“好像百合花在荆棘内”——奥古斯丁的修道理想与文本解读之惑

“Like the Lily among the Thorns”: Augustine's Monasticism in Its Social Context

中国学界和民间解读奥古斯丁以及中世纪的修道理想的困难在于,受到启蒙运动以来西方各种世俗化思潮的冲击,浸润于我们自己通俗文化中对佛教修行的误解和非议,我们一直把注意力狭隘地放在独身这一修道生活的特殊层面上,认为这是违背自然的,甚至是虚伪的。西方学者对修道传统的解释更多地是追溯到古典文化,尤其是其中的新柏拉图主义,强调这一思想传统在灵魂与肉体之间所构建的张力对基督教思想和文化的影响。以奥古斯丁涉及修道问题的文本为研究对象,用马克思主义社会分析方法和现代社会史研究的思路进行分析,可以发现基督教修道传统具有强烈的社会批判意义,在当时的社会语境中,修道代表着一种积极和乐观的生活态度,而绝非是禁欲主义的。

The influence of the Enlightenment and other Western secular intellectual trends have introduced prejudices against mo-nasticism of Christianity into Chinese academics and common people, augmenting the old-fashioned hostility towards monasti-cism of Buddhism that has been considered unnatural and deviating from conventional social norms.Many scholars in the West trace part of the origins of monasticism back to the pre-Christian tradition of literary and philosophical fear of human love as an obstacle in pursuit of wisdom.In reading the texts of Augustine＇s works on monasticism, this paper places his thought on reli-gious life in its social context and emphasizes its quality as social critique inherent in his optimistic attitude of life rather than as a pessimistic view of the world.