周初至春秋天命观中的“德”与“道”

Moral and Tao in the View of Fatality in Early Zhou Dynasty to Spring and Autumn Periods

与殷人的迷信相比,周人在认识"天"、追求"天命"的方式上更为理性,通过关注人事来把握天命。周初统治者认为"天命有德",在人事上提倡修"德"。春秋时期的社会剧变,使人们对于"德"与"天命"的关系提出质疑,于是提出了"道"。但是,现实中政治斗争的胜利不完全取决于"有道"或"无道",而是由实力决定的,这愈发促使人们从追求天命的理想中转而关注现实社会。

Unlike their subjective and superstitious predecessors of Shang Dynasty, philosophers of Zhou Dynasty were objective and rational in their way of looking at heaven and pursuing fatality, as was reflected from their understanding of the fatality by focusing on the management of state affairs. The rulers of the early Zhou Dynasty advocated to govern the country by ＂moral＂, or virtue, believing that there was virtue in fatality; while in the Spring and Autumn period, with its tremendous social upheavals, people doubted the relationship between moral and fatality, and then put forward ＂Tao＂, the Way of Nature. As political struggles were won by whoever had the greatest power rather than those who conformed to Tao, there was in the Spring and Autumn Period a shift from the pursuit of fatality to the concern for social realities.