标题: [阿罗拉]孔子说了什么？ [打印本页]
作者: Robot 时间: 2009-3-5 02:31 标题: [阿罗拉]孔子说了什么？
[光明译丛]孔子说了什么？
纳米特·阿罗拉 著 吴万伟 译
光明网 刊发时间：2009-03-03 14:35:54 光明网-光明观察
本文探索了关于公民行为和个人自由的人文主义儒家以及它与中国人国家的变化关系。
在文革中，中国千百万的红卫兵在毛主席邀请下开始疯狂破四旧：旧风俗、旧文化、旧习惯和旧思想。他们破坏古老的庙宇、捣毁文物、焚烧寺庙、攻击传统艺术、揪斗少数民族和“资产阶级思想家，所过之处留下了50万人的伤亡。儒家成为特别的怨恨对象，年轻人受到鼓励要质疑家长和老师（传统上他们都是得到非常尊重的人），很快就高喊“父母可能爱我，但是赶不上毛主席爱我”的口号游行了。
文革后来甚至被死硬的共产主义者承认是彻头彻尾的灾难，这不是中国领袖第一次把矛头指向儒家学说。创造兵马俑的中国第一个皇帝秦始皇曾经在公元前三世纪就对儒家清洗过，焚书坑儒，但这样的事对于儒学来说是例外情况。后来儒学被复兴、修改和再次兴旺（最长时期的衰落是在唐朝）给予中国几乎2500年的独特的文化延续性。
没有一个人为中国文化留下的影响比这个生活在2500年前社会动荡时期的思想家孔子更深刻。他是试图创立和实践管理艺术的学者和试图成为中层官员的官僚阶层成员。(1)虽然像柏拉图一样，孔子在现实世界没有取得成功，但奠定了中国很多后世关于教育、理想人格的成分、如何生活如何与人交往、应该参与的社会和管理形式等思想的基础。(2)
像佛祖、耶稣、苏格拉底一样，孔子也没有写一个字。甚至被认为最接近孔子思想的《论语》也是在他去世后被后来很多代的学生编纂而成的。为了明白他在中国产生的影响，一个更好的方法是在阅读《论语》的同时也阅读被认为构成儒学核心经典的其他三部评注性著作即《孟子》、《大学》和《中庸》。
儒家经典一个引人注目的特征是它对现实世界的生活的关心。尽管存在一个尊重抽象的天和祖先的义务，非常明显的是里面没有上帝，也没有很多对于宇宙起源、物质和认识本质（如佛教）、死亡等形而上学思考和关心。在孔子看来，人不应该浪费时间探讨天的力量和精神世界，而应该关心现实世界的问题，通过教育和人格修养最好地处理这些问题。
在这个意义上，儒学更少宗教和思辨色彩，更多的是对于个人和社会行为的人道主义话语。
金科玉律（己所不欲，勿施于人）在经典中占有突出地位。许多教导是基于道德互惠性基础上的。主导性观点是人性天生是善良的，因为我们的失误而遭到破坏。通过自己的努力人人都可以重新复兴最初的善良。这实际上是所有学习的目标，发现我们的普遍人性，按照人性度过世俗的生活，也就是天道或者简单地说“道”。一个明显的含义是发现自己内在的天性就会导致内心的平静和社会的和谐。
而且，儒家经典认为在道德能力上，人人都是平等的。任何人都可以成为圣人，至少可以成为君子。那些不追求自我修身道路的人并不让孔子觉得困扰，这一点可以从他的简练而又感到绝望的话语“吾未见好德如好色者也”，但是他从来没有丧失对于教育改造人的力量的信心。(3)
孔子认为自我修身是社会秩序的根源，而社会秩序是和平和政治稳定的根基(4)
作为他那个时代的循序渐进的根本性的思想家，他赞同社会从拥有奴隶的社会转向封建时代（如果脱离这个背景，现代共产主义者和资本主义者可能认为他是反动派)，他说君子没有义务效忠于无道的昏君，必须准备好为了捍卫原则而牺牲性命（舍生取义）。(5)《论语》第9:26中说“三军可夺帅也，匹夫不可夺志也。”。好的政府实施人道的管理，“通过美德和道德模范而不是靠武力惩罚。”(6)儒家经典里有很多圣王应该具备的品质。比如，他必须具有五德：仁、义、礼、智、信。他必须使用九条标准管理他的国家：
培养个人品德、奖赏值得奖赏的人、关爱亲人、尊重大臣、把自己看作官员整体的一分子、爱民如子、吸引各种手工业者、对远方的陌生人表现温柔、给予封建诸侯施加友好和让人敬畏的影响力。[6]
几个世纪后，在纪元后第二个千年初期，在佛教、道教和其他社会改革派的影响下出现了我们所说的理学。理学虽然把道教概念比如气、阴阳、太极也转向更糟糕的地方，采取了更加具有等级差别的社会观。比如详细阐述五种社会关系，和每个角色的行为规范：君臣、父子、兄弟、夫妻、朋友。它提倡服从权威、忠诚顺从、正统家庭价值观、孝顺父母、勤俭节约。几乎可以肯定，孔子可能会反对这些的。
就像在印度的中国菜一样，佛教在中国也改变了它的风味。虽然有共同的不可知论和关注这个世界等特征，佛教中优先考虑的个人精神探索、超脱和隐修生活等对儒学构成了威胁。因此在中国出现了所谓“儒家化”的佛教。正如印度教从佛教而来并在印度将佛教边缘化一样，理学在中国把佛教边缘化了，并非主要因为它是外来信仰。(虽然它不可能像在印度一样完全消失)。
值得注意的是，儒家经典是中国1300年（直到1905年）科举考试课程的核心内容。这种全国范围的管理体制（很可能影响了英国在印度的管理模式）帮助形成了文化同质性和共同的社会价值观，减少了政治上的地方分裂，塑造了共同的身份认同，这使得20世纪的中国民族主义成为可能。毫不奇怪的是，这样做也付出了代价。按照史景迁（Jonathan Spence）的说法：
到了公元12世纪，类似于国家儒教的东西开始出现，随着时间的推移，它往里面添加了一些在最初的《论语》中不明显的普遍真理。比如，现在儒家思想这个广泛的定义中包括在内的东西比如对于女性的敌意和贬低，家庭等级差别的严格和不灵活的体系，对于贸易和资本积累的蔑视、对非常严酷的惩罚的支持，对于表现顺从和尊重的过时礼仪的大肆追捧以及中央帝国要求的习性反应。(1)
毫无疑问这造成了中华文明后来的停滞。造纸术、印刷术、火药和指南针四大发明的故乡变得内向、排外和缺乏创造性。现代史上的殖民侵略和羞辱留下来的意识毛主义的经验和后毛时代世俗的儒家观念需要很长的路来解释现代中国的进程。
值得注意的是当今孔子和佛祖不同，甚至也和众多的印度教精神领袖和瑜珈师不同，他在东亚中国文化圈之外几乎没有跟随者。
这或许是因为儒家的理想道路是“修身的个人组成的社会”重点放在“社会”和“个人修养”上。两者手拉手相互促进谁也离不开谁。
它要求人们提高自身修养以便建立关键的“社会和谐”整体,这个整体导致个人更广泛的修养和更大的和谐。但是人们能在没有社会和谐对应物的西方谈论儒家的个人吗？这就是为什么在西方很少有孔子信徒的原因。佛祖的启蒙当然是非常个人化的道路，所以引起更强烈的反响，同样道理，通过印度教圣人的“智慧”拯救自己的观点也很受欢迎。
现在又重新出现了儒学的一种新形式。中国政府积极推动孔子思想的传播在50个国家建立了120家孔子学院。对于孔子的尊崇在中国很兴盛。北京奥运会上“和谐”成为突出的主题。这个圣人被东亚亲市场的专制政府拿来收买、帮助、推动人们自愿服从、法律、秩序、民族主义。这些政权也打着不同与“西方价值”的“亚洲价值观”的幌子拒绝给予公民很多的人权。那不是孔子说的话，《论语》中清清楚楚地说“他更接近个人自由而不是坚定地服从国家。”(3)
原文注释：
[1] Jonathan Spence in Confucian Ways, Reith Lectures, 2008.
[2] Confucius, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
[3] What Confucius Said, Jonathan Spence reviews Simon Leys’s translation of the Analects, New York Review of Books, 1997.
[4] Confucianism, Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008.
[5] The Search for Modern China by Jonathan Spence.
[6] A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy by Wing-Tsit Chan.
译自：What Confucius said? Namit Arora
http://www.culturewars.org.uk/in ... hat_confucius_said/
作者: Robot 时间: 2009-3-5 02:32
Friday 6 February 2009
What Confucius said
An exploration of Confucianism as a humanist discourse on civil conduct and personal liberty, and its changing relationship with the Chinese state.
Namit Arora
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During the Cultural Revolution, millions of Red Guards rampaged at the behest of Chairman Mao to rid China of its ‘Four Olds’: old customs, old culture, old habits, and old ideas. They defaced ancient monuments, destroyed historical artifacts, burnt monasteries, persecuted traditional arts, and tortured minorities and ‘bourgeois thinkers’, leaving half-a-million dead in their wake. Special venom was directed at things Confucian. Encouraged to question their parents and teachers (who were traditionally revered), youngsters were soon marching with slogans like: ‘Parents may love me, but not as much as Chairman Mao’.
Regarded later as an unmitigated disaster even by diehard communists, this wasn’t the first time a Chinese leader had turned against Confucianism. The very first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, who also commissioned the Terracotta Army, had launched his own great Confucian purge in the third century BCE. But such events are anomalies for Confucianism, which would revive, adapt, and thrive again (the longest slump was during the Tang dynasty), giving China a distinctive cultural continuity for almost 2500 years.
No person has left a deeper mark on Chinese culture than Confucius, who lived 2,500 years ago in an age of social turmoil. He was a member of the scholar or professional class who managed to become a mid-level bureaucrat and sought to define and practice the art of ruling (1). Though, like Plato, he had no success in the real world, he laid the foundation of a great deal of subsequent Chinese reflection on education and comportment of the ideal man, how he should live and interact with others, and the forms of society and government in which he should participate (2).
Like the Buddha, Jesus, and Socrates, Confucius too never wrote a word. Even the Analects of Confucius, considered closest to his thought, was compiled after his death by many generations of disciples. To understand what he inspired in China, a better approach is to read the Analects along with three exegetical works that form the animating core of Confucianism, ie. the Confucian canon - the Book of Mencius, the Great Learning, and the Doctrine of the Mean.
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A striking feature of the Confucian canon is its overwhelming concern with life in this world. Whilst there is an abstract Heaven and the obligation to respect one’s ancestors, God is conspicuously absent. Nor is there much metaphysical wonder or concern with the origin of the universe, the nature of mind and matter (as in Buddhism), or death and beyond. Humans, according to Confucius, should waste no time in trying to understand the forces of heaven and the realm of the spirits; and should concentrate instead on the problems of this world, best tackled through education and character development.
Confucianism, in this sense, is less religion or speculative thought, more a humanistic discourse on personal and social conduct.
The Golden Rule (‘Do not impose on others what you do not wish for yourself’) finds a prominent mention in the canon. Many propositions are based on moral reciprocity. The dominant view is that human nature is innately good, but corrupted due to our failings. With effort, each of us can perfect it and recover our original goodness. This, in fact, is the goal of all learning - to discover our universal human nature and live a worldly life in accord with it - the Way of the Heaven, or simply, The Way. A clear implication is that recovering our innate nature will lead to inner peace and social harmony.
Furthermore, the canon considers all men to be equal in their moral capacities: any person can become a sage, or at least a superior man. That men may not pursue the path of self-improvement did trouble Confucius, evidenced by his pithy but despairing remark that he had ‘never seen a man who loved virtue as much as sex’. Yet, he never lost his faith in the transforming and sustaining power of education (3).
Confucius believed that cultivation of the self lies at the root of social order, which in turn is the basis for peace and political stability. (4)
A progressive and radical thinker in his time, he approved his society’s move away from a slave-owning to a feudal age (taking this out of context, modern commies and capitalists have called him reactionary). Worthy men, he said, were under no obligation to serve unworthy rulers, and must be prepared to sacrifice their lives in defense of principle (5). Analects 9:26 says: ‘One may rob an army of its commander-in-chief; one cannot deprive the humblest man of his free will’. A good government rules humanely, ‘by virtue and moral example rather than by punishment of force’ (6). The canon enumerates the qualities of the exemplary ruler. For instance, he must possess five virtues: benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and trustworthiness. He must use nine standards to administer the empire:
cultivating the personal life, honouring the worthy, being affectionate to relatives, being respectful toward the great ministers, identifying oneself with the whole body of officers, treating the common people as one’s own children, attracting the various artisans, showing tenderness to strangers from far countries, and extending kindly and awesome influence on the feudal lords.[6]
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Centuries later, in early 2nd millennium CE, the impact of Buddhism, Taoism, and other social transformations led to what we now call Neo-Confucianism. Whilst it mainstreamed the Taoist concepts of chi, yin and yang, and tai-chi, Neo-Confucianism also took a turn for the worse, taking a more hierarchical view of society. For instance, it expounded on five social relationships and the conduct appropriate for each: ruler and ruled, son and father, younger brother and older, wife and husband, friend and friend. It advocated submission to authority, loyalty and obedience, orthodox family values, filial piety, thrift and hard work. Confucius, almost certainly, would have disapproved.
Like Chinese food in India, Buddhism altered its flavour in China. Despite their shared agnosticism and focus on this world, the primacy of the individual spiritual quest, detachment, and monasticism in Buddhism posed a threat to Confucianism. What therefore arose in China was a ‘Confucianised’ Buddhism. And just as Hinduism borrowed from and then marginalised Buddhism in India, Neo-Confucianism marginalised Buddhism in China, not the least because it was a ‘foreign faith’ (though it would not disappear as completely as in India).
The Confucian canon, notably, was a vital part of the curriculum of China’s civil services exams for 1300 years (until 1905). This China-wide administrative system (which likely shaped the British model in India) helped forge cultural homogeneity and common social values, reduce political regionalism, and build a common identity that made possible the Chinese nationalism of the twentieth century. Not surprisingly, this came at a price. According to Jonathan Spence,
By the 12th century AD, something approximating a state Confucianism was in place and over time this came to encapsulate certain general truths that had not figured prominently in the original Analects. For example, now included under this broad definition of Confucian thought were hostility to or the demeaning of women, a rigid and inflexible system of family hierarchies, contempt for trade and capital accumulation, support of extraordinarily harsh punishments, a slavish dedication to outmoded rituals of obedience and deference, and a pattern of sycophantic response to the demands of central imperial power. (1)
This no doubt contributed to the subsequent stasis in Chinese civilisation. The birthplace of paper, printing, gunpowder, and the magnetic compass turned inward, uncreative, and xenophobic. The sense of humiliation that colonial encounters left behind, the experience of Maoism, and the worldly Confucian ethos of its people under post-Mao regimes go a long way in explaining the tenor of modern China.
It is notable that today, unlike the Buddha and even various Hindu gurus and yogis, Confucius has almost no following outside the Chinese cultural sphere in East Asia.
This may be because the ideal Confucian path is a ‘society of cultivated individuals’ - the emphasis is on both ‘society’ and ‘cultivated individuals’. The two go hand in hand and reinforce each other. One is incoherent without the other.
It requires people to cultivate themselves to establish a critical mass of ‘social harmony’, which then leads to wider cultivation of individuals and greater harmony. But can one speak of a Confucian individual in the West, which has no equivalent goal of social harmony? This is perhaps why Confucius has few followers in the West. The Buddha’s enlightenment is of course a very individual path and so it resonates more strongly; likewise the idea of saving oneself through the ‘wisdom’ of a Hindu sage.
A new form of Confucianism is ascendant again. The Chinese government now aggressively promotes it and has even established 120 Confucius Institutes in 50 countries. Shrines to Confucius now abound in China. ‘Harmony’ was a notable theme at the Beijing Olympics. The sage has been co-opted by the market-friendly authoritarian regimes of East Asia to help drive voluntary obedience, law and order, and nationalism. These regimes also withhold a host of human rights from their citizens under the pretext that ‘Asian Values’ are different from ‘Western values’. That’s not what Confucius would have said. The Analects makes clear that ‘he stood for something far closer to personal liberty than to unswerving obedience to the state’ (3).
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[1] Jonathan Spence in Confucian Ways, Reith Lectures, 2008.
[2] Confucius, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
[3] What Confucius Said, Jonathan Spence reviews Simon Leys’s translation of the Analects, New York Review of Books, 1997.
[4] Confucianism, Encyclopedia Britannica, 2008.
[5] The Search for Modern China by Jonathan Spence.
[6] A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy by Wing-Tsit Chan.
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