创新与宇宙论:“(Neo-)Confucianism”一词早期的用法

Innovation and Metaphysics:On Early Uses of the Term‘(Neo-)Confucianism’

宋代“道学”的成员,历代有不同的称呼,如中文“程朱学派”“理学家”“今儒”“新儒家”,或外文“Neo-Confucians”,但是都与“道学”原义有所不同。文章探讨西方“Confucian”“Confucianism”“Neoconfucian”“Neoconfucianism”等用语在17到19世纪文献的发展,包括其学术背景与原先的用意。这些用语大部分可以找出比目前所知更早的出处,有时候超过一百年。另外可以看到这些术语刚开始有着比较负面的涵义,而后来才成为正面的用语。同时可以从中探究欧洲学者从17到19世纪对宋明道学家的看法及其变化,以此反思这些用词在现代的意义与使用的恰当性。

Over the course of history,several collective names have been used to represent the Song Dynasty Daoxue Confucianism,but each of them differs from the word Daoxue itself in terms of meaning and scope.This paper gives an analysis of the development of concepts like“Confucian”,“Confucianism”,“Neoconfucian”and“Neoconfucianism”in Western sources from the 17th to 19th centuries,including their scholarly background and original connotations.I will be able to show that most of these terms have been in use much earlier as has been previously assumed,sometimes more than a century.Furthermore,we can see a general trend that many terms used in a positive way today originally had a negative connotation.At the same time,we can retrace the perspectives of early Western scholars on the protagonists of Daoxue,in order to reflect on the contemporary meaning and the appropriateness of aforementioned terms.