道德的重塑:晚清伦理教科书对《诗经》的阐释转向

Reshaping Morality: Shift of the Explanation of The Book of Songs in Ethics Textbooks of Late Qing Dynasty

晚清学制变迁中产生了一系列经训教科书和伦理教科书。由于新旧交替的特殊时代背景,这批教科书呈现出奇特的面貌:它们一方面模仿西方和日本的伦理教科书,从个体、家庭、社会、国家等层面展开伦理教育;另一方面,它们又试图把包括《诗经》在内的儒家经典融合进这些新的伦理原则,对传统知识体系进行新的时代解读。然而,在这个阐释转向的过程中,学者们却遭遇了一个尴尬的处境:尽管《诗经》中有丰富的涉及个人和家庭道德的内容,但关于社会和国家道德的规定却相对较少。据此,学者们认为传统经教难以适应新时代的需求,这种融合“旧经典”与“新道德”的尝试也并未持续。

A series of textbooks on ancient classics comments and ethics textbooks emerged during the transformation in the educational system in the late Qing Dynasty. Under the special background of transition from the old times to the new times, these textbooks demonstrated particular features: On one hand, they imitated the western and Japanese ethics textbooks and offered ethics education at the level of individuals, families, society and nation;on the other hand, they attempted to integrate Confucian classics into these new ethics principles and offered new-era explanations of the traditional knowledge system. However, in the process of the explanation turn, the scholars were confronted with many awkward circumstances: Though The Book of Songs contained rich contents of individual and family ethics there were inadequate rules of social and national ethics. Therefore, some scholars believed that the classics were unable to adapt to the needs of the times and the attempt to integrate ″old classics″ with ″new ethics″ did not go on.