明中葉知識體系建構的多元取向：從李夢陽〈刻《戰國策》序〉談起

Li Meng-yang’s Preface to the Intrigues of the Warring States and Multiplicity in the Construction of Knowledge System in Mid-Ming China

嘉靖2年（1523），巡按河南的王溱（生卒年不詳）打算刊刻《戰國策》，為此特別請文學復古運動的領導者李夢陽（1473-1530）作序。通過對序文及李夢陽相關著作的細讀，本文旨在說明，從表面看來，李夢陽似乎是以衛道之士的口吻，通過作序的方式批判《戰國策》為畔經離道之書，事實上這篇序文實含有多重視角。要理解李夢陽這篇序文的學術思想史意義，我們必須把它放置在明中葉以還「雜學」或諸子學興起的背景下考慮。跟宋代以來的理學家強調士人學術應該統一在宏大和具普遍意義的「道」之下的傾向不同，明中葉以後的思想家對世界的理解，則是以多元和分別為基礎，強調萬物的分殊和差異。本文將說明，李夢陽序《戰國策》的多重視角，正反映了明代中葉知識界重視多元性和差異性多於普遍性的特點。

 

Li Meng-yang (1473-1530), a leader of mid-Ming literary archaist movement, was invited in 1523 by the inspector of Henan Wang Zhen to write a preface for a reprint of the Intrigues of the Warring States that the latter intended to publish. Through a close reading of the preface and Li’s other works, this paper argues that while Li seems to have, on the surface, taken a moral high round and castigated the Intrigues for deviating from the orthodox teachings of the Classics, he preface actually encourages the readers to approach the text from multiple perspectives. We have to situate the preface in the context of the rise of “miscellaneous learnings” and the “learnings of the masters” in the mid-Ming period in order to appreciate its significance in intellectual history. Departing from the ways the Neo-Confucians since the Song dynasty envisioned literati learning to be a focused pursuit of a grand and universal Way, intellectuals from the mid-Ming onwards began with an assumption of multiplicity and diversity and emphasized disparities among all things. The multiple perspectives that Li Meng-yang exhibits in his preface to the Intrigues is a good case for showing that mid-Ming intellectuals were more inclined to see the world as complex and diverse, rather than to pursue the ideal of universality.