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| Working languages: Chinese to English English to Chinese | Haihong He Guildford, England, United Kingdom Local time: 12:54 GMT (GMT+0)
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More Less | | PRO-level points: 4, Questions answered: 1 | | Visa | Sample translations submitted: 20 | Chinese to English: 中国企业的表现 | Source text - Chinese Comment Title :
中国企业的表现
Comment Body :
中国企业也越来越注重发布企业社会责任报告,但有跟风之嫌,报告内容差强人意,正如文章中提到的,报告页数很多,实质性的信息却很少,好的信息多于不如意的信息,报喜不报忧。
而且并没有在自己的业务中融入可持续发展的理念,很多只是列举一些他们的慈善之举,这是在混淆可持续发展的概念。 | Translation - English Chinese Corporates' Manifestation
Nowadays, the Chinese enterprises pay more and more attention to their social responsibility reports; however, this kind of reports are made for the purpose of showcase of their achievements and imitation of their counterparts at home and abroad. This can be seen from the inane contents of the reports. As mentioned in that article, those redundant reports contains very little valuable information, revealing more good news than sad facts. When it comes to the concept of sustainable development, it is far from being appreciated and applied to the management and development of those corporates, since most of the companies are trying to do nothing but reiterate their few acts of charities in their reports | | English to Chinese: Europe VS China | Source text - English Comment Body :
In China the trains use electricty, which mainly comes from coal. I imagine that taking the train still causes less carbon emissions, but cannot be really sure because of the dominance of coal in the power mix fuelling the grid. Would be interesting if anyone knew of a way or somoene that factored this into emission caluclators. | Translation - Chinese 欧洲与中国
中国的火车通常是依靠烧煤发电而运行的。我想坐火车应该能减少碳排放量,但是因为煤在保障电网能源的火电结构中所占的主导地位, 我对此就不敢言称有十足的把握。我非常希望有人能告诉我,他是如何把这一因素计算到排放指数中的,或是请他赐教我,把这一因素计算到排放指数中的方法。 | | Chinese to English: 分类能实现吗? | Source text - Chinese Comment Body :
目前的状况下分类似乎是操作不了的。且不说垃圾箱只有可回收和不可回收这两种粗粗的分类,就算我们把可回收和不可回收的垃圾分开扔,垃圾车来收垃圾的时候依旧是把这两种垃圾袋混到一起运走的,那这种分类还有什么意义呢?如果垃圾分类处理的整个过程不改革的话,就算有一个环节行得通也还是白费。 | Translation - English Classification possible?
Refuse classification seems impossible for the time being, this is because there are only two kinds of rubbish bins available -- recyclable and unrecyclable. Even if the recyclable rubbish have been separated from the unrecyclable ones, they will still be mixed together when being loaded into the same garbage truck. So, what's the point of refusing classification with respect to sorting out recyclable materials and unrecyclable materials at the household or street basis? Seemingly, unless an overall reform is carried out in the entire process of refuse classification, refuse sorting will remain unattainable with only one feasible step of distinguishing recyclable rubbish from unrecyclable rubbish. | | Chinese to English: 过去三十年的信仰 | Source text - Chinese Comment Body :
过去三十年的信仰是“发展是硬道理”,是经济建设为中心;在接下来的三十年,生态危机、社会矛盾渐渐凸显,也许过去的信仰会就是未来三十年的障碍,我们需要改变过去三十年的信仰。 | Translation - English Our Faith of the Past 3 Decades
It is undeniable that economic development has been the top priority on our government's agenda over the past 30 years, as it will and indeed have generated massive profits and dramatical changes for our country. However, the ecological crisis and social conflicts are now arising from the rapid economic development and this kind of confrontation is sharper and sharper in today's China. This probably indicates that our past faith may turn out to be tomorrow's obstacle, and it may be necessary for us to have it re-valued | | English to Chinese: Not so difficult | Source text - English Comment Body :
The supposed difficulty of saving the planet is a self-fulfilling prophesy. Everyone alive now is a product of an era which saw no significant progress with sustainable development. We are pickled in failure, so the ambitious idealism that's essential to our survival and success is nowhere to be found, not among the public and certainly not among decision-makers. A new inspiringly elegant video reveals the scale of this collective self-delusion - http://www.blindspotdoc.com/
Proposals to place a ceiling on the damage done by capitalism is nothing new. Such ceilings have never been welcomed and now, even when slashing emissions is a precondition for future civilisation, we find politicians and the public resisting reductions in cherished freedoms. It's as if we would rather be extinct than be limited.
Why not consider another way to save the planet, which requires no despair (if we act fast enough) and certainly less difficulty than coping with the escalating onslaught of ever more scary crises? Simply switch from turning resources into wastes to making sure that resources are remade into new resources. In China this is called circular economics! www.blindspot.org.uk | Translation - Chinese 其实并不难
我们所预想到的拯救地球的种种困难极有可能是一个终将实现的预言。现存的每一个人都是一个时代的产物,而一个时代通常见证不到带有可持续发展的长足进步。我们屦试不爽,已无望寻找到我们生存下去和实现成功所必需的雄心勃勃的理想主义--它即不取决于公众,也难以寄希望于决策者。而最近新摄制的一部振奋人心的高雅影片足以提示出我们人类在生存和发展方面自欺欺人的骇人程度。(http://www.blindspotdoc.com/)
而关于将资本主义带来的损失设一个上限的提议也可谓是老生常谈了。这样的上限从未受过推祟,即使是在严格控制气体排放已经成为未来发展前提的情况下,目前仍不难发现政客和公众为保障自身那一点点儿自由而奋力抵抗排放量的削减。这正如我们宁可灭亡也不愿受限一样。
那么为什么不寻求另外一条拯救地球的道路呢?这条路走地不是绝望,(如果我们行动足够迅速),而且这条路不像不断加大力度去应对越来越多的惊人危机那样困难重重。我们所需要的就是一种转变--从"变资源为废物"到"变废物为新资源",这种"变废为宝"的做法在中国被形象地称为"循环经济"!(http://www.blindspot.org.uk)
| | Chinese to English: 党政不分家,腐败就开花 | Source text - Chinese Comment Title :
党政不分家,腐败就开花
Comment Body :
问题都一样!不论是哪种污染物,也不论是哪种矿藏,只要摊上我们的政府、我们的党,就一定会出问题。
在中国,环保问题是一个政治问题。 | Translation - English Separation of the Party and its administration results in corruption.
All the problems are the same in nature! No matter what kind of contaminations, no matter what kind of mines, as long as they are under the administration of our Party and our government, problems will be certainly rising from the implementation of government policies.
Therefore, we say that these problems in China are, as a matter of fact, more of the political problems than of the envoirmental problems.
2008/12/9
- 显示引用文字 -
Dear Hailong He,
The following comment needs to be translated :
Comment Title :
党政不分家,腐败就开花
Comment Body :
问题都一样!不论是哪种污染物,也不论是哪种矿藏,只要摊上我们的政府、我们的党,就一定会出问题。
在中国,环保问题是一个政治问题。
Link :
http://www.chinadialogue.net/comment/list
Regards
ChinaDialogue | | Chinese to English: 技术转让是个难题 | Source text - Chinese Comment Title :
技术转让是个难题
Comment Body :
非常赞同作者最后提出的关于技术转让的设想,但是实行起来会很艰难。关于温室气体减排的技术转让问题很多,主要有以下几点:
1. 涉及到的工业领域广,技术复杂,应该优先实现哪些技术的转让
2. 发达国家实现技术转让的动力或压力与他们对国家利益的担心之间的平衡点该如何达到,即国际合作与国际竞争之间的平衡点该如何拿捏
3.如何用可测量可报告可核证的方法来评测技术转让
-------王姗姗 | Translation - English Title: Technology Transfer faces difficulty
Text:
Although I highly agree with the author's assumptions of technology transfer, I gather it will be substantially difficult to put in use in reality.
There are a huge number of problems with respect to technology transfer in GGE (Greenhouse Gas Emission) reductions, and my concerns with this are as follow:
First, which technologies should be priorities in terms of transferring? since technology transfer in GGE reductions are the most cutting edge high-techs, and ranging over every aspect of the industrial field.
Second, how to balance the pressure or motivation of the developed nations and their concerns about national benefits? In other words, how to keep a balance between international cooperation and international competition?
Last, how to evaluate the technology transfer by means of assessment, report and authentication?
Shanshan Wang
| | Chinese to English: 回复 11 | Source text - Chinese Comment Body :
选择过低碳生活的潜台词是 现在的生活很高碳,中国现在不富裕的群体本来就很低碳,所以就无所谓选择低碳生活了,这是我从文章中读到的 | Translation - English Reply 11
It seems that to pursue a low carbon indicates that our present day life is featured by high carbon consuming. However, for the badly off people in China, their life can only be associated to low carbon consuming. So there is no so-called option for them to go for a low carbon life. This is what I have sensed from this article. | | English to Chinese: Liang Shuming: The Last Confucian-- China's Delimma of Modernity | Source text - English Chapter VIII Chinese and Western Cultures
Part Two
In a profluence of some six books and hundreds of articles between 1930 and 1949, Liang formulated an expanded culture theory that was more complex, intricate, and detailed than he had written in Eastern and Western Cultures. A casual reading through this mass of ratiocinations would give the impression that Liang had totally abandoned his cultural theory of the early 1920s; gone were the metahistorical continuum, Wei-shih metaphysics, India, intuition, Vitalism, and jen. Western thinkers and their ideas played no role. In their place were new key terms and concepts. Closer scrutiny, however, reveals not a denial and demission of the message he had conveyed in Eastern and Western Cultures, but rather an elaboration and amplification of it.
If the content was the same, the whole approach and points of analytical emphasis had shifted from philosophy to sociology and history. Society and its structures had been neglected in past attempts to define Chinese culture, Liang explained. 1 Indeed, this second version of his cultural theory might be dubbed “Chinese and Western Cultures and their Societies.” Chinese culture, Liang pointed out, has been something historically unique: a sui generic way of life that has lasted longer, spread farther, assimilated more people, and shaped more neighboring cultures than any other. What has been the essential core of such awesome power? 2
Explication of Occidental Society
To arrive at an answer, Liang systematically compared Chinese and Western social development. Religion was the great historical watershed that set the two off on different paths. Liang would have agreed with such cultural conservatives as T.S. Eliot that the beginning of any human culture is dependent upon and inseparable from religion. 3 But Western religion - because of its strictly organized, disciplined form – created the “habit” of corporate life, which then provided the basis for all later political, social, and economic organization.4 Constant competition and struggle among corporate groups forced their internal cohesion to become extremely strong, which in turn obliterated the individual. On a large scale, this became the nature of the nation-state, the ultimate Western corporate group.5 Liang claimed that this totalitarian corporate life and the medieval asceticism enforced by religion eventually induced a violent reaction, which took the form of individualism, democracy, and hedonism. 6
Liang’s general analysis of the evolution of Western society was actually quasi-Marxist. The dynamic of Occidental history, he wrote, has been dialectic struggle among groups formed along economic lines. The state has been simply an instrument of the ruling class.7 And Western history has been a story of struggle competition, and antagonism among individuals, classes, and nations. In the resulting social changes, the superstructure of political forms, religion, and culture has followed the evolution of modes of production. Liang was, in fact, totally in agreement with historical materialism.
Marx’s explanation of history relies on mechanistic force….
I believe that Marx’s employment of the mechanistic viewpoint to explain social changes and social evolution is suitable for Europe. This is because【when】human consciousness is in the blind service of life, then economic necessity operates mechanically. If【one】can grasp the economic mainsprings【of society】,then deducing【that society】,inevitable development is possible. Because of this, historical materialism is quite reasonable.8
As he had done in Eastern and Western Cultures, Liang still characterized Western society as one that operated completely according to the principle of mechanistic calculation of profit and loss. Before the Enlightenment, the ledger had dealt with the spiritual concerns of gain or loss of heaven or the grace of God’s aid. Later the calculations had become economic and hedonistic. The principle was identical. Throughout history, Westerners have been ruled by one external alien force or another - by God through priests or by the state through law - and have made their calculations accordingly. Through the struggle and interplay between individual and individual and group, and class and class, a rigidly legalistic concept of “rights” had emerged. As a consequence bonds do not exist among people except in legal form. 9: The other result of the Westerner’s externally focused attention and demand for satisfaction is modern science.
China: The Death of Religion
Why did China not develop in this normal pattern? Chinese culture, too, had been born of a religion-one that had provided the supporting ideology for the feudalism of the Shang and early Chou dynasties. Yet the early Chinese sages - especially the Duke of Chou and Confucius - were men of extraordinary insight. Realising that religion was an alienation of the individual from his essence; they began the process of replacing it with pure ethics. People had to rely upon themselves, not some external force, to maintain their humanity. As a consequence, the Chinese produced no great religions and – extremely crucial for the nature of their culture-developed no habit of corporate life or extra-familial collectives.10
At the end of the Chou, China was still following the normal course of societal development. It was a feudal society made up of two mutually antagonistic classes-serfs and aristocrats. Its social order was maintained by brute force, and the Weltanschauung of the time was tending toward the production of scientific thought. During the Warring States period, it produced competing nation-states of the modern sort; at the same time, however, the “gentleman” or “scholar” class (shih) was bearing forward the sage’s discovery-rationality (li-hsing). Neither aristocrats nor serfs, these unattached intellectuals had no fixed economic position in society. They respected neither the aristocrats’ hereditary right to rule nor their military power. They themselves were qualified to hold political office but did not necessarily do so. Because of them, the old feudalism broke down (land was now on the free market), yet no new bourgeois class emerged to replace it. Chinese society then entered into two thousand years of circular stagnation: not quite forming classes, but not achieving economic equality either; not quite forming a nation, but maintaining its integrity as a cultural entity; not quite realizing the ideals of Confucius, but unable to abandon them. As Liang had described in his first theory, China had been in a kind of limbo, its natural development set awry by the sage’s premature leap of consciousness.11
Because of li-hsing, there were no fixed hereditary aristocracy and no primogeniture, but there was high social mobility in the rural economy and through the examination system. Instead of a class society, Liang insisted, China produced an “occupationally differentiated” (Chih-yeh fen-t’u) society. Instead of a legalistic society based on force, China had a society based upon ethics and morality (lun-li pen-wei shehui).
Because there were no corporate bodies and classes, China never became a real nation-state. The government has been a do-nothing entity that has merely collected taxes and occasionally used force to maintain order in the face of external or internal disorder. In times of peace, however, the ethical system itself, not military force or the threat of it, has maintained the social order. In contrast to Western society, in which individual self-interest and its attendant rights have required law backed up by armed force, Chinese society has been held together through inner discipline and ethical consciousness.
Liang’s tendency to idealise the social mobility of traditional society again emerged. According to his reasoning, since anyone could take the examination, and since there were no legal or hereditary barriers to mobility (except for the imperial household-hardly a “class”), there were no hereditary ruling classes.13 He did not dismiss out of hand the CCP’s division of rural society into classes according to land holding. He admitted that such a theory was “not unreasonable”; nevertheless, he concluded that the majority of the population (who were neither landlords nor tenants) have not belonged to clearly differentiated classes of the kind that have existed in Western society (master-slave, noble-serf, bourgeois-proletariat). After all, Liang pointed out; there had been countless rebellions and many changes in dynasty, but not one genuine revolution.
Obviously, the thrust of Liang’s theory was to exempt China from Marxian analysis. It was not overly difficult for him to demonstrate that China does indeed defy attempts to put it into the conventional analytical framework. Over the two thousand years since the Ch’ing dynasty, Chinese society had changed of course, but the basic modes and relations of production had not changed that much. Liang mocked the determined 1930s efforts of the social historians to force the facts of Chinese history into their Marxist Procrustean bed. The question was not, Liang argued, whether the prerequisites for capitalism had existed in traditional China; he admitted that the sprouts of capitalism, democracy, science, and all other “Western” products had existed, but the crucial and unanswerable question was why for two thousand years they had remained only sprouts. Since China’s development was not in accordance with the Marxist normative stages of societal development, some Marxists turned to the absurd category of an “Oriental mode of production” in order to explain it. Others went the equally awkward way of designating the bulk of Chinese history as “semi-capitalist” or “semi-feudal.” “It seems that anything one says about China must be preceded by the prefix ‘semi-’,” Liang chortled.14 All these manifestly inadequate efforts, he felt, proved his point.
Everything in China is such a “riddle” precisely because Chinese society has continually striven to realize its potential while lacking the material prerequisites necessary for the task. Confucianism has been like a religion yet not a religion; China has been like a nation yet not quite one; Chinese society has had a tendency toward the formation of classes yet never quite produced them.15
The difference between Chinese and Western societies was not simply the difference between traditional and modern societies, Liang inferred; rather, the difference rested in the model of humankind upon which each had been built.16 Having yet to evolve “reason”(li-hsing), the Occidentals’ actions are determined solely by material self-interest. Their lives consist only of interaction between the body’s demands and the external physical and human environment. Since in contrast, Chinese society is based upon truly human reason, so all Western theories and modes of analysis are inappropriate. For Liang, Homo economicus had been extinct in China for over two thousand years, so what the likes of Adam Smith and Karl Marx had to say about society were equally irrelevant.
Since Westerners have taken for granted that all humans are capable only of acting in their own self-interest, they naturally have created political systems in which selfish interests are counterpoised against other selfish interests. At the core of constitutionalism and liberal democracy are “checks and balances” and “rule by law.’ But Confucius had seen that humans are capable of ethically motivated action. He had placed responsibility upon the individual’s moral faculty and specifically not relied on any external force-laws or majorities-to insure proper behavior.17 (Liang was, of course, resurrecting the old “rule by man versus rule by law” debate of the late Ch’ing.) Such reasoning prompted Liang to oppose Chinese constitutionalism, despite his own “liberal” political position and activities- an incongruity that paralleled his father’s seemingly contradictory attitude toward the 1898 reforms.
Liang attempted to explain the irrelevance to China of Occidental political and social institutions and thought by developing further an idea he had vaguely suggested in his first book -that in the West human consciousness is determined by social existence, but in China consciousness transcends existence. He now clearly implied that in China the superstructure had determined the economic substructure, while in the West the substructure had determined the superstructure. Some of the cognitive modes he used to express this idea come quite close to the old ‘spiritual versus material cultures” rigmarole. After Confucius, Chinese culture and society developed “from the mind to the body,” “from consciousness to matter,” or “from the higher plane to the lower”; in the West, the opposite was true. The Occident have a “corporal” culture determined by physical factors and forces; Chinese culture is determined by moral and mental ones. Precisely because Western social and cultural development is “unconscious,” objective laws of development can be deduced; in China this is impossible.18
Human Culture and Li-hsing
The keystone of Liang’s second cultural theory is the concept Li-hsing-a word certainly not translatable by the usual English equivalent “reason,” except perhaps as Coleridge distinguished it from “rationality.” Similar to other vague terms that served as cornerstones in the thought of Liang’s spiritual brothers-Matthew Arnold’s “culture,” Cardinal Newman’s “illative sense,” or Gandhi’s “truth”-Li-hsing became the functional equivalent of jen and intuition in Eastern and Western Cultures. 19
Liang’s second theory has none of the systematic quality of his first; its essence lies in subtle implication and oracular innuendo. Liang did not substitute another specific system for the former West-China-India continuum; rather,he implied the existence of a grand cosmological evolutionary plan. The “ten-thousand things” were evolving upward by their very nature into more complex and higher forms. Inherent in them is a tendency toward li-hsing, which runs through and directs this ongoing advance. At the level of vertebrates, a tendency toward reason in the sense of intellect (li-chih) was already present; even farther removed from the lower forms of life, the higher primates had “sproutings” of this capacity. With Homo sapiens, true intellect appeared. It is this faculty of reasoning which distinguishes people from animals because it separates human consciousness from concrete physical things: people can think abstractly, analyse, deduce, and invent. This ability to transcend one’s biological self and physical environment is “the great liberation of life.” 20 Yet there is still a gulf between this animal with intellect and the true human. Intellect does indeed mark humans from beasts and is a prerequisite for li-hsing, but “while the two are intimately and inseparably connected” they are distinct faculties. “For example, in mathematics, the mind that does the calculating is intellect, while the mind that seeks accuracy 【in calculating】is li-hsing.”21 The latter, Liang implied, is the true essence of humanity, the ultimate product of the evolutionary vital force.
At one point Liang explained li-hsing’s relationship to intellect with the t’i-yung formula: “Li-hsing is life itself; it is essence 【t’i】. Intellect is a tool for【the maintenance of 】life; it is utility【yung】.” 22 Liang came quite close to implying that intellect without li-hsing is simply a higher form of animal life; it lacks the moral capacity that distinguishes true humanity. He described li-hsing as “the normative sense that directs moral action…the sense of right and wrong which makes the man human.” Humans are not animals precisely because they can achieve this “sphere of disinterestedness” or “impersonal feeling” which transcends biological instinct or self-interest; it is “liberation from instinct.” 23 Obviously, li-hsing is that capacity for “action without ulterior motive,” which Liang described in his first book as stemming from intuition and the essence of jen.
As in his first theory, Liang was somewhat vague about specific behavioral standards, (This is because, one surmises, fixed objective standards are the apotheosis of true morality.) He did say that li-hsing is embodied in Confucian rites and etiquette (li), and consists of extending familial emotions to all social relationships, emphasizing the “other person,” and putting priority upon fulfillment of ethical obligations.24 Yielding (jang) and self-abnegation are the heart of li-hsing’s manifestations. As humans are born only with the potential for li-hsing, the essence of Chinese culture lies in the process by which this potential is cultivated in the individual. The heart of culture is ethical education. (chiao-hua).
In the final analysis, it was the Chinese sages’ premature discovery of li-hsing that foreordained all differences between Chinese and Western cultures. Both had cultivated reason and intellect to a degree, but in the West, intellect was strong and well developed, while reason was “shallow” and “weak”; in Chinese culture, the opposite was true.25 Western cultivation of intellect eventually produced science, while in China it remained only a latent tendency. Just as Confucius’s replacement of religion with pure ethics had a permanent effect upon China’s history and society, so the West’s retention of religion determined its particular path. When religion collapsed under the onslaught of critical rationalism, legal codes and bureaucracies arose to maintain social order and to define the relationships between the individual and group and between individual and individual. In China, ethical relationships, inner discipline, customs, and traditions have served to maintain social order. In ordinary times, government has had no real role in the process.
Another dichotomy Liang employed to express the fundamental Sino-Western divergence was between the basic Western cultural point of departure - “externally directed force” (hsiang-wai yung-li) and the Chinese one - “inwardly directed force” (hsiang-nei yung-li).26 Liang set up many other such dichotomies (most of them similar to those drawn by non-Chinese cultural conservatives such as the Slavophiles or Gandhi): law versus custom and mores (li-su); political group versus family; individual versus family; rights versus duties; physical force versus moral force; and personal desires versus ethical obligation.27 All are the result of li-hsing.
Liang perceived the modernisation process as developing from Western cultural characteristics. China’s own culture had prevented that process from coming about. Therefore, li-hsing was at once China’s greatest achievement and its greatest fault.
The greatstness of China is only the greatness of human reason; 【its faults are only the faults of the premature rise of reason and the prematurity of its cultural maturation】…The spirit of the Chinese people, in my understanding, lies in “the rationality of humankind.” I often say that if the Chinese have not lived for several thousand years in vain, if the Chinese have made any contribution at all, then it is that they first understood why humankind is human. That is to say, the Chinese ancients precociously understood humankind…and the spirit of the Chinese people in its entirety is the bringing into play this li-hsing.28
Again, as in the first theory, the abortive leap in the normal evolutionary process was the root of all China’s difficulties; without first laying the necessary material foundation for realising its ideals, Chinese culture had moved onto a higher level from which it could not retreat.
Humans are rational animals, but reason in humankind must develop gradually…Speaking in terms of the life of a society, it must slowly develop following economic development and other cultural conditions. To say that, in Chinese society, reason developed prematurely means that the proper time had not yet arrived. 【Material】 conditions were still insufficient.29
Thus in both of his schematizations of the history of culture, Liang implied
that because of the great insight of is early sages, Chinese culture had
achieved human ethical perfection while bypassing the basic task of
mastering the physical environment. It was as if the “literary intellectuals”
whom C.P. Snow decried appeared in China some three thousand years ago
and, before the people has developed the capacity to completely satisfy
their primal needs, turned the direction of their whole culture toward-to
use Coleridge’s famous definition of true culture-“the harmonious
development of those qualities and faculties that characterize our
humanity.” Although they evolved a more human existence than the West
evolved, they have suffered materially because of it.
The second formulation of Liang’s theory also shows how the universal
absolute heavenly principles (expressed in human beings by intuition-jen
and li-hsing) can be universal to humankind and still be particularly
Chinese. Chinese culture is simply the development of a universal and
eventually realizable human potential. He accorded China a privileged role
in the total cosmic-historical process. A historical community, the Chinese
people are unique in history in having a cultural and spiritual life that
represents the culmination of human moral possibilities. Underneath the
corruption of externals this moral community still lives in the present, at
least in the villages.
In essence, Liang was expressing the traditional Chinese attitude toward
their culture; it was not Chinese culture, but literally the only truly human
culture - a way of life valid for all people for all time. His attitude
toward the West was virtually the same as the anti-Western
nineteenth-century Chinese conservatives’. Western technology might
indeed be resorted to; the important thing was that eventually the Western
barbarians would realize the superiority of the Chinese way and adopt it.
Yet a deep gulf separated Liang from these traditional Chinese conservatives: they were sure of what they meant by Chinese culture; they could refer to specific political and social institutions, definable codes of conduct, a particular literary and artistic heritage, and certain native customs and usages. They were, in other words, quite happy to accept yesterday as Chinese culture. Liang, in his first book, had already disowned historical Chinese culture. In this second formulation, he again disassociated historical Chinese culture and society, especially that of the most recent centuries, from his own concept of true Chinese culture. Just exactly when degeneration commenced (from Chinese culture’s very inception?), Liang never quite said. Regarding the past few centuries, however, he was unequivocal:
By the time of the Ch’ing dynasty, as I have often said, Chinese culture was superficially stupendous, glorious, elegant, uniform, and in perfect order. Yet its internal spirit was completely empty and decayed. Its surface was a dead varnished shell; inside, it was already utterly rotten….Take a look at the educated class 【shih】who represented the Chinese spirit. By the Ch’ing, they were unbelievably corrupt. They worshipped the god of literature and the god of war; they promoted the reading of 【books based on superstition and greed】….This whole line was the thing most discordant with the spirit of the ancient Chinese. The Chinese ancients were above all else, against greed and superstition, and yet this stuff was done by combining greed and superstition. So it was the diametric opposite 【of the spirit of the ancients】. By this period Chinese culture was withered up, rotten, empty, and hollow on the inside.30
Even the doctrines of Confucius and his methods of moral education had
become empty formalisms. Like his father, Liang never lost his loathing of
scholarship for its own sake.
The Ch’ing dynast caused the whole empire to do eight-legged essays, established a unified orthodoxy according to Chu 【Hsi’s】 notes 【on the Classics】and made the writings of Confucius and Mencius into literary playthings. The scholarly community took the study of terminology and texts as their 【primary】 task and seldom touched upon the principles of the terms and【texts】. So, “the study of human life” in higher education turned increasingly inflexible, formalistic, and rotten until it became nothing but a corpse. At the same time, the more stern and severe the ethical codes 【li-chiao】 became, the more the true meaning of human feelings 【jen-ch’ing】declined and weakened, so that in ordinary society, this ethical education, too, became formalistic and had little vitality.31
Its very prematurity had doomed Chinese culture to failure in completely realising itself, and as time went on, those social mores and institutions based upon reason had become stultified and “mechanized.” Although originally the diametric opposite of religion and law, they had become a means to social control similar to that in other societies.
Their parochial narrow-mindedness was no less than that of a religion; their inflexible ruthless cruelty was greater than that of law. For instance, according to Chinese mores, a child should be filial and a wife should be chaste. Originally, as personally self-initiated behavior, it was truly a lofty spirit…but later…【the mores and traditions】changed into methods of maintaining social order. By that time the original spirit and significance were lost completely, and they resulted in becoming merely means-formalised, withered, and without zest. At the same time they became extremely intractable, inflexible, and strict. 32
At times, Liang suggested that the “ideals of Chinese culture had always far exceeded the objective realities and had the fault of being unrealistic…. Thought was often very far from the actual state【of society】, and so was self-contradictory.” As he had suggested in Eastern and Western Cultures, Liang claimed that China had hovered between the two levels of human development unable to succeed in either. All of China’s past achievements “can only be considered a mere shadow of the culture of the second level. Because economic development was insufficient, it really had no hope of successfully becoming the culture of the second level.” 33 Well, could not China have just returned to the culture of the first level?
It could not do that either. Going from the second level of human culture back to the first is going from rationality back to biological 【corporal culture】, substituting the external use of strength for the internal use of strength…This would be a regression in Chinese history; it could not return to a state untempered by reason….It could not advance forward, nor could it retreat. It could only go round and round in hesitation.34
That Liang detached his own version of the sages’ message from the historical Confucianism does not, however, negate his authenticity; like many generations of sincere Confucians before him, Liang was attempting to go back to the essence, the original Confucianism, and in the process, was discarding its accidental historical encrustations and baggage.
The Future of China and Humanity
Liang’s second theory, then, set up the same dilemma that Eastern and Western Cultures had: China had to imitate the West in order to survive, and yet preserve its true culture. In this second version, however, the terms “scientific technology” and “group organisaton” replaced science and democracy as the mandatory imports. China’s most serious problem in meeting the modern challenge was its lack of the forms, habits, and mentality of collective life.35 Echoing Sun Yat-sen, Liang described Chinese society as diffuse, disorganized, and completely lacking in a tradition of organizational discipline or cooperation.36. Since ethics has always been a private matter, there has been no concept of public morality or spirit of the commonweal.37
In contrast to his pronouncements in Eastern and Western Cultures, Liang marshaled no detailed arguments for the imminent Signification of the West. Rather, he simply assumed that it must change. The “post-modern era” is the “great turning point in human history, one from which no country can escape.” The evolution of “objective realities” is forcing Western culture to change its direction, just as it is now compelling China to borrow from the West. In the future, “a concrete blending of China and the West will inevitably occur and humanity will develop a common consciousness based upon li-hsing.38 Is this not once more akin to the kind of cultural blending theory that he had long deprecated?
Yet this great wrenching of human history out of its historical groove would allow Chinese culture to finally resolve the curious paradox it had harbored since its inception; the challenge of the West and the power of its science would enable truly human culture to realize itself fully at last. Liang’s unduly optimistic prediction reflects a striking transformation in Chinese thought, one which, according to one student of Confucian tradition, was shard by scientific liberalism, Marxism, as well as tradition-oriented humanism: “What the West quite definitely did bring was not the concept of social and economic transformation per se, but the belief that with modern technology and modern techniques of political participation, the ‘outer realm of economic and political problems…could in fact be formed.”39
As he had done in his first book, Liang still insisted that a mass cultural revival was a sine qua non of successful Chinese modernisation. China should build upon li-hsing to create a new world culture, one that would capture Western modernisation’s strengths while avoiding its epiphenomenal scourges. In his 1921 book, Liang had only hinted indistinctly at a mass movement. By now he had already determined and defined one; it was rural reconstruction.
If Liang’s essential message was identical to that in Eastern and Western Cultures, why did he abandon Vitalism and intuition for li-hsing? His post-1949 Marxist critics have claimed that he had been forced to because such goods had “gone out of fashion,” or because such flagrantly obscurantist thought had been decisively and permanently discredited in the 1923 Science and Philosophy of Life debate. All have agreed that the actual content of li-hsing was exactly the same as the intuition of his first book. 40 Although this is true, Liang also sometimes used li-hsing in the colloquial sense of “reasonable,” implying that Chinese culture was just the only reasonable way for a human to live.41 This axiomatic quality in his use of the word is very similar to the premodern Chinese sense of absolute cultural superiority.
If the message remained unchanged, so too did its underlying and inescapable contradiction. Liang still could only perceive it as irony:
The various weaknesses of the Chinese which you gentlemen see now are all due to their strengths. The present defeats suffered by China are due to its past successes. The weaknesses of the Chinese come from none other than their strengths. In the future, these many strengths can save the life of our ancient race and revive our nation.42
| Translation - Chinese (第二部分)
第八章 中西方文化
梁漱溟先生于1930-1949年间先后创作出6本专著,发表了130多篇文章,并提出了一个外延更广的文化理论,这一理论比他在《东西方文明与文化》一书中所阐述的理论更加全面、更加复杂、更加详细。如果随意翻阅这些大量的著作,会给人留下梁漱溟(以下简称为“梁”)已经彻底摒弃了他二十年代早期的文化理论、还有历史交替的连续、唯识形而上学、印度、直觉、活力论、以及仁等观点的印象。而西方思想者在他这一时期的著书立作中更无毫发之地,取而代之的是全新的术语和理念。然而,若稍加品读,不难发现,梁丝毫没有摒弃他通过《东西方文明与文化》所传递出的信息,反而是对这些信息的升华和扩展。
倘若内容相同,那么我们不难发现,梁的整个分析侧重点的手法和角度已经从哲学转向了社会学和历史学。对此,梁做出了这样的解释1: 在以往对中国文化的界定过程中,我们忽略了社会及其结构。诚然,我们或许可以将梁的第二版文化理论看推演为“中西方文化及其社会”。梁还指出,中国文化在人类历史上是绝无仅有的:它那水一般绵软的生活哲理,比世界上任何一种文化更富有源远流长、同化世人及影响周边文化的渗透力。而又是什么因素促成了这一文化的核心内涵?2
对西方社会的阐释
为了合理地讨论西方社会之现象,梁对东西方社会发展进行了系统的比较。他认为决定这两个社会向不同道路发展的一个最重要的历史分水岭,是宗教在社会发展中所起的作用。我想梁若尚健在,他一定会认同文化保守主义派人物T.S艾略特的观点,任何一种人类文化的起源都依赖并无法脱离于宗教。3 然而,西方宗教,由于组织严密,形式严谨而形成了社团式生活的“习惯”,而正是这种社团生活为其今后所有的社会、政治、经济组织奠定了根本性的发展基础。4 社团间持续不断的竞争和斗争迫使各个社团形成了极其强劲的凝聚力;反过来,这种凝聚力抹煞了个体本身。整体而言,这就是西方国家民族的本色 ―― 根本性的西方社会团体。5 梁指出,受宗教驱使的极权主义的社团生活和中世纪禁欲主义,最终招致了以个人主义、民主和享乐主义形式出现的极端反应。6
梁对西方社会演变的概括分析其实就是“准马克思主义”的。他提道:“西方历史的发展动力源于经济战线上形成的团体之间的辩证争斗。而国家仅仅是统治阶级的工具而矣。7而西方历史则是个人之间、阶级之间和民族之间的竞争、争斗和对抗史。接下来的社会变革则导致上层建筑中的政治形式、宗教和文化随生产方式的演变而改变。事实上,梁与唯物主义历史观的观点完全相符。
马克思主义对历史的解释依赖于机械力量……
我相信马克思主义运用机械论观点解释社会发展和社会演变是符合欧洲现实的。这是由于[当]人类意识尚且盲目地服务于生命时,那么经济需求则机械地运行。如果[一个人]可以操纵[社会的]经济命脉,再推论[那一社会]中产生不可避免的发展是有可能的。有鉴于此,历史唯物主义是相当有理论基础的。
正如他在《东西方文化》一书中所指出的一样,梁依旧把西方社会归结为完全依照“利润与损耗的机械计算原则”运行的社会。在启蒙运动之前,西方人就用帐薄记录与精神有关的忧虑:可否进入天堂或是能否得到上帝的恩赐。继而,它慢慢变成了经济的和享乐的计算,尽管计算原则依旧保持不变。贯穿历史,西方人始终被一种来自外部的异域的力量所统治,或通过神父代表上帝的力量,或通过法律代表国家的力量,并以此相应地为自己做出计算。由于个人与个人、个人与团体、以及阶级与阶级之间的争斗和相互作用,一个严格的,尊重法律观念的词汇 ―― “权利”应运而生了。结果是,除了法律形式外,人与人之间的关系不受任何认何束缚。9 现代科学是西方人向外部集中注意力和满足需求的另一处成果。
宗教在中国的死亡
为什么中国会走上与西方截然不同的道路呢?与西方相比,中国的文化也为商朝和初周各代提供了滋养其封建主义的意识形态土壤;另外,中国早期历史时期的圣人,尤其是周公和孔子更是举世卓绝的思想家。然而,究其根源是因为这些圣人意识到宗教可以使个人脱离其本质,于是,他们开始了用树立纯正道德风尚取代宗教作用之举。他们坚信要保持人性,不能依赖外部力量,必须要从自身行为做起。正因如此,没有伟大的宗教旦生于中国本土――这正是突显中国文化本色的关键一点 ―― 没有形成社团生活的习惯或外家庭式集体。10
周代末期,中国仍延续着正常的社会发展道路。当时的社会主要由两个相互对抗的阶级组成――农奴和贵族。当时,统治阶级通过使用残暴的武力来维持社会秩序,但是那一时期的世界观还是倾向于科学生产思想的。到了战国时期,类似现代的民族国家竞争局面开始出现;然而同时,士大夫(绅士或学者)们也开始转向古圣先贤的教诲之本――理性。这些士大夫即非农奴,也不属贵族,他们在当时的社会里没有固定的经济地位。他们即不尊祟贵族阶级具有统治地位的世袭权利,也不畏怯他们手中的军事权利。他们自身有能力踏上仕途之路,然而其志向却不在争夺权柄。正是他们的出现,瓦解了旧封建主义(人们可以在自由市场上买卖土地),但是却没有新的资产阶级出现以取代他们的地位。中国社会至此形成了长达两千年的周期性停滞:没有形成固定阶级,但是也没能达到经济平等;没有融结成一个民族,但是却形成了一个文化共同体;没有彻彻底底地吸收儒家精华,却也没有完全推翻孔孟之道。正如梁在他的第一个理论中所述,中国一直处于天渊混界,它的自然发展由于受到古圣先贤超越时代的“意识”飞越之影响而偏离了常轨。11
基于理性,中国世袭贵族和长子身份已不复存在,而由于科举考试制度,农村经济有了极高的社会流动性。梁指出,不同于一个阶级社会,中国形成了一个“职业分工”社会。不同于一个建立于武力基础上的法制社会,中国社会建立于伦理辈份基础之上。12
由于没有团体组织和阶级,中国从未形成一个真正的国家。而政府仅仅是一个无所事事的机构,除了征税和偶尔在面对外部或内部混乱时起起镇压作用外,别无它能。然而,在和平时期,不用军队,不用军事威胁,仅凭伦理体制就足以维护社会秩序。在西方社会里,个人的自我利益及其伴随的权利,需要依靠以武力为后盾的法律体系来支撑,与之相比,中国社会则截然不同 ―― 中国社会的形成和维系依赖于其内部的纪律和伦理意识。
梁对于将中国传统社会的社会变动性理想化的想法再次在此得到印证。按照梁的理论,由于任何人都可以参加科举考试,再加上没有法律或世袭上对流动性的制约,(除了帝王家庭――还称不上是“阶级”),致使中国没有世袭的统治阶级。13 他也未对中国共产党对根据土地占有量划分农村社会持反对意见。他承认,这样的理论也并非占不住脚;不管怎样,他总结道,中国的绝大多数人口(即不是地主,也不是雇农)不属于像西方化分得十分明确的那样种种不同的阶级(主仆阶级、贵族和家奴阶级以及资产阶级和共产阶级)。梁指出,虽然在中国的朝代历史上发生过无数次起义和变更,但是没有一次称得上真正的革命。
显而易见,梁的理论核心是说明马克思的分析方法不适用于剖析中国社会。对于梁而言,他有足够的理由来说明用常规分析方式透视中国社会发展是行不通的。中国自秦朝建立至今的两千多年来,确实发生过很多改变,但是最基本的生产关系模式却没什么大的改变。对于二十世纪三十年代那些义无反顾的中国社会历史学家们欲将中国发展实情强搬硬套到马克思主义强求一致的发展规律中去的做法,梁始终嗤之以鼻。梁解释道,问题不在于传统的中国是否已经具备了资本主义发展前提;他承认诸如科技,民主,资本主义等西方社会产物确实已经开始在中国蒙芽,但是问题的关键,或者说是解不开的这个结是 ―― 为什么在过去的两千多年里,这些在中国始终是处于蒙芽状态?由于中国社会发展状况与马克思主义规范的社会发展阶段不符,一些马克思主义者为了能够解释中国现象,就不得不将中国发展史归纳到“东方生产模式”这一怪异的分类中去。更有甚者,一些人还将“半资本主义,半封建”这顶同样荒诞的帽子扣在了中国发展史上。梁不禁戏言,只要一谈到中国的任何一个方面,人们就总忍耐不住以“中国是一个半XX”开始。14 他认为这些无力的表白都与他的观点不谋而合。中国的一切似乎都是个“谜”,这是因为中国这么多年以来一直在竭尽全力开发出自己的全部潜能,但是却始终缺少能够将一切付诸实现的物质前提。儒家在中国就似一门宗教,实质却不是宗教;中国看似是一个国家,然而却并不完全是个国家;中国社会发展中始终有形成阶级的趋势,但是自始至终却没能产生出名副其实的阶级。15
梁如是推断,中国社会与西方社会的区别绝不单单是传统与现代社会之间的区别,最大的区别在于每个社会构建在什么样的人类模型基础上。16 由于西方人的“理性”尚未进化好,所以其行为出发点是由物质利益决定的,因此他们的生活仅仅是产生于身体需求和外部客观环境和人类环境之间的互动作用而矣。与之相反,中国社会完全建立于“人的理性”基础之上,所以用西方的分析方法衡量中国社会是行不通的。在梁看来,经济人已经在中国消失了近两千年,所以像亚当•斯密(Adam Smith)和卡尔•马克思(Karl Marx)等人的社会说法是与中国社会同样没什么关联的。
由于西方人理所当然的认为人的行为只能从满足自我利益出发,他们自然而然的创立了各种政治体系,其实无非就是以一种自私自利的目的对质其它自私自利的目的。“制约与平衡”,以及“法治”就是宪政主义和自由民主的核心理念。然而孔子认为,人能够用伦理道德约束自身行为。他认为人的道德标准能够起到关键的作用,他还特别指出,不能依靠法律或大众来确保得体的行为。17(显而易见,梁又在重提自晚清以来的是“人治还是法治”的相关争论。)正是这种推理促使梁反对中国搞宪政主义,尽管他自己有“自由的”政治立场和活动――这种不和谐,跟他父亲对“戊戌变法”所持有的似乎矛盾的态度相类似。
梁试图解释西方的政治社会制度不适用于中国,并有意进一步延伸他在他第一本书中粗略提出的一个个人见解 ―― 在西方,人的意识是由社会存在决定的;而在中国,人的意识超越存在。他后又明确表述,中国的上层建筑决定经济基础;西方则是经济基础决定上层建筑。他运用了一些认知模式来阐述这一观点,这与那些关于“精神文化还是物质文化”的长篇大论十分相似。自孔子之后的中国社会和文化的发展道路是“从心到肉体”、“从意识到物质”、“从更高层次到更低层次”;而西方则恰恰相反。西方的“肉体”文化是由客观事实和力量决定的;而中国文化是由道德和精神决定的。这一切都源于西方社会和文化发展是处于“无意识”状态的,所有客观发展规律都可以演绎,而在中国,这一切都决不可能。18
人类文化与“理性”
梁的第二个文化理论主旨就是“理性” ―― 其实英文翻译中常用的“reason”一词根本无法与汉语哲学中的“理性”相对应。在这一点上,只有科尔里奇(Coleridge)提出,“reason”(理性)与“rationality”(合理性)有所不同。诸如此类含义模糊,但是却成为哲学语言的闪光词汇,还有由梁的其他精神兄弟提出的 ―― 马修•阿诺德(Matthew Arnold)的“文化”(culture)、卡蒂诺•纽曼(Cardinal Newman)的“演绎感”(illative sense)或是甘地(Gandhi)的“真理”(truth);与这些词一样,“理性”正是“仁”,以及《东西方文化》中所提到的“直觉”一词的功能性对应。
梁的第二个理论不具备第一个理论的系统性;他的精华在于微妙的隐晦和模糊的影射。梁没有用另一个具体系统来取代先前的“西方-中国-印度的连续一体”;相反,他暗示出一个宏伟的宇宙演变进程的观点。“万物”依据它们的本质向上进化到一个更复杂、更高级的形式。然而它们本能地倾向于“理性”,而正是“理性”贯穿并引领这一持续不断的上升趋势。早在脊椎动物阶段,对“理性”的倾向就表现为“理智”;高级灵长目动物更是很好地具备和发挥了这一优势,从而更加远离了低级生命形式。到了现代智人阶段,真正的理智才显现。正是拥有“理性”,使人和动物有了最本质的区别,因为理性把人的意识从具体的客观事物剥离开来:人具有抽象思维、分析、演绎和发明创造的能力。这种超越一个人自身和客观环境的能力是对“生命的伟大解放”。 20 但是在有这种具备理智的动物和真正的人类之间仍有一道鸿沟,虽然理智可以区分人和动物,也是构成“理性”的前提,但是“尽管二者紧密相连”,他们有着质的不同。 “举例说明,在数学运算中,做为大脑计算功能的是“理智,追求[计算]结果正确性的就是“理性”。 21 梁补充道,后者是人性之本,是生命进化能力的最终产物。
梁曾一度使用“体用”公式解释“理性”与“理智”之间的关系:“‘理性’是生活的本身,它就是[体];‘理智’是[维持]生活的工具,它就是[用]。”22 梁对此的论断几乎就是暗示“没有理性的理智无非是动物生命的高级存在形式,它缺少能够区分真正人类和动物之间区别的道德标准。”他认为“理性”是指引道德行为的正常感觉能动。人与动物的根本不同在于人能够达到“无私利性境界”或“不受个人感情影响的状态”,这种状态超载了生理本能或自我利益;这可谓是“对本能的一大解放。”23 不难看出,“理性”是那种达到“别无所图”境界的能力,这一能力来自直觉和仁,这是梁在他的第一本书中阐明的。
与他的第一理论一样,梁仍然没有深层次地讨论具体的行为标准,(有人说这是因为,固定的客观标准是真正道德的极限。)他认为孔子倡导的礼仪学说之中就蓄含着“理性”,“理性”也是家庭式情感在各种社会关系中的外延,“理性”更强调“他人”,它的重心是实现各种伦理责任。24 “让”和“克已”就是对“理性”的根本体现。如同人生来只有“理性”这种潜能一样,中国文化的精髓就是开发个人俱备的这种潜能的过程,因而中国文化之本就是“教化”。
最后,正是中国古圣先贤们过早地阐明了“理性”,注定了中国文化与西方文化千差万别。两类文化都将“理性”和“理智”推到了一个高度,但是对于西方而言,“理智”是强大的,发展全面的,而“理性”是“浅薄”和“微弱”的;中国文化则全然相反。25 西方对“理智”的强调最终使其科技腾飞,而中国却始终处于一种潜能趋势状态下。正如孔子用纯真伦理取代宗教对中国历史和社会产生了恒久的影响一样,宗教在西方的持续决定了其特定的发展路径。当宗教在猛烈的唯理主义的攻击下而土崩瓦解时,法规和官僚阶级起到了维护社会秩序,以及界定个人与集体以及个人与个人之间关系的作用。在中国起到这一作用的是伦理关系,内部纪律,风俗以及传统。在平常时期,政府在发展过程中没有起到什么实质性作用。
用来表述中西基本分歧的另一个两分法是西方的基本文化起点――向外用力,中国则是向内用力。26 梁还启用了其它很多个二分法(其中的大多数都与那些非中国文化保守主义者,如斯拉夫派(Slavophiles)和甘地(Gandhi)总结的相似):法律与风俗和礼术;政治集团与家庭;个人与家庭;权利与义务;物质力量与道德力量;以及个人欲望与伦理责任。27这些都是“理性”的衍生物。
梁认为现代化就是带有浓厚西方文化特征的进程,中国特有的文化已经回避了这一进程的发展。因此,“理性”曾经成为中国最伟大的发展成就,同时也是其最致命的弊端。
中国之伟大仅仅就是人类“理性”之伟大;[其唯一错误就是过早推祟“理性”,以及其文化的早熟]、、、、、、依我所见,中国民族精神就在于“人类的理性。”我常说,如果中国人没有白活几千年,如果中国人真的有什么贡献,那就是他们首先明白了为什么人类是人。换言之,中国人的祖先过早地品透了人类、、、、、、而中国人全部的民族精神就是将“理性”付诸实践。28
另外,正如第一理论中所提及的,在正常发展过程中的失败跨越是中国全部困难的根源;中国文化因为没有先打下实现理想所必需的物质基础,走到了一个非常高级、从此无法倒退的阶段。
人是有理智的动物,但是人的理性只能逐渐发展、、、、、、谈到一个社会的生命,它必须慢慢地跟随经济还有其它文化条件发展。说中国的社会的“理性”发展过早,就是说适宜的时机尚未到来。[物质]条件仍不充分。
因此梁在以上对文化史的两种概括中指出,中国文化因其早期古圣先贤的远见卓识而实现了伦理观念的至善,但是却忽略了创造物质环境这一基本使命。在中国人民尚且无法满足基本生存需要的三千多年前,中国就涌现出了“文人雅士(这些人受到了C•P•司诺(Snow)的诋毁)”。可以用科里瑞奇(Coleridge)著名的真文化标准来形容这些人 ―― 引领中国文化实现“代表人性素质和能力的和谐发展”。尽管与西方相比,他们的进化和生活更加人性化,可他们在物质生活上却遭受到了更多磨难。
梁在他第二个理论形成的阶段还指出,为什么宇宙绝对祟高原则(人类的表现为“直觉”(intuition)――“仁”(jen)和“理性”(li-hsing))对人类而言是普遍的,却又特别是中国式的。中国文化简言之就是一种普遍性发展,并最终能使人类潜能得以实现。他认为,在整个宇宙-历史发展过程中,中国扮演了一个特许角色。因为作为一个历史悠久的国度的国民,中国人在人类史上是独一无二的,他们的精神文化生活象征着人类道德标准的全部可实现性。尽管滋生了腐败的疮孔,这个道德国度至今仍存在,至少是在乡村。
事实上,梁表达的是传统中国人对他们文化的态度;它不仅仅是中国文化,实质更是唯一真正的人类文化 ―― 对任何人在任何时候都有效的生活方式。他对西方的态度跟其他十九世纪反西方的中国保守主义者基本一致。即或许应该求助于西方技术,但是重要的却是最终西方蛮人一定会意识到中国方式更高明,并学会采纳这种方式。
但是梁与这些传统中国保守主义者仍有着本质差别:他们对他们所知的中国文化深信不已;他们可能会指出具体的政治、社会制度、可界定的行为规范、一个特殊的文学和艺术遗产,以及某些本土风俗和方式。换言之,他们十分高兴地认为昨天的一切才是中国文化。梁在他的第一本著作中已经否认了历史意义上的中国文化。在第二本书中,他再次表明要把历史上的,尤其是最近几个世纪的中国文化和社会的关系与他自己真正的中国文化观念作以区分。梁从未说过中国文化堕落是在何时开始的(从中国文化的最初开端?),然而谈及最近几个世纪的中国文化,他的观点十分明朗:
我常说,中国文化到了清代是表面宏大、荣耀、高雅、一统,看似至善至美。但是其内部灵魂已经完全丧失和腐蚀了。它的表面像一个破败的空壳;内部却早已腐烂一空、、、、、、瞟一眼代表中国精神的[士]大夫们,到了清朝,他们的腐败程度已经令人难已置信了。他们膜拜文昌帝,关公,提倡读[迷信和贪婪]之书、、、、、、这一点是最与中国传统精神背道而驰的。中国的古人最不屑一顾的就是贪婪和迷信,而他们迷恋的却正是贪婪与迷信之道,所以这是对[中国古代精神]的最大猥亵。至此阶段,中国文化已经从内部开始枯萎、凋零,徒有虚名了。
即便是孔子的学说和道德教育方法已经成了空洞的形式主义。梁像其父一样,从未丢失他为了治学而治学的厌恶之情,理由是:
清朝迫使全民学习八股文,依朱[熹]所示,一统文章规则,将孔孟文章写法视为卖弄学问之道。学术界将学习术语及文章作为[基本]任务,却鲜为穷究术语及文章之原理。因此,在高等教育中“对人类生命的学习”变得前所未有的死板、形式化、并极其迂腐不堪,直已成为一具腐尸。与此同时,礼教愈威严,人情越薄弱。所以在一般社会,这种伦理教化也毫无生机,实乃形式主义。31
这种早熟注定了使中国文化在实现自身时一败涂地,随着时间的流逝,那些建立在“理性”基础上的社会习俗和制度已经荒谬可笑,甚至“机械化“了。尽管它的初衷与宗教和法律大相径庭,但它现在也成了为一种控制社会的手段,起着与其它社会所使用的控制手段相同的作用。
那偏执的狭小胸襟比宗教毫不逊色;那呆板无情的残忍行为比法律还要严厉。譬如,依据中国礼术,子必孝,妇必贞,这在最初只是个人自我蒙发的行为,堪称绝对的高尚精神、、、、、、但是继而、、、、、、这些[习俗和传统]被用来做为维持社会秩序的手段。如此一来,原有的精神和重要意义消失殆尽,直至变为十足的手段――形式化、没有生机、更没有激情。而从另一方面看,它们已经极其偏执、教条和严格。32
有的时候,梁也提到过“中国文化的理想总是超出客观事实,并有着不够现实的缺点、、、、、、思想总是远离[社会]的实际状况,因此自相矛盾。”正如他在《东西方文化》中所指出的一样,中国在人类发展的两个层次徘徊,却不属于其中任何一个。中国过去的一切成就“只能被认为是第二个层面的文化的一个影子。 由于经济发展不充足,它的确没有成功攀登第二个文化阶梯的希望。” 33 那么,中国干脆回到第一个文化阶梯有何不可呢?
那样做也行不通。从第二阶梯退回到第一阶梯就意味着从“合理性”退回到生物的[身体的]本身,意味着运用外部力量替代内部力量、、、、、、这对中国历史来言无非就是倒退;它不可能倒退回一种没有理性调和的状态、、、、、、这就使得它即不可前进,也不能撤退。它唯一能做的就是在盲然中盘旋。34
然而,梁把他个人对古圣先贤的哲理的分析与历史上的儒学分离开来并没有降低他的可靠性;像早于他的历代真诚的儒家一样,梁的所求就是回到本质,回到最初的儒家思想,与此同时洗涮掉那些历史偶然带给它的污垢和包裹。
中国的未来与人性
梁的第二个理论于是又如同《东西方文化》中的阐述一样出现了一个两难境地:为了生存,中国必须效仿西方,但是她必须保留自己纯粹的文化。然而,在第二版中,“科技”和“团体组织”这类必须引入的术语取代了科学和民主。中国应对现代化挑战的最大难题就是缺少集体生活的形式、习惯和思维方式。35梁附和Sun Yat-sen的说法,把中国描述为分散、无组织和完全缺少组织纪律和合作的传统。36由于伦理一直是私人事务,中国就没有公共道德或者公益精神的观念。 37
与他在《东西方文化》中的一些看法相反,梁没有对即将来临的西方“中国化”罗列具体论据。确切地说,他只认为这是必然。“后现代时期”是“人类历史上最伟大的转折点-任何国家都不可逃避的社会变革。”“客观事实”发展正在迫使西方文化改变其方向,就像现在中国受到的需要借鉴西方的鞭策一样。将来,“一个活生生的中西合璧模式将不可避免的产生,人类将会在“理性”基础上发展一种共同的意识。38这不又是那种他长久以来抨击的文化融合论吗?
但是人类历史这段偏离轨道的大转弯最终会让中国文化解释清他自一开始就深藏的那个谜;西方的挑战和它的科学力量最终能使人类文化充分实现自身。就像一名儒生所言,梁不合时机的乐观预言折射出中国人思想上的巨变,而这种思想曾经被科学自由主义、马克思主义以及以传统导向的人文主义所击破:西方确确实实带来的不是社会和经济变革观念本身,而是让人相信,使用现代技术和政治参与技巧能够重建这个“经济和政治问题的“外在”领域……。”39
像第一本著作的观点一样,梁仍然坚信一场规模宏大的文化复兴是中国现代化成功的必要因素。中国应该在“理性”基础上创造一个新的世界文化,这个文化能够获得西方现代化的力量,却可避免现代化所带来的副带现象。在1921年的著作中,梁只是含糊地提到一场民众运动,现在他已经确定,并为这一思想下了定义,这就是乡村建设。
如果梁的基本思想仍和《东西方文化》一书中的一样,为什么他要摒弃生命主义和直觉而求诸于“理性”?1949年后的马克思主义评论家们已经表白,他被迫如此,因为这些理论已经“不时髦”了,或者是因为这种臭名昭著的蒙昧主义在1923的“科学与玄学”论战中声名狼藉、一蹶不振。所有人都认为“理性”的实质内容与他第一本著作中提出的“直觉”完全一致。40尽管这是真的,梁有时还是用“理性”指代俗语中“合情合理”这一词,意思是说中国文化是唯一一个适合人类生存下去的合理方式。41 他在这一文化词语的使用中表现的公理性质和现代化之前的中国人的绝对文化优越论极其相似。
如果这一思想不变,那么,它那根本也是无法避免的矛盾也就仍然存在。梁却依然把它看成是一种反讽:
诸位今日所见中国人之种种缺陷都归因于他们的长处;中国日前所经历的挫败都来源于它昔日的成功。虽说中国人之缺点恰恰来源于他们的长处,在今后,这些长处能够拯救我们这一古老民族,也有望复兴我们这个国家。42
| | Chinese to English: 世界是很热,很挤,但不是平的 | Source text - Chinese Comment Body :
我很早就想指出,托马斯•弗里德曼的世界是平的,但是我们发展中国家的人民可不是这么看:世界绝不是平的。互联网改变了很多,可是,互联网的通用语言是英语或者美语,对中国的大多数人民来说,由于语言的不通,结果造成这个世界越来越不平。在我们使用世界语以前,我看这个世界永远“平”不了。
如果我说,语言所造成的问题很大,托马斯•弗里德曼也许不相信。现实是,恐怕,通过翻译出来的先进思想,很大场合都被曲解了。举个例子,去年,世界可持续发展工商理事会发表了全球大企业的CEO给8国集团首脑的一封信,就是关于应对气候变化的政策制定工商界的建议。如果你有幸读过英文版,再看看中文的翻译,你就会发现那简直就是垃圾。中文当然是给中国人看的,可是,可以这么说,那个翻译搞完全曲解了这封信,很多数据,目标,实践都搞错了。我很担心,这种事情是不是在其它重要场合也发生过?!没有英文能力的很多( 绝大多数) 中国人民,实际上还处于文化的“初级阶段”,任由各种垃圾文化所侵扰,得不到真正的,完全的,清晰的信息。托马斯•弗里德曼还谈到了中国的环境以及能源方面的事,我感觉,这个话�¢!
�他根本没有资格谈。就像他书中提到了很多次的ROB WATSON一样,在中国的环境中,他们的使命注定要失败:后者在中国推广所谓的绿色建筑,这么多年了,也没有什么成效。把中国变绿,我们最需要的是什么?教育。他还没有认识到这一点。至于什么乱七八糟的民主也好,还是革命也好,我们不关心,也关心不了。从专业的角度看这本书,最多就是个启蒙读物,尽管书中列举了那么多专家和顾问。 | Translation - English The world is hot and crowded, but not flat.
I have long been thinking to review the truth that people from the developing countries would not come down in favor of Thomas L. Friedman's point of view -- the world is flat. By no means will we agree that the world is flat.
Indeed, Internet has brought about great changes to our life; however, the universal language of Internet is British English or American English. Hence, for the majority of Chinese people, the would is still being less and less "flat" due to the communication barriers. Owing to that, the world will never be "flat" until we (all the Chinese) can sufficiently grasp the lingua franca.
Thomas L.Friedman may not believe me, if I say there are substantial problems caused by the use of languages. As a matter of fact, the advanced thinking has been mistranslated in most of the cases, I'm afraid. A handy example come into use is a letter compose by the Chief Executive Officials by the world giant companies to the G8 Summit last year,published by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, urges the industrial and chimerical circles to come up with proposals for the policies to tackle climate change.
If you have by any chance read the English text, please take a look at the Chinese version. You will find our that the Chinese understanding of this letter is absolutely rubbish.Of course, the Chinese version is translated for Chinese people. However, we cannot accept that the Chinese version is highly misleading with incorrect translation of statistics, objectives and practice.
I was really upset by this translation result and was wondering if such things have happened to other important circumstances as well?! As for most of the Chinese people who do not know much of English, they are still under the "primitive cultural stage", plagued by all kinds of cultural rubbish, with no access to the authentic, intact, complete and clear information.
Also, I don't think Thomas L. Friedman is eligible to discuss the issue of Chinese environment and energy development. Just as "Rob Watson" (pioneer of American Green Building Movement) who has been mentioned in Thomas' book, his mission is possible in the Chinese environment: there is no much progress of the so-called "Green Building" promoted in China in the past many years. Actually, what do we need to make China "Green"? The answer is "education". Neither did Thomas realise that so far. When it comes to the rafferty democracies and revolutions discussed n his book, we are not interested either. Thus, this book is only at the rudimentary level in terms of specialism, though it his enumerated quite a few experts and consultants.
| | Chinese to English: 岂能因噎废食 - 续 | Source text - Chinese 第五,我不同意“对于现阶段碳排放不多的普通消费者,责任不是选择低碳生活,而是预防将来的高碳生活”。很多选择(如汽车,住房),不仅影响今天,更影响明天,后天和数十年后的未来。碳锁定效应(Carbon Lock-in)对落后的高耗能投资适用,对生活方式和习惯的形成同样适用。难道要非要先学会美国的生活方式才能再学会低碳生活?每个人都可以在力所能及的范围内减少碳排放。低碳是个相对概念,不是绝对概念。
最后,我建议你的那位朋友不要急着先去再买一个节能灯。既然是飞利浦这样的大厂商生产的,一个月就坏的节能灯应该可以找他们替换,退货,甚至索赔。如果他们连这些服务都没有,那就配不上他们的品牌。消费者维权不是只针对滥竽充数的小工厂,知名外企也应该一视同仁,或者,他们应该更加起到行业标杆的带头作用!
王韬 (Tao Wang)
英国廷德尔气候变化研究中心 (Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research) | Translation - English How should we refuse to do what we should, for fear of running a risk? -- Continued.
Fifth, I don't agree with the idea of expecting common consumers who are causing less carbon emission for the time being not to choose a low carbon life style, but to take precautions against a high carbon life style. A lot of options, like automobiles and houses, will not only affect today, but also affect tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and the future times come after several decades. Seemingly, carbon-lock-in effect is good for the less higher energy-consuming investment, and for our life style and habit formation as well.
Does it mean we shall have to copy the American life style first, and then learn a low carbon life style? The point, I assume, is every one can contribute to reduce the emission of carbon to a certain extent. Low carbon is a relative rather than an absolute concept.
Finally, what I am going to suggest is your friend doesn't need to rush for a new energy-saving light bulb. This is because Philip is such a giant manufacture in the world whose major concern is about their worldwide reputation, they should be able to offer an exchange, refund or even compensation on a faulty product with only one-month service life. If they don't have this kind of after-sale service, they are not worthy of their good reputation.Therefore, outstanding foreign companies, such as Philip, should be treated equally as those small substandarded factories in terms of safeguarding consumers' rights. Or, they should even set an excellent example for those uncompetitive counterparts in their respective industries.
Tao Wang
Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research
| | Chinese to English: 治标亦须治本 | Source text - Chinese Comment Body :
除了资金和技术问题以外,良治亦必不可少,乃安全管理之根本。所以,各国在处理安全问题的时候,应该首先考虑建立一个良好的机制,才能提高效率。应对气候安全,良治即良方。
此外,巨灾保险或气候保险亦需要政府参与和引导,作为没有办法的办法。 | Translation - English Taking a temporary solution while effecting a permanent cure.
Needless to say, a good measure is indispensable except for funds and technologies, as a good measure is the solid foundation for safety management. Therefore, every country should take into account of establishing an effective mechanism to improve the efficiency of confronting safety risks.
Also, a good measure means a good plan with respect to tackling climate change. Besides, governmental participation and guidance are ideal for investing in catastrophe insurance and climate insurance for the sake of backing up safety management. | | Chinese to English: 这不是地方问题,是普遍问题 | Source text - Chinese 官商勾结,滥用权力,在越落后的地区越明显,老百姓没办法只能拼命,但结果往往是被镇压。 | Translation - English This is more of an universal than a regional phenomenon.
In China, the business people and the government officials are enjoying a very cosy relationship built upon money and power. And this kind of collision is even more rampant in the backward areas, where common people's last resort to defend their own interest against this unhealthy tendency is by using force; however, this kind of public discontent will eventually be defused or repressed at the very initial stage | | Chinese to English: 骗人的把戏 | Source text - Chinese 同意:明星根本没资格来教育别人!
明星鼓吹环保生活的作秀简直令人作呕!这简直就是在扇自己的嘴巴。他/她们这样做的目的不就是为了提升人气好赚更多的钱去更过度地消费吗?那些赞助他/她们的企业不就是打着环保的幌子为了提高企业形象好哄骗更多人去买更多的产品吗?当顾客掏钱的时候,它们是绝对不会阻拦的,无论那种消费行为有多么不环保!
zyn | Translation - English Monkey Business
It's correct: famous stars are not eligible to teach the public!
It's really dusgusting to see some famous stars showing their attitudes towards enviornmental protection in real life. This is no worse than smashing their own faces in public. Isn't it because they are trying to gain the huge profits by winning the hearts of millions of people in order to splash more money to gratify their vanity? Isn't it because those companies that are sponsoring them to promote their own image under the disguise of enviornmental protection so that more consumers will be cheated to buy their products? No wonder, they will never stop customers who are going to pay for their products, no matter what a bad consumer behavior will incur to our enviornment | | English to Chinese: Great article | Source text - English great article
Comment Body :
It's very encouraging to read about Chinese companies that are doing good things for the environment. Thank you chinadialogue!
- 显示引用文 | Translation - Chinese 好文章
评论:
得知目前中国公司正在做出对环境有力的举措,本人深感欣慰。再此对《中国对话》论坛表示衷心的感谢! | | English to Chinese: lethal incompetence | Source text - English lethal incompetence
Comment Body :
Who approved these construction projects? What action is being taken to find out who is responsible? I think we owe it to the dead to learn the lessons -- incompetence and corruption kill people. If these lessons are not learned then all the sympathy for the victims and their families is empty. I read in Caijing magazine that only 19 per cent of the donations given by people for earthquake relief actually reached the victims.Is this true?
| Translation - Chinese 标题:
监管不利 殃及百姓
评论:
请问是谁批准了这些建设项目?为了查找出具体负责人,政府又有哪些具体举措?是那么多生命的远逝,让我们认识到政府的监管不利和腐败不堪,这使我们更加愧对那些死去的亡灵。如果我们不从这一巨大的灾难中吸取深刻的教训,那么我们对这些受难者及其家属的全部同情只可谓无稽之谈。我从《财经杂志》了解到,为灾区筹集到的物资善款,只有19%用取了灾民身上,不禁要问这个报导是否属实? | | Chinese to English: 举行听证、质询国家地震局领导的动议书 | Source text - Chinese [关于请求全国人大成立四川汶川大地震特别调查委员会和举行听证、质询国家地震局领导的动议书] 摘录:
2008年6月15日
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为了让全国人民了解事情真相,我们认为作为国家最高权力机关全国人民代表大会常设机关的全国人民代表大会常务委员会应当根据《中华人民共和国宪法》第27条、41条和71条、《中华人民共和国人大组织法》第38条、《中华人民共和国信息公开法》第2条、第5条和第9条2款,对国家地震局进行质询。
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请求人:中华人民共和国公民 赵岩 俞梅荪 王均 郑现莉
二〇〇八年六月十五日 | Translation - English A Petition to the People's Congress for holding hearings and interrogating the National Seismological bureau.
Abstract of the petition to the People's Congress for establishing special investigation Committee for Wenchuan Earthquake, Sichuan Province, holding hearing and interrogating leaders of National Seismological Bureau.
15 March, 2008
As the highest organ of state power of China, the Standing Committee of the People's Congress should carry out an interrogation on the National Seismological Bureau in order to review the truth of the earthquake to the public, in accordance with Item 27, 41, and 71 of , Item 38 of | | Chinese to English: 双向选择,就看如何操作 | Source text - Chinese 任何事物都没有绝对的对与错。
就看如何进行控制和利用。
辐射等等弊端在现实社会中,到处都是,但是现代文明中,所有人都在批判中高兴得接受着,因为它是文明。不过我们可以通过一些手段进行辐射量的减少。
一些娱乐游戏、聊天等可能会导致孩子们玩物丧志或者交友不当,但是我们可以通过一定的人为控制,控制使用时间的长短和时间点等等,并进行一些引导。
相信在这个矛盾促进发展的客观理论之下,一切事物都会积极发展的
| Translation - English Good Dual way options depend on wise manipulations
Nothing is absolutely correct or wrong, it all relies on how we will utilise and control it. Radiation can be found anywhere in a modern society, but people are happy to take it, since it is regarded as civilisation. More importantly, we are able to minimise the impact radiation has on our life through certain means.
It's obvious that excessive on-line chatting and games will affect our children's study and normal life; however, we can set the time and length of their visual entertainment with proper guidance.
We know that the theory of con traditions are conducive to developments, so let's hope that everything keeps going towards a positive side.
| | Chinese to English: 中国政府应认真对待全球变暖 | Source text - Chinese 中国政府应认真对待全球变暖
Comment Body :
全球变暖已变得越来越严峻,这些年发生的台风等自然灾害方面可以看出,我觉得政府有必要采取措施来解决全球变暖问题:
1.宣传"全球变暖"知识给公众,让公众了解全球变暖的危害,进而转变公众保护环境意识
2.政府要制定一部环境保护法,规范企业/工厂等减少排放二氧化碳,使用高效率和高环保的技术
3.建议政府加强国际上的环保合作,共同对待全球变暖 | Translation - English
Call for Chinese Government's efforts to confront the challenge of global warming.
I believe our government should take some effective measures to eliminate the hazards of global warming, since global warming has been increasingly affecing our life, and natural disaters resulted from global warming, such as typhoon, have caused more and more problems throughout the world.
Belowing are some proposed measures to be taken into account to confront global warming.
1. We should raise the public's awarness of the importance of enviornmental protection by dessminating knowledge and information "global warming". We hope the public could realise how many potential risks have been or could be resulted from global warming.
2. It is necessary for the government to formulate harsh laws for enviornment protection to urge the companies or factories to reduce carbon emission and to adop new enviornmental-friendly and energy-efficiency techologies.
3. It is desirable for all the governments to enhance their cooperations with respect to envionmental protection. Without global efforts, it is unlikely for us to succeeconfront glob
| | Chinese to English: 危险并未过去 | Source text - Chinese 地震死亡人数如此众多,建筑倒塌得如此诡异,不仅仅是天灾的原因。但追究责任、体制改革等杜绝“人祸”的必要举措看来至今还没有真正落实,这是否意味着:如果再有同样类型的灾难的话,我们还是要经历这样大的痛苦?
| Translation - English Risk has not faded away
We can not only blame natural disasters when we saw so many people died in the earthquake, and so many houses collapsed and being ruined disastously. However, essential steps haven't been taken to prevent man-made accidents, such as affixing responsibility for the incarged ones and reforming certain systems. So does this indicate that we have to face this kind of misery once again, if disaters at this earthquake level will happy again?
| More Less | | Master's degree - University of Surrey | | Registered at ProZ.com: Jan 2009. | | N/A | Chinese to English (Institute of Translation & Interpreting) | | ITI | | Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Excel, Microsoft Word, Powerpoint, SDL TRADOS | | Haihong He endorses ProZ.com's Professional Guidelines (v1.0). | | About me Freelance Translator with a MA degree in Translation (Business and Technical Translation) granted by the University of Surrey, and 5 years of bilingual language services in Chinese and English.
I am specialised in the field of Social Science , namely, philosophy, history, lingusitics, etc, as well as Business and Technical translation.
Currently, I am doing my PhD at the University of Surrey, in the subject of Philosophy, Education and Culture with special reference to Professional Ethics. And one of the course I am determined to undertake in my PhD studies is the translation of the Chinese philosophier Liang Shuming's work -- "Eastern and Western Cultures and their Philosophies". |
| Keywords: technical and economic translations
Profile last updated Mar 13, 2009 |