Political Philosophy Workshop （VII）:The Contradictions of Nation-State and Global-City Singapore
新加坡面临的民族国家与全球城市之间的矛盾
Political Philosophy Workshop （VII）
Organizer: Department of Philosophy (Zhuhai)，Sun Yat-sen University
Topic: The Contradictions of Nation-State and Global-City Singapore
Speaker: Kenneth Paul Tan (Vice Dean & Associate Professor, National University of Singapore)
Moderator: Jun-Hyeok Kwak (Professor, Sun Yat-sen University)
Discussant: Hugo EL KHOLI (Research fellow, Sun Yat-sen University)
Venue: Room 106, No.13 Administrative Building of Department of Philosophy (Zhuhai), SYSU
Singapore’s dual nature as a multicultural nation state and a cosmopolitan global city produces a dynamic variety of contradictions and tensions. Keeping the Singapore state stable, strong, enlightened, successful, and durable over time has meant having to contain, rather than resolve, these contradictions in a pragmatic fashion. The project of maintaining state hegemony has required a systematic foregrounding of persuasive reasons and ideological justifications for widespread buy-in, reserving the exercise of brute force only for highly targeted occasions. Thus, the ideology of integrity, meritocracy, and pragmatism, as well as the national narrative have been essential resources for sustaining hegemony. But how long can this hegemonic Singapore state last? Where are the pressures for change coming from? Using Plato’s classic account of the decline of regimes as a lens, this paper re-imagines Singapore’s political liberalization as a future, possibly dystopian, scenario in which hegemony unravels and transforms into authoritarian populism.
Political Philosophy Workshop系列第七讲
主办：中山大学哲学系（珠海）
主题：新加坡面临的民族国家与全球城市之间的矛盾
主讲：Kenneth Paul Tan（ 新加坡国立大学副教授）
主持：郭峻赫（中山大学教授）
时间：2017年6月15日下午16:00
地点：中山大学珠海校区海滨红楼13号哲学系（珠海）行政办公楼106
摘要：
新加坡既是一个多元文化的民族国家，也是一座国际化大都市，这一双重本质导致了各种各样不断变化的矛盾和冲突。要保持新加坡国家的稳定、强大、开明、成功和经久不衰，就意味着必须以务实的态度控制而不是消除这些矛盾。维持国家的霸权要求全面突出有说服力的理由和能够证明其正当性的意识形态工作，以得到广泛接受，并保留在特定场合下暴力的使用。因此，国家统一、精英统治、实用主义以及国家叙事的意识形态成为维护霸权的重要来源。但新加坡这种霸权统治能够持续多久？做出改变的压力又来自哪里？本文将借柏拉图对于政权衰落的经典叙述为透视镜，重新想象新加坡的政治自由化，构建起一个可能反乌托邦的未来场景，即霸权主义瓦解并转变为威权式的民粹主义。
