清儒关于《古文尚书》的争论大体分为两个相互联系的主题，一为 “真伪”，一为 “废立”。
现代的研究者站在“文献学”或“史学”的立场，需要关心者只涉及“真伪”问题。但对清代的儒者而言，“真伪”本身并不能完全决定《古文尚书》在儒学系统中的价值，因为在这个考据层面之上，还牵涉一层义理的问题。清儒大体公认《古文》虽伪却义理纯美，因此应当如何在考据与义理两边取舍——或以“伪”而废，或以“正”而立，成为他们长期争论的一个难题。“义理”基本已经淡出现代学术的关怀，惟其如此，如果能够将现代“史学”或“文献学”的回溯逻辑暂搁一旁，转而深入清儒因“义理”而来的关于《古文》“废立”的困境，那么通过这场伪《书》废立的争论所折射出的清代汉学（考据学）的思想史意义，也许就不再是其作为现代学术的源头活水，反而是它与现代学术之间的巨大断裂了。

There were two themes in the argument about the Old Text Chapters of the Shangshu ( Book of Documents) among Qing Confucian scholars. The first approach determined whether it was genuine or fake, while the second approach wanted to exclude or preserve it from the canon. Modern scholars relying on philology and history have addressed whether it was genuine. While Qing Confucian scholars eschewed the simple true-or-false dichotomy because it could not consider the value of Old Text Chapters of the Shangshu for Confucianism. Because there was a layer of argumentation above the level of textual study, Qing scholars generally regarded the Old Text Chapters of the Shangshu as excellent. So that how to deal with textual study and principle——excluding it based authenticity or preserving it for its correctness——became an ongoing controversy to them. Since the principles expressed in the text has been excluded from the modern scholarship, if we can put aside the traceability of modern history and philology and turn it into the dilemma of exclusion or preservation of Old Text Chapters of the Shangshu which stems from the Qing scholars’insistence of the principles，then the significance of the Han learning for Qing intellectual history，which was reflected in the continuous controversy，would be that it was not the source of modern scholarship，but a big break between Han Learning and modern scholarship．