The Theology of Carl Schmitt's Political Theology

The theological turn in studies of Carl Schmitt is pronounced. This paper does not challenge this turn, but questions what theology means for Schmitt. Specifically, it challenges the assumption that Schmitt's political theology is grounded in divine revelation. By distinguishing between “theology in the sense of divine revelation” and “theology in the sense of epistemic faith,” it argues that Schmitt's political theology is epistemic in origin. Schmitt's political theology is not rooted in faith in divine revelation, but in the narrower notion that human cognition is, ultimately, rooted in faith not reason, revelation, or common sense.     

A Realist Response to the Appeal for Pacifism

Abstract

Political philosophy is a discipline related to all other disciplines in a manner that prevents it from becoming autonomous but at the same time not absorbed into other disciplines. When political philosophy ceases to be itself, other disciplines rush in to take its place and thereby themselves undermine their own being.     

日本单一窗口的构建及共制度性启示

日本单一窗口构建属于“单一系统”模式的成功典范。自1978年启动第一个电子通关系统——空运NACCS系统开始,通过30年的努力,分三个阶段实现了以海关NACCS系统为核心系统的单一窗口。在其构建过程中,NACCS的核心系统功能,领导机构与运营主体以及立法先行、动态修订的单一窗口法律保障是其成功的关键所在。因此,分析日本单一窗口的构建进程可以发现,解决单一窗口的瓶颈与障碍不在于电子技术,而在于制度构建与机构整合。强有力的单一授权领导机关,单一窗口制度构建的思维转换,制度改革与机构整合的法律化,这三项内容是单一窗口得以顺畅有效运作的重要支柱。     

Writers and politics in West Germany

This article argues that Archibald Campbell's Necessity of Revelation (1739) can be viewed as the first application of the ‘science of human nature’, a characteristic branch of the Scottish Enlightenment, to the study of religious belief. Adopting Baconian and Newtonian methodological principles, Campbell set hypotheses, collected historical data, and inferred conclusions about the capabilities of human nature to come to fundamental religious ideas without the aid of revelation. He did so not only to reject the ‘deist’ position on the powers of unassisted human reason, associated with Matthew Tindal's Christianity as Old as the Creation (1730), but also to refute Campbell's conservative critics within the Church of Scotland who had earlier tried him for heresy. Campbell's example is that of a university professor using the experimental study of religion to defeat both radical freethinking and Calvinist orthodoxy. His work is another instance of the complicated relationship between science and religion within eighteenth-century Scotland.     

Modern Liberty and the Moral Contents of Life: An Introduction to the Political Reflection of Pierre Manent

Abstract

Robert Faulkner's The Case for Greatness offers a lively, detailed discussion of Aristotle's magnanimous man and the statesman who embodies this ethical–political ideal. Faulkner's portrayal of the complexity and tensions within this classical portrait of magnanimity and in the souls of its ancient and modern exemplars is compelling, but missing from his discussion is any mention of magnanimity in the Jewish and Christian intellectual traditions and the resources they afford to mitigate and heal these tensions and provide an openness to fuller wholeness and happiness. One of these resources is the virtue of humility, which is discussed here as a support and a supplement to magnanimity. Various statesmen who seem to incarnate this humble yet arguably more magnanimous magnanimity are noted in the last sections of this essay.     

Archibald Campbell and the Committee for Purity of Doctrine on Natural Reason,Natural Religion,and Revelation

Summary

This article discusses Archibald Campbell's (1691–1756) early writings on religion, and the reactions they provoked from conservative orthodox Presbyterians. Purportedly against the Deist Matthew Tindal, Campbell crucially argued for two claims, namely (i) for the reality of immutable moral laws of nature, and (ii) for the incapacity of natural reason, or the light of nature, to discover the fundamental truths of religion, in particular the existence and perfections of God, and the immortality of the soul. In an episode that had its peak in 1735 and 1736, a Committee for Purity of Doctrine of the Church of Scotland scrutinised Campbell's writings. It attacked the second claim as contradicting Calvinist doctrines concerning the universal guilt of mankind after the Fall, and the first claim as contradicting doctrines concerning justification and salvation, and as supporting Deism. The study of this episode reveals new aspects of how the struggle to define orthodoxy crystallised in philosophical and theological debates in Scotland at the dawn of the Enlightenment, and before the rise of the Moderates.     

《徐复传》版本考

徐复是北宋著名术数家,因其精通京房易数,获宋仁宗赐号“冲晦处士”。曾巩的《隆平集》、李焘的《续资治通鉴长编》、王称的《东都事略》及脱脱等着的《宋史》均收录了《徐复传》。从比较不同版本的《徐复传》,可以得出一项重要的启示,也就是《隆平集》的史书地位不但出类于宋代,更留芳于元代。