God,Justice and Society

Abstract

This non-evaluative overview of God, Justice, and Society: Aspects of Law and Legality in the Bible summarizes Jonathan Burnside’s introduction to biblical law and his demonstration of its value as a resource for modern legal issues     

Forgiveness and reconciliation in Hobbes’s natural law theory

Thomas Hobbes’s laws of nature dictate the making and keeping of the social contract. In addition, Hobbes’s natural law theory considers traditional moral virtues, such as mercy and gratitude, as being conducive to peace. Some Hobbes scholars have argued that these other natural laws call for ‘forgiveness’ and facilitate ‘reconciliation’. However, as this essay shows, Hobbes does not use these terms to mean the reparation of broken relationships between victims and perpetrators. Rather, Hobbesian reconciliation refers to efforts to propitiate enemies in order to win their favour, while forgiveness is a synonym for pardon, in the sense of punishment-forbearance. It is argued that neither of these requires true remorse and reparation of the wrong done. By contrasting Hobbes’s conception of anger with that of Aristotle, the article provides an explanation for why Hobbes maintains that the rage of enemies could be appeased by instrumental calculations of expected benefits, thus ignoring more deep-seated resentments caused by moral wrongs.     

Law,Principle, and the Theologico-Political History of Sovereignty

Abstract

This article takes it cue from the debate between Carl Schmitt and Erik Peterson regarding the possibility of political theology within Christianity, and in response, offers a conceptual-historical portrait of sovereignty and its juridical dimensions. Beginning with the introduction of Roman law into the medieval Church, the article traces the logic of “legal principle” as the basis of sovereign decision and how the form of legal distinctions adopted into canon law translate the Romanitas of law into the theory of papal sovereignty. By the Romanitas of law, that is to say the principle of sovereignty in law. The article then seeks to describe the conceptual translations of Roman politics and Stoic metaphysics into theological form and the logic of this translation into medieval natural law. The article concludes by evaluating how the civic theology of Rome is conceptually inherited by the politics and legal framework of sovereignty and returns to Peterson’s critique of Schmitt, arguing that political theology can be understood as a dynamic where politics is theologized, assuming that in the history of religion, theology and politics are never fully distinct to begin with.     

Volksunruhen in Württemberg 1789–1801

The juridical force of time forms a critical, but hitherto unexplored part of Hugo Grotius’s discourse on the justice of war and peace. Grotius defines war as a span of time in which disputed rights and armed conflicts between states are examined in reference to temporal coordinates. This method allows him to adjust otherwise static laws to meet the demands of times and spaces in an increasingly expanded world. In doing so, Grotius is also able to reconcile multiple layers of laws in a temporal framework, which suspends one layer of law, to be revived at later times. Finally, cautious in the use of the language of time, Grotius admits both that right demands immediacy, and that justice suffers delays. By this nexus of delay (mora) and emergency (necessitas), Grotius warns against the abuse of ‘time’ as a legal concept to justify unlawful claims, which still rings with alarm today.     

The Moral Theologian,Oliver O'Donovan and International Law

Abstract

Oliver O'Donovan renders a singular contribution to the theory and history of international law by identifying the spiritual impoverishment of the discipline following the triumph of state-centred contractarianism in the theory of international relations, with Hobbes, Locke, Kant and, for the present, John Rawls. This contractarian approach to international society has an inherent tendency, which O'Donovan highlights, to ground international order in the hegemonic claim of one or two countries to represent the values of the whole of humanity. With a combination of rational moral theology and biblical interpretation (Revelation), O'Donovan reasserts an international order grounded in the autonomous identities of the nations, which God has recognized as equal. With a theory of political legitimacy which rests upon representation of national identity, O'Donovan points the way to an international order based upon mutual respect among nations under natural law, in the classical medieval sense finally represented by Grotius and Suarez. This article describes again what the natural law tradition meant in the hands of Aquinas and Vitoria, in order to highlight the fact that the ontological dimension of natural law theory provides a way to meet the intolerable insecurities which theories of nationalism appear to generate. Then the article goes on to offer one way to bring natural law thinking up to date for contemporary audiences by drawing upon Paul Ricoeur's phenomenological theory of mutual recognition and respect among the nations as a way of going beyond the contractarian tradition in contemporary international law and relations theory.     

读香港中文大学文物馆藏简札记

香港中文大学文物馆2001年出版的《香港中文大学文物馆藏简牍》,编著者陈松长先生对所公布的简牍在分类、分篇、释文、注释等方面作了初步的整理研究,解决了不少问题。本文在时贤的基础上新释出“辞”、“惑”、“民”、“曰”、“疵”、“牢”、“致”等字,对简文的通读有一定的意义。     

大遗址历史文化内涵的展示与阐释

大遗址历史文化内涵非常丰富,但如何将其生动地呈现给观众并非易事,展示和阐释是最基本的两种方式。展示旨在呈现大遗址的本体及相关信息,阐释是展示的延伸和补充,是运用更丰富的手段多方位诠释大遗址的历史文化内涵,给观众以更全面的认知。由于大遗址有诸多未知因素．因此对其展示和阐释也不可能是一次性或完结式的,需要随着考古学及相关科学研究的深入不断充实、调整和完善。     

Topoiesis de la recepción literaria

ABSTRACT

This article proposes a particular notion about “topoiesis,” focusing on the text reception point of view. Initially, it establishes a theoretical framework using useful concepts from hermeneutics and post-structuralism, to later discuss the real existence of a dialogue or a “fusion of horizons” in which a “sense of space” of a text would be blended in the meeting point between textuality and the reader. Finally, through this space we propose a categorization of the different types of “topoiesis” of literary reception, establishing correspondences with the concept of “enunciative instances” in the text space, detailed in another article.     

Unsociable Sociability and the Crisis of Natural Law: Michael Hissmann (1752–1784) on the State of Nature

Summary

This article studies the impact of the debate about human sociability on the crisis of natural law in the later eighteenth century examining the Untersuchungen über den Stand der Natur of 1780 by the Göttingen scholar Michael Hissmann. It makes the case that this crisis ensued from Rousseau's Discours sur l‘inégalité and a revival of neo-Epicurean trends in moral philosophy more generally. The sociability debate revolved around the question to what extent society was natural or artificial to man. This had important implications for the problem of whether distinctions between right and wrong or just and unjust were natural and inborn, or had developed at a much later stage of mankind's history, reflecting merely the respective needs and utility of different societies and cultures. Hissmann's essay summarises this European debate concisely. His point of departure is Rousseauian premises, yet his political conclusions turn Rousseau upside down. Here, Hissmann's essay opens up several questions regarding the allegedly radical political character of one-substance theories in philosophy.     

楚简释读七则

本文对《郭店楚简》中的“迁”、“兢”、“工”等字提出了新的释读;并为楚简“去”、“慎”字的释读提供新的文献证据。     

An Incomplete History of Interpretation from the Big Bang

Interpretation/guiding has been recorded as a profession as far back as 2500 BP. It has left a legacy, sometimes positive, sometimes negative; a legacy of pride in place and the importance of passing on heritage to the local community and the tourist. This paper covers some highlights of the period from the time of Herodotus to the present. There is much more to discover and record; this is a beginning.     

The Reward of a King: Machiavelli,Aquinas, and Shakespeare's Richard III

Abstract

Richard III centers on the rise and fall of a man who claims that he will “set the murderous Machiavel to school” and proceeds to seize the crown of England, only to lose his grip on that coveted prize in his own sudden personal and political unraveling. Insofar as we see Richard as a genuine but failed Machiavellian, it remains difficult to determine the extent to which Shakespeare's critique of Richard is a critique of Machiavelli. Yet Shakespeare's account of Richard's hopes, successes, and failures, examined in light of relevant classical texts, points to fatal flaws in Machiavelli's account of reason, conscience, and the end of human actions, demonstrating that the concept of the objective good is an essential component of any meaningful and coherent account of human action. Thus, Richard's ultimate descent into madness is a sign of the fate that even the “best” Machiavellian statesman or society is destined to share.