严复与近代中国的文化转型

Yan Fu and Modern China's Cultural Transition

严复为第一代接受西式教育的知识分子,他在翻译西方经典与宣扬西方启蒙思想上有杰出的贡献,然而他也受到传统思想与生活方式的影响,表现出"反启蒙"的特点。严复思想在传统与现代的双重影响下,具有一部份矛盾、两歧的性格,然不容忽略的是,严复一生思想亦有其连续性,而且他的现代性方案与源自佛道思想的终极关怀之间具有内在凝聚性,并非全无理路可循。此一个案显示中国知识分子在追求西方观念的同时,并不忘情中国传统,其理想在建立一融合中西之长,而超越西方现代性的新中国。

This paper takes Yan Fu as an example to investigate the complicated process of cultural transformation in modern China. Yan,who had studied abroad,belonged to the first generation of new intellectuals,but he was also strongly influenced by traditional values and lifestyles,and he displayed certain 'anti-enlightenment' features. This paper argues that Yan,influenced by elements of both tradition and modernity,was to a certain extent contradictory and 'janus-faced.' Yet he was also consistent in combining his modernizing project with his ultimate concerns that derived from Buddhism and Daoism. This case study indicates that Chinese modernizing intellectuals searched for Western ideas while at the same time they did not completely reject Chinese tradition. Their ideal was to combine the strengths of China and the West in order to establish a China which transcended Western modernity.