儒家修身之道的历程及其现代命运

The Historical Course of Confucian Self-Cultivation and Its Modern Destiny

儒家修身学最早见于《五经》,经历了以培养“君子”为目标的“德性—德行培育”到以“成圣”为目标的“心灵操练”两个不同的时代。而在三千年未有之大变局的“过渡时代”中,儒家修身传统被转化为培育“新君子”(国民、公民)与“新圣人”(“革命圣人”)的精神资源。当今,我们正在步入另一个“过渡时代”,一个“人禽之辨”的2.0版本(“人机之辨”)的时代,如何回应这个“加速化”与“全球化”成为不可逆转的时代所提出的人类生存的根本问题,如何重新激活儒家修身学资源,是当今建设哲学的“中国话语”必须重视的问题。

The Confucian notion of self-cultivation or cultivation of the person first appeared in the Five Classics.It had experienced two different eras with the shift from“moral cultivation”to“spiritual training”,with the former aiming for the ideal personality of“Confucian gentleman”whereas the latter for“becoming a sage”.Along with the collapse of the Qing dynasty,in the“transitional era”that witnessed the greatest transformation in the past three thousand years,the Confucian tradition of self-cultivation was transformed into spiritual resources for cultivating“new gentlemen”(nationals or citizens)and“new sages”(“sages for revolution”).We are now confronted with another transitional era marked by the“distinction between human and machine”,an updated version of the classical“distinction between human and animal”.Inevitably,how to respond to such“acceleration”and“globalization”of our time has become a fundamental issue for human existence,and how to reactivate Confucian resources for personal cultivation is an issue that must be taken seriously in the current project of constructing“Chinese discourse”in philosophy.