荀子伦理学的理论特色——从“国家理由”的视角说起

The Theoretical Characteristics of Xunzi’s Ethics in a Perspective of“Reason of State”

在先秦儒家中,荀子第一次明确地为政治国家的存在提出了逻辑清晰的辩护,而将“礼义”赋予“国家理由”的形式,使其获得“权力”与“道德”的双重身份,则构成了我们理解荀子伦理学之理论特色的不二途径。在荀子,国家是以“圣王”和“礼义”来表现的,礼义所具有的止争去乱的功能以及规范行为的性质,其实质是以“国家理由”的形式出现的;国家之所以必须并且必然,乃是因为其深深地根植于人的性恶的天性之中,而荀子所说的人性的“恶”,并不是在特定的伦理或道德意义上的恶,而应当被理解为政治意义上的“偏险悖乱”。如果说以“圣王”和“礼义”为代表的政治国家,其创立之初意原在遏制人之性恶的话,荀子似乎对此一政治国家抱持了过分的道德期许,远未及严肃思考政治国家本身可能就是一种恶。

Among the pre-Qin Confucianists,Xunzi was the first one to make logical defence of the existence of political state;and the one and only way to understand the theoretical characteristics of Xunzi's ethics is that he endows rites with the form of“reason of state”,making it own the dual identity of power and morality.For Xunzi,the state is manifested in“sage king”and“rite and morality”.The function of stopping upheaval and property of regularizing behavior possessed by“rite and morality”appear in the form of“reason of state”;and the necessity for state lies in that it is deeply rooted in the evil nature of human being.Such“evilness”does not refer to the one in the sense of ethics or morality,but should be understood as injustice and revolt politically.If political state represented by“sage king”and“rite and morality”was established to contain the evil nature originally,it seemed that Xunzi held too much moral expectation of the political state to reflect that the state itself can be one kind of wickedness.