论“殷周之变”与早期人文主义的缘起

一般认为,商周天命观之变革在于周人以道德之天、伦理之天取代殷商的命定之天与前伦理之天,从而确立了“明德慎罚”“敬天保民”的德治传统,表现出“人道主义”“人文精神”或者“道德人文主义”的特征。但事实上,“以德受命”“为政以德”可能是源自殷商的一贯传统,而非周人的创造。周人的贡献在于,否定任何氏族、王朝与天“有亲”的观念,将“德”作为天命转移的唯一依据。然而需要注意的是,尽管周人的天命观总体上呈现如上倾向,但并不意味着此后理性精神的高歌猛进与绝对胜利:一方面,道德性成为天命的主要特征;另一方面,西周的天命观仍带有“不完全理性”的成分,与天道“有亲”的观念通过其变形依然得以留存,甚至对春秋末期孔子的天命思想犹有影响。

On the“Change from the Shang to Zhou”and the Arising of Early Humanism

It is well accepted that the transformation of the view on the mandate of heaven from the Shang(c.1600-1046 BCE)to the Zhou(1046-256 BCE)was manifested as that the Shang people’s deterministic and pre-ethical heaven was replaced by the Zhou people’s moral and ethical heaven which enabled the establishment of the tradition of the rule of virtue as a kind of humanism,humane spirit or moral humanism.As a matter of fact,the tradition of governing with virtue might originate from the Shang rather than the Zhou dynasty.The contribution of the Zhou people lies in that they viewed virtues as the only basis for the shift of the mandate of heaven and denied the intimacy between heaven and any clan and dynasty.Nevertheless,the Zhou people’s view of the mandate of heaven,which even influenced Confucius’s(551-479 BCE)view on this issue,is not completely consistent with rational spirit.