本文是作者對近代思想文化史研究的若干思考，它涉及三個方面。第一是史料方面，強調對私密性史料的重視及利用，並強調對地方性思想文化材料的重視。第二，本文探討了一些方法論的問題，像「事件的邏輯」與「史家的邏輯」，強調如果不能時時警覺於兩者之不同，則容易對史實作出錯誤的解釋，或是忽略了歷史發展過程中歧出、複雜的層面。第三，本文提出了一些值得進一步探討的問題，如近代傳播網絡的形成與思想文化史之關係，如對保守派人物研究，如對地方上小讀書人的角色與功能的研究等。最後，本文仍強調，思想史研究的最重要工作是對重要文獻縝密而深刻的閱讀。

Regarding the use of historical materials, I would like to emphasize three things: first, historians in this field should make better use of private documents, including numerous newly available diaries and personal correspondence. Second, we should pay more attention to materials relating to modern cultural conservatives. And third, we should pay more attention to materials concerning the local worlds of readers. As for methodology, I would like more reflection on the social function of thought. On one level, one might ask of any document what it is overtly about. But might also consider the numerous uses of these thoughts on various occasions. For example, one might look at the numerous uses of the classics; Confucian classics were sometimes used as social texts and sometimes as mystical ones. It is not only a question of how the literati interpreted these texts; in fact, everyone was using them. For example, even though Confucius claimed to have no interest in religious matters, his texts were used to exorcize spirits, etc. More attention should be paid to the interdependence among thought, everyday life, politics, economics, etc. On the topic of methodology, I want to remind my colleagues that we are always trapped by a certain historical logic. The logic of the historical actors who are the objects of our study is necessarily quite different from our own, yet we tend to confound them as one. Specifically, we tend to think from the perspective of knowing everything that has happened since, even while the historical actors we study could not possibly know such things. They progressed from A, to B, and to C, while we start from Z and work backwards. Knowing the consequences of all historical events is actually the opposite of how history truly evolved. There are many dangers embedded in this situation, as we neglect those streams of events or ideas that did not bear fruit, although they may have been very important at the time. We confuse A-Z and Z-A logic, assuming they are the same, and thereby we miss an abundance of historical development and detail, obscuring what really happened. As for research topics, I propose focusing on several things. First, I believe we must pay more attention to the study of small, local intellectuals. We pay too much attention to the nationally renowned elite and to the grass roots of peasants and merchants, forgetting that there is a history in between these two. Local intellectuals are in fact agents who played very complicated roles in modern intellectual history. This topic deserves further inquiry. Secondly, I believe we have far too little knowledge about modern cultural conservatives, as we are always focusing on new, radical thinkers, leaving others aside. We thereby neglect to observe the cultural creativity and complexity of conservative thinkers. Third, the new press, including newspapers and journals, constituted a new network of communication that transformed the intellectual climate quite dramatically, especially as regards the formation of public opinion, the public sphere, and the relation of these to official policy, the rise of new social elites and various other phenomena. These should be looked into more closely. A fourth topic deserving of further research is the study of the structure of feeling. This is something beyond the strictly intellectual that profoundly shaped people’s actions. Additionally, I would to promote a comparative approach to intellectual history. That has been done before, but always under the framework of modernization theory, so now a new type of comparison should be possible. In particular, we should compare the intellectual history of places with somewhat similar experiences, such as Eastern Europe, Russia, India, China, and Japan. They have in common their experience of contact with an expanding and hegemonic “West”. Finally, the intellectual history of the 1950s on either side of the Taiwan straits has hardly been explored.

思想史；文化史

intellectual history; cultural history