Accountability without democracy: evidence from Confucian accountability

This article argues that the dominant democratic model of political accountability is shown to have been unduly centred on rights, institutionalisation, and punishment. Drawing inspiration from Confucian classics, this article proposes an alternative model of political accountability in which ethical norms and moral sentiments play crucial roles. Based on a structural analysis of accountability, the comparison between democratic accountability and Confucian accountability demonstrates two implications: first, recognition of the ample resource of accountability in Confucian tradition challenges the idea that the notion of accountability is simply a Western or democratic concept which has no root in Confucian societies; second, as an intellectual tradition and practical wisdom, some of the Confucian insights, reconstructed and applied to modern society, may well have the capacity to address contemporary issues more productively, especially in the domain of democratic deficits, than the dominant liberal approach.     

Reappraising Walter Bagehot's Liberalism: Discussion,Public Opinion,and the Meaning of Parliamentary Government

Summary

This article offers a novel and comprehensive account of Walter Bagehot's political thought. It ties together an interpretation of Bagehot's liberal commitment to norms of discussion and deliberation, with an analysis of Bagehot's extensive arguments about the institutions of representative government. We show how Bagehot's opposition to American-style presidentialism, to parliamentary democracy, and to proportional representation were profoundly shaped by his conceptions of government by discussion, and the rule of public opinion. Bagehot's criticisms of English parliamentarianism, both of its pre-1832 and post-1832 varieties were also motivated by those principles, as was his own proposal for parliamentary reform. By examining the whole range of Bagehot's writings on representative government (not merely his preference for parliamentarianism over presidentialism) and by connecting his institutional recommendations to his liberal principles, we are also able to better clarify Bagehot's position in Victorian political thought. The article concludes with a discussion of the debate leading up to the Second Reform Act, in which we elucidate Bagehot's disagreements with other prominent exponents of liberalism including John Stuart Mill, the “university liberals,” and Robert Lowe.     

Josephus' description of the Essenes illustrated by the Dead Sea Scrolls

The essay analyses the notion of ‘purity’ in the early writings of Walter Benjamin, focusing more specifically on three essays written around the crucial year 1921: ‘Critique of Violence’, ‘The Task of the Translator’, and ‘Goethe's Elective Affinities’. In these essays, ‘purity’ appears in the notions of ‘pure means’, ‘pure violence’, ‘pure language’, and, indirectly, the ‘expressionless’. The essay argues, on the one hand, that the ‘purity’ of these concepts is one and the same notion, and, on the other, that it is strongly indebted to, if not a by-product of, Kant's theorisation of the moral act. In order to make this claim, the essay analyses Benjamin's intense engagement with Kant's writings in the 1910s and early 1920s: ‘purity’ is a category strongly connoted within the philosophical tradition in which the young Benjamin moved his first steps, namely Kantian transcendental criticism. The essay argues that the notion of ‘purity’ in Benjamin, though deployed outside and often against Kant's theorisation and that of his followers, and moreover influenced by different and diverse philosophical suggestions, retains a strong Kantian tone, especially in reference to its moral and ethical aspects. Whereas Benjamin rejects Kant's model of cognition based on the ‘purity’ of the universal laws of reason, and thus also Kant's theorisation of purity as simply non empirical and a priori, he models nonetheless his politics and aesthetics around suggestions that arise directly from Kant's theorisation of the moral act and of the sublime, and uses a very Kantian vocabulary of negative determinations construed with the privatives-los and -frei (motiv-frei, zweck-los, gewalt-los, ausdrucks-los, intention-frei, etc). The essay explores thus the connections that link ‘pure means’, ‘pure language’ and ‘pure violence’ to one another and to the Kantian tradition.     

徐干儒学文艺观与创作关系述论

徐干具有鲜明的儒学文艺观,具体体现在注重个人创造的艺德观、以言为贵、言为德藻的重言观、以立志为先、博达中正的才学观等三个方面。它们是徐干自身儒家人格的集中反映,又对其文学创作产生了深刻影响,为考察魏晋之际儒风与文风的交融互动关系,提供了可资借鉴的范本。     

The Dialogical Tradition of Iranian Modernity: Monazereh,Simultaneity, and the Making of Modern Iran

Iranian modernity has chiefly been examined in the context of a dialectical antagonism between “traditionalists” and “modernists”—main categories comprised of related sub-headings such as “Islamist” versus “secular,” “reactionary” versus “revolutionary,” and “regressive” versus “progressive.” Following this approach, Iranian adaptations of modernity have often been (de)historicized as a theater of national “awakening” resulting from the toils of secular intellectuals in overcoming the obstinate resistance of traditional reactionaries, a confrontation between two purportedly well-defined and mutually exclusive camps. Such reductionist dialectics has generally overwritten the dialogic narrative of Iranian modernity, a conflicted dialogue misrepresented as a conflicting dialectic. It has also silenced an important feature of Iranian modernity: the universally acknowledged premise of the simultaneity and commensurability of tradition with modernity. The monazereh (disputation or debate) is the account of the interaction between rival discourses that engaged in opposing, informing, and appropriating each other in the process of adapting modernity. Narrativizing the history of Iranian modernity as the conflict between mutually exclusive binaries overlooks its hyphenated, liminal¹1 The notion of liminality has been theorized in different capacities. The anthropologist Victor Turner first used the idea of liminality in his study of tribal and religious rituals during which an initiate experiences a liminal stage when he belongs neither to the old order nor yet accepted into his new designation. Victor Turner, The Ritual Process: Structure and Anti-structure (Chicago, IL: Aldine, 1969). Turner’s insight has been expanded to investigate the general question of status in society. See, for example, Caroline Walker Bynam, Fragmentation and Redemption (New York: Zone Books, 1992), 27–51. Bynam applies Turner’s notion of liminality to the lives of Medieval female saints, arguing that Turner’s liminal passage applies more readily to the male initiate but does not in most cases reflect the experience of female initiates in Medieval times. Jungian psychology has shifted the focus from liminality as a stage in social movement to a step in an individual’s progress in the process of individuation. Jeffrey Miller, The Transcendent Function (New York: State University of New York Press, 2004), 104. See also: Peter Homans, Jung in Context: Modernity and the Making of a Psychology (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1979). Others have used liminality to describe cultural and political change, have prescribed its application to historical analysis, or have made reference to “permanent liminality” to describe the condition in which a society is frozen in the final stage of a ritual passage. Respectively, Agnes Horvath, Bjorn Thomassen, and Harald Wydra, “Introduction: Liminality and Cultures of Change.” International Political Anthropology (2009); Agnes Horvath, Modernism and Charisma (Basingstoke: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2013); and Szakolczai, Reflexive Historical Sociology (New York: Routledge, 2000), 23. Finally, the notion of liminality has been applied to the analysis of mimetic behaviour and to the emergence of tricksters as charismatic leaders, given the association of the figure of the trickster with imitation. Respectively, Agnes Horvarth, Modernism and Charisma (Basingstoke: Palgrave, Macmillan, 2013), 55; and Arpad Szakolczai, Reflexive Historical Sociology (New York: Routledge, 2000), 155. This latter sense seems to apply to the history of Iranian modernity, for the anxiety of imitation was indeed one of its central concerns, and influential figures such as Mirza Malkum Khan (1833–1908) were sometimes perceived (though this was not universally the case) as saviours or tricksters alternatively by different people. On this issue, Fereydun Adamiyat notes how different people had different views of Malkum. The “despotic prince Zill al-Sultan” considered him to be of equal status to Plato and Aristotle. Aqa Ibrahim Badayi’ Nigar thought he was devoid of “the fineries of knowledge and literature (latīfah-i dānish va adab). Minister of Sciences and chief minister Mukhbirul Saltanah Hidayat thought “whatever Malkum wrote has been said in other ways in [Sa’di’s] Gulistan and Bustan.” Fekr-e Azadi (Tehran: Sukhan, 1340/1961), 99. Mehdi Quli Khan Hedayat’s view of Malkum Khan was summed up in these words: “This Malkum knew some things in magic and trickstery and finally did some dishonorable things and gave the dar al-fonun a bad reputation,” Khaterat va Khatarat (Tehran: Zavvar, 1389/2010), 58. Having said that, my use of the notion of liminality, though informed by the theoretical perspectives cited above, diverges from them in one important aspect: liminality as perceived by contemporary theory seems to be based on a pre-/post- understanding of non-liminal statuses accompanied by a desire on the part of the subject to emerge from the liminal state. This approach does not explain liminality as a site for the synthesis of coexisting identities. The munāzirah is precisely the account of such a process. In the context of Iranian modernity, the discourse of tradition was not perceived as prior to the discourse of modernity, as we shall amply see. In fact, European civilizational progress was deemed to have resulted from the successful implementation of Islamic principles. Therefore, while the history of Iranian modernity can still be analyzed as a liminal stage where a weakened old order meets the promise of a new order, it must be understood in terms of the encounter of simultaneous and parallel discourses. It is in this sense that liminality is employed in this study.View all notes identity—a narrative of adaptation rather than wholesale adoption, of heterogeneity rather than homogeneity, of dialogues rather than dialectics. The monazereh is the account of modern Iranian histories.     

唐代经学统一的制度性保障

《五经正义》的颁行是唐代在经学文本上的统一举措。经学思想的真正统一还有赖于制度的保障。唐代教育、科举、铨选和其他相关制度不仅确保了五经的权威,而且极大地促进了经学的全面推广和传播。这些制度为经学统一提供了源头性的保障。     

明末儒家伦理的困境及其新动向

明末儒家伦理遭到了来自各方面的批评 ,并陷入了困境 ,诸如对“五伦”关系的前后顺序进行重新排列 ,夫妇、朋友二伦置于五伦之首 ;对君臣关系的新评价 ;相对主义孝道观的普及 ;对仁、义、礼、智、信“五常”的批评。明末是中国思想史上第一次大规模批评传统儒家伦理的时代 ,是近代文化与“五四”新文化的文化源头     

琉球古国华裔儒学大师程顺则

古代琉球是位于中国东南太平洋中的一个岛国 ,自明洪武五年 (1 3 72年 )中琉建立正式的藩属关系起 ,到清光绪五年 (1 879年 )琉球为日本吞并止 ,中琉双方友好交往五百余年。此间 ,中国儒家思想和文化传入琉球 ,对琉球政治制度、思想文化乃至社会生活都产生了深刻影响。华裔儒学大师程顺则一生致力于儒家思想与文化在琉球的传播。此外 ,他对促进中琉间政治、经济、文化及航海交通方面的交流 ,也做出了卓越的贡献。     

《论语》雌雉节新解

《论语》雌雉节汉代以来无定解。朱熹在《四书集注》中判此节两处有阙文,此说遂成定论。此节与《乡党》篇旨通意连,决无阙文。两千年来先贤大师释不通此节,关键在于离开“雌雉”之“雌”而去释解“时哉时哉”,结果变成离“礼’’释义。只要从“雌”字着眼,以“雌”释“时”,“山梁雌雉,时哉时哉”就与“礼”连接起来。雌雉节是子路惊飞孵卵雌雉,孔子强调此时正是雌雉孵卵之时,责备子路不应违反“不唐不卵”的时令之“礼”。子路打拱认错,雌雉终又惊飞。此解不见于《论语》讲读各家释义。     

清代理学的特点

清代理学沿承宋、元、明,但有自己的特点：一、无主峰可指,无大脉络可寻;二、学理无创新,重在道德规范;三、鸦片战争后,理学受西学冲击,既抵拒又有所会通;四、宋学、汉学虽存门户之见,但也兼采。     

魏晋南北朝经学的演变与更新

皮锡瑞在《经学历史》中认为：魏晋为经学中衰时代,南北朝是经学分立时代,并不能代表这个时期经学的全貌。东汉末年郑学的出现,标志着经学兼容古今而演变的方向。三国时期经学在南方传播,出现了南北互动的新气象。魏晋经学在北方继续传承,并在演变中得到发展。十六国北朝各少数民族统治者“变夷从夏”,缩小了胡汉民族文化的差异,中原儒学虽历经丧乱而得以存续,更值得注意的是妇女也参加了经学教学与学术传承。北朝经学继承两汉以来的传统,比较重视考证,而不善于创新。东晋南朝儒学受玄学的影响,清谈之风推动了儒释道的交流,教育格局多样化促进了儒学的玄化。所谓“南人约简,得其英华;北学深芜,穷其枝叶”,出现了南北学风的不同趋势。陆德明撰《经典释文》,由陈入隋入唐,将南学传入北方。颜师古、孔颖达定《五经正义》,亦多从南学。南学终于成为唐朝经学的主流,并成为中国传统文化的主流。     

Modern Pagan Festivals: A Study in the Nature of Tradition

The cluster of recently appeared religions known as Paganism have developed, over the past sixty years, a distinctive cycle of annual festivals, most of which draw on long historic roots but that are grouped together in a modern framework. No study has yet been made of the manner in which this cycle developed, and potentially rich rewards may be gained from doing so. Such a project is a rare opportunity to study a religious festive tradition in the process of evolution, and also to suggest features of the nature of tradition in modern societies, and the manner in which it is perceived by scholars in different disciplines.     

The (un)promised land: queer identity and South Africa’s post-apartheid urban landscape

Abstract

In this article, I explore the intersection of photography and contemporary urban topographies in the production of queer identity in post-apartheid South Africa. To do so I examine Thebeautifulonesarehere, a contemporary photo-collage portrait series by Kelebogile Ntladi, which attempts to queer representations of South African cityscapes to reveal the entrenched homophobia and the systematic rejection of queer subjects. Ntladi, inspired by their own experiences of counter-normativity and the omnipresent threat of violence they face as a result, took to the streets to walk through their home city of Johannesburg to photograph the urban and cultural landscape; these photographic prints were then used as the building blocks in the assembly and fabrication of imagined spaces in which they and their fellow queer citizens would be able to live without fear of violence, where they could move freely and without repercussion. Using the trope of the flâneur as a starting point, I draw on Walter Benjamin’s paradoxical experience of Paris: his writing of Paris as the ‘capital of the nineteenth century’ and ‘the promised land’ of the flâneur exists in stark juxtaposition with his own complex experience of anxiety, dislocation and impending doom while living in the city while in exile during World War II. Ntladi’s personal experience of post-1994 Johannesburg echoes the paradoxical experience.     

敦煌儒典与隋唐主流文化——兼谈隋唐主流文化的“南朝化”问题

本文根据敦煌儒典的种类与源流,以及《经典释文》与《隋书·经籍志》的有关记载,对敦煌儒典与南朝、隋唐主流文化的关系进行了深入的探讨,认为敦煌儒典远与南朝主流文化衔接,近与隋唐主流文化接轨,既代表了华夏文明,也反映了隋唐主流文化的“南朝化”。     

Orthodox violence: “Critique of Violence” and Walter Benjamin's Jewish political theology

This paper deals with the role of Judaism in Walter Benjamin's famous 1921 essay on violence and law, Zur Kritik der Gewalt. Despite the intense attention devoted to this essay, the role of Jewish myth in it has not yet been thoroughly explained. This study contends that the association between what Benjamin termed revolutionary violence and the Jewish messianic tradition, which plays a central role in the evaluation of Benjamin's text, is far more problematic than has hitherto been assumed, and poses a serious challenge, which has not been fully examined in its historical context. Second, this essay claims that the subversive elements that many have supposedly found in Benjamin's text and the attempts to link these elements to messianic traditions are also unconvincing. Third, the paper contextualizes Benjamin's thought within the framework of the Jewish political–theological debate of the period. It contends that Benjamin's theory of law and justice should be understood not as a revolutionary, anti-republican text, as has been generally accepted, but as a secularized conservative orthodox one. In doing so, it seeks to shed light not only on Benjamin's early thinking and its influences, but also on the neglected element of Jewish orthodoxy within the broader topic of political theology.