“民可使由之不可使知之”之本义探寻

A Probe into the Original Meaning of“People May Be Made to Follow rather than to Understand”

“民可使由之不可使知之”语出《论语·泰伯》,两千多年以来古今学者都对这则论语进行了多角度、多层次的阐释。古代学者大多对断句无异议,但在内涵解读上大致分为“民愚”说、“愚民”说、“天道深远不可知”说、“自觉”说四种;现代学者对断句大致分七种形式,在内涵解读上,大部分学者在继承“民愚说”基础上融合发展为“开启民智说”,带有现代民主色彩。

In the chapter of Taibo of The Analects of Confucius,it reads,“People may be made to follow rather than to understand.”For more than two thousand years,scholars have interpreted this sentence from multiple perspectives.Most of whom have no objection to the punctuation of this sentence,but the connotation interpretation can be roughly divided into four kinds:“People are stupid”,“Obscurantism”,“The Tao of heaven is profound and unknowable”,and“Self-conscious”.Modern scholars roughly based their study on seven different ways of punctuation of this sentence.In terms of connotation interpretation,most modern scholars accepted the interpretation of“People are stupid”,and combine it with the thought of social enlightenment,which is considered to have been influenced with modern democratic thoughts.