东方与西方,还是传统与现代?——论“东西方”两分法的历史渊源和现实误区

The Historical Origin and Misleading Discourse of the East-West Dichotomy

当今中国普遍流行的"东西方"划分让人们的思维方式格式化了,以至于我们的教科书中充斥着戴有"西方"帽子的学科领域。笼统地划分中学、西学,所犯的一个简单错误就是将不同时期的文明成果混淆到一起。而事实上,是"地理大发现"之后的文明接触才激发了欧洲的思想变革,催生了现代世界。这个现代世界既不同于传统的亚洲,也与传统的欧洲没有多少必然联系。然而,当现代性被强加于中国等非欧洲国家时,却是以西学的面目出现的,因此造成了"现代即西方"、"现代化即西方化"的误解。中国知识界从晚清以来围绕中西文化、传统与现代进行了多次论争,由于不能区分西方与现代,无论是西化派、本土派还是互补派,都难以产生压倒性影响。正确的思路应该是摈弃"东西方"两分法,戒除动辄诉诸传统的思维习惯,在实现充分的现代化的基础上,引领"全球共同体"的建立。

The East-West dichotomy that is popular in contemporary China has become a shackle for people's thinking.As a result,the titles of many disciplines or fields are prefixed with'Western'.The simple mistake of categorizing learning into East and West is to confuse the intellectual achievements from different periods without making a distinction between modern and pre-modern ages.As a matter of fact,it is the increased contacts among various civilizations after the great geographical discoveries that generated the intellectual revolutions in Europe and produced the modern world,which showed little similarity with either traditional Asia or traditional Europe.When modernity was imposed on Asian countries by European powers,however,it appeared as Western learning,which led to the inappropriate association of modernization with Westernization.The correct way is to discard the dichotomy of East and West and to pave the way toward a global community.