective. , hit the human weakness. For example, in "The Naked Ape", Morris pointed out that among the 193 known species of apes, there is only one kind of ape that is completely naked. As a result, every word he wrote became the subject of debate by traumatized "Homo sapiens", and at one point "The Naked Ape" became a banned book, the book circulating underground was confiscated, and the church burned it because it caused the thought of human evolution to be destroyed. To ridicule, it ruthlessly satirized the idea of human supremacy, which made "The Naked Ape Trilogy" a bestseller. Thirty years later, when The Naked Ape was republished, Morris was still stubborn, claiming in his preface that he would not change a word because, despite our magnificent civilizations, we are still subject to basic biological laws.
Maurice, author of The Human Zoo
In addition, the "panopticism" from Bentham to Foucault also provides a kind of evidence for our understanding of what the "fable hypothesis" is. "Panorama" building, is the British philosopher Jeremiah? Bentham (1748-1832) conceived a kind of architecture composed of "power technology". In his book Discipline and Punishment, Foucault introduced the basic principles of Bentham's "panorama" architectural structure: "It is surrounded by a ring-shaped building, and in the center is a watchtower. The watchtower has a circle of large windows, which The circular building is divided into many small cells, each of which runs through the cross-section of the building. Each cell has two windows, one facing the inside, opposite the tower window, and the other facing the outside , so that the light can pass from one end of the cell to the other. Then all that is required is to have a supervisor in the central watchtower, and in each cell to keep a lunatic or a sick person, a criminal, a Worker, a student. Through the backlight effect, people can observe the small figures of the prisoners in the surrounding cells from the angle of the watchtower and the light source. These cells are like many small cages and small stages. Inside, Each actor stands alone, unique and vivid. The open-view architectural mechanism arranges the spatial units so that they can be viewed and recognizable at any time. In short, it overturns the principle of prison, or more accurately Said, overturns its three functions - closure, deprivation of light and concealment. It retains only the first function and eliminates the other two. Sufficient light and the watcher's gaze capture captivity more effectively than darkness because darkness is ultimately what guarantees the imprisoned. Visibility is a trap.”
Subsequently, the French thinker Michel? Foucault extended this thought of Bentham, extending it from the concrete prison building to the abstract sociological category, and proposed the concept of "panopticism":
“However, Panopticon should not be seen as a dream building. It is a schematic diagram of a mechanism of power reduced to an ideal form. It operates in the absence of any obstacles, resistance or friction, so Should be seen as a purely architectural and optical system. It is actually a symbol of a political technology that can and should be independent of any specific use. If the economic take-off in the West begins with technology that leads to capital accumulation, then perhaps It can also be said that the management method of the accumulation of people has led to a political take-off away from the traditional, ritualistic, expensive and crude forms of power. Those old forms of power were quickly abandoned, replaced by a subtle, refined We can say that discipline (discipline) is a unified technique that reduces the body to a 'political force at the same time as a 'political force' and at the same time as a maximum useful force. The growth of the capitalist economy has caused The specific way of discipline power. Its general formula and technique of subjugating forces and bodies, namely 'political anatomy, can be applied to an enormous variety of political institutions, institutions and institutions.'
The concept of "micro-power" and its analytical methods are the most valuable theoretical heritage in Foucault's thought. Foucault believes that power analysis should move away from traditional concepts such as the state apparatus, kingship, and judicial power, to "cut off the head of the king" and replace it with a pluralistic and multipolar view of "micro-power". He noted: “Power is everywhere. Not because it has the privilege of shrouding everything in its invincible whole, but because it is produced every moment, everywhere, even in all relationships. is produced. Power is everywhere, not because it encompasses everything, but because it comes from everywhere.” Thus, he believes that Bentham’s “panorama” captures the essence of the “political technology” of power, stating: "It's an important mechanism because it makes power automatic and impersonal no longer in one person, but in some uniform distribution of body, surface, light, gaze, in a kind of Arrangement. The inner mechanism of this arrangement creates a relationship that constrains everyone. … So it doesn’t matter who wields power. … Panorama is a magical machine, no matter what purpose people come to Using it, both have the same power effect." But Foucault's innovation is that he takes Bentham's "panorama" concept, but extends it. He believes that the so-called "panorama" should not be limited to a specific space, such as a prison, but extend and pervade all corners of society. E.g:
"It has multiple values in use. It can be used to reform prisoners, but it can also be used to heal the sick, to educate students, to confine madmen, to supervise workers, to force beggars and idlers to work. A template for placing the body, distributing people according to mutual relations, organizing people according to a hierarchy, arranging the center points and channels of power, and determining the means and methods of power intervention. It can be used in hospitals, factories, schools and prisons. Anything with a group of people Panorama mode can be used when dealing with each other and assigning a task or a special way to behave for each person. Apart from the necessary modifications, it is suitable for 'buildings that do not take up too much space and need to Any agency that oversees a certain number of people."
In this way, the so-called "panorama" confirms his view that "power is everywhere", making power a "being in relation", which is permeable, productive and creative, and can extend to any place. This clearly goes beyond Bentham's "panorama", Foucault said: "In order to exercise this power, it must be equipped with a persistent, all-seeing, omnipresent means of surveillance. What does not appear becomes apparent. It must, like a faceless gaze, turn the whole social organism into a field of perception: there are thousands of eyes scattered here and there, and the flow of attention is always on alert , there is a large hierarchical network. According to the opinion of the mayor of Paris, this network in Paris should include 48 police chiefs, 20 inspectors, regular paid 'observers, daily paid' spies, and paid informers and prostitutes. This incessant observation should be aggregated into a series of reports and records. Throughout the eighteenth century, a vast policing text increasingly covered society with the aid of a complex organization of records."
To sum up, several scholars such as Plato, Harding, Lippmann, Morris, Foucault, etc., have different times and different nationalities. Profound, but abstract and profound expositions are not easy to understand after all, so thinkers have used methods similar to metaphorical rhetoric, let allegorical hypotheses participate in thinking activities, and visualized their views with an easy-to-understand story, so that It is easier for readers to understand.
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