歷史懷疑論、古物研究與近代歐洲史學的起源

Historical Pyrrhonism, Antiquarianism and the Origin of Modern European Historiography

這篇論文目的是探討近代歐洲歷史學界書寫「可信的」「古代史」的學術基礎，由此討論近代歐洲史學方法的起源問題。從古典時代到文藝復興時期，歐洲歷史家發展出一種以史家的見證為基礎，以當代史為主要對象的歷史書寫傳統。但到十六世紀時，這種以「敘事性史源」為基礎的人文主義史學，其可靠性開始受到歷史懷疑論的質疑而陷入一種「歷史意識的危機」。此一史學危機中，因古物學的發展而得以化解。古物學是文藝復興古典學術的一支，試圖以古代文物的收集與考究來重建古代世界，其特色是重視具體可見的文物，如錢幣、銘文、圖像、紀念建築、檔案文獻等。這些具體的文物，因係古人遺留的一手證據，被認為是比敘事性史源更可靠的歷史資料，可據以書寫「可信的」古代史。古物學的興起引起一個史學方法的革命，不但化解人文主義史學的危機，也帶動歐洲歷史家的書寫轉向，從當代史的寫作導向古代史的書寫。

The purpose of this article is to investigate the scholarly foundations of writing “truthful” ancient history in early modern Europe, with a view to tracing the origins of the modern historical method. Renaissance humanists revived the paradigm of the historical writing developed by classical historians, which relied on narrative sources as evidence. But the development of historical pyrrhonism during the sixteenth century, which questioned the reliability of narrative sources, shook the foundations of the humanist historical writings. The rise of antiquarian research, however, helped the humanist historians out of this crisis. Antiquarianism was a branch of Renaissance classical scholarship which attempted to reconstruct the ancient world via material remains such as coins, inscriptions, pictures, monuments, and documents. These tangible objects, being directly left by the ancients, were assumed to be more reliable than narrative sources as historical evidence and could therefore be used to reconstruct trustworthy ancient history. The rise of antiquarianism was to cause a revolution in historical methods, which induced historians to shift to primary sources for historical evidence. In so doing, early modern European antiquarians not only helped to lay the foundations of modern historiography, which cherishes mainly primary sources; they also enabled modern historians to write ancient as well as contemporary history.