胡适:“有实无名”的中国现代诠释学探索者

Hu Shi:An"Actual yet Unentitled" Explorer in Modern Chinese Hermeneutics

胡适在中国近现代思想史上可谓一个开先锋的人物。他在哲学史、古典白话小说、禅宗史等领域的学术实践,为我们提供了一些至今绕不开且仍在使用着的观念和方法,如评判的态度、科学的方法等。胡适终生奉行并倡导的评判的态度与科学方法,实际上透露出一种强劲的“诠释学”精神,只不过因作为专门的学科门类的诠释学,在引介、吸收上都较晚,故而很难看到胡适作为中国现代诠释学的探索者、开创者的一面。如其不然,中国学问也许还在经典注疏、问答语录、清式朴学等传统形态之路上逗留良久,遑论任何学术的“现代”转换。就此而言,胡适是一位“无名”的却在“实际”意义上的“现代诠释学家”。这一论点可能从当今还在沿用的为学入路的自觉性、写作的论辩性、方法论上的反思性,一一显明出来。

Hu Shi is a pioneering figure in modern Chinese intellectual history.His academic practices in the fields of history of philosophy,classical vernacular novels and history of Chan Buddhism have provided us with certain key ideas and methods that are still valuable and popular today,such as the critical attitude and scientific methods.These ideas and methods have been continually adopted by scholars to varied degrees,either obviously or in a hidden way.Nonetheless,there has not been adequate reflection in the academic field on his awareness of the importance of methods as well as on the nature of his methodology.This article attempts to reveal that there is a strong"hermeneutical"spirit in"the critical attitude and scientific methods"that Hu Shi advocates for and sticks to throughout his academic career.However,due to the fact that hermeneutics as a branch of philosophy was introduced and taken in China after the age of Hu Shi,the contribution that he made to modern Chinese hermeneutics as an explorer and pioneer has not been adequately noticed.If not for Hu Shi,Chinese scholarship would have lingered for a longer period along the traditional path,taking such forms as commentaries and sub-commentaries to classics,records of Q&A and Qing-styled textual studies,and thus the occurrence of modern transformation of scholarship would have been delayed.In this sense,Hu Shi is an actual yet unentitled modern scholar of hermeneutics,which can be shown in his awareness when entering the scholarship,his dialectical way of writing and his reflection on methodology,all of which have been followed by Chinese scholars up to now.