神圣时间、礼俗时间制度与礼乐行为之时中、时频--论司马光礼乐美学思想之一端

One Thread of Sima Guang’s Aesthetics of Ritual and Music:On Sacred Time, the Temporal System of Ritual Customs, and the Appropriate Time and Frequency of Ritual and Musical Activities

司马光礼乐美学思想的核心是建构与维护国家层面的礼乐制度,由此出发,他对如何自上而下地推行礼乐制度的风俗化、移风易俗,以及确保礼乐行为能够持久地适时而发,提出了自己的设想。第一,为了维护美感—财富分配中的剧烈不公与阶级差异,为了弥补由孝到忠的血缘断绝之危,司马光不遗余力地美化、神化国家礼乐制度中君主的天命性,赋之以绝对的、无时间性的至上权威,以神化时间、圣化时间来固化礼乐时间制度。第二,为了让礼乐制度衍化为民众或庶民的自主化、习惯化的风俗,司马光通过国家礼乐制度的君主极权之威严与官僚阶层的礼乐取士制度,来实现礼制的移风易俗。第三,司马光礼乐美学的“中和”之“中”所指的是礼乐生活共同体的时中,即礼乐生活共同体适时而发、适时而止,且其间流畅;“和”所指的是礼乐制度之中双方或多方对差异、差别的同时性认同与施行;“中庸”之中的“庸”所指的是礼乐生活适时宜而发的久、勤或常常的时频特性。

Sima Guang’s aesthetics of ritual and music was centered on creating and maintaining the system of ritual and music at the state level. He expounded on how to customize the state system of ritual and music in a top-down manner, so as to bring about changes in social customs, and how to ensure ritual and musical activities be carried out at the appropriate time. First, in order to cope with the drastic unfairness and class difference in the distribution of aesthetic perception and wealth as well as the crisis in filiality and thus also in loyalty caused by the broken ties of blood relations, Sima spared no effort to embellish and deify the Heavenly mandate of the sovereign in the state system, to endow the sovereign with an absolute and atemporal form of supreme authority. By making time divine and sacred, he hoped to consolidate the temporal system of ritual and music. Second, aiming to develop the system of ritual and music into a form of autonomy and habituation among the ordinary people, Sima tried to change social customs and morals by virtue of the authoritative state system of ritual and music centralized on the sovereign and placing an emphasis on ritual propriety and music in the selection of imperial officials. Third, in Sima’s aesthetics of ritual and music, when zhonghe(appropriateness and harmony) was concerned, zhong referred to the appropriate time in relation to the ritual life of the community, in other words, that a community sharing a common ritual life could act and stop at the appropriate time while its members could communicate smoothly, while he meant both or many sides synchronically recognizing and performing their differences. As for the concept of zhongyong(appropriateness and constancy), yong denoted the temporal frequency of appropriate ritual life, such that if ritual life was performed appropriately, it would have a quality of constancy and high frequency.