沃尔夫对儒家经典的使用与接受

On Christian Wolff's Application and Acceptance of Confucianism

沃尔夫《关于中国实践哲学的讲话》大量使用了儒家经典的思想和材料。这其中主要涉及《大学》的三纲领和八条目,《中庸》的"人心""道心"和"明善",《孟子》的"理义之悦我心"的思想。与此同时,沃尔夫还积极接受了朱熹理学:他《讲话》的主旨是由理性和知识可以开导出道德,这一思想与朱熹理学若合符节;他还引用了《大学章句序》和《小学》,对朱熹理气、天命之正和形气之私的理学思想也进行了阐释。沃尔夫在《讲话》中提到的所有重要观点和哲学概念,都可以在儒学经典中找到对应处。

Christian Wolff cited plenty of thoughts and materials in Confucian classics in his Speeches on China’s Practical Philosophy,which mainly involves the three programs and eight items of cardinally ethical relationships in The GreatLearning(Daxue),the“human mind”,the“mind of nature or the Way”and the“illumination of goodness”in The Doctrineof the Mean(Zhongyong),and the thought of“the principles of the nature and the determinations of righteousness beingagreeable to our mind”in Mencius(Mengzi).Meanwhile,Wolff also accepted ZHU Xi’s thoughts positively for the reasonthat the motif of his Speeches is the thought that the morality can be enlightened from reason and knowledge,which matches ZHU’s Neo-Confucianism completely and perfectly.In addition,with the quotation of“Preface of the Syntactic and Se?mantic Analysis of The Great Learning”and The Primary Learning(Xiaoxue),he even elucidated ZHU’s thoughts of Neo-Confucianism such as the correlative relationship between the principle(li)and the substantiality/material force(qi),the justification of destiny and the selfish desire of physical appearance and substance.The counterparts of his important viewpoints and philosophical concepts in his Speeches can all be found in Confucian classics.