董仲舒從師到素王的心結

Remoulding Confucius from a 'Guru' into a 'King without the Crown' is Dong Zhongshu's Ultimate Desire

教育素來是儒家的核心價值，孔、孟、荀三位先秦大儒，學術路數雖不盡相同，但均強調師道的重要性。然而，董仲舒為漢儒宗，其力作《春秋繁露》中，卻極少提及師道，並在〈策問〉中，把孔子定位為素王。本文發現董氏在仁義之道上，詳於義，略於仁，故近荀而遠孔孟；在性論上，非人之共性，則又遠於荀子。孔子時，已將師轉化為價值秩序，然受限於客觀環境，董生時，師似乎又下降至居天子之下的臣位了。為了平衡權力不向君主的傾斜，董生試圖把孔子和《春秋》的地位提高，產生了孔子為素王之說，試圖從理論與象徵兩方面，繼續儒家對君權的約制。

Education has always been a core value of Confucianism. Although the pre-Qin master-scholars including Confucius, Mencius and Xunzi took ideological paths that were not entirely similar to one another, they had all placed huge importance on the ways of teaching. Nevertheless, Dong Zhongshu, who was looked upon as the 'grand master of Confucianism' of the Han Dynasty, rarely mentioned 'the ways of teaching' in his masterpiece “Chunqiu Fanlu”. In his “TianRenSanCe”, however, Dong had positioned Confucius as 'the king without a crown'. When Dong Zhongshu talked about the ways of benevolence and righteousness, Dong's ideology was closer to that of Xunzi than to that of Mencius. On the subject of 'human nature', however, Dong held the view that human beings might not have a 'common nature', a point that made him different from Xunzi. Originally, Confucius had already succeeded to shift the meaning of 'junzi' （a gentleman）. From just meaning people of high social or political ranks, the term was also attached with moral and ethical values. In Dong's hands, it seems that the term 'teacher' had fallen from its previous moral high ground, a 'teachers' was no more than a 'court official' working under the 'emperor'. In order to balance the power from the emperor, Dong intentionally elevated the status of both Confucius and the book “Spring and Autumn”. The idea of calling Confucius as 'a king without the crown' was born. It was Dong's attempt to prolong the countering effects of Confucianism on the absolute power of the emperor both theoretically and symbolically.