Petitions,Polling Stations and Paisley: the First Outworking of the Recall of MPs Act 2015

The Recall of MPs Act 2015 allows constituents to petition for their MP to be unseated. A petition of recall is opened, for six weeks, if an MP has received a custodial sentence or been suspended from the House of Commons for ten or more sitting days. Should 10 per cent of constituents sign the petition, a by‐election is required, which the deposed MP has the right to contest. The first test of the Act came in 2018, when Ian Paisley, MP for North Antrim, was suspended from the Commons for thirty days. This article examines how the Act was implemented and assesses whether procedural oddities played any part in the petition failing to attract sufficient signatures to trigger a by‐election.     

国学传统与现代学术

“国学”是近代以来相对于“西学”而兴起的关于中国固有学术的一个新称谓,国学的内涵虽然不断变化,但国学的基本传统却必须追溯到孔子,孔子通过整理六经,建立了国学强调社会责任的传统、追求天下大同的传统、追求善美和谐统一的传统。这些传统,是拯救现代学术的良药。     

“伽利略传统”与经济学实证方法

经典力学中诞生的“伽利略传统”对经济学方法有很大的影响。实证主义把整个人类文化看成是以实证为基础的知识体系,把科学方法的某一方面夸大为科学理论的唯一出发点,走向了片面性。在现代经济学中,一方面模型方法发挥着越来越大的作用,体现了经济学方法的进步;另一方面,我们应该看到,经济学与物理学有本质差异,它没有典型的物理意义上的实验,同时它又包含物理学所没有的人与人的关系。因此,经济学既要合理地继承“伽利略传统”,又要注重社会历史、文化和民族心理等因素。     

Sketching the Lineage: The Critical Method and the Idealist Tradition

The influence of philosophical idealism on critical theory is often taken for granted, but it has rarely been the subject of scrutiny. This paper attempts to explore the logic of idealism--as it developed from Kant, to Fichte and Schelling, Hegel, and the young Marx--and the way in which it frames the dominant alternative perspectives in critical theory. The interplay between traditions should illuminate some of the contributions of critical theory, expose certain problems that plague it, and offer a few positive suggestions for those committed to the critical enterprise in our own time. Thus, this article will hopefully serve as an example of an intellectual history with a political purpose.     

Martin Luther King's Civil Disobedience and the American Covenant Tradition

Daniel J. Elazar introduced the covenant idea to political sciencein his four-volume work, The Covenant Tradition in Politics.As he showed, American government and society are indebted tocovenant ways of New England Puritans and their doctrine, "federaltheology". Puritan covenants fostered polities whose framesof government and patterns of civil order established a federalmatrix antecedent to modern American federalism. The moral orientationof covenant has also influenced modern American political thought,as evidenced by the public philosophy articulated by the Rev.Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement(1954–1968). In such works as "The Letter from the BirminghamCity Jail," King challenged his contemporaries' ideas aboutlaw and justice, Americans with an opportunity to examine moderncovenant practice.     

The Just War Tradition and the Moral Character of Nuclear Deterrence

The paper begins with a brief conceptualization of deterrence as a category of state institutionalized threats which are characterized by the risk of use of nuclear weapons. Using this as justification, it continues with a discussion of the principles of thejust war tradition and, in the third section, examines a specific attempt to describe an alternative, more morally acceptable, structure of deterrence. The shortcomings of this attempt provide the springboard for a discussion of an alternative conceptualization of deterrence which moves beyond the bounds of the tradition's obsession with intent as the source of ethical evaluations of deterrence. The philosophical limits of the tradition, particularly its lack of a theory of rights, are finally discussed.     

道德文化传统与常识化道德

道德文化传统不同于传统道德文化,它是在不断地汲取传统道德文化的精华以适应现实社会经济发展需要的过程中形成和发展的,它深深地积淀于社会成员的心理意识之中,因而时时处处地体现在平民百姓的日常生活之中.