是重新塑造的托克维尔还是“巴西的民主”

为什么重新塑造托克维尔？ 重新解读亚历克西·德·托克维尔的经典著作《论美国的民主》至少有一个形式上的理由：近来出现的纪念他诞辰200周年的活动，不仅重新引发了有关处于新世界和旧世界的背景之中的民主的辩论，而且也导致了标题为《托克维尔与民主精神》这部文集的出版。     

From Empire to Democracy: Effects of Social Progress on Turkish Writers

What is the effect of a society's culture on the creative writers living there? Few cultures have had such a event as Ataturk's 1920 revolution that changed Turkey from a monarchy ruled by sultans into a republic. How would such a dramatic shift in a country's history be reflected in the accomplishments and characteristics of its writers? In this study, the authors investigated 948 eminent Turkish writers. Variables of gender, era, type of writing, education level, profession, and winning an award were all analyzed. The type of writing (fiction, poetry, plays, or nonfiction) and the era in which the writing was produced were both predictive of whether an author won a literary award. Before 1920, fiction writers received more awards than poets; after 1920, poets received more awards. In addition, professional writers were more likely to win awards than were professional politicians. Reasons for these findings are discussed with an emphasis on cultural and historical influences.     

Individualist and collectivist values: hypotheses suggested by Alexis de Tocqueville

The work of Alexis de Tocqueville, the 19th-century social theorist who coined the term individualism, supplied a conceptual foundation for hypothesizing that individualism and collectivism, as value systems, should be directly correlated. In previous research (D. K.-S. Chan, 1994), individualist and collectivist values were negatively correlated in a sample of men, and in a combined sample of men and women (P. J. Watson, J. Sherbak, & R. J. Morris, 1998) these values were positively correlated. In the present study, a positive relationship was in fact observed in both men and women. Linkages with other measures of self and social functioning uncovered a few small associations of individualist values with maladjustment. Collectivist values predicted adjustment. These data confirm that individualist and collectivist values are compatible, just as Tocqueville had suggested, and that gender differences do not explain the conflicting results previously reported in this literature.     

Global Democracy and the Resort to Despotism: Global Democracy Revisited

Abstract

There exist existential global problems we cannot solve unless we resort to a world government. It is desirable that such a government can be held responsible by a democratically elected world parliament. Hence, global democracy is desirable. However, the road to global democracy is blocked by similar problems that render it necessary in the first place: collective decision problems of a different but related sort. And time is short. In particular we face an emergent need to tend to problems to do with global warming. This means that we have to investigate the possibility and desirability of a last resort to global despotism.     

Render Unto Caesar: Pastoral Care and the American Empire

This article addresses the relation between the American Empire and the intriguing contradictions and problems that arise for pastoral ministers who live in and are citizens of the empire. Sources and characteristics of the American Empire are described, which serves as a foundation for identifying four key features of an empire psyche. The attributes of the empire psyche, which are yoked to pastoral identity and practice, contradict central Christian claims. Given the reality of the American Empire and an empire psyche, I identify and describe some pastoral struggles and possible responses.

Empire Stories: Imperious Objects and the Necessity of Fools

In this article, I examine and depict the attributes of empire narratives and discourse, arguing that these dominant narratives quietly shape and represent shared motivations of U.S. citizens in their active or tacit support of national hegemonic policies. Using an amended version of Winnicott's notion of transitional objects, I describe how these narratives may be understood as imperious objects. The psychological defenses of weak dissociation, rationalization, and denial are used to explain, in part, why many U.S. citizens overlook perspectives and questions that would challenge empire stories and ignore the destructive consequences of deeply and long held expansionist policies and actions. In addition, the psychosocial functions of the role of the fool, in conjunction with psychological defenses, help explain the public perpetuation of expansionist policies.     

Wrestling the Serpent: Gandhi,Amritsar and the British Empire

Throughout the period of the non‐co‐operation movement in India in the early 1920s, Gandhi surprised and sometimes bewildered the British in India with his incessant labelling of the Government as ‘satanic’. It is argued in this paper that Gandhi deliberately employed the word ‘satanic’ with a keen awareness of its power on both his opponents and supporters. He used it to give religious justification to the non‐co‐operation movement. He used it to apportion guilt and spread disaffection with the British Government. He used it to exhort his followers to greater self‐purification, especially against the ‘weaknesses’ of violence and untouchability.     

Autonomy and the Normativity Question: Framing Considerations

Abstract

An initial interest in the question of whether one can autonomously choose to be non-autonomous has developed into the broader question of whether there are any normative commitments that necessarily attend being autonomous. This paper argues that reflection on this issue has been systematically hampered by a failure to realize that the normativity question does not delineate a single line of inquiry, but rather several different such lines; and that these differences depend on how certain key concepts embedded in the question are understood. The paper concludes by noting several lines of future research suggested by the present work.     

Religious competence and individuality: three studies in the Roman Empire

Abstract

The theme of individuality and individualisation in religious contexts in the fairly remote past is perhaps best viewed as a heuristic device whose main value, at least in the context of Graeco-Roman history, is to question the excessive dominance of a model of religious action as essentially collective, which is perhaps proximately Durkheimian but in the Classical field goes back ultimately to early scholarship on ancient Judaism. Terminology is a basic problem in this context. Religious individuality can be defined as the construction of personal religious achievement or the practice of mastery defined by sui generis rules. In the case of the Roman Empire, five types of such achievement have been suggested: pragmatic; moral; competitive; representative; or exemplary/ reflexive. All these distinguishable types of individuality are linked, at least indirectly, to the complex and highly differentiated social, political, economic and moral structures of the Empire. Specifically religious individuation emerges only with the development of religion as a distinctive field of (social) action and thus the possibility of specifically religious distinction. If sustained over the long term, any such achievement is to be seen as individualisation under ancient conditions. This article briefly explores three types of religious distinction based on a conviction and lived practice of such individualised competence: the figure of the Weberian mystagogue in his Mediterranean forms; the figure of the practitioner skilled in Graeco-Egyptian ‘magic’; and the idealised figure of Pythagoras as projected by Iamblichus’ On the Pythagorean life (c.300 CE).     

The Bible, the Empire and the Other

Book reviewed in this article:
R. S. Sugirtharajah, The Bible in the Third World: Precolonial, Colonial and Postcolonial Encounters     

Begging the Question: A Case Study

The essay starts by presenting two accounts of begging the question, John Biro's epistemic account and David Sanford's doxastic account. After briefly comparing these accounts, the essay will study an argument suspected of begging the question and subsequently apply the epistemic and doxastic accounts to this test case. It is found that the accounts of Biro and Sanford do not analyse the test case adequately, therefore a new account is developed using the idea of a knowledge-base.     

Begging the Question: A Qualified Defense

This discussion examines two of the central notions at work in Sterba’s From Rationality to Equality: question-beggingness, and the notion of a rational requirement. I point out that, against certain unreasonable positions, begging the question is a perfectly reasonable option. I also argue that if we use the sense of “rational requirement” that philosophers ought (and tend) to have in mind when defending the idea that morality is rationally required, then Sterba has not succeed in defending this idea. Rather, he has at most demonstrated the rational preferability of morality over two other positions: an extreme egoism, and a very particular form of altruism. But another position exists: one that holds altruistic reasons to exist, and to be capable of justifying sacrifices, but that also holds that they do not require us to sacrifice our interests in the way that morality sometimes does require.     

Why We Believe in Democracy: Testing Theories of Attitude Functions and Democracy1

This study tested different attitude function theories, as well as hypotheses democratic theorists have developed regarding the bases of pro-democratic attitudes. Two hundred and sixty-six undergraduates explained why they believed in democracy, rating the aptness of 40 sentences operationalizing attitude functions, as well as the persuasiveness of six arguments framed in terms of these functions. Factor analysis suggested the existence of either four or six distinct attitude functions. Functional saliences were weakly predictive of persuasiveness ratings, and regression analyses revealed semipartial correlations between functions and age, estimated parents' income, and attitude strength. Implications were drawn for both functional theory and democratic theory and practice.     

North Africa and the Twelfth-century Renaissance: Christian Europe and the Almohad Islamic Empire

This article explains the impact of the rise of the Berber, Islamic Almohad Empire on Mediterranean history. The influence of the Almohads on the twelfth-century European Renaissance and the connections and interactions between the Almohads of North Africa and centres of power in Europe has been overlooked by scholars. While scholars of the medieval period have focused on the interactions between Europe and the East, including the great Islamic centres of Baghdad and Cairo and the Crusader states, the North African Almohads also had an important role in the twelfth-century milieu. The central role of the Almohads and the western Mediterranean, an often overlooked area of medieval studies, deserves a reassessment.     

直接民主与间接民主--《代议制政府》的重新解读

直接民主与间接民主的问题,是当代政治哲学的一个热点。本文通过对密《代议制政府》的重新解读,澄清了直接民主和间接民主的关系。密尔系统地阐述了代议制民主的问题,他的间接民主理论中包含着直接民主的因素。一方面密尔把人民亲自参政的直接民主视为代议制民主的基础和前提,阐明了人民参政的直接民主的正当性、合理性;另一方面他又深刻地分析了人民参政的直接民主可能带来的弊病和危险。实际上,直接民主是一把双刃剑,它既可以成为克服暴政的武器,又可能导致多数的暴政;既可以成为自由的保障,也可能成为自由的敌人。因此,需要根据实际情况,扬利避害,在政治制度的设计中,正确地适度地运用直接民主的形式,保证人民的政治参与。     

Mahometans on the Edge of Colonial Empire: Antipodean Experiences

ABSTRACT

The public conceptualization of Muslim immigration and settlement in New Zealand has become synonymous with the comparatively recent influx of Asian and African migrants and refugees over the past two decades. However, a noteworthy minority of Muslim immigrants arrived during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, in the colonial period. This article surveys the immigration and settlement of Muslims from the 1850s to the 1950s, focusing on the biographies of the most prominent individuals, broadly tracing their arrival and participation in the Anglo-European Christian society they chose to settle in, through to the creation of the Islamic institutions in this country from the 1950s to 1980s. I will conclude with a brief overview of the significance of this pioneer period in view of more recent immigration and the proliferation of Islam in New Zealand, together with some observations upon the interactions of Muslims with a largely Christian society and what that may indicate for the understanding of relations between Muslims and Christians within New Zealand from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Although the first century of Muslim settlement has been largely overlooked, or marginalized, much can be revealed about the broader Muslim experience at this extremity of the (former) British Empire.