蘇轍『孟子解』に見るその歷史󠄁思想

Abstract

Su Zhe 蘇轍, a prominent literary figure of the Northern Song dynasty, wrote many works concerned with history. When we consider the thought of a Northern Song dynasty scholar like Su Zhe, one of the most important clues is how he interpreted Mencius 孟子. Su Zhe had studied Mencius from a young age and wrote a commentary on Mencius called the Mengzijie 孟子解. It should be noted that this book contains numerous discussions of history. First, starting from his thoughts on the taxation system of the Sandai 三代, which Confucianists regard as the ideal, Su Zhe analyzed the process of civilization's development through stages. According to his theory, a sage improves the life of the people at any one time, one step at a time, and not bringing to the highest state all at once. This thinking is closely related to the position of the San Su Shuxue school 三蘇蜀學, which believed that it was wrong to create absolute standards of good and evil, and that the measure of good and evil changes with the times. Second, Su Zhe argued that whether or not a person has the virtue of benevolence is irrelevant to whether or not he could unify China. This is at odds with the assertion of Mencius and is somewhat unnatural in terms of the common understanding in commentaries. In this author's opinion, this assertion by Su Zhe was influenced by the controversy over the legitimacy of historical dynasties, which was a major issue at the time. Su Zhe's evaluation of historical figures also clearly reflects his individualistic thought. While many other commentators criticize Chen Zhongzi 陳仲子 from an ethical point of view, namely, that he did not have a good relationship with his mother and elder brother, this is not the case with Su Zhe. Based on the definition of goodness in the San Su Shuxue school, Su Zhe thought that the problem with Chen Zhongzi's attitude was that he was unable to share it with others and argued that Chen Zhongzi would have been better off compromising and cooperating with those around him. In addition to this, Su Zhe also disagreed with the ethical stance seen in the accusations against Feng Dao 馮道󠄁. Su Zhe's ideas on history seem to have been formed largely through his study of Mencius. At the same time, however, they are also deeply related to the social conditions of his time and should be analyzed from multiple perspectives.