中国文化中的“形上”与兰克史学中的“虚质”

“Metaphysics” in Chinese Culture and the Historiography of Ranke

中外传统史学均讲究依据事实材料重建历史,同时看重形而上的历史思辨。西学东渐之后中国史家渐离传统,加之学习西学过程中部分学人对兰克的误读,只注意到兰克史学理论中被其中国传人不恰当表述的“实证”一面,忽略了兰克的历史哲学思考,致使研究出现忽略“虚证”的偏颇。本文致力于梳理中国传统文化中强调形而上的学术思想资源,同时发掘被严重忽略的兰克史学对史料的超越,提出历史研究须虚实结合,但在中国史学的研究现状下,则应适当偏重形上思辨,注重“虚证”,以提高研究成果水准及研究者的学术段位。

Both Chinese and foreign traditional historiographies pay attention to reconstructing history based on factual materials, and at the same time attach importance to metaphysical historical speculation.With the Western learning spreading eastward, Chinese historians gradually departed from tradition, and some scholars misunderstood L.V.Ranke in the process of learning Western culture.They only paid attention to the positive side of Ranke’s historiography theory, which was inappropriately interpreted by their Chinese descendants, and ignored Ranke’s historical philosophical thinking, resulting in the bias of ignoring metaphysics in their research.This paper is devoted to sorting out the academic ideological resources that emphasize metaphysics in traditional Chinese culture, to excavating the transcendence of historical materials in Ranke’s historiography, which has been seriously neglected, and to proposing that historical research must be based on the combination of abstraction and positivism.However, under the current research situation of Chinese historiography, we should put appropriate emphasis on metaphysical thinking, and pay attention to the side of “non-positivism” in order to raise the level of research results and the academic rank of researchers.