「主智」與「仁本」：朱子哲學的道德規範性之思

Intellectualism and Benevolence as the Foundation: Reflections on Moral Normativity in Zhu Xi’s Philosophy

「仁本」或「仁包四德」作為宋儒本體工夫論的核心命題，對儒家倫理學中的道德規範性之內容與根源，進行了貼切的描述。對於「如何認識規範性」這一問題，朱子採取了「主智」進路，即在工夫前提上，以是非之心的發動作為「明明德」之端；在工夫內容上，以智德「分別是非」之功能，指向以「所以然之理」與「所當然之則」為代表的規範性事實；在工夫目的上，則以智德完滿實現為導向。面對「以知識的態度講道德」與「混淆德性之知與聞見之知」的質疑，朱子對格物「合內外」、「以內為重」的理解，構成了對前者的回答；而主張道德知覺與一般知覺同為智德的功能，並結合具有「行動者相關」特徵的道德實在論觀點，則回應了後者。以上觀點，可以概括為「智是諸德的認識論前提與工夫論基礎」，而這又以「仁是諸德的存有論基礎」這一總命題為前提。

The core proposition of the Song Confucian ontology, of either benevolence as the foundation or benevolence encompassing the four virtues, accurately characterizes the content and origins of moral normativity in Confucian ethics. For the issue of how to understand normativity, Zhu Xi adopted a tripartite intellectualist approach: epistemologically, he took the activation of the heart/mind that distinguishes right from wrong as the starting point for illustrating illustrious virtue (ming mingde); methodologically, he directed the intellectual virtue’s function of discrimination toward normative facts represented by the reason for the existence of things (suoyiran zhi li) and the reason according to which things should exist (suodangran zhi ze); teleologically, he oriented self-cultivation toward the perfection of intellectual virtue.
In response to critiques accusing him of approaching morality through intellectual knowledge and of confusing moral knowledge with empirical knowledge, Zhu Xi addressed the former criticism through his understanding of gewu as integrating internal and external while prioritizing the internal. Furthermore, he addressed the latter through his view that moral perception and ordinary perception share the same cognitive function of intellectual virtue—possessing agent-relative characteristics within a moral realist framework. These positions can be summarized as intellectual virtue serving as the epistemological precondition and practical foundation for all virtues, which itself presupposes the overarching proposition that benevolence constitutes the ontological foundation of all virtues.