湯恩比的歷史觀及其博雅教育理念探析

The Ideas of Toynbee's Historical Philosophy and Liberal Education

湯恩比是最負盛名的歷史學家之一。他以文明作為其解釋人類歷史的核心概念，認為文明代表著人類在各種社會的歷史意義。他最偉大的著作《歷史研究》，透過近三十種文明闡釋文明的誕生、發展、衰退、離析和消失，乃依循著「挑戰與回應」的某種律則推進。他曾於麥爾斯所編著的《從歷史觀點看教育》一書中，以相同的歷史哲學觀點，論述學校教育中所面臨的挑戰與困境。他指出專業化理工知識與人文學科分離，意味著原有創造文明的離析，是文明衰落的開始，而倡導人文主義的教育精神，一方面也指出要絕大多數的普羅大眾學習源自於古代少數人的文化遺產是困難的，何況是東西方更多不同環境背景下的所有民眾，進而對博雅教育的實施提出了看法。本文茲整理其歷史觀的要旨和博雅教育的相關理念，提供關心此議題的人士參考。

Arnold J. Toynbee is one of the most famous historians in history. He used civilization to explain the core idea of human history and considered civilization to be the historic meaning of human in different societies. In his greatest book, ”Study of History”, he explored about 30 kinds of different civilization to interpret how the civilization to birth, development, breakdown, disintegration and dissolution was followed the laws of challenge and response. He also described the challenge and predicament of school education in the book of ”Education in the perspective of history” using the same viewpoint of his historical philosophy. He pointed out the separation of professional technological knowledge and humanities to be the disintegration of original civilization and beginning of civilization decadence. He proposed Humanism is the spirit of education and how to practice the liberal education in his work. However, he also indicated that it would be not very easy for most people to learn the old culture from the minority of ancient times in the same culture, not to mention the other people from different cultures. The article tries to work out his main ideas and the extending ideas related to liberal education, and to refer the ideas to the people who concern this project.