早期现代还是晚期帝国的考据学?——18世纪中国经学的危机

Philology of the Early Modern or the Late Imperial:The Crisis of Chinese Classical Learning in the 18th Century

18世纪的经学研究者们所使用的话语进一步强化了一种转变,即从宋明时期的理性主义转变为一种更具怀疑精神和世俗化的经验主义经学。通过对知识的来源作细致研究,清代经学家主张人们应该更精密地考索经书文本,来重估如何正确、合理地构筑经书中的古代理想。这意味着当时知识精英的论辩重心,已由抽象概念和理性主义论题开始让位于具体事实、信而有征的制度、古代的自然研究以及历史事件。大体而言,在清代经学家看来,宋明"道学"对于实证研究构成了阻碍,因为道学并不鼓励进一步的实证性研究。他们所提倡的对于知识的实证性研究在分析经学传统时将证据和事实置于核心的地位。学者和批评家也将历史学分析应用于清代官方所尊奉的经典之中。其结果导致官方尊奉的经学注释失去其光辉,文献批判和考证转而被当作捍卫古代经典的手段。作为帝制晚期中国的一场儒学运动,清代经学家们依旧试图重建儒家经典中所描绘的愿景。然而,其考据学的早期现代特征所具有的力量,最终还是在走向现代的过程中演变为去经典化和去权威化的趋向,尽管这已经与他们在自己的著述中所设定的知识范围相去甚远。

The discourses of classical scholars during the eighteenth century reinforced a shift from Song-Ming rationalism to a more skeptical and secular classical empiricism.By making precise scholarship the source of acceptable knowledge,Qing classicists contended that the legitimate reach of ancient ideals should be reevaluated through comparative delineation of the textual sources from which all such knowledge derived.This turn to empirically based classical inquiry meant that Abstract ideas and rational argumentation gave way as the primary objects of elite discussion to concrete facts,verifiable institutions,ancient natural studies,and historical events.In general,Qing classicists regarded Song and Ming 'Learning of the Way' as an obstacle to verifiable truth because it discouraged further inquiry along empirical lines.The empirical approach to knowledge advocated placed proof and verification at the heart of analysis of the classical tradition.During this time,scholars and critics also applied historical analysis to the official Classics.Classical commentary yielded to textual criticism and a 'search for evidence' to refortify the ancient canon.Representing a late imperial movement in Confucian letters,Qing classicists still sought to restore the classical vision.The early modern power of their philology,however,yielded the forces of decanonization and delegitimation as modernist trends,which went beyond the intellectual limits they had imposed on their own writings.