章學誠の「史學」の立場

Abstract

Chang Hsueh-ch'eng (1738-1801) belongs to the so-called Che-tung school which may be called a historical school in the trend of neo-Confucanism, but he elaborated a phase of the historical school further so as to develop his own philosophy of history. In his theory a kind of pure continuous nature as found in Bergsonian phylosophy is given to the traditional Chinese concept of "tao" upon which his world conception and his idea of history is founded. History is regarded as the very learning of accomplishing man by this great scholar who believed in free will and creative spirit. He thinks that history is the only criterion to judge the value of thought, and criticizes the then flourishing school of textual criticism from his own point of view of universal evolutionary historicism. According to his theory the Confucian Canons are the very records where we find the accomplishments of ancient Chiness civilization, while the ancient sages, the authors of the Canons, were moral as well as cultural genii with creative spirit and the Great Master, Confucius, was the author of ancients Chinese thought and culture. In such a sense Chang Hsueh-ch'eng must be regarded as the one who opened a new field in the history of Chinese histbriography.