严复
中国要重新强大，就必须明白西方为何强大：不是靠武器，而是靠其民众被释放出来的力量、知识与公德。
定位
福州出身的海军军官，曾在格林尼治皇家海军学院学习（1877—1879年）；1895年中国败于日本之后，他以带有长篇按语的文言译本向中国读者介绍赫胥黎、斯宾塞、亚当·斯密、穆勒和孟德斯鸠；他的《天演论》（1898年）使“进化”与“适者生存”成为变法讨论中的关键词。
核心思想
- 以按语为翻译：借斯宾塞读赫胥黎
- 以民之力量求富强
- 信、达、雅
- 进化与国家的生存
影响
受影响于 5
孟德斯鸠
受其影响
Yan Fu translated The Spirit of the Laws as Fayi (1904–09), adding commentaries that compared Montesquieu’s typology of governments with Chinese institutions. Yan Fu, Fayi (1904–09); B. Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (1964)
依据: AI 草稿
孟德斯鸠 › 1689–1755
亚当·斯密
受其影响
Yan Fu translated The Wealth of Nations as Yuanfu (1901–02) and argued in his commentary that freeing individual economic energies would strengthen the state. Yan Fu, Yuanfu (1901–02); B. Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (1964)
依据: AI 草稿
亚当·斯密 › 1723–1790
约翰·斯图尔特·密尔
受其影响
Yan Fu translated Mill’s On Liberty (Qunji quanjie lun, 1903) and part of the System of Logic (1905); how faithfully he rendered Mill’s liberty is debated. Yan Fu, Qunji quanjie lun (1903); Mule mingxue (1905); B. Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power (1964); M. K. Huang, The Meaning of Freedom: Yan Fu and the Origins of Chinese Liberalism (2008)
依据: AI 草稿
约翰·斯图尔特·密尔 › 1806–1873
查尔斯·达尔文
受其影响
In ‘On Strength’ (Yuan qiang, 1895) and the Tianyanlun (1898) Yan Fu introduced Darwin’s natural selection as a process in which things contend and Heaven chooses (wujing tianze), applying it to nations. Yan Fu, Yuan qiang (1895); Tianyanlun (1898); B. Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (1964)
依据: AI 草稿
查尔斯·达尔文 › 1809–1882
赫伯特·斯宾塞
受其影响
In the commentaries to his Tianyanlun (1898) Yan Fu sided with Spencer against Huxley, treating evolution as progress and applying the struggle for survival to nations. Yan Fu, Tianyanlun (1898), commentaries; B. Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (1964)
依据: AI 草稿
赫伯特·斯宾塞 › 1820–1903
影响了 2
梁启超
影响了
Liang Qichao read Yan Fu’s Tianyanlun in manuscript in 1896 and discussed it in a letter to him (1897); its struggle among nations shaped his political thought. B. Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (1964); H. Chang, Liang Ch’i-ch’ao and Intellectual Transition in China (1971)
依据: AI 草稿
梁启超 › 1873–1929
胡适
影响了
Hu Shih recalled reading Yan Fu’s Tianyanlun as a schoolboy and taking the name Shi, ‘fit’, from its ‘survival of the fittest’ (Autobiography at Forty, 1933). Hu Shi, Sishi zishu (1933); B. Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (1964)
依据: AI 草稿
胡适 › 1891–1962
作品
立场
Yan Fu read the liberal classics as an answer to one question: what is the source of the West’s wealth and power? His answer, set out in “On Strength” (1895), was that a nation’s strength rests on the physical vigour, knowledge and public virtue of its people, and that freedom matters because it releases these energies. In the “Tianyanlun” he translated Huxley but argued against him in his commentaries: Huxley had separated human ethics from the cosmic process of evolution, while Yan Fu followed Spencer in seeing evolution as progress and applied the struggle for survival to nations. Phrases he created, such as “natural selection” (tianze) and “survival of the fittest”, became slogans of a generation that included Liang Qichao, Lu Xun and Hu Shih. He translated into an elegant classical prose to win over the scholar-officials, and formulated the triad of faithfulness, comprehensibility and elegance (xin, da, ya) that is still quoted in Chinese translation studies. Benjamin Schwartz’s study “In Search of Wealth and Power” (1964) argued that Yan Fu subordinated individual liberty to state power; later scholars, among them Huang Ko-wu, have questioned this reading and stressed how carefully he rendered Mill’s idea of liberty.
生平与背景
Yan Fu was born on 8 January 1854 in Fuzhou, Fujian, the son of a doctor. After his father’s early death he entered the school of the Fuzhou Navy Yard in 1867, one of the first Chinese institutions to teach Western science, and served on naval ships. From 1877 to 1879 he studied at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich, where he read widely in British political economy and philosophy and impressed the Chinese envoy Guo Songtao. Back in China he taught at the Beiyang Naval Academy in Tianjin from 1880 and later headed it, but he repeatedly failed the imperial examinations and remained outside the inner circle of officials. China’s defeat by Japan in 1895 turned him into a public writer: in a series of essays in a Tianjin newspaper he asked why the West had become wealthy and powerful. His translation of Huxley’s “Evolution and Ethics”, the “Tianyanlun” (1898), was followed by versions of Adam Smith, Mill, Spencer, Montesquieu and Jevons. In 1912 he briefly served as the first president of the renamed Peking University. In 1915 he joined a society that supported Yuan Shikai’s attempt to restore the monarchy. Disillusioned by the First World War, he turned back to Confucian values. He died in Fuzhou on 27 October 1921.
其他主要作品
- On the Speed of World Change (Lun shibian zhi ji, 1895)
- On Strength (Yuan qiang, 1895)
- Refutation of Han Yu (Pi Han, 1895)
- On Evolution (Tianyanlun, translation of Huxley with commentary, 1898)
- The Origin of Wealth (Yuanfu, translation of Adam Smith, 1901–02)
- On the Boundaries between Society and the Individual (Qunji quanjie lun, translation of Mill’s On Liberty, 1903)
- The Study of Sociology (Qunxue yiyan, translation of Spencer, 1903)
- The Spirit of the Laws (Fayi, translation of Montesquieu, 1904–09)
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