The enemy as the unthinkable: a concretist reading of Carl Schmitt’s conception of the political

This article offers an unconventional interpretation of Carl Schmitt’s conception of the political. It first identifies two alternative readings – an ‘exceptionalist’ and a ‘concretist’ one – to make the claim that in the late 1920s he laid the foundations for a theory of politics that overcame the flaws of his theory of exception. It then explains why the concretist reading provides an insightful key to Schmitt’s take on the relationship between politics and law as a whole. Despite this, the chief aim of this analysis is not interpretive. Rather, the article claims that such a paradigm change was related to Schmitt’s pondering on the elements that were menacing to draw the experience of modern statehood to an end even more seriously than any upheavals and revolutions. For he came to the conclusion that the mere claim to political self-sufficiency on the part on non-state social entities was able to defy the idea of the state as the political entity par excellence. While these reflections urged Schmitt to reformulate many features of his conception of the political, the article contends that this particular juncture in his production sheds light on a crucial feature of contemporary politics.     

中苏同盟与战略利益的选择

中苏同盟是战后雅尔塔格局的产物 ,同时又对这一格局的发展产生了重要影响。中苏同盟的演变反映了战后国际关系的深刻变化 ,其实质则是中苏在战略利益上的选择。本文从战后国际格局和国家利益的角度 ,对中苏在结盟中的战略利益选择问题作了分析     

Lucy Hutchinson,Lucretius and Soteriological Materialism

Abstract

This article examines Lucy Hutchinson's pervasive materialism, arguing that her use of corporeal imagery – in part shaped by her early translation of Lucretius – contributes to the soteriological purposes of her later works in multiple ways. Criticism on Hutchinson has tended to divorce the materialist imagery of her translation from the Calvinistic themes of her other writings. I argue, however, for the lasting presence of a materialism constructed from the vocabularies of Lucretian Epicureanism, Neoplatonism and John Owen. Focusing especially on the poem Order and Disorder and Hutchinson's theological tract to her daughter, I show how she uses materialism as a “means” to achieving assurance and grace. I suggest that these various responses to physical experience are part of Hutchinson's enduring investigation into the ontology of “Order” and “Disorder”, and her quest for stable spiritual being.     

Henry IV and Charles VI: the confirmation of the twenty-eight-year truce

The deposition of Richard II in 1399 caused serious problems for the new English king, Henry IV, in foreign affairs. Contemporaries believed that his seizure of the crown would provoke an outbreak of new hostilities with the French since the wife of the deposed monarch was none other than Isabel, a daughter of Charles VI, king of France. Indeed Charles took certain belligerent measures against henry, whom he stubbornly refused to recognize as the legitimate ruler of England, but stopped short of war because Isabel still remained in English custody. Henry IV, on the other hand, desired to improve relations with France because of his own tenuous hold on the English throne. Once Charles VI became convinced early in 1400 that Richard II had died in captivity, he abruptly changed his policy towards England and announced his intention of observing the terms set forth in the Twenty-Eight-Year Truce which he had originally concluded with his son-in-law in 1396. Later in May, Henry IV similarly proclaimed his willingness to honor that agreement. How both sides avoided an open clash and eventually confirmed the Twenty-Eight-Year Truce forms the central theme of this paper.     

Reputation and responsibility in Australia's 2003 intervention in the Solomon Islands

This article reinterprets Australia's motives for its 2003 intervention in the Solomon Islands. The central argument is that considerations of Australia's international reputation have not been afforded sufficient importance in explaining the Howard government's decision to intervene. A primary concern for the Howard government was to bolster Australia's reputation in the ‘War on Terror’ vis-à-vis the USA and the international community more broadly by being seen to maintain order in its regional sphere of responsibility. The article establishes the historical basis for Canberra's claims to a special responsibility for the South-West Pacific region. It then demonstrates the close connection between Australia's responsibility for order in its region and the reputational norms that evolved during the early years of the War on Terror. These claims are substantiated through an analysis of the Solomon Islands crisis from June 2000 until the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands was deployed in July 2003.     

Michael Polanyi's Social/Political Order: Design for a Society of Explorers

Abstract

Michael Polanyi's fascinations throughout his lifetime were threefold: (1) science—specifically physical chemistry; (2) philosophy—specifically epistemology and ontology; and (3) political society, understood, in the British tradition, to include economics. In developing his recommendations for political society, Polanyi draws broadly upon insights and even concepts from his experiences and reflections in both science and philosophy. His search for meaning in all of his philosophical works provides for him the definition of what he considers the most important human endeavor and is that which the political order must strive to encourage and protect. In addition, the gratification he found in the collegiality and conviviality of scientific research, conducted most productively in what Polanyi identified as “societies of explorers,” suggested to him the diverse groups—as in science, “polycentrically” ordered—and engaged in all kinds of productive activities that came to represent, for him, the grassroots source of a society's creative vitality. Having come to appreciate the necessity of freedom for scientific discovery, freedom became a paramount value in the model he proposed for political society. But this freedom, he realized, had to operate within the boundaries of legal and moral constraint if it was not to dissolve into the oppressions of anarchy. So we find in Polanyi's model of political society a dynamic very similar to that which he had developed in his epistemology: an indwelling of tradition for the purpose of social stability but also a “breaking-out” of established ways to engage in creative endeavors. Similarly, as Polanyi had recognized higher and lower “orders” of existence in his ontology that were necessary for the “emergence” of more comprehensive and novel entities, “greater than the sum of their parts,” he provided for a similar vertical, or qualitative, “layering” in his social order. These insights, and more, that Polanyi draws from his scientific and philosophical reflections in the process of constructing his model of a political society are what I attempt to develop in this essay.     

论清初东北招民开垦政策与汉族民人对东北的开发

清朝迁都北京后 ,满族大量移居中原 ,造成东北经济的凋敝。清初 ,清廷在加强东北驻防八旗的同时 ,积极鼓励关内汉族民人出关开垦土地 ,恢复辽沈地区残破的经济。为了有效地管理迁居关外开垦土地的汉族民人 ,清廷设置了民治州县机构。随着汉族民人的大量徙入 ,东北地区土地得到开发 ,城镇兴起 ,以烧锅、油坊、参、貂、烟、麻、药材为主要特色的城镇经济得以发展。     

A shared imitation: Cistercian convents and crusader families in thirteenth-century Champagne

This article examines the relationship between Cistercian nunneries and the crusade movement and considers the role of gender in light of the new emphasis on penitential piety and suffering prevalent during the thirteenth century. Focused on evidence from the region of Champagne in northern France, it argues that female family members of male crusaders adopted Cistercian spirituality as a means of participating in the experience of suffering and the pursuit of the imitation of Christ that had come to be associated with the act of crusading. The connection between Cistercian nuns and crusaders was further strengthened during this period as the Cistercian order expanded its liturgy to include specific rounds of prayers for success in the east and in southern France, for Jerusalem, and for the well-being of crusaders. Many crusader families in Champagne founded Cistercian nunneries to function as family necropolises, further sharpening the connections between crusaders, memory, and suffering as experienced in female Cistercian houses.     

我国商品房销售市场的法律调制体系研究

我国现行的商品房销售市场法律调制体系存在对开发商的违法责任规定不够明确、对开发商的违法行为处罚较轻、相关配套措施之间缺乏协调、管理措施难以到位、未规定房管部门不尽管理职责等四大问题。笔者建议从三方面来加以完善：立法上加大政府的调制力度,完善政府的调制制度;加强执法力度,使整顿和规范房地产市场秩序工作经常化;建立科学、合理、规范、高效的房地产市场管理运行体系。     

宾组卜辞五次月食的先后次序

宾组卜辞中的五次月食是殷商年代学研究极其重要的资料,本文以殷墟甲骨分期研究的最新成果为基础,先对记载五次月食的卜辞材料进行类别的划分,然后再排出五次月食的先后次序,在此基础上,就可根据目前所掌握的历算知识,求出其相应的绝对年代,以作为殷商年代学研究的重要基点。