中国史学的现代使命

中国传统史学曾先后发展出三种价值观和使命观:政治家注重它的实用价值,把历史看成是意识形态、制度政策、经验教训的源泉;哲学家关心它的观念价值,通过建立历史发展模式树立社会信仰;书斋历史学家认为历史学的首要任务是重构或再现历史面貌.这些史学观的科学性和实际效用皆可质疑.历史学还有科学价值,然而遭到大多数哲学家的拒绝.本文列举哲学家七个论题加以分析,以为皆不足成为反对历史科学的充分理由.为此,文章介绍了文化要素分析方法,并强调史学科学化不仅是理论问题而且是实践问题,只要历史学家能够更新历史观念,历史学成为科学并非异想天开.

Modern Missions of Chinese Traditional History

Traditional historians had three views of values and missions.The first is the politicians who focus on its practical value of history as ideology,system policies,and a source of lessons learned;the second is the philosophers who are concerned with the value of concepts and aims at building social belief through the establishment of a social model of historical development of belief.The third is the scholastic historians who believe that the primary task of history is to reconstruct the historical landscape.Whether these views were scientific or practical is worth doubting.The scientific quality of history is rejected by most philosophers.In this paper,seven of the philosopher's topics are analyzed with the result that none is justified to reject the science of history.Accordingly,cultural element analysis is given with the emphasis on the proposition that a scientific history is not only theoretical,but also practical.As long as historians fresh their ides,a scientific history will not be a wishful thinking.