论科举制度力尚公平的历史内容和历史矛盾

On the Historical Content and Historical Contradiction of the Imperial Examination System Pursuing Fairness

自封建变为郡县,帝王治天下则不得不选官。以儒学的贤人政治为理想,选官则不能不尚贤。因此,先出的察举和后起的科举,主旨都在"选贤与能"。但与由少数人选少数人的察举制度相比,科举制度既用"以试为选"变以人选人为以文选人,又用"怀谍自列"变少数人受选为多数人受选。选官过程的广泛性、普遍性、公共性和公开性都使得公平成为这个过程里的要义和要害。所以,从宋初到清末的九百多年中,次第而起的殿试、锁院、糊名、誊录、地域分卷、分省乡试、官民分卷,以及以《四书》为范围的八股文程式,都是意在用铲平一切单面优势和主观影响的办法着力维护"势家"与"寒俊"之间的公平,贫与富之间的公平,文风盛弱不同的地域之间的公平,以及考官与士子之间的公平,以期做到"无情如造化,至公如权衡"。然而,贤之为贤和能之为能皆以出乎其类,拔乎其萃为存在方式和表现方式,因此,铲平一切单面优势的过程,则不能不以其选出的人物因越来越普遍化而普通化,又因越来越普通化而均等化,最终走向尚贤的反面。与之相类的,则是一种最开放的选官制度与最不开放的思想环境同存于一个过程之中,以及用知识为尺度的选官为了维持公平而内生出的反知识的倾向。

When the feudal system was replaced by the province-country system,emperors had to select officials for administration. Guided by the Confucian political ideal,selected officials should be wise men.Therefore,both the previous recommendatory system and the imperial examination system afterwards were aimed to select 'the wise and the competent'. In the recommendatory system,a small number of people choose another small number of people. By contrast,in the imperial examination system,officials are selected according to their intellectual performance in exams,and a large number of people are allowed to attend the selection by'registering with their own resumes'. The selecting process is so extensive,widespread,communal and public that fairness is essential to it. During over 900 years from the early Song Dynasty to the end of the Qing Dynasty,various measures,including the final imperial examination( presided over by the emperor),locked examination hall,covered names of examinees,transcription,regional differentiation,provincial examination,different examinations for sons of officials and common people,and stereotyped writing with eight parts in the range of the Four Books,were all aimed to eliminate some partial advantages and subjective elements in order to maintain fairness that between the influential and the common,the rich and the poor,regions favoring learning and those indifferent to learning,examiners and examinees. Nevertheless,since the wise and the competent are distinguished from the common,eliminating all partial advantages inevitably results in the fact that more and more common and ordinary persons are selected,which is against the original purpose of selecting the wise and the competent. Correspondently,the most open official selecting system coexists with the most severe ideological control,and in the process of maintaining fairness,an anti-knowledge tendency arises in the official selecting system,which originally takes knowledge as measurement.