董仲舒“君主论”:君主身份的二重性及其对君主的限制

Dong Zhongshu’s “Theory of the Monarch”: Duality of the Monarch’s Identity and Its Restrictions on Him

董仲舒将君主纳入天人系统中,赋予君主以神圣性与人间至尊性地位的政治思想受到较多批评,人们认为如此将导致君主缺乏有效限制。董仲舒采取的办法是:一方面通过"屈民以伸君,屈君以伸天",借助天的权威来约束君主;另一方面,则通过对君主政治性身份与个人性身份的分离,将作为个人的君主纳入儒家伦理的约束中,以保证君主的德行。董仲舒所分离出的君主二重身份,其政治性身份表现为君主的政治身份或代表国家的社稷身份;个人性身份则表现为父子、兄弟、亲亲的伦理身份或代表宗族延续性的宗庙身份。

Dong Zhongshu’s political thoughts of including the monarch in the system of heaven and man and giving him a status of sacredness and human supremacy have been much criticized. People believe that it will result in the lack of effective restrictions on the monarch. On the one hand, Dong Zhongshu put forward the idea of "Subjects must obey the monarch absolutely, and the monarch must obey the heaven absolutely on his part", hoping to restrict the monarch with the aid of the authority of heaven. On the other hand, he separated political identity from personal identity and incorporated the monarch into the restriction of Confucian ethics to ensure his virtue. The dual identity of the monarch separated by Dong Zhongshu refers to his political identity and his personal identity;the former refers to the political identity of the monarch or his social identity that represents the country, and the latter refers to the ethical identity as father and son, brothers and relatives or the identify in the ancestral temple that represents the continuity of the clan.