天人合一 The Continuity and Interdependence Between Tian and the Human Being (tianren heyi)

伏羲、神農所實踐的是一種“域境化”做法，即有效地實現、將人類經驗與自然運行過程視作同一域境，且使其相合，努力將宇宙的可用性創造潛能，利用到最好程度——伏羲、神農在對《易經》一套深邃卦象的建構之中，耕種出一種“文化”與“自然”之間厚重的不分性。這是一種被體悟到的人的經驗與自然促使文化間相互對接的和諧性，這種和諧狀態顯明地表達于對這一關系特點的描述性用語中，如“天人合一”（宗教性、自然、文化的域境與人經驗的不分性）、“天人相應”或“天人感應”（精神領域與人經驗的相互照應--不分）。值得注意，這種用語所表示的，是人類經驗方面延續不分的共生相互性，而不是世界中兩個原本分立不連的方面后有的結合性。人類的修養不是把世界與人類經驗作為兩件分立的事物而使它們結合在一起，而是讓同屬經驗的兩個本身不可分的部分，由于生態連續性（也即“我與我的世界”）而更深度、緊密地相合。

（《儒家角色倫理學：一套特色倫理學詞匯》，第64頁）

By their efforts at ars contextualis—the art of effectively contextualizing and coordinating the experience of the human being within the processes of nature in an effort to optimize the creative possibilities of the cosmos— Fu Xi and Shen Nong cultivated a thick continuity between“nurture” and “nature” expressed in the evocative images that constitute the Yijing . This perceived resonance between the human experience and the natural and cultural forum in which it occurs is made explicit in expressions that have come to characterize the relationship, such as “the continuity between the religious, natural, and cultural context, and the human experience”(tianren heyi天人合一), and the “mutual responsiveness of the numinous context and the human experience” (tianren xiangying 天人相應or tianren ganying天人感應). It is important to note that such expressions report on the continuing symbiotic mutuality of these dimensions of experience rather than on the reconciliation of two originally separate aspects of the world after the fact. Personal cultivation is not the bringing together and the “uniting”of the world and human experience, but is rather the deepening and intensifying of the productive continuities that conjoin two inseparable aspects of experience, that is, oneself and one's world.

( Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary. pp. 53-54)

其實，在這樣的儒家傳統之中，有一種從“為仁”向著一種以人為中心“宗教感”的直接通道，可作為對人格修養最高的表述。儒家“宗教感”，也即獲得價值感和人格歸屬感的那種強烈意義，在充滿意義的人與人關系交融成長之中，油然而生；當家庭與社會成員都誠心誠意渴望在其與他人關系之上奉獻自己之時，它是那種“精神”，是人們為一種被激發的靈感而活著。這種“宗教感”本身，是家庭興旺、社會繁榮的源泉，也是它的效果。具有這樣“宗教感”的生活也是社會生活品質的直接效果。換句話說，人傾向聚群的“宗教性”不僅是社會幸福生活之“本”和幸福社會發達成長的“種子”，而且最重要的，它是成熟果實、光彩四射的花朵。人的修身與人的精神性，二者的共生協同，生動地蘊含在常用語言之中。這種語言也常是研究“中國宗教感”的學者，將儒家傳統的家國忠孝，與亞布拉罕傳統的崇拜上帝，進行區分而啟用的。也就是說，“天人合一”即儒家傳統的“宗教感”的特質。

（《儒家角色倫理學：一套特色倫理學詞匯》，第104-105頁）

Indeed, in this Confucian tradition, there is a direct corridor from the achieved consummate life to a human-centered religiousness as the highest expression of personal cultivation. Confucian religiousness—the powerful sense of achieved worth and personal belonging that arises from the concerted growth of meaningful relations—is the spirituality achieved when members of family and community aspire to contribute themselves utterly in their relations with others, and thus live inspired lives. Such religiousness is itself the source and product of the flourishing family and community, and the quality of this religious life is a direct consequence of the quality of communal living. Said another way, religiosity is not only the root of the flourishing community and the seed from which it grows, but is most importantly its mature fruit, its radiant flower. The synergy between personal cultivation and the numinous is captured in the familiar mantra that is often appealed to by students of Chinese religiousness in distinguishing Confucian familial and communal reverence from Abrahamic God-inspired worship: That is, Confucian religiousness is characterized by “the symbiotic continuity between the natural and cultural context and the human experience” (tianren heyi天人合一).

(Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary, p. 92)

“天人合一”（自然與文化域境，同人的經驗之間互系不分）——這個流行成語的基本意義是闡述儒家宗教感的意識，講的也是與“潛能”同一的道理。人是受文化的陶冶才成仁的，成仁的生活才可成為文化資源，才能使人成仁具有可能。“潛能”是在這樣孜孜追求的人與富于靈感的世界協同合力中萌發的。

（《儒家角色倫理學：一套特色倫理學詞匯》，第174頁）

The basic significance of the mantra, “the continuity between the natural and cultural context, and the human experience” (tianren heyi天人合一) that is invoked to describe the Confucian religious sensibility is making this same point about potential. It is the person nourished by culture who becomes consummately human, and it is the life of the consummate human who contributes to the cultural resources that make a consummate humanity possible. Potentiality emerges in these collaborations between aspiring persons and an inspired world.

(Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary, p. 156)

簡而言之，自古至今的中國哲學家只認可一種人類經驗與自然文化環境之間的不斷融合，即所謂“天人合一”。不過，這種融合經常被誤解為對自然學科的削弱。它不是被理解為多少主觀性東西與客觀性東西的相互融合，因而尊重人類社會集體對其所在環境進行有效改造的能力“以及”自然世界對這種人類改造的抵制，而是受到一種信仰的支配，道德的主觀性對一個可無限塑造的自然世界具有幾乎絕對的改造力量。這樣的信仰阻礙我們正確對待一種潛能——自然科學堅持改善人類條件。正是這個原因，“唯意志論”變成了一種簡單主觀主義，它對需求科學和技術集體努力的真正原因打了折扣，認為是對自然進行“人化”，以建立主觀與客觀之間的生產力關系。李澤厚認為，這種關系是人類自由的先決條件。

（《儒家角色倫理學：一套特色倫理學詞匯》，第293頁）

The argument, simply put, is that Confucian philosophers from classical times have recognized a continuity between the human experience and their natural and cultural context that is captured in the mantra tianren heyi天人合一．The nature of this continuity, however, has often been misunderstood. Instead of being a continuity between what is more or less subjective and more or less objective, respecting both the ability of the collective human community to transform its environment productively and the resistance of the natural world to this human transformation, it has been dominated by the belief that the moral subject holds almost absolute transformative powers over an infinitely malleable natural world. Such a belief has retarded an appreciation of the potential that the natural sciences hold to improve the human condition. As such, this voluntarism has become a kind of raw subjectivism that discounts the real need for collective efforts in science and technology to “humanize” nature in order to establish a productive relationship between subject and object, a relationship that Li Zehou takes to be a precondition for human freedom.

(Confucian Role Ethics: A Vocabulary, p. 264)

儒家的宗教性產生于這樣一個基本假定：即天人一體，相互依賴。天與特殊的個人之間的關聯，經常用“天人合一”的術語加以表達，這一術語被用來概括這一時期的宗教感悟方式。因此，孟子說：

盡其心者，知其性也。知其性，則知天矣。（《孟子·盡心上》）

在儒家經典中，天與道即使不被用以相互替代，也是經常相互聯系的?？鬃邮冀K認為：“人能弘道，非道弘人?！?/p>

Confucian religiousness begins from the assumption that there is a continuity and interdependence between tian 天，conventionally translated as “Heaven,” and the human being (ren人). This correlativity between tian and the particular person is often captured in the claim that tianren heyi天人合一(literally, “tian and human beings are continuous”)used to summarize religious sensibilities during this period. Hence, the Mencius observes:

For a person to realize fully one's heart-and-mind is to realize fully one's nature and character, and in so doing, one realizes tian .

Tian and “the way” ( dao 道 ) are often associated if not used interchangeably in the classical Confucian corpus. And Confucius insists that “it is the human being who broadens the way, not the way that broadens the human being.”

天人一體、相互依賴表現于源于孟子的、人們熟悉的哲學路線：“萬物皆備于我?！蔽覀兛梢詫@一主張作以下解釋。人作為環境中人（persons-in-context）總是完全處于一定的境況之中，在一個由特定的社會、文化和自然的條件所規定的世界中繼承了傳統。個人既形成了又形成于他所處的區域，這區域是由事情和事件構成的。在一個特定的情境中，他或她總是開放的，按照母親、姐妹等等身份以許多不同的方式，被重新規定，從這個意義上說，一個人是易變的，是多值的（multivalent）。通過任何一個這類身份，個人被置于整體、系統中，并成為諸關系的核心，他既是從擴大了的關系區域內的焦點角度，又是從這種區域內的局部角度，來體現社群。

The continuity and interdependence between tian and the human being is reflected in the familiar line from the Mencius : “All of the myriad things are here in me.” We can explain this claim in the following way. Persons are radically situated as personsin-context, inhering as they do in a world defined by specific social, cultural, and natural conditions. Persons shape and are shaped by the field of things and events in which they reside. A person is fluid and multivalent in the sense that, in any particular situation, he or she is open to redefinition in many different ways by appeal to the roles of mother, sister, and so on. Articulated and brought into focus in any one of these roles, a person expresses the community from both a focal and a local perspective within the extended field of relationships.

在這里講一個類似情況可能是有用的。一部音樂作品中任何一個音符的全部價值，只有通過了解此音符在這個被演奏的整個作品中的地位，才能加以確定。這樣，任何一個音符在它當中蘊涵了整個樂譜。這個音符可以說是對種種關系的整個區域的聚焦，這些關系是由諸音樂成分構成的。這里重要的是種種關系的區域不受限制，相反，它是特殊細節的無限的蓄積，并且是始終開放的，能夠更多地包容。與此特殊的音符相關的細節的區域可以擴展到包括同一作曲家另一部作品的一個樂章，或他的所有作品，或一個時代的音樂作品，等等。

An analogy might help here. The full value of any one note in a musical composition can only be assayed by understanding its place in the entire piece of music as performed. Any one note thus has implicate within it the entire score. That note may be said to focus the entire field of relationships constituted by the compositions. Important here is that the field of relationships is not circumscribed, but an unbounded reservoir of particular detail that remains open and available for further inclusion. The field of relevant detail for the particular note can be extended to include a movement in another piece by the same composer, or his entire corpus, or the musical product of a particular era, and so on.

“環境中的人”像音樂演奏中的特殊音符，是多值的，他從其特殊的角度對人的社會及其自然環境加以聚焦。因此，他們或多或少是重要的，或多或少與整體相聯接，或多或少地代表了他們的社群的價值和在文化上的重要性。

“Persons-in-context,” like the particular note in the musical performance, are multivalent, bringing the human community and its natural surrounds into focus from their particular perspective. As such, they are more or less distinguished, more or less articulated, more or less representative of the values and cultural importances of their communities.

這種焦點與區域的用語給我們提供了一種方法，據以論述中國人的世界觀所規定的天人一體、相互依賴的關系。天是區域，是社會的、文化的和自然的環境，因而從某種意義上說，大于特殊的個人（“天生德于予”），同時又蘊涵和聚焦于特殊的個人（“萬物皆備于我”）。正像我們在前面指出的，天經常以擬人的方法被加以描繪。但是這種關系是雙向的，反之亦然。人也是似神的。這就是說，當一個人成功地以榜樣的方式將文化及其制度聚集于己，當他作為一個他的社群及效法他的后代的典范出現之時，他就通過他們仿效的模式而擴展了自己，從而成為尊崇的對象。因此，按照儒家的語匯，修身擴大了一個人（“大人”），他因而是名副其實地“超塵拔俗”。

（《漢哲學思維的文化探源》，第271—272頁）

This language of focus and field provides us with a way of talking about the continuity and interdependence of the human being and tian presupposed in the Confucian worldview. Tian is the field, the social, cultural, and natural context, and is in some sense greater than the particular person (“ Tian has given life to and nourished excellence in me”), as well as being implicate within and brought into focus by the particular person (“all of the myriad things are here in me”). As we have noted above, tian is frequently described in anthropomorphic terms. But the relationship is bidirectional, and works the other way as well. The human being is also theomorphic. That is, when a person is successful in focusing culture and its institutions in a manner that is exemplary, and emerges as a model for his community and future generations to which they defer, he has extended himself through their patterns of deference, and has become the object of reverence. Hence, in the Confucian vocabulary, cultivation enlarges one's person ( da ren大人), so that one becomes literally“larger than life.”

( Thinking from the Han, pp. 263-265)