Political Confucianism and Democracy

Abstract

Modern Chinese intellectual history was dominated by rejection and criticism of much of Chinese traditional culture and thought in general and of Confucianism in particular. In the early twenty-first century,both the fates or prospects of Confucianism and of liberalism in China seem to be changing. Jiang Qing,a leading Confucian thinker in China today,opposes the introduction of Western-style democracy in China. So does Kang Xiaoguang,another influential contemporary Chinese thinker who advocates Confucian benevolent governance (renzheng) instead of democracy. On the other hand,the most well-known neo-Confucian philosophers of the twentieth century fully embrace constitutional democracy in the form that has evolved in the West. The political Confucianism of Xu Fuguan and of the 1958 Manifesto,though developed more a half a century ago,can still speak to us directly today and resonate among our hearts. The adoption of Confucianism as the ruling ideology of the Chinese state as proposed by Jiang Qing and Kang Xiaoguang is hardly the solution for China’s political reform in the long term.

現代中國思想史在總體上充斥著對許多中國傳統文化和思想——尤其是儒學——的拒絕和批判。二十一世紀初,儒學和自由主義在中國的命運和前途似乎開始改變。當今中國一位著名的儒家學者蔣慶反對將西方式的民主引入中國。另外一位在當代中國富有影響力的學者康曉光也如此認為,他倡議用儒家的"仁政"來代替民主。另一方面,二十世紀著名的新儒家學者們卻完全接受在西方演化而來的民主憲政。盡管已有半個世紀之久,但徐復觀所宣揚的以及1958年《宣言》所體現的政治儒學思想,對我們今天仍具有啟示意義,并回蕩在我們心中。蔣慶和康曉光提出的將儒學作為中國的意識形態的建議,不是中國政治改革的長遠之道。