第九十二章《胡适英文论著：中国哲学史》（1）

  第九十二章《胡适英文论著：中国哲学史》（1）

  Confucianism
  Edwin R. A. Seligman, ed., Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences.
  New York: Macmillan Co, 1931. Vol. 4. pp. 198-200.
  Religion and Philosophy in Chinese History
  Sophia H. Chen Zen, ed., Symposium on Chinese Culture.
  Shanghai: China Institute of Pacific Relations, 1931. pp. 25-58.
  Development of Zen Buddhism in China
  The Chinese Social and Political Science Review
  Jan., 1932. Vol. 15. No. 4. pp. 475-505.
  Types of Cultural Response
  The Chinese Social and Political Science Review
  Jan., 1934. Vol. 17. No. 4. pp. 529-552.
  The Indianization of China: A Case Study in Cultural Borrowing
  Independence, Convergence, and Borrowing in Institutions, Thought, and Art
  Cambridge: Harvard College, 1937. pp. 219-247.
  Historical Foundations for a Democratic China
  Edmund J. James Lectures on Government. Second Series.
  Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1941. pp. 1-12.
  The Exchange of Ideas Between the Occident and the Orient: A Case Study in Cultural Diffusion
  Contemporary China: A Reference Digest
  Nov. 3, 1941. Vol. 1. No. 12. pp. 1-4
  India Our Great Teacher
  Asia Magazine
  Sep., 1942. Vol. 42. No. 5. pp. 323-324.
  The Natural Law in the Chinese Tradition
  Edward F. Barrett, ed., Natural Law Institute Proceedings.
  Ch’an (Zen) Buddhism in China: Its History and Method
  Philosophy East and West
  Apr., 1953. Vol. 3. No.1. pp. 3-24.
  Authority and Freedom in the Ancient Asian World
  Man’s Right to Knowledge. First Series: Tradition and Change.
  New York: H. Muschel, 1954. pp. 40-45.
  Yung Wing: One Hundred Years After His Graduation
  Unpublished Script
  at Yale University on June 13, 1954.
  The Scientific Spirit and Method in Chinese Philosophy
  Charles A. Moore, ed., The Chinese Mind: Essentials of Chinese Philosophy and Culture.
  Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1962. pp. 104-131.
  Ⅰ

  In the course of the past work in East-West philosophy, the question has been raised as to whether there was science in the East, and why the East developed little or no science.
  To the first question, some of the answers seem definitely in the negative. “So the West generated the natural sciences, as the East did not,” said Professor Wilmon Henry Sheldon. And Professor Filmer S. C. Northrop said, “There is very little science [in the East] beyond the most obvious and elementary information of the natural history type.”

  To the second question as to why there was very little or no science in the East, the answers vary. But the most challenging and provocative answer has come from Northrop, who declares, “A culture which admits only concepts by intuition is automatically prevented from developing science of the Western type beyond the most elementary, inductive, natural history stage.” As defined by Northrop, concepts by intuition are those “which denote, and the complete meaning of which is given by, something which is immediately apprehended.” This is Northrop’s theory:
  Formal reasoning and deductive science are not necessary if only concepts by intuition are used in a given culture. If what science and philosophy attempt to designate is immediately apprehended, then obviously all that one has to do in order to know it is to observe and contemplate it. The methods of intuition and contemplation become the sole trustworthy modes of inquiry. It is precisely this which the East affirms and precisely why its science has never progressed for long beyond the initial natural history stage of development to which concepts by intuition restrict one.
  This theory is concisely expressed in these words “…the East used doctrine built out of concepts by intuition, whereas Western doctrine has tended to be constructed out of concepts by postulation.”

  I have no intention to go into the details of this Northropean theory, which must have been familiar to us who have followed our philosopher-friend all these 20 years.
  I only wish to point out that this theory of bifurcation of East and West is unhistorical and untrue as far as the intellectual history of the East is concerned.
  In the first place, there is no race or culture “which admits only concepts by intuition.” Indeed, there is no man who “admits only concepts by intuition.” Man is by nature a thinking animal, whose daily practical needs compel him to make inferences for better or for worse, and he often learns to make better and surer inferences. It has been truly said that inference is the business man never ceases to engage in. And, in making inferences, man must make use of all his powers of perception, observation, imagination, generalization and postulation, induction, and deduction. In that way, man develops his common sense, his stock of empirical knowledge, his wisdom, his civilization and culture. And, in the few centers of continuous intellectual and cultural tradition, man, of the East and of the West, in the course of time, has developed his science, religion, and philosophy. I repeat, there is no culture “which admits only (the so-called) concepts by intuition,” and which “is automatically prevented from developing science of the Western type.”

  In the second place, I wish to point out that, in attempting to understand the East and the West, what is needed is a historical approach, a historical attitude of mind, rather than a “technical terminology for comparative philosophy.” Northrop includes among his examples of “concepts by postulation” these items: Centaurs, the opening sentence of the Fourth Gospel, the concept of God the Father, the Christianity of St. Paul, of St. Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas, as well as the atoms of Democritus, the atomic models of Bohr’s and Rutherford’s classical atomic physics, and the space-time continuum of Einstein’s physics. Surely, one can find a thousand imaginary concepts in the mythological and religious literature of India and China that can compare with the Greek concept of “Centaurs.” And, surely, one can point to many scores of religious ideas in India and China that can compare with the concept of God contained in the first sentence of the Fourth Gospel. Are we not justified in calling a halt to such “bifurcating” terminology that tends to emphasize a difference between East and West which historically does not exist?
  I would like very much, therefore, to present here what I mean by the historical approach to the comparative study of philosophy. Briefly, the historical approach means that all past differences in the intellectual, philosophical, and religious activities of man, East and West, have been historical differences, produced, conditioned, shaped, grooved, and often seemingly perpetuated by geographical, climatic, economic, social and political, and even individual or biographical factors, all of which are capable of being studied and understood historically, rationally, and intelligently. Through this historical approach, patient and fruitful studies and researches can then be conducted, always seeking to be understood, never merely to laugh, or to cry, or to despair. It may be that, through this historical approach, we may find that, after all, there are more similarities than differences in the philosophies and religions of East and West; and that whatever striking differences have existed are no more than differences in the degree of emphasis brought about by a peculiar combination of historical factors. It may be that, through this historical approach, we may better understand the rise and rapid development of what has been called “science of the Western type”—not as an isolated or exclusive creation of any chosen people, but only as the natural product of an unusually happy combination of many historical forces. It may be that, as a result of patient historical researches, we may better understand that none of those historical forces, nor a combination of them, will ever “automatically prevent” or permanently incapacitate any race or culture from learning, adopting, developing—and even excelling in—the intellectual activities historically initiated and developed by any other race.
  To say that any culture “is automatically prevented from developing science of the Western type” is to despair prematurely. But to seek to understand what historical forces have conspired to give the nations of Europe the glory of leading the entire world by at least fully four hundred years in the development of modern science, and, on the other hand, what other historical forces or what combinations of such forces have been largely responsible for retarding or even crushing such scientific development by any race or culture throughout historic times, not excepting the Graeco-Roman-Christian culture throughout the Middle Ages—that would be a legitimate ambition not unworthy of such a learned assembly of philosophers and historians of philosophy.
  Ⅱ

  It is in the direction of suggesting some such historical approach to comparative philosophy that I have prepared this paper with the rather immodest title: “The Scientific Spirit and Method in Chinese Philosophy.”

  I have deliberately left out the scientific content of Chinese philosophy, not merely for the obvious reason that that content seems so insignificant compared with the achievement of Western science in the last four centuries, but also because I am of the opinion that, in the historical development of science, the scientific spirit or attitude of mind and the scientific method are of far more importance than any practical or empirical results of the astronomer, the calendar-reformer, the alchemist, the physician, or the horticulturist.
  This point of view has been eloquently presented by Dr. James B. Conant, former President of Harvard University, and a first-rank scientist in his own right, in his Lectures, On Understanding Science . Let me, therefore, quote him:
  Who were the precursors of those early investigators who in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries set the standards for exact and impartial inquiries? Who were the spiritual ancestors of Copernicus, Galileo and Vesalius? Not the casual experimenter or the artful contrivers of new mechanical devices who gradually increased our empirical knowledge of physics and chemistry during the Middle Ages. These men passed on to subsequent generations many facts and valuable methods of attaining practical ends but not the spirit of scientific inquiry.
  For the burst of new ardor in disciplined intellectual injury we must turn to a few minds steeped in the Socratic tradition, and to those early scholars who first recaptured the culture of Greece and Rome by primitive methods of archaeology. In the first period of the Renaissance, the love of dispassionate search for the truth was carried forward by those who were concerned with man and his works rather than with inanimate or animate nature. During the Middle Ages, interest in attempts to use the human reason critically and without prejudice, to probe deeply without fear and favor, was kept alive by those who wrote about human problems. In the early days of the Revival of Learning, it was the humanist’s exploration of antiquity that came nearest to exemplifying our modern ideas of impartial inquiry….
  Petrarch, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, and Erasmus, far more than the alchemists, must be considered the precursors of the modern scientific investigator. Likewise, Rabelais and Montaigne who carried forward the critical philosophic spirit must be counted, it seems to me, among the forerunners of the modern scientists.
  I believe that the position taken by President Conant is essentially correct. It is interesting to note that he gave his lectures a subtitle: “An Historical Approach.”

  From this historical standpoint, “the love of dispassionate search for the truth,” the “interest in attempts to use the human reason critically and without prejudice, to probe deeply without fear and favor,” “the ardor in disciplined intellectual inquiry,” “the setting of standards for exact and impartial inquiry”—these are characteristics of the spirit and method of scientific inquiry. It is these aspects of the scientific spirit and method, as they are found in the intellectual and philosophical history of China, that will form the main body of my paper.
  Ⅲ

  To begin with, there was undoubtedly a “Socratic tradition” in the intellectual heritage of classical China. The tradition of free question and answer, of free discussion, independent thinking, and doubting, and of eager and dispassionate search for knowledge was maintained in the school of Confucius (551-479 B.C.). Confucius often described himself as one who “learns without satiety and teaches without being wearied,” and as one who “loves antiquity and is earnest in seeking to know it.” On one occasion, he spoke of himself as one “who is so eager to know that he forgets to eat, whose cares are lost in moments of rapturous triumph, unmindful of the coming of old age.”

  That was the man who founded and molded the orthodoxy of the Chinese intellectual life of the past twenty-five centuries. There was much in Confucius that reminds us of Socrates. Like Socrates, Confucius always professed that he was not a “wise man” but a man who loved knowledge. He said: “He who knows does not rank with him who loves knowledge; and he who loves knowledge does not rank with him who really delights in it.”

  An interesting feature in the Confucian tradition is a deliberate encouragement of independent thinking and doubt. Thus Confucius spoke of his most gifted student, Yen Hui, “Hui is no help to me: he is always satisfied with what I say.” But he also said, “I often talk to Hui for a whole day, and he, like a dullard, never raises an objection. But when he is gone and I examine his private life, I find him fully capable of developing [my ideas]. Hui is no dullard.” Confucius apparently wanted no docile disciples who would feel pleased with everything he said. He wanted to encourage them to doubt and raise objections. This spirit of doubt and questioning was best shown in Mencius, who openly declared that to accept the whole Book of History as trustworthy is worse than to have no Book of History at all, and that, of the essay “Wu-ch’eng” (a section of The Book of History ), he would accept no more than two or three (bamboo) pages. Mencius also suggested a free and independent attitude of mind as a necessary prerequisite to the understanding of The Book of Odes (Shih ching ).
  The best-known Confucian dictum is: “Learning without thinking is labor lost; thinking without learning is perilous.” He himself, however, seemed to be always inclined to the side of learning. He said of himself: “I have often spent a whole day without food and a whole night without sleep—to think. But it was of no use. It is better to study.” “Study as if life were too short and you were on the point of missing it.” “He who learns the truth in the morning may die in the evening without regret.” That was China’s Socratic tradition.
  Intellectual honesty was an important part of this tradition. “Yu,” said Confucius to one of his students, “shall I tell you what knowledge is? To hold that you know a thing when you know it, and to hold that you do not know when you really do not know: that is knowledge.” When on another occasion the same student asked Confucius how to serve the spirits and the gods, Confucius said, “We have not yet learned to serve men, how can we serve the spirits?” The questioner then asked about death, and the Master said, “We do not yet know life, how do we know death?” This was not evading the questions; it was an injunction to be intellectually honest about things one does not really know. Such an agnostic position about death and the gods and spirits has had lasting influence on Chinese thought in subsequent ages. That, too, was China’s Socratic tradition.
  In recent decades, doubt has been raised about the historicity of the man Lao Tzu (or Lao Tan) and about the authenticity and the dating of the ancient book known as The Book of Lao Tzu . But I, for one, still believe that Confucius was at one time a student of and an apprentice to the older philosopher, Lao Tzu, whose influence in the direction of a naturalistic conception of the universe and of a laissez-faire (wu-wei ) philosophy of government can be observed in the thinking of Confucius himself.
  To have postulated a naturalistic view of the universe at so early a date (the sixth century B.C.) was truly revolutionary. The ancient Chinese notion of T’ien (Heaven) or Ti (Supreme God), as represented in the songs and hymns of The Book of Odes , was that of a knowing, feeling, loving, and hating supreme ruler of men and the universe. And the fate of men was also supposed to be in the hands of all kinds of gods and spirits. In place of such an anthropomorphic deity or deities, an entirely new philosophic concept was proposed.
  There is something of indeterminate origin,
  And born before Heaven and Earth.
  Without voice and without body,
  It stands alone and does not change;
  It moves everywhere but is never exhausted.
  It may be regarded as the mother of the universe.
  I do not know its name:
  I call it “the Way” (Tao ),
  And perforce designate it “the Great” (ta ).
  So, the new principle was postulated as the Way (Tao ), that is, a process, an all-pervading and everlasting process. The Way becomes so of itself (tzu jan ), and all things become so of themselves.
  “The Way (Tao ) does nothing, yet it leaves nothing undone.” That is the central idea of this naturalistic conception of the universe. It became the cornerstone of a political theory of non-activity, non-interference, laissez faire (wu-wei ). “The best ruler is one whose existence is scarcely noticed by the people.” And the same idea was developed into a moral philosophy of humility, of non-resistance to evil and violence. “The supreme good is likened to water which benefits all things and resists none.” “The weak and yielding always wins over the hard and strong.” “There is always the Great Executioner that executes. [That is the great Way, which does nothing but leaves nothing undone.] To do the executing for the Great Executioner is like doing the chopping for the master carpenter. He who does the chopping for the master carpenter rarely escapes injuring his own hand.”

  Such was the naturalistic tradition formed by Lao Tzu, the teacher of Confucius. But there was a fundamental difference between the teacher and his student. Confucius was a historically minded scholar and a great teacher and educator, whereas Lao Tzu was a nihilist in his conception of knowledge and civilization. The ideal utopia of Lao Tzu was a small state with a small population, where all the inventions of civilization, such as ships and carriages “which multiplied human power by ten times and a hundred times are not to be put in use; and where the people would restore the use of knotted cords instead of writing!” “Always let the people have no knowledge, and therefore no desires.” How different is this intellectual nihilism from Confucius’ democratic philosophy of education, which says, “With education there will be no classes!”