Listen to this articleliù jīng jiē shǐ 六经皆史
The Six Confucian Classics Are All About History.
这是古代学者提出的一个重要的学术思想命题，认为“六经”（《易》《书》《诗》《礼》《乐》《春秋》）反映的是夏、商、周三代社会、政治等现实情况的历史文本，而不是圣人刻意留下的义理说教。系统阐发这一命题的代表人物是清代学者章学诚。这一命题动摇了儒家经典的神圣地位，标志着中国史学趋向自觉与独立。
The Six Confucian Classics are The Book of Changes, The Book of History, The Book of Songs, The Book of Rites, The Book of Music, and The Spring and Autumn Annals. An important proposition put forward by scholars of late imperial China was that those are all historical texts. According to these scholars, the Six Classics are all concerned with the social and political realities of the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties rather than the teachings left by ancient sages. Zhang Xuecheng of the Qing Dynasty was the representative scholar to systematically expound this proposition. This view challenged the sacred status of the classics of Confucianism and marked a self-conscious and independent trend in Chinese historiography.
引例 Citation:
◎学者崇奉六经，以谓圣人立言以垂教，不知三代盛时，各守专官之掌故，而非圣人有意作为文章也。（章学诚《文史通义·史释》）
（学者推崇六经，认为圣人著书立说，是为了给后人留下垂示教训，却不知道那实际上是夏、商、周三代兴盛之时，各司其职的官员写下的制度和史实，而不是圣人有意撰写的典籍。）
Scholars worship the Six Classics and say that they are the words of sages set down to teach later generations. They do not realize that the classics are the regulations and historical facts recorded by officials in the flourishing days of the three dynasties of Xia, Shang, and Zhou. They are not the writings of ancient sages. (Zhang Xuecheng: General Principles of Literature and History)
