譚嗣同的「烈士」與「思想家」形象，在中國近代轉型時代具備普遍 性和特殊性，此為歷來學者研究的重心。本文擬跳脫理論模式、擺脫「烈 士」的必然論證，以及《仁學》的思想內涵，而是透過譚嗣同留下的文 本，追索其人在思想成熟時期之前的性格養成；從「先祖」、「親情」、 「生死」和「遊歷」四個面向，深入探討譚嗣同的性格是在「傳統」的基 調上，拉出「生」和「死」的兩極，讓多元矛盾的因子相互衝撞、震盪 後，凝聚成為不容於世的絕對孤獨。其人朝向激進改革之道，乃是意欲衝 決自我矛盾性格所撕裂、交織而成的「網羅」。

Tan Si-tong was known as a ‘martyr’ and ‘thinker’, this image processes both generality and particularity in modern China’s converting era, and is the key point for scholars ever researched. This essay plans to leap from the mode of theory, get rid of the inevitable demonstration of a ‘martyr’ and the thoughtfulness of ‘仁學’, but to explore how Tan Si-tong’s character was built before the maturity of his thought through the texts he left behind, and to inquire through the four dimensions of ‘ancestor’, ‘family affection’, ‘life and death’, and ’peregrination’, into Tan Si-tong’s character which was based on the keynote of ‘tradition’, and dragged out the two poles of ‘life’ and ’death’, so that the various contradictious factors crashed and shocked each other, and then condensed into the unacceptable absolute solitude. His heading for the way of radical reform was an intention to burst the ‘toils’ interweaved, and torn by the self-contradictious character.