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发布时间：2025-09-19 14:14

“除了思想，我是谁？”—胡适

这几天看完了芝加哥大学出版社出版的胡适写的The Chinese Renaissance 。今天准备写读书笔记，脑海中莫名其妙就出现了胡适在回应某个人对他的批判的时候说的上述的话，此句大有深意，我不敢说我现在懂胡适的意思，我享受地玩味其中。

我刚刚对比了一下，豆瓣此书的目录，和我自己看得本子的目录，还是有一定出入，现把我自己看得版本的目录摘录如下：

书名:

The Chinese Renaissance

The Haskell Lectures 1933

By HU SHIH

成书背景：

这本“书”实际上更像是胡适在芝加哥大学的一个学院做的演讲的讲义。

时间：1933年7月

地点：芝加哥大学，Department of Comparative Religion, Haskell Lectures

目录：

I. Types of Cultural Response

II. Resistance, Enthusiastic Appreciation, and the New Doubt: Changes in Chinese Conceptions of Western Civilization

III. The Chinese Renaissance

IV. Intellectual Life, Past and Present

V. Religion in Chinese Life

VI. Social Disintegration and Readjustment

如果豆瓣里所体现的是更完整的演讲录，我目前没有看到，可以说是有点遗憾了。

正经的（？）读书笔记开始：

第一章

在中国被迫被西方列强打开国门之后，中国文化上面的一些“应激反应”，这大概就是胡适第一章想要概括的内容。

也是读这章，我知道了王韬（中国改良派思想家，卒于1897上海，大清）这个人。我的“大胆的假设”是，胡适应该是熟读了王韬作品的，不仅在第一章，也之后的章节提到过他的一些际遇和思想。这位在19世纪就活跃于东西方，且被牛津大学邀请过去演讲的清朝县考秀才，如此预言到中国未来的发展：

“…in less than a century, the Chinese people would be able to master all the technique and methods of the western world and excel the Westerner in his own inventions”.

从现在中国的发展来看，不得不佩服他当时的远见，这也是他通过长期的观察，思考、对比和反思中西方文化和思想的结果。

胡适提到了，中国文化一直都在抑制尚武（martial spirit）这种倾向。哪怕是中国被一些野蛮的外族所侵略，最后的结果也是这些作为侵略者的蛮族被中华文明所驯服：

“Even the most warlike barbarians, who from time to time invaded China, could not help catching the contagious influence of this pacifist people and civilization; and in the course of centuries of racial intermixing, all these militant conquerors were rapidly demilitarized by the conquered people.”

胡适对比了中国和日本对于西方文化的吸收过程，对于日本他是这样描述的：

“The whole affair has assumed the form of ingrafting an alien culture on the stock of traditional Japan. Much of the traditional medieval culture is artificially protected by a strong shell of militant modernity.”

对于中国对于外国文化的吸收，胡适这样描述：

“Whereas cultural control in Japan has been in the hands of the ruling class, the cultural changes in China have always begun from the people, sometimes from no one knows where.”

说实话，读到“no one knows where”的时候我情不自禁地笑了起来，就觉得很可爱（捂脸）。

再次感叹，胡适用词的精准，ingraft这个词有嫁接的意思，我觉得胡适想表达的意思是日本的西化是表面的西化，他们内核的日本传统是被严重保护和隔离起来的，但中国的西化是真正的吸收而不是嫁接，是自下而上的改变。

第二章

想必接受过国内应试教育的我们，都对“德先生”和“赛先生”这两个概念不陌生。我本人之前就就以为科学和民主就能够代表中华民国时期智识阶层的思维立场，读完这章才知道，又犯了“标签主义”的错误。

陈独秀最初教导年轻人：

“…advised the youths of the nation to worship only two gods: Science and Democracy.”

吴稚辉（中华民国政治人物，蒋中正心腹，卒1953台湾）也提到：

“…believes that science and technology alone have been responsible for the creation of the civilization of the West.”

激起了国内风起云涌讨论的“德“”赛”两位先生，在其发源地的西方却引发了另一股思潮，出现了强烈的批评的声音：

“Its economic and industrial system which has been the most important force to utilize the new discoveries of science and to help to bring them from the laboratory to the market-place and the home, was most ruthlessly condemned as capitalistic, as the exploiter of the sweat and blood and brain of the many for the exclusive benefit and enjoyment of the few. Even its political ideal of democracy and parliamentary government, which has been accepted as the highest embodiment of the political genius and inspiration of the race, was severely criticized as the historical accompaniment of the capitalistic system, as the instrumentality of the rich and strong for the government and oppression of the poor and the weak, and as a wasteful and inefficient system better suited for the division of spoils than for the effective ordering of society and the state.”

想要摘录这段话，是觉得这段话非常精炼地概括了对于资本主义批判的各个方面，对于底层人民的残酷压榨，财富分配的不均，所谓的民主体制成为资本的附庸和帮凶。

面对着西方对于资本主义的强烈的批判，国内的思潮也跟着起了变化：

“A nation which is only on the threshold of political democracy and capitalistic industrialism, therefore, begins to congratulate itself on not having gone very far in imitating blindly a civilization of which the fundamental blunders are being so loudly exposed by a unison of the voices of the Marxian Communists, sentimental social workers, pious religious leaders, anti-religionists, imperialistic junkers, and anti-imperialist reformers.”

哪怕是之前如此热忱地宣扬着维多利亚时代安格鲁萨克逊人的美德的梁启超也发出了如下的警告：

“Mr. Liang Ch’i-ch’ao, who twenty years ago had been the most eloquent champion of Westernization, came out in 1919 as the standard-bearer to sound the warning of ‘the imminent bankruptcy of the scientific civilization.’”

下划线的那个congratulate用的就很妙，把当时国内某些知识分子的那种窃喜刻画的入木三分，这似乎映射出了一种风气，就是不去花时间去把一个事情的来龙去脉搞清楚，却人云亦云，云里雾里，到最后，恐怕既不知道自己在支持什么，也不知道自己在反对什么，最后的最后可能也解决不了任何问题。

读胡适给我最大的感受就是他的疏离、冷静和理性的姿态，这无疑是将理性精神和大同主义身体力行，知行合一的典范。胡适的文字对于不受偏见束缚的人，无疑是绝佳的学习和拓展思维边界的思想材料。

第三章

胡适描述了这么四次“中国文艺复兴”：

1. The development of Zen Buddhism as a Chinese reformation of that Indian religion

2. 宋明理学—11th century, a powerful secular neo-Confucianist philosophy which gradually overshadowed and finally replaced the medieval religions

3. Rise of dramas in 13th century, rise of novels in later periods together with their glorification of love and the joys of life

4. In 17th century, a revolt against the rational philosophy of Sung and Ming Dynasties, and its strict emphasis on the importance of documentary evidence.

但是这些所谓的“文艺复兴”都缺少一个要素，那就是对自己的历史使命的自觉性，因此很容易被保守势力反扑：

“But all these great movements which rightly deserve the term of ‘renaissances,’ suffered from one common defect, namely, the absence of a conscious recognition of their historical mission. There was no conscious effort nor articulate interpretation: all of them were natural developments of historical tendencies and were asily overpowered or swept away by the conservative force of tradition against which they had only dimly and unconsciously combated.

而“中国文艺复兴”是一场知道自己的诉求也知道自己目的运动，胡适看来，这场“新文化运动”的使命是：

“They want a new language, not only as an effective instrumentality for popular education, but also as the effective medium for the development of the literature of a new China. They want a literature that shall b e written in the living tongue of a living people and shall be capable of expressing the real feelings, thoughts, inspirations, and aspirations of a growing nation. They want to instil into the people a new outlook on life which shall free them from the shackles of tradition and make them feel at home in the new world and its new civilization. They want a new scholarship which shall not only enable us to understand intelligently the cultural heritage of the past, but also prepare us for active participation I n the work of research in the modern sciences. This, as I understand it, is the mission of the Chinese Renaissance.”

第四章

主要记录一下宋明理学的一些英文翻译吧。咱也不太懂宋明理学，照我这个水平，啥时候能看懂古文都非常值得怀疑

格物: “Go to the things”

穷理: “Learn the reason of all things”

致知: “Extend your knowledge to the utmost”

还学到一个跟胡适一样有考据癖的老先生，阎若璩（山西，清朝，卒于1704，经学家）, “he offers higher criticism of Chinese classics.”

梁启超说阎若璩“不能不认为近三百年学术解放之第一功臣。”。《四库全书总目提要》称赞他：“引经据古，一一陈其矛盾之故，古文之伪乃大明”，

第五章

这章是讲中国人的宗教的。很早之前在一些垃圾媒体上看到有人叫嚣中国没有宗教，白人无知也就算了，中国人不能附和着也说自己没有宗教。胡适原来在20世纪三十年代的时候，就创造了一个词来描述中国的宗教”siniticism”—华夏宗教（？？？？），是一种非常朴素的、没有繁琐仪式的围绕祖先崇拜的宗教。 “They had a very simple religion consisting chiefly in a worship of their ow ancestors, a belief in the spirits and the powers of the natural forces, and worship of a supreme God or heaven (which was probably evolved out of the worship of natural objects), and a belief in divination. To these they added a belief in the idea of retribution of good and evil. There was neither Hell nor Paradise; no life after death, only a firm belief in the importance of the perpetuation of the family line. Probably primarily for economic reasons. This was the original religion of the Chinese.”

在没有被印度的佛教影响前，智识阶层的宗教主要还是儒教和道教，而这两教底色依然是人文的、自然的、不可知论的以及理性的，这也是为什么中国从来没有真正的出现像西方那样的宗教迷狂时期，甚至为了单一神的崇拜而迫害异教徒，我想这跟儒和道的这种思维底色是离不开的。

这章已经看到，胡适在描述墨家了，这是跟他的大同主义暗合的中国古典的学派。强调的是博爱。

摘录蔡元培对于宗教对中国人没有吸引力的原因，以及蔡元培认为美学才能够拯救人们的生活：

“Cai…expressed his conviction that the religions of the world were obstacles to human progress and that the Chinese mentality was not favourable to religious attitudes. He proposed a peculiar substitute for religion. He thought that religion was essentially a product of the instinctive love for beauty and sublimity, and that it might be replaced by a universal education in aesthetics, a training which should lead men to love the beautiful and the sublime in human conduct as well as in nature.”

这个sublimity就很值得细品。审美的能力确实是需要教育和训练的。如果一个人有能力有更多的美学体验，那么他的人生会更加容易被忍受。我目前就非常懊恼自己无法欣赏书法的美，这毫无疑问错失了非常多的审美感悟。

第六章

这章想摘录的是，“中国文艺复兴”思潮影响下的年轻人与旧思想下的传统家庭之间的冲突。包括当年的中国，刚刚摸到了资本主义的大门，也出现了大批的农民涌入城市进入工厂工作：

“…peasants are flocking to the manufacturing and trading centers to find new employments.”哪怕是今天，不也是如此么？

那个时候的年轻人，已经跟传统的家庭价值观产生了激烈的矛盾：

“The young students who leave their homes to get an advanced education in the cities find it difficult to return to live and work. They have come under new intellectual influences and new social contacts which make them dissatisfied with the old ways of life back in their ancestral villages.”—这不是现在很多受过高等教育的年轻人宁愿蜗居在一线城市也不想回老家的相似写照么？可怜的年轻人，没有当年胡适、陈独秀这样的思想领袖了，现在领导我们思考的都是资本家和娱乐明星。

胡适对于“孝道”的批判，可以说是“一以贯之”。胡适认为中国的“孝道”是一道枷锁，牢牢捆绑着“个体性individuality”的发展。100年前就有人敢于批判“孝道”，现在的社会何如？作为胡适的读者，如果全盘接受胡适的观点，想必也不配做胡适的读者了。这个individuality到底该怎么解释？我觉得可能更贴合的表达是一种独立人格的发展，翻译成个性应该不是那么的准确。独立人格是非常复杂的一个概念，如果肤浅的只是理解为一种自私的、不考虑他人的、或者标新立异狂妄“个性”，这我觉得是不准确的。

“The Chinese family is theoretically built on the foundation of suppressing individuality for the sake of the well-being of the whole. The real basis was economic; it was always cheaper to live together and cook together in a large family than for the separate married couples to start life independently; and it was considered more economical for the incompetent members to be helped and supported by parental or ancestral charity, or by the communal income made by the more enterprising and productive brothers.”

一个笑点，胡适用“good-for-nothing”形容亲戚们，适之你太酷了（捂脸）。

最后

李敖这样评价胡适，“民主二字早在五四时代就叫得满天响，四十年来，能够‘一以贯之’的相信他所相信的，宣传他所相信的，而在四十年间，没有迷茫、没有转变、没有‘最后见解’的人，除了胡适之外，简直找不到第二个。别看他笑得那么好，我总觉得胡适之是一个寂寞的人。”

我认为胡适能够‘一以贯之’的宣传他所一直相信的原因，是因为他是一个不被偏见束缚的人，他博采百家，但却不轻易完全相信，或者完全推翻，他的思维底色永远是有那么一点点怀疑和批判精神的，对人如此，对己更是如此。他反对儒家，但谁敢说他读的孔子的材料比任何人少？他反对共产主义，但谁比他对马克思的著作有一样的不抱偏见的吸收态度？他永远是一个冷静理性的观察者，绝非人云亦云之辈。

有的评论说胡适是“美国人”，我哑然失笑，这是我十分不同意的。如果不是抱着对中国文化的热爱，又怎会花那样大的力气为她的未来呕心沥血的思考呢？爱之深，才责之切。指出己方文化中不如人的地方，并不就自动把这个批评者划归到对方的阵营中，这是一种非常肤浅的二元对立思维。从我个人丰富的跨文化交际经验中，我认为他是真正掌握了与西方世界沟通秘钥的人。在西方人面前以一种理性且不谄媚的姿态批评中国文化中的一些糟粕，恰恰能够引起西方人对于中国人敢于自我反思自我批判的的敬重。一味的扬长避短，不去面对自身的问题，缺乏反思、故步自封，无知自大又极易敏感自卑，这不是我们需要的。正因为我们有底气，有自信，所以才相信自身的文化自身的文明，是经历得起批判的，也是有能力自我革新的。这是我理解的胡适。他绝对不是一个“美国人”胡适，他是在阅尽了西方和东方双方文化和思想之后，依然对中国文化不离不弃，且助力其自我革新的“中国人”胡适。

胡适的伟大（但我觉得他应该是很讨厌伟大这个词吧），还在于他永远不停歇的求知的热情，他的不提倡、不相信，绝对不是空穴来风，也不是一厢情愿，也不是放任自身的思维偏见限制自身的思维。这也是为什么我觉得胡适是一个值得我们信任的作者。而一个作者值得被信任，在现在的社会是多么的可贵。我们伟大的中国，在100年前就已经为我们生产出了各种各样的思维榜样。民国，不得不说是一个宝藏时期，领略完了胡适这位巨子的风采，我实在很想了解与胡适就传统文化辩论了10年的章士钊的角度。

高手过招，必定不凡。

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