From "Ture" To "Consistent": The Systematism And The End Of Chinese Traditional Historiographic Theory

While history is played by people, historiography is written by people, that fact contain such a implication: unlike history, history of historiography in most concentrated on history writing. Based on the fact, we could provide a new generalization of history of Chinese traditional historiography. This essay maintains that there are two phases: early historiography and late historiography, fundamental characteristic of former is the pursue of "true" , and purpose of latter is "consistent" .The two tendencies respectively incarnated into the historiographic theories of Liu Zhi梛i and Zhang Xue-cheng, which constitute the two milestones on the path Chinese traditional historiography from historiographic compiling to historiographic philosophy.The framework of this essay is constucted as follows. The introduction comments other historians' contribution to the hisotory of Chinese traditional historiography and provides the author' s perspective, arguments and method. LiuZhi-ji' s historiographic theory and its significance in the systemization of Chinese traditional theory are reviewed in the chapter 1 and 2. Shi Tong is not just a product of Liu' s thinking, but also a achievement that the development ofhistoriographical thought in Tang Dynasty required. The "true" be come the main subject of early historiography, incarnating in the writing and thinking of early historiography. The theory of Liu respondes the issues which emerged in writing of early historiography and generalizes historiographic theories earlier. The next two chapters is concentered on Zhang Xue-cheng' s theory and its relation to the end of Chinese traditional historiographic theory.The essay maintains that the theory of Liu completes the systematism of Chinese tradional historiographic theories, however, the histiographic philosophy is not yet to be explored. The later historiographic theories are addressed to a historiographic philosophy, the subject of which is the "meaning of history" . Zhang summed up the contributions of later historigraphy, illuminatingly answered the core issue of later historiography , and achieved the peak of Chinese traditional historiography. The contribution of the essay lies in that a new discription of the development of Chinese traditional historiography is provided in view of historical writing. The author maintains that the main theses of early historiography is how to ensure the "true" in historical writing, and that of late historiography is how to grasp the "consistent" ofhistorical writings. The exploration in these issues constitutes the main lines of development of Chinese traditional historiography.