西方不在西边——西方主义的自我认识方法

The West is not in the west:the Self-recognition of Occidentalism

上世纪七十年代末期,扎伊尔德(Edward W.Said)在《东方主义(Orientalism)》一书中,批评普遍主义对差异的不尊重,这个批评也可以用来批评主流社会科学界,亦即藉由把东方描述为一个特殊且落后的对象,来突显自身的普遍性与先进,并延伸出改造东方的责任。本文辩称这样的批判仍陷入"自我—对象"的认识框架下,藉由考察中国与日本的思想史,发现不论在现代性加入之前还是之后,中国的天下观与日本的神道观,都不靠与对象的差异来进行自我认识,也没有赋予自身改造他人的责任,反而是透过自我修养与砥砺来超越差异。

This paper will discuss the concept of ＂the West.＂ It will argue that for the Japanese and Chinese thinkers, the West does not exist in the West. Rather, the West Js sometimes at the periphery and, at other times, at the center. For them, ＂the Chinese＂ is about the epistemology of all-under-heaven. There is no such concept as ＂Other＂ in this epistemology. As a result, the modern Western thinkers depend on opposing the concrete, historical, yet backward ＂Other＂ to pretend being universal, while the Chinese and the Japanese thinkers concentrate on self-rectification to compete for the best representative of ＂the Chinese.＂ The Chinese is no more than an epistemological frame that divides the world into the center and the periphery. During modern times, the Japanese accepted Japan being at the periphery, while the West is at the center. To practice self-rectification is to simulate the West. The West is therefore not geographical Western, but at the center of the Japanese selfhood. Self-knowledge produced through Othering and that through self-rectification are so different that the universal West could not make sense of the all-under-heaven way of conceptualizing the West.