《大学》“诚意慎独”章新解

A New Interpretation of“Sincerity and Caution”of The Great Learning

《大学》是了解儒学的纲领性文献,其中三纲领八条目实际应为三纲领四条目,格物、致知与诚意、正心是修身的具体内容,可以包含在修身条目之下,而并非在修身之外另有格物、致知与诚意、正心四个条目。《大学》的慎独指诚其意,独指真实的自我,而非传统上所理解的独居、独处,郑玄、朱熹以来对慎独存在误读。了解慎独的本意,可以发现儒家在重视人伦关系的同时,也关注个体的内在自我,而处理好二者的关系应是儒学未来发展的方向所在。

The Great Learning is a guiding work to understand Confucianism.The Three Cardinal Guidelines and Eight Articles highlighted in this book should be shortened into Three Cardinal Guidelines and Four Articles,since“investigating things”,“extending knowledge”,“making one's intent sincere”and“rectifying one's mind-heart”are all concrete contents of“cultivating oneself”(xiushen)and therefore would be fairly sufficient to be accommodated under one single category.shendu is referred to as“sincerity”for the reason that du means“the true self”;its conventional erroneous understanding is“to live solitarily”or“to stay alone”,with Zheng Xuan(127-200)and Zhu Xi(1130-1200)as two well-known examples.Therefore,exploration into the original meaning of shendu can help us discover how Confucians concern about the inner self while highlighting all along the ethnical relationship of humans.How to deal with these two aspects properly is the very direction for future research into Confucianism.