從《世說新語》看魏晉士人的生命意識

魏晉是一個前所未有、後難企及的生命意識高度覺醒的時代。所謂「生命意識」是個人對死生諸問題的自覺體認與把握，這種覺醒在《世說新語》一書中表現尤為深刻。魏晉士人的生存環境險峻，生命遭受戕害比任何一個時代都要突出，使得他們對生死課題的思考極為深刻而獨特，正由於他們獨特的生命意識，才形成了獨特的魏晉風度，二者實有著密不可分的關係。雖然魏晉以後的士人對生命的思考與探索從未停止過，但再也沒有像魏晉時期這樣地引人注目，也再沒有出現像魏晉士人這般對生死問題投入極大關注的龐大群體了！《世說新語》中所反映的魏晉士人的生命意識極為豐富，也極具個性。由該書所載材料可看出，魏晉士人的生命意識的覺醒，主要表現在自我意識、時空意識、死亡意識等，本文即從這三個方面探討魏晉士人的生命意識。魏晉士人強烈的生命意識留給了後代很多的啟示與省思，這種生命意識已成為中國士人精神建構中的一股潛流。魏晉士人的生命意識如何表現？它與前、後代的差別為何？它與魏晉風度有何關係？這都是本文探討的重點。

關鍵字

《世說新語》；魏晉士人；生命意識；自我意識；時空意識；死亡意識

並列摘要

Wei-jin was an unprecedented era that highly focused on life awareness. The so-called ”life awareness” revealed an individual's self realization and grasp of life-and-death issues. Such realization was profoundly portrayed in ”Shishuo Shinyu”. Wei-Jin scholars experienced and thought of life and death profoundly and uniquely; as a result, unique Wei-Jin demeanor was developed. Actually, there was a close relationship between the two. Although the scholars after Wei-Jin never stopped exploring and thinking of the meaning of life, there had never ever been such an era like Wei-Jin that paid great concern to life-and-death issues on such a big scale. ”Shishuo Shinyu” reflected the abundantly rich and highly personal information on life awareness of Wei-Jin scholars. As can be seen from the written records of the book, Wei-Jin scholars' life awakening was mainly expressed in three aspects: self realization, time and space awareness, and death awareness, which would be discussed in this paper. As Wei-Jin scholars' strong sense of life awaking left the later generations much inspiration and reflection, this became the undercurrent for uplifting the spirit of the Chinese literati. The focus of this paper would be on: a. how Wei-Jin scholars expressed their life awareness, b. how it differed from that of former and later generations, and c. the relationship between Wei-Jin scholars' life awareness and demeanor.