西方不在西邊：西方主義的自我認識方法

Abstract

1970年代末期，薩伊德（Edward W. Said）在東方主義（Orientalism）一書中，批評普遍主義對差異的不尊重，這個批評也可以用來批評主流社會科學界，亦即藉由把東方描述為一個特殊且落後的對象，來凸顯自身的普遍性與先進，並延伸出改造東方的責任。本文辯稱這樣的批判仍陷入「自我－對象」的認識框架下，藉由考察中國與日本的思想史，發現不論在現代性加入之前還是之後，中國的天下觀與日本神道觀，都不靠與對象的差異來進行自我認識，也沒有賦予自身改造他人的責任，反而是透過自我修養與砥礪來超越差異。

This paper will discuss the concept of “the West.” It will argue that for the Japanese and Chinese thinkers, the West does not exist in the West. Rather, the West is sometimes at the periphery and at other times, at the center. For them, “the Chinese” is about the epistemology of all-under-heaven. There is no such concept as “Other” in this epistemology. As a result, the modern Western thinkers depend on opposing the concrete, historical, yet backward “Other” to pretend being universal, while the Chinese and the Japanese thinkers concentrate on self-rectification to compete for the best representative of “the Chinese.” The Chinese is no more than an epistemological frame that divides the world into the center and the periphery. During modern times, the Japanese accepted Japan being at the periphery, while the West is at the center. To practice self-rectification is to simulate the West. The West is therefore not geographical Western, but at the center of the Japanese selfhood. Self-knowledge produced through Othering and that through self-rectification are so different that the universal West could not make sense of the all-under-heaven way of conceptualizing the West.