主体与精神之外:孟子论心的三重层次

Beyond Subject and Spirit:Mencius’s Discourse of the Threefold Level of the Mind

十九世纪以来,中国本土的部分学者受到西方哲学,尤其是康德道德形上学影响,倾向将《孟子》文本中的“心”解读为能动的思维主体或自律自为的道德精神。这些解读在捕捉《孟子》文本中“心”的表面特征并试图将之概念化时,却忽略了孟子对思想形式化倾向的警惕与拒斥。换言之,孟子并非不知思想通过自我隔离而抽象为“精神”的可能性,然而他却自觉回避了这条认识之路,而诉诸对人生而有之的内在本性具体而普遍的“揭示”。通过这一揭示,孟子引导人走出对思想形式的固执,在“行”的层面将代表不言自明的本性的“心”加以发明、扩充。最终,对心的践行扩充所带来的并非是超越现实经验的“世界精神”,而是在抹除限制性的“自我”之后对天地万有的周全、贯通。

Since the nineteenth century,some local Chinese scholars influenced by Western philosophy,especially Kant’s moral metaphysics,have tended to interpret the“mind”(心)in Mencius’s texts as a dynamic thinking subject or a self-disciplined moral spirit.These interpretations,in capturing the superficial features of the“mind”in Mencius’s texts and attempting to conceptualize it,ignore Mencius’s high vigilance and explicit rejection of the formalized tendencies of thought.That is to say,Mencius was not unaware of the possibility of the mind being abstracted into“spirituality”through self-isolation,yet he consciously avoided this path of understanding and appealed to the concrete and universal“revelation”of the inherent nature of human beings.Through this revelation,he led man out of his stubbornness to the form of thought and realized the invention and expansion of the“mind”representing the self-evident nature of man at the level of“action”.In the end,the practice and expansion of the mind did not bring about a“world spirit”that stood above reality.It is the erasure of the limiting“self”and the consequent connection and complete‐ness of all things in Heaven and Earth.