If we can no longer ignore China and its Confucian perspective, what in concrete terms does the Confucian tradition have to offer a changing world cultural order? As a living cultural tradition, the continuities between contemporary China and its earliest cultural roots are much more evident than that the more tenuous links between ancient Greece and the modern nation state of Greece, or between ancient Rome and what is now modern Italy, or between ancient Egypt and its contemporary presence.

我们如果不能再忽视中国及其儒家的视角的话，那么它对于正在变化当中的世界秩序有什么贡献？作为一个生生不息的文化传统，现代中国及其最早的文化根本之间的连续性关系比古希腊和今天的希腊、古罗马和今天的意大利、古埃及和今天的埃及要更加明显。

 

China provides a hybridic and inclusive model of cultural change wherein the heat of contest over the centuries has fired the furnace of amalgamation and fusion. This is a tradition in which the tides of Western learning, Buddhism first and then in its various waves from the Jesuits to Protestant educators to the influx of Marxism and down to phenomenology and pragmatism in our own times, have been ingested and internalized to become the evolving Confucian tradition itself.

近几百年来，文化之间的竞争与争论点燃了融会与融合的熔炉，而中国就此文化之变化提供了一个兼容并蓄、包容异己的模式。这是一个一直在西学东渐的海潮之下的传统，先是佛家然后是耶稣会的传教士和提倡马克思主义的人物及至今的现象学和实用主义，各个都被中国吸收和内在化而变成了儒家传统自己的一部分。

 

And the enduring momentum of this Confucian tradition comes from the fact that it proceeds from a relatively straightforward account of the actual human experience. Confucianism, rather than relying upon metaphysical presuppositions or supernatural speculations, is a pragmatic naturalism in the sense that it focuses on the possibilities for enhancing personal worth available to us here and now, through enchanting the ordinary affairs of the day.

而儒家这个传统的持久声势的来源，就是它对于人类经验的比较照直的描述。儒家不依赖形而上学的假定或者超自然的猜测，而是实践自然主义，是将关注点放在通过人们日常处理生活事务时，实现个人在当时当刻最大价值的可能性。

 

Confucianism as a culture is simply the attempt to inspire the most ordinary of things within the human experience to become the most extraordinary of things. In this process of the intergenerational transmission of a living civilization, the cultural genealogy is implicated in and dependent upon the productive cultivation of its participants. And by extension, the meaning of the entire cosmos is implicated in and dependent upon the productive cultivation of persons within their families and communities.

作为一个文化，儒家对于人类经验中最一般东西进行有灵感和启发性的尝试，而使之变成它最优秀的东西。在这个生生不息的文明代代相承过程中，文化的谱系与传承内含并依于人们终日乾乾的修养和教化。推之而言，整个宇宙的意义也在于人们在其家庭与社会之中的修养和教化。

 

Personal worth is the source of human culture, and human culture in turn is the compounding resource that provides the context for each person’s cultivation. In terms of its religious sensibilities, Confucianism offers an alternative “family-centered” rather than “God-centered” religiousness that unlike the competing Abrahamic traditions, is not given to posturing as singular, exclusive, and absolute. Such a human religiousness has not, in the name of some ostensive One Truth, precipitated war and carnage among its adherents.

个人的价值是人类文化的源泉，而人类文化反过来也为每个人的修养提供了背景。就宗教意识而言，不同于竞争态度的亚伯拉罕宗教是“以上帝为中心（God-centered）”的宗教性，儒家而是一种“以家庭为中心（family-centered）”的宗教性，它不倾向于单一的、排外的、和绝对的特性。这种宗教性并不以外在“唯一真理”的名义促使信徒之间的战争和屠杀。

 

Confucianism is at once a-theistic, and profoundly religious. It does not appeal to an independent, retrospective, and substantive Divine Agency as the reality behind appearance and as the source of all cosmic significance. Indeed, it is a religious tradition without a God; a religious sensibility affirming a spirituality that emerges out of the inspired human experience itself. For Confucianism, the world is an autogenerative, “self-so-ing” process—ziran er ran 自然而然—that includes the energy of its ongoing transformation as residing within the continuing narrative itself. Its world is an inside without an outside.

儒家既非宗教却有深刻的宗教性。它并不诉诸一个独立、回溯的、实体性的神去作为现象背后的真理和宇宙意义的来源。的确，儒家是一个没有上帝的宗教性传统；它是一种肯定出自人类经验本身的宗教情怀。对于儒家来说，世界是一个自然而然（“self-so-ing”）的自生自成的过程，而此过程的不止的力量都包含在所发生的变化的叙述本身当中。它的世界是内在的，非外在的。

 

And human feelings themselves are the motor of religious meaning, understood both retrospectively and prospectively as an unfolding and inclusive spirituality achieved within the qualitatively inspired activities of the family, the community, and the natural world. Human beings are both inspired by and contributors to the numinosity that elevates and refines the human experience within the world in which we live.

而人情本身是宗教性意义的驱动力，回溯且前瞻性地被理解为一个在于家庭、社群和自然世界中所实现的不断延展的和包容性的精神。人类既收到宗教性的启发也为它的发展做出了贡献，提升和完善了我们所生活的世界中的人类经验。

 

There is no church (except for the extended family), no altars (except perhaps for the dining room table), and no clergy (except for the exemplary models both past and present who are deferred to as the living center of the community). Confucianism celebrates the way in which the process of human growth and extension is shaped by, and contributes to, the meaning of the totality—a notion of creatio in situ that stands in stark contrast to the theology of the creatio ex nihilo traditions in which the creator Godhead is everything and His creatures are nothing.

没有教会（除扩大了的家庭外），没有祭坛（除餐桌外），没有牧师（除了为人民社会作为中心的古今之君外）。儒家崇尚塑造人类发展和扩展的过程的道以及人类所赋予他这个整体的意义。这个“物中创造”与以造物主为一切而以被造物为贱的“无中创造”的神学传统有非常明显的差别。

 

Confucianism also has a contribution to make to our understanding of social order. Confucian community is grounded in the aspiration for an achieved propriety in human roles and relations (li 禮), a way of translating this key philosophical term that is a considered choice. On the formal side, li are those meaning-invested roles, relationships, and institutions that facilitate thick communication, and that promote the feelings of family and community.

就我们对于社会制度而言，儒家思想也有很大的贡献。儒家社会给予追求“礼”。从正式的一面看，礼是所被赋予意义的角色、关系和促成浓厚沟通的社会结构，同时又促使家庭和社会的情感。

 

All formal conduct constitutes one aspect of li—including table manners, patterns of greeting and leave-taking, graduations, weddings, funerals, gestures of deference, ancestral sacrifices, and so on. In this formal sense, the li constitute a social syntax that, in the semiotics of the human experience, provides each member with a defined place and status within the family, community, and polity.

一切正式行为构成礼的一面—包括餐桌礼仪、迎送客人、毕业典礼、婚礼、丧礼、谦让行为、祭祀祖先等等。在正式意义上，礼构成一个社会语法，而由于人类经验的意义为他们提供具体的地方，包括家庭的、社会的和国家的。

 

But the li within this process cosmology are rhythm rather than form. The existential aspect of li makes them alive, always provisional, and emergent. The pattern of li can be fairly described in terms of a cultural hermeneutic as it is transmitted from generation to generation, serving a living civilization as repositories of meaning, and enabling persons to appropriate persisting values and to make them appropriate to their own, always novel situations. While we perform the li in the present, much of their efficacy stems from their being a link to the past and thereby, to the future as well.

可是这些过程宇宙观中的礼不是形式而是节奏。礼的生存方面使之活生生的、随时随地的和涌现性的。礼的条理，用文化诠释学的语言来讲，可以说是代代相承的，为一个还活着的文明作为意义的仓库，而也让人采取坚持下来的价值而又将之用在自己的新颖情况中。虽然我们是在当下进行这些礼，它的有效性来自它之作为过去与未来的环节。

 

In the discursive family and community, social order emerges out of the relational virtuosity made possible by effective communication, and li is nothing less than communal “language” in its broadest sense.

在起到教育作用的家庭和社会中，社会秩序从关系性的“德（virtuosity）”而来，这种“德”通过人与人之间尽可能好的沟通交流体现，而“礼”不过是最广义上公用的“语言”。

 

Certainly li is linguistic, but it is much more than just speaking to each other. It is also the language of body and gesture, of music and food, of protocols and ceremony, of institutions and their functions, of roles and relationships. For Confucius, the “human becoming” as a social achievement is an adaptive success made possible through the applications of the social intelligence perpetuated through li.

“礼”的确是一种语言，只是它要比用口说的语言有更深更丰富的意义。“礼”也是身体的语言，饮食的语言，也是音乐、规则、仪式、机构及其作用的、角色和关系的语言。就儒家而言，人（或曰“变在人类”、“过程性的人” human becoming）作为社会成果的是一种适应性的成果，因通过对渗透着“礼”的社会性智慧的应用去践行而得以可能。

 

Society is not derivative of individual properties, nor is the individual the product of social forces. Associated living and the personal collaboration such individuality entails does not bring discrete people together in relationships, but rather makes increasingly productive what is already constitutively related. Confucianism provides a conception of family and community based on the pursuit of a sustained propriety within the roles and relations that bind them together.

社会不是个人财产的衍生物，个人也不是社会力量的产物。人的个体性所意味着的公共生活和合作不是把具体的个人聚起来，而是使这个本来就紧密不分的事物变得更加多产和密切。儒家思想提供的家庭和社会的观念，基于紧紧绑在一起的角色和关系对于恰当性的追求。

 

As what is most fundamental and enduring, li nurtures the internal dynamic of social and political order, making the invocation and imposition of the rule of law, while unfortunately necessary at times, always second-best, and a clear admission of communal failure.

作为最基本和持久的东西，礼培育了社会和政治秩序的内在动力，虽然也使人们援引和实施法治，但只是有时是必要的，法治在公共关系出现大问题的时候是必要的，“礼”使得法律成为第二选择，不是第一选择。

 

With respect to Confucianism’s contribution to human culture as a philosophy of education, we must begin by acknowledging that personal cultivation is certainly the root of Confucian philosophy, and again that such personal growth is itself the substance of education.

儒家作为教育哲学，就对于人类文化的贡献而言，必须首先承认个人修养是儒家哲学的根本，且承认这样的个人修身就是教育的实质。

 

But we must also observe that any root that has not been properly set and that is lacking a fertile environment will soon wither and die. To continue this horticultural metaphor, Confucian education must be understood as a process that is “radically” embedded in and grows within the roles and relations that constitute us as persons in the fertile context of our families and communities.

但我们也得意识到任何一个根，如果没有被正确种植而且缺乏肥沃的环境，就会很快枯死。沿着这个园艺比喻接着讲，儒家教育须理解为是“根深蒂固”地在家庭和社会的肥沃环境中、在构成我们的角色和关系中成长。

 

The close link between education and Confucian morality lies in the fact that they are both grounded in a sustained growth in our roles and relations. Education so conceived is not instrumental as a means to some desired end, but is a process that is an end in itself. We pursue education and thus grow simply to live intelligent lives, and we become moral through this growth in our relations simply to behave as moral human beings.

道德和儒家教育之间是所以紧密关系，是因为两者都基于角色和关系中的生长。如此理解的教育不是为了达到某种目标的工具性的手段，而是这个过程本身就是目标。我们追求教育，过有智慧的生活，通过在关系中的生长过程而成为有道德的人。

 

With “family reverence” (xiao 孝) as the governing moral imperative of classical Confucianism, it is clear that any understanding of philosophy of education in this tradition must begin from the primacy of those vital roles and relations that constitute us as persons in family and community. That is, within this interpretive framework, associated, interpersonal living is taken to be an uncontested, empirical fact. Every person lives and every event takes place within a vital natural, social, and cultural context. Our lives are lived not beneath our skins, but in the world. And no one and no thing does anything by itself.

因为“孝”是经典儒家最关怀的道德命题，所以理解这个传统的教育哲学必须在构成我们的具有生力的家庭和社会的角色和关系开始。就是说，在这个阐释语境中，人与人之间分不开的、相互的关系是一个不争的经验事实。每一个人的生活和每一个事件都在有生生的自然、社会和文化语境中发生。我们的生活不在皮囊之里，而是在世界中。而且没有一个人或一个东西能够单独地、脱离关系地做任何事情。

 

Association being a fact, our different roles lived within family and community are nothing more than the stipulation of specific modes of associated living: mothers and grandsons, teachers and students, and even second cousins and shopkeepers.

因为人与人之间的联系不分是事实，所以我们在家庭和社会中所扮的不同角色不过是被定下来的关系性的生活模式：母亲与子孙、老师与学生、甚至表堂表哥和店长。

Many of these designated roles, far from being arbitrary and contingent, can be traced back into the mists of history and the emergence of human beings in their earliest forms as being basic to the human experience of family and community life. The role of mothers and communal elders are integral to the human genealogy.

很多这些特定的角色并不是随意和偶然的，其实它们可以追溯到历史的迷雾以及人类最早出现为有家庭和公共生活的时候。母亲和村长对于人类谱系很重要。

 

But while we must acknowledge that associated living is a simple fact, the consummate conduct that comes to inspire virtuosity in the roles lived in family, community, and the cultural narrative broadly is normative. What we have come to call “Confucian role ethics” is no more than stipulated kinds of association that register the personal growth of each person in the roles that they live.

可是虽然必须承认关系性的生活是一个简单事实，是“仁”启发了在家庭、社会、和文化叙事中德行行为，它是规范性的。我们所谓的“儒家伦理学”不过是这些被定义的人间关系中的角色。

 

Confucian role ethics is what human beings, with effort and imagination, are able to make of the fact of association.

以足够的努力和想象力，儒家伦理学是从人与人联系不分的生活事实所能做出来的。

 

With Confucian role ethics as a vision of the moral life then, Confucianism offers a win-win or lose-lose alternative to the divisive and deflationary model of winners and losers characteristic of the ideology of liberal individualism.

以儒家角色伦理学看待道德生活，与自由个人主义的意识形态对比，儒家提供的则是一个“双赢”或“双输”的选择。

 

Indeed, when we turn to Confucian role ethics, the specific guidelines offered for consummate conduct, rather than appealing to self-sufficient, abstract principles or values or virtues, look primarily to theorizing practice within the contours of our concrete and existentially more immediate, familial and social roles.

的确，转向儒家角色伦理学时，为“成仁”行为提供的具体做法，不诉诸于自足的、抽象的原则，抽象的价值或美德，而它主要在具体的直接存在的家庭和社会角色中去理论实践。

 

In contrast to abstract principles, there is a vital sense of propriety in our lived roles and relations that we can feel viscerally—a commitment to what it means to be this son to this mother. And on that basis, role ethics provides the kind of intuitive insight that would suggest to us, quite specifically, what we ought to do next.

与抽象原则相比，我们在生活中所处的角色能够出于内在感受到我们关系和角色的恰当性—成为这个母亲的这个儿子所包含的责任。而在这个基础上，角色伦理学提供的直观视角为我们提示了我们下一步应当怎么做。

 

Role ethics in offering insight into how to behave most productively in our relations, provides an explanation for proper conduct that does not obscure the inevitable complexity of human activities in service to a simple-minded sense of right and wrong. “Because he is my brother” is both a disarmingly simple and yet a profoundly complex justification for my conduct, and is persuasive in a way that other reasons are not.

角色伦理学为我们提供了在我们关系中最有效的行事方法的洞见，为了服务一个简单的是非观，它为恰当的行为提供不掩盖人类活动不可避免的复杂性的解释。对于关系中最有产生力行为的洞见，为了服务一个简单的是非观，它提供一个不遮蔽人类活动中的正当性为的复杂性的解释。“因为他是我的兄弟”不仅是一个极为简单的行为证据，而且也甚为复杂。而它在其他理由缺乏说服力的时候，恰恰能够说服人。

The single most important common denominator within the various areas of the Confucian cultural sensorium rehearsed above, from education to ethics, is the relationally-constituted conception of persons. I have made the argument that perhaps the most important contribution Confucian philosophy has to offer our times is precisely its own elaborate, sophisticated, and ethically compelling conception of a relationally-constituted persons that can be drawn upon to critique and to challenge the entrenched ideology of foundational individualism.

在儒家文化所感知的各个领域中，最重要的就是上面提到的，从教育到伦理学，就是由关系构成的人的这个概念。我得出的结论是，儒家对于当今的世界最重要的贡献，就在于它复杂的、精致的和启发道德思想的关系构成的人的观念，可以用来批判和挑战一直以来根深蒂固的基础个人主义意识形态。

In particular, at a critical time when we can fairly anticipate a quantum transformation in the changing world cultural order, it is this alternative conception of persons as human becomings that recommends most clearly to me that we would do well to give Confucianism its place at the table.

具体地说，在这个我们可以预期世界文化秩序的变化的关键时刻，正是这另一种把人看成是过程性的“人观”告诉我，我们应该在交流桌上给儒学一个位置。

The argument is not that the Confucian values I am advocating can be mustered to solve all of the world’s problems. Nor has the argument been that the ineluctable forces of Westernization are pernicious and need to somehow be contained. Instead, my attempt to bring attention to the Confucian tradition has been that we do well to make room for all of the cultural resources available to us at a time when the most dramatic changes to the human condition in the history of our species are gathering on the horizon.

我的论点并不是主张儒家价值能够解决世界所有的问题，也并不是说不可避免的西方化势力是有害且需加以遏制的。而是引起人们对儒家传统的关注，把它作为应对世界将要面对的危机的文化资源之一。

In many ways, the position advanced herein has been compensatory, trying to overcome the kind of ignorance that comes with the uncritical ignoring of an ancient tradition integral to the identity of a quarter of the world’s population. There is much to be valued in this Confucian cultural tradition as a source of enrichment for world culture, and as a substantial critique of our existing values, and we would all do well to know it better.

在很多不同的方面上，这里所提出的观点是在填补对来自对于世界四分之一的人口的古代传统的忽视所带来的无知。儒家文化传统具有丰富的价值，可以作为丰富世界文化的一个来源，也可以作为对我们现存的价值的批判，我们应该更好的了解它。

For those who do believe that Confucian philosophy has values and institutions that can be of significant benefit to a new world cultural order, important and critical questions need to be asked retrospectively about both the contributions and the failings of Confucianism as a pan-Asian phenomenon over its long history.

对于那些相信儒家哲学的价值和制度能够给予新世界文化秩序有重大意义的人来说，我们需要往回看，继续思考儒学在其悠久历史中泛亚洲历史现象的贡献和失败之处，进而提出重要和批判性的问题。

Prospectively too, we must ask if the globalization of Confucian values would make a felicitous difference in the contemporary global dynamic, and if so, how the prevailing and impoverishing equation between modernity and Westernization that erases Confucian culture altogether is to be challenged? And perhaps most importantly, how can a global Confucianism be retrofitted to constitute a critical, progressive, evolutionary, and emergent force that will make its own contribution to resolving the pressing issues of our times?

我们还需要往前看，须质问，儒家价值的全球化是否有益于改善当今世界的局面，如果是的话，我们将如何挑战“全球化即西方化”等式对儒家文化意义的忽视，这是个不得不问的问题。而或许最重要的是，一个世界性的儒学如何改进并建立起一个批判的、不断前进的、发展和新兴的力量来为解决我们今天这个时代的紧迫问题做出自己的贡献？