人人皆圣:王艮对儒家“圣人说”的新解

Everyone Can be a Sage: Wang Gen’s New Interpretation of Confucian Sage Theory

圣人一直是崇高伟大身居高位的,与普通的百姓有着云泥之差,因而千古留名,深受万世敬仰。对于儒家来说,成圣是儒者终其一生所追求的目标。而自阳明以来,理学家逐渐拉近圣人与常人的距离,泰州学派创始人王艮更是提出“人人皆圣”“人人君子”的主张来弱化“圣人说”。他通过将“天理良知”改造成“日用良知”,使玄虚神秘的天道等同于老百姓的日用;又将一直备受推崇的君子之道——“舍生取义”新解为“立本安身”,关怀到百姓最基本的生存需求;最后又将“乐”与“学”结合起来,将晦涩深奥的“圣人之学”转换为“至简至易之学”,更是打破了精英阶层对于教育的垄断。这样,王艮就把原本高高在上的圣人拉下神坛,重新建立起一套常人成圣论,力图填平圣人与平民之间的鸿沟。

Different from ordinary people, sages are great figures and have prominent position in society, so they are remembered and worshipped all the time. For the Confucians, to be a sage is the ultimate goal of their life. Starting from Wang Yangming, the gap between sages and ordinary people was gradually narrowed by the neo-confucianists, among whom Wang Gen, founder of the Taizhou School, even made such claims as “everyone can be a sage or a gentleman” to reduce the influence of the Sage Theory. By transforming “heavenly principle” into “daily intuitive knowledge”, he demystified the occult Dao of heaven. Besides, he made new interpretation of “laying down one’s life for a just cause”, one of the important doctrines followed by gentlemen, as “settling down and getting on with one’s pursuit”, which is a manifestation of caring the most fundamental living requirements of ordinary people. And he also combined pleasantness and learning together, changing the obscure and profound sages’ thoughts into understandable knowledge and breaking elite class’ monopoly in education. In this way, Wang pulled sages down from altar and reestablished a set of theory that ordinary people could become sages, trying to bridge the gap between them.