从“优胜劣汰”到“争以自强”——以严复对达尔文与斯宾塞理论的阐释为中心

From“Survival of the Fittest”to“Struggle to Thrive”:Yan Fu's Interpretation of Darwinian and Spencerian Theory

严复是推动达尔文进化论在清末民初中国传播的重要思想家,但其进化论(天演论)并非对达尔文学说的照搬,而是中西思想资源与晚清历史语境的多重融合。严复一方面融合达尔文自然选择理论与道家“去伦理化”的自然观,揭示出以竞争与优胜劣汰为特征的残酷世界秩序;另一方面又融合斯宾塞的“直接适应”理论与儒家自强不息的道德理想,阐明了残酷法则下人类主观努力的重要意义。严复也摈弃了斯宾塞强调个体自由竞争而拒绝国家干预的立场,做出了适合中国语境的创造性理论转化。因此,严复天演论不仅展现出自然与伦理复杂的二元结构,也将达尔文主义从“优胜劣汰”的强者哲学转化为“争以自强”的弱者哲学,成为近代中国救亡图存的重要思想资源。

During the late Qing dynasty,Yan Fu was a significant thinker who worked to spread Darwinian evolution in China.However,Yan Fu's theory of evolution was not merely a copy of Darwinism but rather a complex synthesis of Chinese and Western intellectual sources as well as the historical setting in which he and his people lived.On the one hand,Yan Fu revealed a cruel world order characterized by competition and the survival of the fittest by fusing Darwin's theory of natural selection with Taoism s“deethicalized”view of nature;on the other hand,Yan Fu elaborated on the significance of human subjective effort under the law of cruelty by fusing Spencer's theory of“direct adaptation”with the Confucian ideal of self-improvement.Nevertheless,Yan Fu didn t stop at Spencer either;instead,he renounced his position of favoring individual free competition above state involvement and developed a novel theoretical modification that was appropriate for the Chinese issue's specific setting.Based on this transformation,Yan Fu's evolutionism has emerged as a crucial ideological resource for the salvation and survival of modern China.It not only demonstrated the intricate binary structure of nature and ethics,divine movement and human rule,but also changed Darwinism from the philosophy of the powerful“survival of the fittest”to the philosophy of the vulnerable“striving for self-improvement”.