从梁济“自沉”看中国近代遗老的文化心态

The Cultural Mentality of Chinese Fogies in Modern Times Seen From the Angle of Liang Ji Who Drowned Himself

近代遗老梁济的"死义",表明一心期望"旧学复兴"的近代遗老们,所缺乏的是一种扬弃和批判旧文化所必需的心理承受力,他们承受不了一种非中国化的价值体系在生活中成为普遍观念的中心。在他们的心目中,"圣学"乃是具有超时空的、绝对合理和完美的、自我和谐的有机体系。这些晚清遗老们以一种潜逻辑的形式将各种文化信息、文化刺激归类到旧的认知框架中———这也正是许多晚清遗老在新旧嬗替之际始终能够保持一种以尊临卑、虚矫自大的文化优越感的深层原因。深入探析梁济"死义"过程的文化心态,足可启发我们深思具有悠久文明遗产的中国何以在近代落伍于世界潮流,何以难于开发出民主和科学这类现代思想资源,并在此基础上,获得实现传统文化与道德的时代转换的必然性认识,而不是一味地沉湎在道德理想主义之中。

Mr. Liang Ji, an old fogy who had witnessed great social changes, drowned himself. His death showed that modern fogies who were looking forward to reviving the old Chinese learning lacked a mental ability required to bear the old culture being abandoned and criticized. They also could not endure a non-Chinese value system which became the center of common ideas in daily lives. In their opinion, 'the holy learning' was a kind of organic system, which was beyond spatial-temporal, absolutely reasonable, prefect and self-harmonious. Those late Qing Dynasty fogies classified by means of a potential logic all kinds of cultural information and cultural stimuli into the old framework of cognition. It is also the profound reason why many fogies could keep a dignified, sham and arrogant cultural superiority complex when they were faced with the coming of a new culture. An analysis of the cultural meaning implied in the death of Liang Ji so greatly enlightens us that we naturally think hard enough to seek out the answers to these questions: why did China with relics of a long culture drop behind other countries in modern times? why was it difficult to develop resources of modern thoughts such as democracy and science in China? What's more, on the basis of such analysis, we are so enlightened that we have a understanding of the inevitability of realizing shifts of times in traditional culture and morality, and that we can not indulge in moral idealism.