标题: East and West, Confucianism speaks to us all [打印本页]
作者: apple 时间: 2009-4-21 00:18 标题: East and West, Confucianism speaks to us all
East and West, Confucianism speaks to us all
TIMOTHY GARTON ASH
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
April 9, 2009 at 12:00 AM EDT
BEIJING — When I was a young child, China was, for me, a vaguely comical Chinese man with a wispy mustache, dressed in an embroidered silk robe and conical hat, exclaiming in a funny accent: "Confucius he say ..." Later, it was black-and-white photos of a Mao-period sculpture of a prerevolutionary rent-collection courtyard, shown me by an enthusiastic English schoolmaster. Then it was the naively misinterpreted madness of the Cultural Revolution and the Red Guards. And now it is an American-educated Chinese academic in a dark suit, telling me in excellent English, "So, what Confucius says is ..."
Everyone knows that in China, Confucianism is back. A popularization of Confucius by a media-friendly academic, Yu Dan, has sold more than 10 million copies. Her book has been called "Chinese chicken soup for the soul." On the campus of Beijing's prestigious Tsinghua University, there used to be a statue of Chairman Mao; now there's Confucius. A Confucius film is to be made with funding from a state film company, with Chow Yun-Fat as the Master.
This is a private and public revival, a social and a party-state affair. "Confucius said, 'Harmony is something to be cherished,' " President Hu Jintao observed in 2005, promoting the Chinese Communist Party's proclaimed goals of a harmonious society and world. "From Confucius to Sun Yat-sen," Prime Minister Wen Jiabao averred a couple of years later, "the traditional culture of the Chinese nation has numerous precious elements." In his book China's New Confucianism, Montreal-born political theorist Daniel A. Bell quips that the CCP might one day be renamed the Chinese Confucian Party.
At an exhibition in the largest Confucian temple in Beijing, electric lights on a wall map pinpoint the spread of world branches of the Confucius Institute, a relatively new counterpart to the likes of Germany's Goethe Institute. While China's institutes are currently devoted mainly to teaching language, the exhibition clearly implies the benefit of Confucian thought.
There's a simplistic way to read this renaissance, and a more interesting one.
The simplistic way is to seek in Confucianism the key to understanding contemporary Chinese society, politics, even foreign policy. But for a start, there are many contrasting versions. Prof. Bell, for instance, distinguishes among liberal Confucianism, official or conservative Confucianism, left Confucianism and depoliticized pop Confucianism (Yu Dan's chicken soup).
Besides, Confucianism is just one ingredient in the eclectic mix characteristic of today's China. Many features of the country's society and political system can be described without any reference to Confucianism, and some would have the Master writhing in his tomb. You can discern elements of Leninism, capitalism, Taoism, Western consumer society, socialism, the imperial tradition of Legalism - and more.
It's precisely the mix that defines the Chinese model, which is anyway not yet fully formed. After all, China is still a developing country in every sense. Meanwhile, if we must seek a single label, then a better candidate would be Confectionism. The secret is in the confection.
It follows that it's a great mistake to conceive of a political and intellectual conversation with China as a "dialogue between civilizations." In this conception, Westerners put on the table what we call "Western values," the Chinese put on the table what they call "Chinese values," and then we see which pieces match.
Stuff and nonsense. There is no such thing as a pure, unadulterated, separate Western civilization or Chinese civilization. We have all been mixing up for centuries, and especially over the past two. There's more of the West in the East and of the East in the West than most people imagine. Moreover, even 2,500 years ago, when China and Europe really were worlds apart, Confucius was addressing some of the same issues as Plato and Sophocles, because these issues are universal.
So, the interesting way for Westerners to engage with Confucianism is quite different. This way starts from a simple proposition: Here was a great thinker who still has things to teach us. Rich schools of scholastic interpretation over more than two millennia not only reinterpreted Confucius but added new thoughts of their own. We should read him and them as we read Plato, Jesus, the Buddha, Darwin and their interpreters. This is not a dialogue between civilizations but a dialogue inside civilization.
For this conversation, most of us must depend on translators. In Beijing, I have been rereading Simon Leys's translation of The Analects of Confucius, with its notes full of vigorous cross-reference to Western writers. Of course, some passages are obscure or anachronistic. But many of the sayings attributed to Confucius breathe a remarkably fresh secular humanism.
I prefer his cautious formulation of the golden rule of reciprocity - "What you do not wish for yourself, do not impose upon others" - to the Christian one. What should government do? "Make the local people happy and attract migrants from afar." How should we best serve our political leader? "Tell him the truth, even if it offends him." Best of all: "One may rob an army of its commander-in-chief; one cannot deprive the humblest man of his free will."
If these are familiar thoughts in an unfamiliar place, there are also very distinctive emphases, such as that on a kind of extended family responsibility to generations both past and to come. Not such a bad idea, at a time when we are ravaging the planet that our grandparents left us.
Earlier this year, one of Britain's education officials reaped some mild satire for suggesting that his country's schoolchildren could benefit from studying Confucius. But couldn't we all? We would not merely learn something about the Chinese. We might even learn something about ourselves.
Timothy Garton Ash is a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and professor of European studies at Oxford University.
作者: apple 时间: 2009-4-21 00:19
[光明译丛]无论东方还是西方，儒家思想都适用
提摩西·阿什著 吴万伟 译
光明网-光明观察 刊发时间：2009-04-14 14:00:59
北京：在我小时候，中国对我来说是形象模糊可笑的中国人，他长着一缕缕小胡子的，穿着绣花的丝绸衣服，戴着一顶圆锥形高帽，用滑稽可笑的口音“子曰”个不停。后来，它是毛时代革命前农村收租子的雕塑的黑白照片，这是一个热情的英国校长让我看的。再后来是文化革命和红卫兵天真的错误表达的疯狂。现在它是穿着黑色西装的接受美国教育的中国学者，用漂亮的英语告诉我“啊，孔子说的是……”
人人都知道在中国儒家思想又回来了。在媒体上宣讲孔子学说的学者于丹的著作销售量达数百万册。她的书被称为“滋养心灵的中国鸡汤”。在北京的名牌大学清华大学校园里曾经有毛主席的雕像，现在则是孔子。国家电影公司资助正要拍摄电影《孔子》，由周润发（Chow Yun-Fat）扮演孔圣人。
这是私人和公共的复兴，是社会和党国的事件。国家主席胡锦涛在2005年说“孔子说和为贵”，推动中共宣称的推动和谐社会和世界的目标。总理温家宝在几年后说“从孔子到孙中山，中华民族的传统文化有众多宝贵的东西。”蒙特里尔出生的政治理论家贝淡宁在他的书《中国新儒家》中开玩笑地说中国共产党或许有一天被改名为中国儒家党。
在北京最大的孔庙的展览会上，电光束在墙上地图中表明世界各地孔子学院的传播情况，这是类似于歌德学院的相对新的东西。尽管中国的学院目前主要是用来讲授语言，该展览显然隐含着儒家思想的好处。
有个最简单的也更加有趣的阅读这种复兴的方法。
最简单的方法是在儒家思想中寻找理解当代中国社会、政治、甚至外交政策的钥匙。但是首先，存在许多对立的版本。比如贝教授就区分了不同的儒家学说，比如自由派儒学、官方儒学或者保守派儒学、左派儒学和去政治化的大众儒学（于丹的鸡汤）。
而且，儒学只是当今中国兼收并蓄多样特征的组成部分。这个国家的社会和政治体制的许多特征可以根本不提儒学的情况下来描述，有人可能宁愿大师躺在坟墓里。你可以辨别出来列宁主义、资本主义、道家、西方消费社会、社会主义、法家帝国传统等等因素。
正是这个混合体确定了中国模式，虽然还没有完全成型。毕竟，中国在任何意义上都仍然是发展中国家。与此同时，如果我们必须寻找一个单一的标签，那么，更好的候选对象可能是调和主义。秘密就在于拼凑调和。
接下来，认为和中国进行的政治和思想对话是“文明间的对话”就是个巨大的错误。在这个概念上，西方人把我们称为“”西方价值的东西放在桌子上，中国人把他们称为“中国价值”的东西放在桌子上，然后我们看看有哪些东西能对上。
一派胡言。没有所谓的纯粹的、不受污染的、独立的西方文明或者中华文明，我们都一直在混合几个世纪了，尤其是在过去的两个世纪里。西方中拥有东方和东方中拥有西方的东西远比我们想象的要多。而且，在2500年前，当中国和欧洲是真正分开的两个世界的时候，孔子就在讨论一些和柏拉图或者苏格拉底一样的话题。因为这些话题是普遍性的。
所以，西方人接触儒学的有趣方式是非常不同的。这个方式开始于一个简单的命题：这里有一个伟大的思想家，仍然能为我们提供新的东西。过去两千多年丰富的学院派解释不仅重新解释了孔子而且增添了自己的新思想。我们应该阅读孔子以及后来的儒家思想，就想我们阅读柏拉图、耶稣、释迦牟尼、达尔文和他们的阐释者一样。这不是文明之间的对话，而是文明内的对话。
从这个对话中，我们多数人必须依靠翻译者。在北京，我一直在阅读西蒙·莱斯（Simon Leys）的孔子《论语》的译本，注释里面提到了很多西方作家的观点。当然，有些段落是模糊的杂乱无章的，但是其中许多被认为是孔子说的话表达了特别新鲜的世俗人文主义的情怀。
我喜欢他做人的金科玉律“己所不欲，勿施于人”和基督教原则一致。政府应该怎么做呢？“让本地人幸福，吸引外来移民”。我们该如何最好地为政治领袖服务呢？“告诉他真相，即使这会冒犯他。”（勿欺也，而犯之。）最好的是：“一个人能剥夺军队的首领，但不能剥夺一个最卑贱的人的自由意志。”（三军可夺帅也，匹夫不可夺志也。）
如果这些是在不熟悉的地方看到的熟悉的思想，那里也有一些非常独特的思想，比如强调我们对过去祖先和未来子孙的家族责任。在我们放肆地掠夺祖先留给我们的地球的时刻，这显然不是糟糕的观点。
今年早些时候，英国一教育官员建议本国学生能从学习孔子中受益，而遭到一些温和的讽刺。可是，难道我们每个人不能从中受益吗？我们不仅能从中国人那里学点什么，甚至能从我们自己身上学点东西呢。
作者简介：
提摩西·阿什（Timothy Garton Ash）斯坦福大学胡佛研究院高级研究员，牛津大学欧洲研究教授。
译自：East and West, Confucianism speaks to us all TIMOTHY GARTON ASH
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
April 9, 2009 at 12:00 AM EDT
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090408.wcoash09/BNStory/specialComment/home
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