论伏尔泰宗教思想的形成及中国文化的影响

On Voltaire's Religious Thoughts and Their Influence over Chinese Culture

伏尔泰是18世纪法国启蒙运动中杰出的思想家,他在中法比较的基础上提出一系列重要的看法,如宗教是实现社会控制诸多手段中的一种、宗教狂热并不具有世界性意义、神权政治并非人类社会政治发展的必经阶段等等。由于中国文化具有鲜明的现实主义特征,伏尔泰在形成这些观念的时候受到中国文化的深刻影响。这些认识不仅有助于推动当时的启蒙运动,而且预示着西方未必即是世界文化的中心,这为确立比较研究法中的“去中心主义”原则作出了贡献,很好地推动了历史学、宗教学与社会学的发展。

Voltaire is an accomplished thinker in the French Enlightenment of 18th century. He advanced a series of important propositions, such as the proposition that religion is one of the means of realizing social control, the proposition that religious mania is not cosmopolitan, the proposition that the theocracy is not the indispensable phase in the course of social political development and so on. Since Chinese culture is featured with sharp-ut realism, it exerted deep influence in shaping those ot Voltaire＇s views. Voltaire＇s views not only promoted the development of contemporary Enlightenment, but also foreshowed the west would not necessarily be the centre of the world culture, which contributed to the establishment of the principle“centre-removing” in the methodology of contrastive study and remarkably spurred the development of history, religious study and social study.