试析20世纪40年代的新自由主义思潮

20世纪40年代自由主义思潮的最大特点就是把自由主义思想的提倡与当时中国社会的迫切需求结合在一起:既要解决政治民主问题,又要实现经济平等的目标。这就需要最大限度地调和政治民主与经济平等之间的矛盾,建立一个政治民主与经济平等齐头并进的社会。为了适应这种社会需要,自由主义在坚持原有的自由、民主、平等、法治等基本理念的基础上,吸收了许多社会主义的思想要素,用当时形象的话说就是"大家有饭吃,各人选路走"。这种调和自由主义和社会主义的思潮在中国社会引起了极大的反响和共鸣,形成了系统、完整的思想体系,一时间成为思想界关注的焦点,许多人将其称为"新自由主义"。     

Freedom,Religion and the Making of the Modern State in Japan, 1868–89

This paper rethinks the article of religious freedom of the Meiji Constitution of 1889 and calls into question the liberalist paradigm employed to understand the Constitution and modern Japanese history. In this liberalist framework, the Constitution manifests the peculiar and authoritarian nature of the pre-war Japanese state. In particular, the 28^th article, which provides for the conditional freedom of religious belief, is seen as no more than a cover for social control by the state. This paper examines the histories of the ideas of religion and freedom, and the religious freedom article, and argues that the most appropriate task is not to measure how much religious freedom the Meiji Constitution failed to guarantee against a de-historicised liberalism, but rather to consider the function of the very inclusion of religious freedom in the Constitution. I argue that the inclusion of religious freedom as a generic type of liberty in the Meiji Constitution was instrumental in the creation of the private modern individual as a subject-citizen. It is through this private individual citizen that the modern state as a public, secular authority was created.     

自由与平等的道德观简

文章提出自由、平等、道德这三个日常生活中常碰到的词,关于它的意思和真正价值需要认真地思考。首先要从道德的角度去理解自由和平等这两个概念,然后又从自由和平等的角度去理解道德,并把这种理解放到日常生活中,最基本的是不要制造痛苦,不要制造暴力。     

陕甘宁边区的离婚法实践

陕甘宁边区的离婚法令体现了对婚姻自由、男女平等的追求,但由于落后的社会现实而在实施中遭遇了困境。对此,边区政府在立法、司法、宣传等方面采取了多种补救措施。在离婚问题上,边区还面临着革命需求与个人权利之间的价值冲突,并在实践中对前者有所偏向。考察边区的离婚法令及其实践,可为今日的法制建设提供借鉴。     

Internet freedom,human rights and power

Internet freedom is rapidly becoming understood as a normative framework for how the Internet should function and be used globally. Recently declared a human right by the United Nations, it also forms a central pillar of the USA's 21st Century Statecraft foreign policy doctrine. This article argues that although there is a clear human rights agenda present in this policy, there is also a power element which is much less discussed or acknowledged in the vast literature on Internet freedom. Through an exploration of both a short history and some important lessons learned about Internet freedom, this article demonstrates how the US Department of State has adapted to the information age in such a way as to harness individual agency (reconceptualised in policy terms as ‘civilian power’) for the promotion of state power. Although this is by no means as stable or reliable as some more conventional mechanisms, it is an expression of power that meets with few challenges to its legitimacy.     

No Angst and All Play: Postmodernism and the Humanities

Abstract

There is widespread disagreement about Tocqueville's conception of human nature, some going so far as to say that Tocqueville possessed no unified conception of human nature at all. In this paper, I aim to provide the essential principles of Tocqueville's conception of human nature through an examination of the way in which he describes the power of human circumstances, such as physical environment, social state, and religion, to shape human character by extracting the principles underlying these transformations. There is no “natural man” or man “in the state of nature” but instead a set of psychic operations that reveal a picture of human nature in which human freedom, or the ability to initiate action in pursuit of important objects, lies at the heart of human life.     

Governor Sir Thomas Brisbane's experiment in press freedom: A quantitative evaluation through media system dependency

ABSTRACT

The relatively isolated circumstances of colonial Australia provide a natural laboratory for examining the establishment of press freedom there in 1824. A quantitative content analysis of newspapers from 1821 to 1825, guided by media system dependency (MSD) theory, suggests publishers were more concerned with exploiting the end of their dependence on the government as censor than with addressing their remaining dependence on the government as a well-funded advertiser. Findings also reveal considerable variation among publications and between colonies. The analysis also demonstrates the value of MSD theory in historical research.     

Philosophy and literature,

Freedom as a natural right, the importance of consent, defending the idea that government should be in the hands of the most virtuous and reflective citizens, denouncing patronage, the need to link individual and political freedom … These are some of the characteristics of La Boétie's doctrine that I believe place him within the tradition that Quentin Skinner calls the neo-Roman conception of civil liberty. Of course, La Boétie did not write a positive defence of the rule of law, as Livy did in his History of Rome and as the English republicans do, but the Discourse can easily be read as a legal plea condemning absolute monarchy and any kind of arbitrary regime.     

The Representative of the State: Why the English Parliament Was Distinctive in the Early 17th Century

This article identifies the forms of state development in 16th- and 17th-century England, and shows that they were embraced by parliament rather than the crown, reflecting the change whereby MPs ceased to be mere local representatives and came to be seen as the central representative of the kingdom, traditionally the function of the monarch. Thus parliament assumed a defining role in the new national dimension of foreign policy, working in concert with the Elizabethan government, but generally in opposition to the early Stuarts, who perpetuated a dynastic approach. The most challenging domestic manifestation of parliament as central representative was the long-term campaign for freedom of trade, pursued by a broad coalition of the merchant community and the gentry in parliament, asserting a principled right of English subjects to be free of arbitrary exactions and restraints, such as the royal prerogative of impositions. The emergent state was structured by a distinctive internal dynamic, based on the sole sovereignty of representative law, established by the expulsion of the universal church. Omni-competent statute had a unique dual force, responding directly to constituency requirements, and meeting them with definitive national provisions. This was adopted by parliament as the new instrument of good government, but distrusted and sidelined by the Stuart crown. Consequently, in 1641, John Pym bemoaned the absence of parliaments as bereaving the country of the legislative function, which he now saw as ‘that which makes and constitutes a kingdom’. The appropriation of state perspectives reinforced parliamentarian strength and ambitions.