嚴復與《天演論》的接受、翻譯與轉化

Yan Fu and Acception, Translation, Transformation of ＂Tian Yan Lun＂

本文以嚴復《天演論》的創造性譯介作為論析的對象，從嚴復早年的經歷與《天演論》的翻譯兩個部分，著手了解進化的歷史意識如何首度被重新鎔鑄而後帶進中國，以及它為時代所提供的思考與影響。文中先以甲午戰爭後的時代語境及嚴復早年的治學興趣，描摩《天演論》在中國誕生的歷史契機。並強調，嚴復選擇赫胥黎《進化論與倫理學》作為進化論首要的翻譯對象，且在翻譯過程中做了大幅度的改造，乃是為了假「天演」之名，鎔鑄中西學理，創造出契合傳統又兼具時代意義的論著。透過此作的翻譯，嚴復成功的以自然科學與社會學的思維角度，論證社會制度、道德政教的改革乃是合情合理。而中西文化的不同意味著社會發展過程中的不同進度，人們能藉由西方的經驗找出人類歷史演化上先後階段的次序與內容，從而指出中國現存社會之歷史性質、當前應取的走向，和即將踏入的歷史階段。這也是嚴復的「天演」思想對時人與五四前後學人最為關鍵的啟發。

This article studies Yan Fu's creative translation of the ＂Tian Yan Lun＂ (Evolutionism), and depicts how the historical philosophy of evolutionism was first reconstructed and introduced to China, and evaluates its impact and influence on contemporary philosophies by studying Yan’s experiences in his early days and his translation of the ＂Tian Yan Lun＂. The author first describes the social and historical backgrounds of the ＂Tian Yan Lun＂ in China vis-a-vie discussions of social and historical status after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 and Yan’s research interests in his early days. This article stresses that Yan chose Huxley's ＂Evolution and Ethics＂ as his primary source of translation and greatly modified its contents to conduct a meaningful and influential research integrating and reflecting both Chinese and Western cultures and both traditional and contemporary philosophies. Through the translation of this work, Yan successfully demonstrated, from the viewpoints of both natural sciences and social sciences, that the reforms of social systems, ethics, politics and educations were reasonable. He also maintained that Chinese and the Western societies had different profiles of social developments mainly because of their different cultures. He argued that we could summarize the evolutional orders and profiles of human societies by studying the Western experience. This knowledge could help us understand the historical aspect of the contemporary Chinese society, and discern the future directions of social development and the coming historical stage. This is the most crucial and important influence Yan's philosophy of ＂Tian Yan＂ had on those researchers during the May Fourth Movement and on us today.