中国近代政体变革的知识化方案——基于清末民初“国民必读”类读本的历史观察

The Plan of Intellectualizing Political Reform in Modern China:A Historical Observation Based on“Citizen Readers”of the Late Qing and Early Republican Periods

本文将清末民初“公教育”架构下出现的各类不同国民/公民读本还置于它们原初的历史脉络中,讨论了有关近代国家政体变革的早期知识化与普及方案。清末政治体制改革的各类不同目标在近代中国作育国民的“公教育”方案中皆有体现,从县、省到朝廷相应组织编纂的各类国民/公民读本各有脉络,它们对近代国家转型的政体变革方案进行知识化的路径也并不一致:有的侧重政治认同,有的则偏向参与共同政治生活的实践性常识。从清末至民初政体变革与国民教育的发展来看,近代国家政治生活的知识化是在国家主导与社会参与两个框架下展开的,在新的三级制学堂体制内走向了普及化与专业化,在旧有的社会教化宣讲框架及日用类书出版传统中完成知识下渗与常识化。这与现代西方及明治日本主要由近代大学制度与政治学专业团体、期刊主导的政治学学科化有很大区别。这一历史脉络构成政治学学科在中国发生发展的一个颇为特殊的本土语境。

Placing various citizen readers compiled in the framework of“public education”in the late Qing and early Republican periods back in their original historical contexts,the essay attempts to examine how the ideas of modern political reform were converted to knowledge and popularized.The different purposes of the late Qing political reform were expressed in public education plans that aimed to educate modern Chinese citizens.The citizen readers compiled respectively by county,provincial,and national governments not only had their different contexts,but also took different approaches to intellectualize the plans of modern political reform:some emphasized political identity,whereas others stressed the practical commonsense indispensable in participating common political life.In terms of the development of political reform and national education in the late Qing and early Republican periods,the intellectualization of the modern political reform evolved in the contexts either of state domination or social participation.It was popularized and specialized in the framework of new three-tiered modern school system,or infiltrated downward and spread as common knowledge in the framework of the social educating and lecturing system and the printing tradition of everyday encyclopedia.In result,the rise of political science in China took a different path from that in modern West and Meiji Japan,where it was dominated by modern university system as well as academic associations and journals.This historical context is the special indigenous context of how political science was born and developed in China.