学术资讯 | 比较哲学工作坊第三十四讲：儒家关于德性政治的争论

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This paper explicates the historical Confucian debate about whether virtuous people (ren 人) or good institutional rules (fa 法) are the proper source of good governance and social order. It takes Xunzi 荀子, Hu Hong 胡宏, and Zhu Xi 朱熹 as the primary representatives of the “virtue-centered” position, which holds that people’s good character and not institutional rules bear primary credit for successful governance. And it takes Huang Zongxi 黃宗羲 as a major advocate for the “institutionalist” position, which holds that institutional rules have some power to effect success independently of improvements in character. Historians have often called attention to this debate but left the major arguments and positions relatively unspecified. As I show, the Confucian virtue-centered view is best captured in two theses: first, that reforming people is far more demanding than reforming institutional rules; second, that once the rules have reached a certain threshold of viability, further improvements in those rules are unlikely to be effective on their own. Once we specify the theses in this way, we can catalogue the different respects and degrees to which the more virtue-centered political thinkers endorse virtue-centrism in governance. Zhu Xi, for example, turns out to endorse a stronger version of virtue-centrism than Hu Hong. I also use this account of the major theses to show that Huang Zongxi, who is sometimes regarded as historical Confucianism’s foremost institutionalist, has more complicated and mixed views about the power of institutional reform than scholars usually assume.

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　　本文论述了一个儒家历史上的论争，即： 贤人还是善法才是良好的统治和社会秩序的正确来源。 本文将荀子、胡宏和朱熹视作“美德为中心”立场的主要代表，这一立场主张，统治的成功主要归功于人的德性而非制度。 而黄宗羲则是“制度主义”立场的主要支持者，这一立场认为，制度可以独立于品德的改善而对统治的成功有影响。 历史学家经常希望引起对这场论争的关注，却没有详述其中的主要论证和立场。 本文认为，有两个论点最好地表述了儒家美德中心论： 第一，对人的改进比对法的改进要求更高； 第二，一旦法达到一定的可行性门槛，基于法本身的进一步改善就很难有效。 基于这些论述，我们就能在看重美德的政治思想家中划分出其认可德治的不同方面和程度。 例如，朱熹相较于胡宏就认同一种更强的美德中心论。 此外，基于这些论述，我表明，有时被视为历史上儒家最重要的制度主义者的黄宗羲，其对于制度改进所持的观点比学者通常认为的更复杂和混合。