以人为中心:论儒学的宗教感
Taking Confucian Religiousness On Its Own Terms
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摘要: 著名汉学家葛兰言曾断言"中国智慧勿须上帝的观念"。尽管表述各异,但可知许多著名汉学家对此颇为赞同。以之来衡断中国的宇宙论,一个重要的后果便是,它会消除古典中国哲学核心词汇本来具有的某些模糊性蕴含,而使之变得齐整划一。中国勿须超越性上帝的观念,此说虽流传深远,但其实经不起仔细推敲——因为它所赖以成立的坚实基础是"实在/表象"之类的二元对立思维,因此不能适用于古代中国的世界观。儒家的宗教性不把独立、自省、实体性的"神圣作用者"作为表象之后的真实存在,也不把它视为宇宙意义的根源。儒家把世界视为自生自成、自然而然的过程——它自身便具有自我转型的能量。人类的宗教情感就是宗教意义的发动者,它广泛地、内在地展现于家庭、社区和自然世界的各种活动之中,激发出富有生机的精神力量。人类既是鼓舞人生世界之神圣价值的源泉,同时也是神圣价值的奉献者本身。Abstract: The distinguished French sinologist Marcel Granet observes rather starkly that "Chinese wisdom has no need of the idea of God." Albeit in different formulations, this same characterization of classical Chinese philosophy has had many iterations by many of our most prominent sinologists. One important outcome of taking Granet's insight into Chinese cosmology seriously is that it will enable us to disambiguate some of the central philosophical vocabulary of classical Chinese philosophy by identifying equivocations that emerge when we elide classical Greek ontological assumptions with those cosmological presuppositions indigenous to the classical Chinese worldview. The philosophical implications of Granet's seemingly off-hand observation that China did not need the idea of a transcendent God are fundamental and pervasive, entailing as this claim does the plethora of dualistic categories that follow from such a reality/appearance distinction. When we turn to Confucian religiousness, we find that it does not appeal to an independent, retrospective, and substantive Divine Agency as the reality behind appearance and as the source of all cosmic significance. The world is an autogenerative, "self-so-ing" process-ziran er ran 自然而然-that has the energy of self-transformation within it. And human religious feelings themselves are a motor of religious meaning, understood prospectively as an unfolding and inclusive spirituality achieved within the qualitatively inspired activities of the family, the community, and the natural world. Human beings are both a source of and contributors to the numinosity that inspires the world in which we live.
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Key words:
- cosmology /
- ontology /
- transcendence /
- ziran /
- human-centered religiousness /
- God-centered religion
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