中国何来“轴心时代”?(上)

雅斯贝斯的"轴心时代"理论在20世纪80年代介绍到中国时,正值中国社会处于一个特殊的转折时期。雅斯贝斯将人类历史划分为史前、古代文明、轴心时代和科技时代四个基本阶段,其中,第三阶段以公元前500年为中心,东西方同时或独立地产生了中国、印度、巴勒斯坦和希腊四个轴心文明。虽然这一理论具有反西方中心论的意味,但也必须注意到,在雅斯贝斯所划分的整个人类历史上,只有中华文明跨越着全部四个阶段,埃及和美索不达米亚文明到第二阶段绝灭了,古希腊文明则在第三阶段才开始。追溯民初以来学者早已开始的东西文明比较,更多关注的是在古埃及、古巴比伦、古印度和中华文明的第二阶段上。20世纪初兴起的疑古思潮将中国古史"砍掉一半"、"打个对折","轴心时代"理论则恢复了晚周诸子学的合法性,但它同时继续漠视三代王官学,而三代王官学正是晚周诸子学乃至整个中华文化的源头。"轴心时代"理论与中华文明对接中的偏差,其影响将是流与源的颠倒、反题与正题的倒置和各期学术史的逐次错位。

What is Chinese Axial Age

Jaspers separated the human history into four fundamental phases, which consist of the Pre-history time, the Archaian civilization time, the Axial age and the science and technology time. During the third phase, about BC500, there independently or contemporarily created four axial civilizations, China, India, Palestine and Greece. Just as some scholars pointed out that this theory is permeated with anti-western center thought, but we also must notice that during the whole human history that has been separated by Jaspers, Chinese civilization entirely spanned four phases, but the civilization of Egypt and Mesopotamia disappeared during the second phase, and the ancient Greek civilization barely began at the third phase. The trend of doubting ancient history thought which arising in early 20th century cut away and rebated half of Chinese history, the Axial Age theory resumed the validity of the various scholars in later Zhou Dynasty, and went on disregarding the government and official scholars of the San Dai Dynasty, but the government and official scholars of San Dai Dynasty just is the headstream of the various scholars in later Zhou Dynasty even of the whole Chinese civilization.