Hobbes and the prophet Samuel on leviathan government

Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan is one of the most important treatises in the history of political economy and has influenced writings on constitutional economics and public choice. In his treatise, Hobbes proposed the desirability of voluntary subjugation to an authoritarian ruler. Hobbes appealed to the authority of the prophet Samuel to make his case for Leviathan, a precedent that has remained unquestioned for some 350 years. Yet Samuel clearly warned against the dangers of appointing an all-powerful king. Hobbes’s argument in favor of Leviathan thus demands an authority other than Samuel.     

Hobbes and Samuel: reply

Geoffrey Brennan has presented a defense of Hobbes against the claim of misrepresentation of the prophet Samuel as supporting a leviathan. He has also used the occasion of his reply to introduce embellishments that were outside of the scope of my observations concerning the prophet Samuel and Hobbes.     

Aristotle, Hobbes and Chimpanzees

The article is an exercise in the philosophical anthropology of politics. According to Aristotle, man is a political animal but not uniquely so, whereas, according to Hobbes, politics is artificial and the preserve of humans alone. Both Aristotle and Hobbes draw upon contemporary science. The dominant relevant science today is neo-Darwinism – humans are products of evolution and genetically closely related to the other primates. The argument that chimpanzees are political, thus putatively endorsing an Aristotelian rather than a Hobbesian perspective, is scrutinised. However, at best, chimpanzees are only metaphorically political. While this conclusion may weaken the Aristotelian position, it cannot of itself vindicate the Hobbesian one. The philosophical anthropological endeavour to investigate the relation between politics and human nature still has work to do.     

Chinese Intellectual Discourse on Democracy

Intellectual discourse on democracy has made important impacts on China’s transformation and the Chinese pursuit of democracy. There has been an intense divergence in understanding and interpretation of democracy among the Chinese scholars. In spite of different point of views among scholars in China, there is a growing consensus among them that political reform is the right answer to China’s today’s problems and democracy is a good thing for China. This paper analyzes the on-gong heated debates on democracy. It reviews the main structure, characteristics, and implications of the debates on democracy among three major schools of thought, namely: democracy with Chinese characteristics, liberalism, and New-Leftism.     

Democracy as Procedure and Democracy as Regime

In the intellectual confusion prevailing since the demise of Marxism and "marxism", the attempt is made to define democracy as a matter of pure procedure, explicitly avoiding and condemning any reference to substantive objectives. It can easily be shown, however, that the idea of a purely procedural "democracy" is incoherent and self-contradictory. No legal system whatsoever and no government can exist in the absence of substantive conditions which cannot be left to chance or to the workings of the "market" but must be posited as objectives of political activity. The confusion results from a deficient understanding of what makes a society and an empty idea of "freedom". The objective of politics is not happiness, an affair to be left to the individuals, but it certainly is liberty understood as participation in the governance of the polity; it is also the pursuit of the common good, defined as the sum of the prerequisites and facilitations of individual autonomy depending on collective action, and as the realization of commonly agreed collective goals.     

From Evaluating Democracy Assistance to Appraising Democracy Promotion

Organisations involved in delivering international democracy assistance are engaging increasingly with questions about how to assess their activities. A double shift in the terms of reference, from the ex post evaluation of assistance projects or programmes to ex ante appraisal of the broader democracy promotion strategies, could make democracy promotion more effective. This does not mean abandoning the former; on the contrary its status would be enhanced. Improving the chain of learning that leads from assistance evaluations to the formulation of promotion strategies could improve decision-making over how and whether to promote democracy abroad. Because strategies for democracy promotion are constitutive of the political relationship with countries, different strategies have different implications for the possibilities of political self-determination. For that reason and because democratisation and hence effective democracy promotion may be beneficial for human development, international peace and national security, strategies that reflect informed appraisal would be an improvement on a defective status quo. The challenges include: more systematic data gathering; innovative ways of comparing the various democracy promotion options; and institutional changes that connect the research findings to the high politics of policy-making.     

再论以党内民主推进社会民主——关于党内民主的几个问题

以党内民主推进社会民主,应看作是中国进行渐进性政治体制改革的合理路径选择,是符合中国实际情况,代价最小收益最大,最能获得各方面认同而形成最大共识的改革方案。但如何发展党内民主,目前仍有不少问题,如党内民主的可能性问题,党内民主建设的顺序问题,对民主集中制的理解问题,如何有效保障党员的民主权利问题,我们都需要进行认真地讨论,其中一些错误的观念也需要澄清。