王船山《四書箋解》析論

Wang Chuanshan 'Four Book Notepaper Solution' analyzes theory

《四書箋解》為船山督課所講，隨機點發，非若《大全》之橫陳，故亦不若《讀四書大全》之廣為人知。有明之際，中葉以後，亂象迭起，講章時文者，談論《四書》，每隨口而說，只在章句尋工夫，於書中精要，其知者說之，其不知者含糊引過，或胡言以對，遂使聖人章法為之割裂；又以王學末流，心學為尚，卻乏實踐，亦使思想流於膚淺空泛，則《箋解》之述，一駁講章時文，再駁王學，蓋為有因。惟以所述斷續連綴，故評時文者顯，論王學者隱，此為讀本書者之一大關鍵。若船山之思，則承宋儒脈絡，獨契張載而略別程朱，故於朱註，雖表贊同，但未全然肯定，於有疑者，仍下一己之見，治學之不茍，可以曉知。至若立說之間，非逐章以論，乃隨文解說，蓋取精用閎，使聖賢理義，彰顯明達；循是以言，而船山講學之泱泱氣象，實已涵蘊其中。

Four Book Notepaper Solution was proposed at random by Wang Chuanshan while supervising students’ learning. The content was neither comprehensive as Comprehensive work nor well-known as Reads Four Book Comprehensive works. During the era of Ming Dynasty, the social disorders occurred repeatedly. Then many articles spoke of Four Books casually and only focused on the sentence structures. Those who knew well the nature of Four Books could talk about the content comprehensively and those who didn’t get the points explained it ambiguously or just spoke nonsense instead. This chaos not only led to the disguised fragment of the nature of Four Books but also resulted in the superficial and vague explanations of the theme. Wangxue-xinxue theory was the most of all the vague explanations. In view of this, Wang Chuanshan proposed The Four Book Notepaper Solution to refute those disguising articles and Wangxue-xinxue criticism. The Notepaper solution drew people’s attention on the discussion of the social disorders rather than on Wangxue-xinxue theory. Wang Chuanshan inherited the ideas of the great scholars of Song Dynasty. His thought was closed to Chang Zhai’s and different slightly from Cheng & Zhu’s. Even though Wang agreed on Zhu’s thought; however, it was not totally accepted by him. Wang not only questioned some parts of the thought but also made comments on the questioned parts. This attitude showed his dedication and carefulness to studying. He carried on the scholars’ ideas in his casual lectures. His lectures aimed at the nature themes in stead of struggling on detailed contents. This way not only made Wang’s thought easily accepted by the students but also brought out his practical teaching style and such teaching style was exactly the same as what the great scholars advocated for.