“老子年代”問題在民初(1919-1936)論辯過程的分析研究

Abstract

During the period of early republican society, the outbreak of public polemic against Lao-Tzu era was triggered by Hu-Shih's work published in 1919 under the title ”An Outline of History of Chinese Philosophy”, which adopted an old theory that positioned Lao-Tzu higher than Confucius. This adoption aroused scholars' doubts and questions about backgrounds of the ancient ideological trend. The polemic had lasted for sixteen years and generated more than four hundred thousand textual criticisms which covered not merely true and false about Lao-Tzu's manuscripts and as an individual, but also discussed about reflections of conventional Confucianism by the early republican society, emergence of studies on Zhu-Zi, and even the development of studies of documents orthodoxy during late-Qing period. Hence, the subject matter of this study is putting focus on the perspectives of modern intellectual history; not on investigation and identification of antediluvian philosophy. The study will illustrate the complete history of this period by means of data integration. First of all, beginning with argumentation, problem finding, and defining values-these three procedures which are aimed to identify and understand the initiation and termination, as well as the meaning of that historical event in order to avoid entwinement with minor issues that might cause perplexity of the discourse. Secondly, displaying one of the textual criticism works through mutual references to related literature and rejuvenation of ancient learning movement; of which the results from the following two academic issues, goal and method of textual criticism research, would proceed to the identification and understanding of new culture movement scholars' essays on conferring ”ancient learning” with modern values; then, in this circumstance, where does the cognitive border lie? Thirdly, according to the values of ancient historical reconstructions and materials, results of these debates also deeply influenced the cogitation process in the modern intellectual thoughts, particularly towards divergences among new culture movement scholars and revolution of modern doubters on antiquity.