Existential Responsibility - The Civic Virtue

Responsibility can cast light on the context of consensus, conflict, and education. In terms of juridical responsibility, the person responds to a defined claim or duty. Education as an alive relationship between unique persons is characterized by existential responsibility - the response to a unique and problematic situation. Depending on which kind of society we are referring to, responsibility will serve society best as juridical responsibility when it is a closed society and as existential responsibility when it is an open democratic society. Education as such will create the potentiality of provocation of conflicts in any kind of society.     

Religious Political Parties and the Limits of Political Liberalism

Political parties have only recently become a subject of investigation in political theory. In this paper I analyse religious political parties in the context of John Rawls’s political liberalism. Rawlsian political liberalism, I argue, overly constrains the scope of democratic political contestation and especially for the kind of contestation channelled by parties. This restriction imposed upon political contestation risks undermining democracy and the development of the kind of democratic ethos that political liberalism cherishes. In this paper I therefore aim to provide a broader and more inclusive understanding of ‘reasonable’ political contestation, able to accommodate those parties (including religious ones) that political liberalism, as customarily understood, would exclude from the democratic realm. More specifically, I first embrace Muirhead and Rosenblum’s (Perspectives on Politics 4: 99–108 2006) idea that parties are ‘bilingual’ links between state and civil society and I draw its normative implications for party politics. Subsequently, I assess whether Rawls’s political liberalism is sufficiently inclusive to allow the presence of parties conveying religious and other comprehensive values. Due to Rawls’s thick conceptions of reasonableness and public reason, I argue, political liberalism risks seriously limiting the number and kinds of comprehensive values which may be channelled by political parties into the public political realm, and this may render it particularly inhospitable to religious political parties. Nevertheless, I claim, Rawls’s theory does offer some scope for reinterpreting the concepts of reasonableness and public reason in a thinner and less restrictive sense and this may render it more inclusive towards religious partisanship.     

Political Liberalism and Male Supremacy

In Equal Citizenship and Public Reason, Watson and Hartley dispute the claim that Rawls’s doctrine of political liberalism must tolerate gender hierarchy because it counts conservative and orthodox religions as reasonable comprehensive doctrines. I argue that their defense in fact contains two arguments, both of which fail. The first, which I call the ‘Deliberative Equality Argument’, fails because it does not establish conclusively that political liberalism’s demand for equal citizenship forbids social practices of domination, as the authors contend. The second, which I call the ‘Equal Liberties Argument’, fails because it supports a particular version of political liberalism and not the doctrine itself.     

"权利优先于善"的自由主义政治伦理观

"权利优先于善"是自由主义政治伦理观的价值立场.自由主义者都从个人自由及其权利出发来考量国家权力的来源和性质,规范"国家道德中立"的行为准则和制度安排.以个人自由为政治伦理的思维原点,导致自由主义理论上的悖论和道德上的虚无化,造成自由主义内部的严重分歧并遭到保守主义、社群主义及后现代主义等流派的多维批判.     

施特劳斯论德性与古今自由主义

施特劳斯批评现代自由主义放弃了对德性的追求,不再把自由与德性联系起来。以霍布斯为视角批评现代自由主义的过程中,施特劳斯指出,作为现代自由主义的奠基者,霍布斯修正了西方传统道德法则,用有利于和平的习惯取代了传统意义上有利于灵魂完美的德性,造成节制等严肃德性的丧失。以古代自由主义为视角批评现代自由主义的过程中,施特劳斯指出,自由的原初含义是追求德性,古代自由主义追求德性,但现代自由主义不再将自由与德性联系起来,甚至不再认为自由与德性有何联系。施特劳斯表明,现代自由主义对德性的弃绝是坚定彻底的。     

儒家的政治思想与美德政治观

儒家政治哲学是中国古代哲学的政治思考的主要部分,自孔子以来就提出了德与政的一系列讨论,孔子以为政者的“自正”转变了西周春秋政治“政以正民”的方向,孟子则引入“他正”的“批评政治”,并被朱子继承。以美德政治为古代中国政治特色,就刻画传统中国政治而言是不充分的,必须同时强调批评政治,才能反映古代中国政治与传统的实际。儒家与西方人文主义的政治观相接近,而与立宪主义有较大区别。     

Political Correctness: the Twofold Protection of Liberalism

Philosophia - As understood today, political correctness aims at preventing social discrimination by curtailing offensive speech and behaviour towards underprivileged groups of...