阿克顿史学思想初探

阿克顿勋爵是19世纪英国最著名的史学家之一。他认为,人类社会的历史是一部自由史,道德法则是最终的历史评判标准,确定性和超然性是历史研究不可或缺的原则。他的思想超越了同时代的史家。但由于对史料的过分重视阻碍了他取得应有的学术成就,对于道德标准的执着使得他把复杂的历史过程看得过于简单化了。     

论历史学的客观性原则

历史研究的客观性根据是现实批判的理性要求。它完全有别于古代史家所说的“直书”和“实录”。直书之所以不是客观性,就在于它本质上是一种等级性。与此相反,客观性的本质则在于其平等性。历史学之所以可能保持一种客观性原则,就在于它追求一种理想的境界。这一理想境界就是人性、自由与真理。历史学中的种种偏见可以借助人性、自由和真理来克服,同时,人性、自由和真理本身的偏见又可以被历史本身所克服。     

把握执政规律提高执政能力 --从"必然"和"自由"的关系看加强党的执政能力建设

政党执政是有规律的,加强党的执政能力建设,是合规律性与合目的性的统一。只有尊重执政“必然”,才能走向执政“自由”。     

Sorcery and Negotiating Economic Agency: A Critical Observation from Solomon Islands

In this paper, my aim is to add to the discussions of sorcery in Melanesia by focussing on its relation to economic agency in the context of a case example from Malaita, Solomon Islands. Using Taylor's (2015) categories of ‘distributive’ and ‘possessive’ agency as a critical point of departure, I illustrate how sorcery can be considered as an outcome when people are perceived not to be balancing these forms of economic agency. By drawing on the example of an entrepreneur from Malaita, I highlight the complexity of the negotiations between possessive and distributive agencies and show how critically investigating these negotiations is important for understanding why sorcery may happen but also how to limit the chances of it happening. Furthermore, I also illustrate how critical investigations of accounts of sorcery can reveal complexities of socio‐economic and political life in changing economic and social circumstances.     

Towards Hume – the discourse on the liberty of the press in the age of Walpole*

The liberty of the press became one of the main topics of public debate in the 1720s and 1730s in response to Walpole’s restrictive press policy. This debate was carried on mainly in newspapers such as the Craftsman and the London Journal. Country and Court writers did not limit their discussions to legal questions, but conducted a lively debate about what press freedom actually was, and what role the press should have in political life. Among other things, they discussed to what extent it was appropriate for the press to take on an anti-governmental role. This debate is important, not least because it is a foil for one of the ‘classical’ eighteenth-century texts on the problem of press freedom, David Hume’s essay ‘Of the Liberty of the Press’. The debate reveals to what extent, and in what respects, Hume was breaking new ground in this essay.     

The New Republicanism Without Religion?

The past decades have witnessed a harvest of new books and articles exploring the modern republican tradition and its relevance for contemporary political theory. Members of this movement present the tradition as an alternative to both political liberalism and communitarianism and offer its unique conception of liberty (“freedom from domination”) as a distinct third option beyond the “positive” and “negative” varieties famously identified by Isaiah Berlin. Yet in recovering this view of liberty, civic republicans have neglected the essential role that religion plays in the modern republican tradition. This omission represents not only a serious deviation from the tradition, but, what is more, it fundamentally weakens civic republicanism’s capacity for theorizing and achieving political liberty at the level of institutional life. In the modern republican tradition, religion has been understood to undergird republican liberty both in terms of shaping the morals, customs, and habits of citizens and in providing normative authority for the value of liberty over domination. In this essay, I offer a counter-narration of the modern republican tradition that gives religion its due and challenges civic republicans to recognize the central role that religion has played, and should continue to play, in theorizing and promoting republican liberty.     

Witchcraft,Human Nature,and Political Theology in Jean Bodin’s de la Démonomanie des sorciers

ABSTRACT

Jean Bodin (1530–1596) is most well-known as the thinker Carl Schmitt credits for modern absolutist sovereignty and political theology. Contemporary critics of sovereignty, following Schmitt, ascribe to Bodin a theological politics of obedience and the negation of individual and collective human freedom through authoritarian discipline (Cocks, Joan. On Sovereignty and Other Political Delusions. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2014). Yet, a dedicated study of Bodin’s own political theology remains wanting. His most extensive discussion of theology and law is in his more obscure work on the jurisprudence of witchcraft. In de la Démonomanie des sorciers (1580), Bodin provides a theological account of a divinely created rational order where benevolence and evil are at work in the world. Humans must exercise the free will to choose between them. Bodin’s theological anthropology anchors his political theology with important implications for the proper exercise of human political power within the natural and divine order.     

A study of the origins of the Chinese communist movement from a new perspective – The History of the Establishment of the Chinese Communist Party by Ishikawa Yoshihiro

From around the time of the Opium War to the May Fourth New Culture Movement, democracy in China advanced through four stages. Originally it surfaced as a germ of rough ideas gleaned from imported knowledge; from there, democracy transpired gradually via various avenues towards a more sophisticated level in the period from the Second Opium War until before the Sino–Japanese War of 1894–1895 and meanwhile a number of individuals favoring utilitarianism opted for a constitutional monarchy as a way of making the nation strong. Then, following the Sino–Japanese War 1894–1895 until prior to the 1911 Revolution, when manifold Western ideas of democracy penetrated China, people embarked on somber discussions about what kind of democratic system China actually needed to adopt. During the years between 1912 and the May Fourth New Culture Movement, people initially rushed to build democratic politics but afterwards began to examine the ideologies and social structures that demonstrated compatibility with democracy. By the time the May Fourth Movement emerged, people hardly disagreed on the sense of democracy that they understood. After the May Fourth Movement people mainly focused their attention on the question of true and false democracy or the matter of what type of democracy harmonized best with national conditions in China.     

关于真理的几个问题新议

在实践唯物主义精神的指引下,遵循实践哲学的方法原则,正确对待真理的主观特征和主体本性,挖掘深藏其中的主观意蕴,是关乎真理论研究和发展方向的重大问题,是唯物主义反映论的基本要求。真理作为主体对客体的正确反映,即科学的理论,它包含认识和正确的认识两个规定性,简而言之,真理是特殊的认识。     

Eros and Dionysus

Abstract

Liberty was once praiseworthy because it enabled a free choice for the good. Technology recasts the classical link between liberty and virtue by making human well-being depend on technological advance. Till recently, technology signified human mastery over nature. But now virtual reality offers itself as a substitute for nature. Unlike machines which hold us at a distance, it draws us in with images. It no longer shapes the soul indirectly through the effects of using machines, but involves the soul directly. The modern attempt to bracket the soul has brought it back virtually. The argument between fight and flight is at a standstill. Instead, the irony which many lament as a feature of postmodernity can provide a distance from the technologies which have made themselves necessary.     

权力与自由:美墨战争期间美国外交大辩论研究

美墨战争发生在19世纪美国大陆扩张进入高潮时期,是美国以武力进行领土扩张的开始,在美国国会内部引发了一场有关美国国家目标的外交大辩论。辩论从得：克萨斯兼并开始,涉及宣战、拨款、领土兼并以及奴隶制的扩展等诸多问题,但其核心主题在于扩张性的外交政策与美国的自由事业是否相容,美国的国家目标是追求领土的扩大,还是自由的延续,从而体现了当时美国人对权力与自由两者之间关系的思考。     

From English to British liberty, 1550–1800

This essay was written for a symposium on Dutch conceptual history in a comparative European perspective. The concept in question here is liberty, and the context first English and then (following the creation of the United Kingdom in 1707) British. What follows primarily addresses two themes, both challenging. First, what role did the concept of liberty play over an exceptionally long and turbulent period of English history punctuated by two revolutions? Second, what relationship existed during this period between English and Dutch understandings and experience of this concept?     

中国古代遗嘱继承制度质疑

中国古代不存在一般意义上的遗嘱继承制度。遗嘱继承制度的产生 ,以单纯的个人所有权的普遍化和血亲观念的相对淡化为前提条件 ,而中国古代不具备这些条件 ;中国古代的法律仅允许被继承人在“户绝”时适用遗嘱 ,有子时则必须实行法定继承 ,与普通意义上的遗嘱继承制度相去甚远 ;虽然古代史籍中有实行遗嘱继承的个别实例 ,但不能据此认为中国古代存在遗嘱继承制度     

Citizenship and religion in the Italian constitutions, 1796-1849

This article explores the link between religion and politics, religious liberty and the rights of religious minorities, by focusing on the constitutions which Italian states adopted and discarded from 1796 to 1849. It concerns questions about the ‘national character’ and the rights and duties of the citizen, and argues that - far from being ‘an outlet’ for material discontent - questions of religious identity and pluralism were integral to the Risorgimento definition of liberty. In this context, the author explores also the Mazzinian vision of a democratic republic inspired by an acephalous and non-hierarchical civil religion, similar to the Unitarian Transcendentalism practiced by some of his New York admirers - a far cry from the ‘religions of politics’ inspired by Saint Simon and Auguste Comte.     

历史与人的意志支配的实践

针对人类历史是不以人的意志为转移的合乎规律的客观发展过程的传统见解,本文提出正是人的意志支配下的对象性实践活动创造和改变了实际历史进程.历史发展的"合力论"不能成立.观察了各种理论派别对人类历史的基本理解,揭示辩证唯心主义、实证主义、人文主义解释学、传统历史唯物主义殊途同归,都将人类历史归结为精神的发展.只有马克思的"新唯物主义"的实践哲学揭示了实际历史过程的实践本质,启迪历史学朝着科学认知的实践的方向发展.