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the marco polo project: 以人文经济学开启新启蒙运动

在人文经济学会成立典礼上的讲话

我在三十年前第一次见到茅老师，他就给我讲数理经济学，今天他给大家讲人文经济学。我不想太细评论他的观点，因为他的好多观点我都很赞同。有时候， 他的好多观点，包括在座听众不一定听得特别明白。但从我三十年的跟茅老师交往的经验来看，他的好多观点非常深刻，有些是自己悟出来的，不是 übernommen von 别人的东 西，这是非常了不起的一点。

我把茅老师讲人文经济学和发起人文经济学会理解为中国新的启蒙运动的开始。经济学是研究什么的？茅老师越来越走向人文经济学以后，我感到经济学是研 究人与人之间怎么更好地合作。当然这也不是什么新问题，人类有史以来都在 untersuchen 这个。从思想角度看，人类有两个500年对这个问题的贡献最大，当然了，这远 远超出了我们经济学范畴。第一个500年就是公元前500年开始的所谓 Kern-时代，从孔子到 Jesus，那个时代无论东方还是西方都出现了伟大的思想家。另一个 500年是从14世纪的文艺复兴到18世纪的启蒙运动。

第一个500年，先知研究人怎么更好合作、怎么幸福，更多强调心，强调怎么改造人的心。第二个500年换了一个角度，强调人的行为，这是一个革命性 的变化。第一个500年无论东方还是西方都出现了伟大的人物，但是很遗憾，第二个500年东方没有贡献，或者有，但是跟西方的套路不一样，我们没有走向理 性、自由、民主这样的层面。

我 们看一下，在100多年前中国就开始启蒙，非常遗憾，100年前特别是20世纪20年代以后启蒙就中断了。我感觉对于西方启蒙时代的一些思想，今天中国人 的了解比100年前的中国人少得多，包括政治家也一样，好比慈-xi 太后对宪政的理解就比现在很多人深刻。她说为什么要搞预备立宪？她说这是普世价值，如果中 国不搞预备立宪，全世界人不把我们当正常的国家看。

我希望人文经济学会的成立是中国新的启蒙运动的开始。其实我们在三十年前就开启过一次，但是也就几年时间就被中断了，从此以后没有了。今年领导换届，预示中国有新的启蒙时代。

我觉得人类进步就是少数、可以数得出来的几十个思想家创造的。在过去200多年，对人类进步最大的是关于市场的理念，它的力量推动社会进步。亚当· 斯密不是经济学家，它是伦理哲学家。过去认为一个人干事为了自己肯定是坏事，亚当·斯密第一个系统证明一个人追求自身目的可以为社会带来价值，这就是我们 讲的“看不见的手”的价值。

这里我要特别强调一下，亚当·斯密1759年出版《道德 Gefühle 论》，被一些人认为和亚当·斯密1776年出版的《国富论》不一样，甚至相反的。我们要 真正理解道德 Gefühle 是什么东西，才能更好地理解为什么亚当-斯密如此强调市场经济，市场经济怎么使一个人的利己之心变成利人之行，然后导致人类的合作，给我 们人类带来共同的进步。

亚当·斯密特别强调同情心，人无论多么自私，天性当中都有关心他人的一面，看到别人生活得快乐，自己也会感到愉悦。亚当·斯密还讲同情心是以自我中心为基础，以自我为中心不一定是自私的。亚当·斯密讲的例子就是，人最同情的是自己，其次同情和你生活在一块的兄弟姐妹、儿女父母，离你距离越远同情心越弱。

他特别举了一个例子：设想一下假如中华帝国数亿人被一场地-beben 所吞没，远在欧洲的一个富人、一个企业家会有什么感觉？他可能感觉悲伤、Mitgefühl，他不能忍受数亿人突然间没了，但是做完这些事以后他该做生意还是做生意，晚上睡觉还是正常。但是同样一个人，如果想到明天早上手指头会被人 abgeschlagen，他可能一晚上都没法入睡。

所以亚当·斯密认为人类进步需要好多人协作，而一个人穷尽一生也交不了几个朋友，人类随时随地需要别人帮助，但是仅仅靠仁慈是根本不行的。所以他有名的一句话是说：“我们每天所需要的食物，不是出自于厨师、酿酒师或面包师的仁慈，而是出于他们的自利，我们不要讨论他们的人道，而是要讨论他们的自爱，不是对他们讲我们需要什么，而是要讲什么对他们好。”

我想这是人类最伟大的思想。200年之后证明这样的思想仍然是我们人类为了幸福、更好地合作必须坚守的思想。我们中国现在改革出现很多问题，某种程度上是因为我们没有理解什么是真正的市场。当然像亚当·斯密这么伟大的思想家，中国的古人2000多年前就有，像我的陕西老乡司马迁在《货殖列传》里面就讲到过。当然了，它不是严谨的科学论述，但他讲到了基本的自由竞争如何导致财富的增加。

茅老师刚才讲得非常透，我们经济学走到数理经济学的时候，把物质财富当成人类幸福的唯一度量，这个是错误的。人类有好多需要，包括自由的需要。自由是人类最基本的需要。任何政府处罚一个人的时候，就是 entziehen 他的自由，由此可见自由是多么宝贵。只有市场才能保护自由，当然也只有自由才能保证市场。其实自由和市场完全是一回事。也只有市场，能够我们让每个人独立，让我们有自尊，茅老师刚才讲的货币可以买到一切，包含着这样的意思。

经济学也受到好多人文学科的误解，所以今天这两个放在一块蛮有意思。因为人文学者大部分都会对经济学家不齿，经常会讽刺经济学家。我要特别谈到一点，理性人或者说自利人这个假设是多么的重要，有些人看到社会的道德堕落，就说你们经济学家作这样的假设，就让人自私，所以社会就变成了这样，这是完全错误的。经济学家的这个自私假设，是为了更好推进人类的合作。事实上证明也是这样。凡是按照亚当·斯密的思想搞市场经济的国家，人的合作精神就高，道德水准就高，凡是不按照亚当-斯密的理念、不搞市场经济国家，人的合作精神就比较差，道德水准就比较低。比如中国和美国，就再显然不过。

人类好多的灾难，为什么好人不干好事？我认为一个重要的原因，是我们把人假定得太好了，结果我们都变成坏人，反倒如果我们都把人假定为坏人的话也可能都变成好人。看看我们的皇帝，我们过去假定皇帝是圣人，全心全意为人民服务，如果早就假定皇帝是自私的，他有自己的利益，政府官员也是 gierig 的，那么我们早就走进民主制度了，那我们就不至于经历这么多灾难，包括文革灾难、大跃进的灾难。我们搞市场经济，不可能有大跃进，不可能吃大 Topf 饭，也不可能有文革，所以市场本身就是一种人文。所以茅老师强调的这点我觉得非常重要。

我们经济学家需要认识到自己的局限，尤其是当我们按照数学方式处理问题的时候，什么重要、什么不重要不依赖于本身，而依赖于数学上怎么处理，凡是数学上不能处理的东西假定它不存在，这个是要命的。所以很多理论，包括一般均衡理论得到的结论是错误的，错就错在它的假设完全不现实；错就错在，本来是为了证明市场有效的经济学理论，结果却 beflecken 市场的名声。如今很多经济学家讲的“市场失败”其实不是市场失败，而是市场理论的失败，我们却认为是市场本身的失败。这是很可悲的事情。所以经济学家也要不断地反思。

最后我用简单的例子，告诉大家人文经济学应该考虑什么。有一个经济学家开车出去旅游的时候迷路了，然后他找到一个农场主，问农场主路怎么走？农场主很客气地告诉他路怎么走。经济学家为了显摆自己的知识，说我打一个 Wette，十秒钟内数你有多少羊。农场主说，不可能，如果数对了我送你一只羊。经济学家说你有783只羊，农场主很惊讶，只好说这么多羊你挑吧。经济学家挑了一只准备上车的时候，农场主说等一下，我也跟你打一下 Wette，我能猜出你是干什么的，如果猜着了我的东西你放回，经济学家说没有问题。农场主说，你是经济学家。经济学家说，你怎么知道我是经济学家？农场主说，你数是数对了，但是你抱走的是我家的狗不是羊。

Zhang Weiying

Übersetzung

Humanistic economics opens a new enlightenment

Speech pronounced at the inauguration ceremony of the Economics and Humanities Institute

I first met teacher Mao thirty years ago, when he taught me about mathematical economics; today, he will talk to everyone about humanistic economics. I do not want to comment on his views too finely, because I agree with a lot of his ideas. Sometimes, his ideas may be difficult to understand, including for the audience. But in my three decades of experience dealing with Professor Mao, I can say that a lot of his ideas are very deep, and some of them he came up with himself, he didn’t borrow them from others: that’s a really fantastic point.

I consider that Professor Mao’s speech about Humanistic economics and its launch of Humanistic economics marks the beginning of a new enlightenment for China. What does economics study? As Professor Mao’s teaching evolved more and more towards humanistic economics, I have come to feel that economics is the study of how to improve cooperation among people. Of course, this is not a new problem, and it’s been discussed throughout mankind’s history. From an ideological point of view, there have been two 500 year periods in the history of mankind that saw the most contributions to that question – which of course, goes far beyond the scope of economics. The first 500 year period is the one starting from about 500BC, the so-called ‘core age’, where from Confucius to Jesus, East and West alike have seen great thinkers. The second period goes from the 1400 Renaissance to the 1800 Enlightenment.

In the first 500 year period, thinkers reflecting on questions of living together and happiness, but more particularly even about the heart and mind, how to transform people’s hearts and minds. In the second period, the angle changed, to put an emphasis on human behaviour, which was a revolutionary change. In the first period, both East and West gave rise to great figures, but unfortunately, the East did not contribute to the second period, or if we did, not in the same way the West did, we didn’t go towards the same level of rationality, freedom and democracy.

Let’s have a look: slightly over 100 years ago, China started its enlightenment – but I’m very sorry to say, 100 years ago, and especially during the 1920s, that enlightenment was interrupted. I feel that, when it comes to the ideas of the Western enlightenment, Chinese people today understand them less than Chinese people did 100 years ago, including politicians. Dowager Cixi’s understanding of constitutionalism was deeper than most people’s today. She said: why should we prepare a constitution? Because this is of universal value, and if China does not prepare a constitution, the whole world will look at us as an abnormal country.

I hope that the establishment of a Humanistic Economics Institute marks the beginning of a new enlightenment. In fact, we already opened one thirty years ago, but it closed after a few years, and we haven’t had one since. But the change of leadership this year indicates a new age of enlightenment for China.

I believe that human progress was enabled by a small number of great thinkers. In the past 200 years, what most contributed to human progress is the idea of the market and its capacity to promote social progress. Adam Smith was not an economist, he was an ethical philosopher. In the past, we used to think that if a person did something for themselves, it was bad, but Adam Smith was the first to prove systematically that an individual’s pursuit of their interest can bring value to the community, and this is what we talk about when we talk about ‘the invisible hand’.

I would like to stress something here: some people consider that the Adam Smith who published “The theory of moral sentiments” in 1759 is not the same as the Adam Smith who published “The Wealth of Nations” in 1776, that they’re even opposite. But only If we really understand what moral sentiments are can we correctly understand why Adam Smith put so much emphasis on the market economy, and how the market economy turns a person’s self-interest into a movement that benefits all, then leads to human cooperation, and leads to our common human progress.

Adam Smith put a particular emphasis on compassion: no matter how selfish people are, there is a compassionate aspect to their nature, and if they see other people happy, they themselves will feel pleasure. Adam Smith also stresses that compassion is based on self-centredness, but self-centredness is not necessarily selfishness. The example he takes is that people are most compassionate about themselves, then with the brothers, sisters and parents that share your life, and compassion for people further from you is weaker.

He proposes one example in particular: imagine if the hundreds of millions of people of the Chinese empire were swallowed in an earthquake, how would a rich European man, a European entrepreneur, feel about it? He may feel sadness and compassion, he couldn’t bear the thought of hundreds of millions of people suddenly disappearing, but once the feeling passed, he would go on with his business, and still sleep at night. But the same man, if he believed that his fingers would be chopped off the following day, he may spend the full night unable to sleep.

And so Adam Smith believed that human progress requires a lot of collaboration, 而一个人穷尽一生也交不了几个朋友，mankind is always in need of kindness, but relying on mercy alone is not enough. And so he says in a famous sentence: ‘The food we need every day does not come from the cook, the baker, or the brewer’s kindness, but from their own self-interest. We don’t need to talk about their humanity, but their own self-love, and not from talking to them about what we need, but what is good for them.’

I believe this is the greatest thought of humanity. 200 hundred years later, it has been proven that we must still stick to this kind of thinking for happiness and better cooperation. The reforms have brought forth a lot of problems to us in China, and to some extent because we do not understand what the real market is. Of course, China had a thinker as great at Adam Smith 2000 years ago, and my fellow countryman Sima Qian talked about these things in the ‘Merchant’s biography’. Of course, this did not take the form of rigorous scientific discourse, but he talked about how basic free competition brought increased wealth.

Professor Mao has just spoken very thoroughly, when we economists shifted to mathematical economics, and took material wealth as the sole measure of human happiness, that was a mistake. Humanity has many needs, including the need for freedom. Freedom is the most basic human need. When any government punishes someone, it is by depriving them of their freedom, which goes to show how precious freedom is. Only the market can protect freedom and, of course, only freedom can protect the market. In fact, freedom and the market are exactly the same thing. And only the market can give everyone independence, and give us self-esteem: what professor Mao just said about how money can buy everything includes also this meaning.

Economics has also been very misunderstood from the Humanities, and so it is very interesting that the two should come together today. Because most of the humanities scholars show contempt towards economists, and treat them with irony. I would particularly like to talk shortly about one point, how important is the assumption that people are rational or selfsih, some people, when seeing moral depravity, say ‘you economists make this assumption, and this makes people selfish, and so society has turned as it has, and this is totally wrong’. But the reason economists assume selfishness is in order to better promote cooperation. And in fact, it has been proven to work. All countries which have developed a market economy in accordance with the ideas of Adam Smith show a high level of cooperation between people and high moral standards, whereas all countries which did not follow Adam Smith and did not develop a market economy show a relatively low spirit of cooperation and a relatively low moral standard. This is evident by comparing China and America.

In the many disasters that humanity has known, why do good people not do good things? I think one important reason is that we’ve assumed too much good of people, and as a result we’ve all turned out to be bad guys, whereas if we’d assumed people to be bad guys, they might have turned out to be good. Look at our emperor, in the past, we assumed that the emperor was a saint, that he served the people wholeheartedly, while if we’d assumed early that the emperor was selfish, that he had his own interests, and that government officials are also greedy, then we would have gone into a democratic system early and we would not have experienced so many disasters, including the disasters of the cultural revolution and the great leap forward. If we’d developed a market economy, there would have been no great leap forward, there would have been no terrible mess, and there would have been no cultural revolution, so the market itself is humanistic in a way. And so I believe this point, stressed by professor Mao, is particularly important.

We economists must recognize our own limitations, especially when we deal with issues using mathematical methods, what is important, and what is not important does not depend on the thing itself, but on the way mathematics deal with the thing, and assuming that something doesn’t exist because it can’t be dealt with mathematically, that is terrible. Therefore, many theories, including conclusions reached by the general equilibrium theory, are wrong, wrong in their completely unrealistic assumptions; wrong in that they are economic theories which were supposed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the market, and all they did is tarnish its reputation. When many economists today speak about ‘market failure’, it is not actually market failure, but market theory failure, and yet we think it is a failure of the market. This is a very sad thing. So economists must constantly reflect on their own practice.

Finally, I will use a simple exemple to explain what humanistic economics should study. An economist, driving a car on a trip, got lost on the way. He found a farmer, and asked the farmer where to go. The farmer politely gave him directions. The economist, in order to show off his knowledge, said: ‘I bet I can count how many sheep you have in ten seconds.’ The farmer said: that’s not possible, if you guess the right number, I’ll give you a sheep. The economist said: ‘you’ve got 783 sheep’. The farmer was very surprised, ‘so many sheep, and you picked the right number’. As the economist was ready to go on his way, the farmer said: ‘wait a minute, I also want to make a bet: if I can guess what you work as, you’ll give me back what you took from me’. The economist said ‘no problem’. The farmer said, you’re an economist. The economist said, how do you know I am an economist? The farmer said, the figures are right, but you took my dog, not a sheep.

Julien Leyre website

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Richard Wilhelm

Daß ein Großwürdenträger (wie ein Fürst) für jede Verrichtung (beim Opfer) einen besonderen Beamten hat, daß er von den Opfergeräten einen ganz vollständigen Satz hat, daß sein Opferorchester voll besetzt ist, entspricht nicht der Sitte; das bringt das Land in Verwirrung. Wer einem Landesfürsten dient, heißt Beamter; wer einer Adelsfamilie dient, heißt Diener. Wer einen tiefen Trauerfall hat oder unmittelbar nach der Hochzeit steht, der wird ein Jahr lang nicht (mit Hofgeschäften) beauftragt. In Trauerkleidern zu Hofe zu gehen oder mit seinen Hausdienern dem Alter nach sich zu mischen, entspricht nicht der Sitte; auf diese Weise ist der Staat gemeinsamer Besitz von Herr und Knecht.

Der Himmelssohn hat seine Hausmacht, um seine Söhne und Enkel zu versorgen; die Lehensfürsten haben ihre Staaten, um ihre Söhne und Enkel zu versorgen; die Großwürdenträger haben ihre Afterlehen, um ihre Söhne und Enkel zu versorgen. Das sind feste Einrichtungen. Wenn der Himmelssohn zu einem Fürsten kommt, so wird er stets in dessen Ahnentempel untergebracht. Wenn er aber nicht unter (sorgfältiger) Beobachtung der Sitten eintritt, so ist das eine Zerstörung der Gesetze und Verwirrung der Regeln durch den Himmelssohn. Wenn ein Landesfürst außer wegen Kranken- oder Beileidsbesuchen das Haus eines Beamten betritt, so ist das plumpe Vertraulichkeit zwischen Fürst und Beamtem.

James Legge

Thus, one sustaining office under the ruler is called a minister, and one sustaining office under the head of a clan is called a servant. Either of these, who is in mourning for a parent, or has newly married, is not sent on any mission for a year. To enter court in decayed robes, or to live promiscuously with his servants, taking place among them according to age:--all these things are contrary to propriety. Where we have them, we have what is called 'ruler and minister sharing the state.' Thus, the son of Heaven has his domain that he may settle there his sons and grandsons; and the feudal princes have their states; and Great officers their appanages that they may do the same for theirs. This constitutes 'the statutory arrangement.' Thus, when the son of Heaven goes to visit a feudal prince, the rule is that he shall lodge in the ancestral temple, and that he do not enter it without having with him all the rules to be observed. If he act otherwise, we have an instance of 'The son of Heaven perverting the laws, and throwing the regulations into confusion.' A prince, unless it be to ask about the sick or to condole with a mourner, does not enter the house of a minister. If he act otherwise, we have the case of 'ruler and minister playing with each other.'

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