冯友兰中国哲学简史中英文版之第九章道家第二阶段：老子.doc

CHAPTER 9 THE SECOND PHASE OF TAOISM: LAO TZU 第九章　道家第二阶段：老子ACCORDING to tradition, Lao Tzu (a name which literally means the Old Master) was a native of the state of Chu in the southern part of the present Honan province, and was an older contemporary of Confucius, whom he is reputed to have instructed in ceremonies. The book bearing his name, the Lao-tzu, and in later times also known as the Tao Te Ching (Classic of the Way and Power), has therefore been traditionally regarded as the first philosophical work in Chinese history. Modern scholarship, however, has forced us drastically to change this view and to date it to a time considerably after Confucius.传统的说法是，老子是楚国（今河南省南部）人，与孔子同时代而比孔子年长，孔子曾问礼于老子，很称赞老子。以“老子”为名的书，后来也叫做《道德经》，因而也被当做中国历史上第一部哲学著作。现代的学术研究，使我们改变了这个看法，认为《老子》的年代晚于孔子很久。Lao Tzu the Man and Lao-tzu the BookTwo questions arise in this connection. One is about the date of the man, Lao Tzu (whose family name is said to have been Li, and personal name, Tan), and another about the date of the book itself. There is no necessary connection between the two, for it is quite possible that there actually lived a man known as Lao Tan who was senior to Confucius, but that the book titled the Lao-tzu is a later production. This is the view I take, and it does not necessarily contradict the traditional accounts of Lao Tzu the man, because in these accounts there is no statement that the man, Lao Tzu, actually wrote the book by that name. Hence I am willing to accept the traditional stories about Lao Tzu the man, while at the same time placing the book, Lao-tzu, in a later period. In fact, I now believe the date of the book to be later than I assumed when I wrote my History of Chinese Philosophy. I now believe it was written or composed after Hui Shih and Kung-sun Lung, and not before, as I there indicated. This is because the Lao-tzu contains considerable discussion about the Nameless, and in order to do this it would seem that men should first have become conscio