「內聖外王」此詞出自＜莊子＞，未見於原始儒家典籍，亦非宋代理學家講學論道的用語，宋代以降卻成為士大夫文化中的頌詞。本文列舉事實，指出此詞的使用對儒學傷害極大。清朝皇帝用了它摧毀清代理學;熊十力主觀認定內聖外王為孔子之道，扭曲了孔子思想和整個經學和理學傳統;繼而通過牟宗三先生的承繼與發揮，使後學對此深信不疑。最近的例子是余英時教授，他在〈朱熹的歷史世界》及其續集〈宋明理學與政治文化》二書中，依憑內聖外王建立一套對宋明儒學思想的見解，引申出儒學/理學之辨和道統/道學歷史階段之分等謬誤結論，同樣也使儒學思想變形。「內聖外王」一詞修辭魅力無窮，然而絕對不宜據以論述儒學思想文化，收而納之於葫蘆中可也。

The phrase neisheng waiwang 內聖外王(a sage in the inner sphere, a king in the outer sphere) appears in the pre-Qin Daoist classic Zhuangzi. The term emerged as a panegyric in the Northern Song Dynasty, beginning with the Confucian philosopher Cheng Hao 程顥,who used it to comment on the accomplishments of his fellow philosopher Shao Yong 邵雍 during their first meeting. This anecdote captured the attention of the lierati, and soon the phrase became an exaggerated form of flattery in their circles. With the help of Confucian scholar-officials in the early Qing Dynasty, it became a term used exclusively for the emperor, especially the Manchu rulers Kangxi 康熙 and Qianlong 乾隆,who strove to live up to the image of the sage-king without losing their tyrannical grip on their governance. This moralization of absolute power was a great political triumph for Confucian philosophers;ironically,it was to their detriment, for why would a world with a sage ruler need moral idealists, whose traditional role in the political arena
had always been to counteract power with morality? consequently, philosophy in the mid-Qing period lost its vitality and yielded its place to such studies as evidential research.A revival of the dictum in Confucian philosophical discourse occurred with the rise of the New Confucian Movement in modern times. Xiong Shili 熊十力,its most influential founder, proclaimed that the Way of Confucius was precisely neisheng waiwang, and based on this premise, presented a distorted interpretation of the Confucian classics and their exegetical tradition. Despite the fact that Xiong's opinionated views were rejected by many, he is nevertheless revered as an original thinker among New Confucian scholars, and his assertion that neisheng waiwang is a Confucian dictum is widely shared and given various interpretative extensions. In this way, the introduction of this term into Confucian studies had deleterious results for our understanding of Confucianism.It is against this background that this paper offers an analysis of the
thrust of the ideas in Yu Ying-shih 余英時's study of Song Neo-Confucianism. Like Xiong Shili, Yu is strategically-minded. He unquestioningly accepts Xiong's disputable assertion that neisheng waiwang was a Confucian dictum.But instead of using this assertion, as Xiong did, to blame Neo-Confucian philosophers for what they did not accomplish, he turns on New Confucian scholars, accusing them of lopsided scholarship. In Yu's view, these scholars are preoccupied with Neo-Confucian thought, which belongs to the inner sphere, and overlook the fact that Confucians in history were always concerned with politics.The assumption that neisheng waiwang is a Confucian dictum turns out to beunfounded. Taking this false assumption as a premise, logically speaking nothingfollows. Yu has drawn a variety of conclusions from this premise, but they amount tosimply another distortion of Neo-Confucianism. The discussion in this paper focuseson two issues: the supposedly different status of lixue 理學 and ruxue 儒學, andYu’s new interpretat on of daotong 道統 and daoxue 道學. These demonstrate theextent to which basic Confucian ideas and the meaning of passages from texts andcommentaries can be twisted to fit a particular theory.