Confucian China and Jeffersonian America: Beyond Liberal Democracy

This paper begins by reviewing the ancient Chinese worldview, one imbued with cultural particularism wherein the Middle Kingdom identified itself as the centre of the universe. I then distinguish the ways in which historically the Confucian East and Christian West have respectively exerted cultural hegemony. I next analyse China's rebuffing of liberal democracy, and how the CCP's retention of one-party rule has generated concerns about its legitimacy. I conclude by showing that China and America each possess moral traditions – specifically Confucianism and Jeffersonian Deism – that have overlapping outlooks. Both maintain a worldview that disavows extremism. Based on this broader philosophical-religious analysis, I argue that contentions over liberal democracy notwithstanding, China and America share moral ideals vital for confronting some of today's exigencies.     

古典斯巴达政治制度中的民主因素

在古代和现代学者的著述中,斯巴达政体一般被视为寡头政治的代表。本文试图发掘斯巴达政治生活中的民主特征,指出作为城邦的斯巴达,政治生活中具有相当浓厚的民主色彩。虽然从法律上看,长老会和国王拥有相当的权威,可是在实际的政治生活中,他们的地位并不显赫。监察官对国王形成了有效监督,公民大会在选举、宣战、媾和等重要问题上享有决定权。斯巴达人仍能够区别对待自己作为士兵和公民的身份。斯巴达政体200年来的稳定,也反映了公民对自己的地位相对满意。     

Hannah Arendt's Political Theology of Democratic Life

Abstract

In this essay, I explore Hannah Arendt's suggestion that we conceptualize human power and freedom polytheistically if our aim is to understand the challenges and requirements of democratic self-governance. Although it is not clear that politics must always be understood through theological grammars, if it is to be, polytheism affirms that there may be multiple sources of value and of right, offering both a metaphysical counterpart to value pluralism and a vision of how to create political practices and institutions that mirror and honor both the equality and distinction of human beings.     

Antebellum Southern Political Economists and the Problem of Slavery

This article seeks to contextualize the political economists of the antebellum South. The article analyzes them both as members of a transatlantic set of economic thinkers and as southern defenders of slavery. As such, they paired a commitment to the fundamental precepts of classical economics with a defense of chattel slavery. Some historians have claimed that the simultaneous commitment of the southern political economists to political economy and slavery compromised both their social science and their defense of slavery. In contrast, this article finds that the southern political economists exploited the gaps and tensions in classical political economy on the topic of unfree labor to build a coherent and popular economic defense of slavery. Key to the defense was a view of planters as profit‐seeking capitalists and a racism that necessitated the control of black laborers. In the process of developing the defense, some of the southern political economists championed the prospect of industrializing the economy of the South with surplus slave labor.