清初書院之學術自主性及其反政治意涵

Scholarly Autonomy and Political Dissent of Local Academies in the Early Ch’ing

本文探討清朝初年順治、康熙二朝書院之講學活動，並進而討論書院擁有多少學術自由，以及講學家對政治的反抗。一般學者都忽略了清初書院之復興及講學風氣之盛行。雖然順治帝頒布禁令，不準興建新書院，可是新舊書院之復建極其可觀。科舉考試恢復之後，更有助於書院之茁壯。明末遺民如李顒和黃宗羲等更是投身於教育與學術研究，使東林、證人、關中等書院之講學風氣相當蓬勃。他們極具強烈的歷史意識，一方面想保存文化傳統，另一方面想以學術濟世。這些明末遺民非但不肯做滿清的官，更刻意地以己身之學術地位與高尚之人格和康熙皇帝作對。雖然書院享有相當大的自由活動的空間，講學家的講學、講經活動亦帶有反政治之意圖，清初書院是否構成一個「民間社會」(Civil Society)則有待進一步討論。

In its over nine hundreds years of history, local academies in China became the most powerful educational and scholarly institutions. Academies (shu-yuan) were founded in the tenth-century Sung China in increasing number by families and communities to provide for their children's education, which was unavailable from the government. By the twelfth century academies developed into influential teaching and learning institutions, where scholars were trained and intellectual issues were discussed. Academies grew in size and in importance in subsequent dynasties. To date there is still no comprehensive survey of academies. According to one estimate, there were 29 academies in the Northern Sung (960-1125), 140 in the Southern Sung (1126-1279) (or 397 according to another estimate), 227 in the Yuan dynasty (1280-1367). Then came the dramatic increase in the Ming (1368-1643) (1,239) and in the Ch'ing dynasty (1644-1911), which had about two thousand academies. The number itself does not tell the whole story of the academies. Most of them are small institutions that exist for a short period of time. Moreover, in the Ming and Ch'ing dynasties a great number of academies are in fact state schools in disguise. If we only focus on academies that had country-wide reputation in history, their number is relatively small. For example, the official history of the Ming dynasty, the Ming shih, mentions about 40 academies (out of the estimated total of 1,239). Furthermore,if we limit our study to those academies engaging in chiang-hsueh, a distinct style of lecture and discussion on philosophical and moral issues, the number probably is even smaller. The Ming-ju of Ming-ju hsueh-an (Case Studies of Ming Confucianism), for instance, contains references to slightly more than 20 academies. In this paper I will limit myself to discussing the revival of academies engaging in chiang-hsueh in the early years of the Ch'ing dynasty. I especially draw on the experiences of the Ming loyalists, who became leading scholars and great propagators of Neo-Confucian thought as well as “Chinese” cultural identity (vis-a-vis the Manchu) in the new regime that they didn't like very much. What I will discuss is only an aspect of the phenomenon of local academies, but, in my opinion, an important one as far as intellectual history is concerned.