倫理翻譯與主體化問題：王國維問題重探

Wang Guowei's translations of utilitarian ethics and education theory reveal clearly the role that he played at Education World and as a Chinese intellectual. His participation in the public discourse fit into the plans of Luo Zhenyu both at the journal and later at the Ministry of Education of the late Qing government. The impact that Wang and Luo together produced on the Chinese intellectual world was profound. Those theories of ethics and education they introduced became the main axis of Chinese ethical thought throughout the 20(superscript th) century; they defined the terms in which the subject related to society or the state, However, Wang's translations of the texts of foreign theories were practiced on another level by a second act of translation on the conceptual level. During his exploration of the limits of Western and classical Chinese ethics, he found the limitations of dualism, and attempted to return to monist models of experience/knowledge. Moving back into the fields of aesthetics and ethics, he suggested a critique of utilitarianism and life-ism (shengsheng zhuyi) that was popular at the time. As well as a critique, he also developed a response: no-life-ism (wusheng zhuyi). This response transcends considerations of self-interest or the relationship of the self with the material world, and involves the ethics of reducing one's own partial volition. This is not a negative or pessimistic account of humanity. Via the appreciation of art, people may experience an objectification of human will in an aesthetic form, and informed by that experience, they can retreat from the position of the subject in an oppositional relationship with the material world; and they can reject utilitarian politics. Thus, Wang himself maintained a level of detachment and criticism concerning the politicized ethics of his contemporaries and Luo Zhenyu.