从“与物同体”说论儒家仁学的哲学叙事

On the Philosophical Narrative of Confucian Ren(Benevolence) from the View That Human Beings and Other Things Share the Same Body

比照亚里士多德《形而上学》中的哲学叙事,孔孟仁学所发展出的“与物同体”说彰显了一种中国式的哲学叙事。其一,“与物同体”说体现了仁学与生生易道的会通,开启了一种不从静态“是(being)”而从动态“生”的立场去构建“本体论(ontology)”的进路;其二,仁学“ontology”不是要上达“being”本身以成就一门作为最普遍原因和本原的知识原理,而是以“民胞物与”“与物同体”等学说所开显的天人、物我一体合流之理境去澄明“生”或“仁”之原因和本原;其三,不同于“being”本体论以逻辑思辨、构建知识的证真模式,仁学本体论吸取了佛、老反求诸己的内在体认模式;其四,阳明又在此基础上,将“与物同体”说和《大学》的内圣外王之理境会通,一改“为求知而求知”以及佛、老“出世间”等理念而形成的缺失致用面向的本体论叙事,建构了一种具有致用面向的儒家仁学本体论新叙事。

Through a comparison with the philosophical narration in Aristotle’s Metaphysics,we can find that the view that human beings and other things share the same body,developed from the theory of Confucius’s and Mencius’s ren(benevolence),manifests a kind of Chinese philosophical narrative.First,this view embodied a fusion of the theory of ren and the Dao of ceaseless producing in the Changes,which initiated another route to the establishment of ontology,from dynamic“producing”rather than from the static“being”.Second,the ren-oriented ontology does not aim to arrive at“being”itself so as to achieve a kind of principle of knowledge as the most universal cause and origin,but to clarify the cause and origin of“producing”or ren on the basis of the unity of Heaven and humans manifested in the view that human beings and other things share the same body and origin.Third,different from the mode of being-oriented ontology which aims to prove the truth through speculative logic and knowledge construction,ren-oriented ontology assimilated the mode of internal experience from Buddhism and Daoism.Fourth,Wang Yangming(1472-1529)further synthesized the view that human beings and other things share the same body and the theory of internal cultivation of sageliness and external service to society in the Great Learning;he rectified the ontological narrative of the Western mode of knowledge-seeking,as well as the other-worldly focus of Buddhist and Daoist modes which lack actual function for this world,and established a kind of new ontological narrative based on Confucian ren which possesses actual function for this world.