唐君毅先生(1909-1978)的史學價值判斷論

Abstract

Professor T'ang Chun-I is a philosopher, idealist, humanist and neo-Confucianist. He commands a great variety of different kinds of knowledge. His concern of the different aspects of culture, of the development of human history as well as of the science of history is noteworthy. However, his consideration of the latter is not well known. By the way, as a historian, I am very interested in his discussion on the topic of the science of history, especially on his discourse on the value judgement of the science of history. The present article thus serves as a tentative attempt to elaborate his theory relative to the historical value judgement. It contains the following four parts: (1) Introduction I am of the opinion that if we accept the weather reporter, whose very aim is to provide the best service to the spectators, to use the terms ”very hot”, ”very cold”, etc. which are actually value orientated, to forecast next day's weather, we should, due to the same reason (to provide the best service to the readers), accept the historians to pass the value judgement on the past events as well as on the historical figures. (2) The Chinese historians' tradition of passing value judgement The author of the present article gives a brief account on the Chinese historians' tradition of passing value judgement, which has lasted more than two thousand or even three thousand years. (3) T'ang Chun-I's theory of passing historical value judgement (a) Firstly, the author of the present article identifies the following terms: historical opinion, historical discourse and historical value judgement, due to the reason that they have roughly the same meaning. (b)The content of the philosophy of history is rather rich. Among the different ”ingredients”, historical value judgement is without any doubt part of it; and it is this very part which is most noteworthy in the Chinese historical tradition. As a result, T'ang Chun-I pays great attention to it. (c) T'ang Chun-I is of the opinion that to pass historical value judgement is a quite natural human behavior. Furthermore, he states that it is actually a historian's obligation and duty to do so. (d) T'ang Chun-I argues that those historians who object to pass historical value judgment is ridiculous and is actually a dereliction of duty. (e)T'ang Chun-I claims that the historical value judgement actually plays an important role of promoting the valuable human performances and transforming the performances contrary to the human values. (f) T'ang Chun-I states that historians should anyhow pass value judgement, but strongly suggests that it should be passed after factual judgement has been made, because this is the very way of training and cultivating oneself to be a cognitive subject. (4) Conclusion The author of the present article finally affirms that T'ang Chun-I is a philosopher full of wisdom and benevolence, his discussion on the issue of the historical value judgement serves as a good example.