从改善民生、革新行政到议员政府、普及教育——蒯光典政治思想述论

From Improving the People's Welfare and Reforming Administration to Parliamentary Government and Universal Education: The Political Thought of Kuai Guangdian

晚清变法潮流中,蒯光典是一位极富现实感的人物,与理论先行的康有为诸人不同。其政治思想可分前后两期:前期旨在改善民生、革新行政;后期则以议员政府、普及教育为归宿。在民生方面,主张减轻农民负担,权力退出商业运作;在革新行政方面,则主张“定则例”,即行政必须公开与透明。光典深知,为政之要在于政府与人民互相监督。经多年阅历及欧洲之行,终于得出结论:即英国式议员政府与普及教育、公共卫生二项最是根本,乃“周情孔思”。更以为,教育之目的绝非仅是培养精英,而必须提高全民素质;教育之内容则不在某一类的学说,而在基本的、科学的知识。如此看法,显已越出了士大夫传统之见。

In wave of reform of the late Qing, Kuai Guangdian was a pragmatic man with a strong sense of reality, quite unlike Kang Youwei and others who emphasized theory. His political thought can be divided into two periods. His early political views focused on improving people's welfare and reforming administration, and in the late period, he emphasized parliamentary government and making education universal. As to people's welfare, he advocated lightening the burden of peasants and having political power withdraw from commerce. As to administrative reform, he was an advocate of “setting regulations”, i.e. that administrative management must be open and transparent. He clearly knew that the most important thing in statecraft is mutual checks and balances between government and the people. Finally through his rich experience as an official and following his trips to Europe he realized that the best choice for governing China was a British-style parliamentary government, with universal education and medical care, a system which he thought totally conformed to the age-old Confucian ideal of humanity. The purpose of education, he emphasized, should be to cultivate the whole population rather than produce a class of elites, and the contents of education should not be a single doctrine, but rather basic and scientific knowledge. These views obviously went quite beyond those traditionally held by Confucian scholar-officials.