He Zhaowu, originally from Yueyang, Hunan, was born in Beijing on September 13, 1921, and died on May 28, 2021, at the age of 99. In 1939, he was admitted to the School of Engineering of Southwest Associated University, transferred to the Faculty of Letters in 1940, graduated from the Department of History in 1943, and pursued a master's degree in philosophy and Western literature, graduating in 1946. Later, he served as a teacher at Taipei Jianguo Middle School and Hunan No. 11 Middle School, a cataloger at the Beijing Library (now the National Library), and a lecturer at the History Department of the Teachers College of Northwest University (now Shaanxi Normal University). From 1956 to 1986, he was an assistant researcher and researcher at the Institute of History, Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences). Since 1986, he has been a professor at the Institute of Ideology and Culture, Department of History, Tsinghua University. He has been a visiting professor at Columbia University in the United States and a visiting professor at the University of Marburg in Germany. In addition to writing his own essays as "He Zhaowu's Academic and Cultural Essays", "Reed Grass Collection", "Historical Rational Critical Essays" and "He Zhaowu's Collected Works", he has participated in the writing of "General History of Chinese Thought" edited by Mr. Hou Wailu, edited "Contemporary Western Historical Theory" (co-editor), "Going to School", and translated Russell's "History of Western Philosophy" (I), Rousseau's "Social Contract", Pascal's "Thoughts", Kant's "Critical Essays on Historical Reason", Collingwood's "Concept of History" (co-translation), and "Matteo Ricci's Chinese Notes" (co-translation), DeBarry's East Asian Civilization: Five Stages of Dialogue (co-translation), Burke's French Revolution (co-translation) and a large number of Western classics.One.
Recently, I re-read Burke's "On the French Revolution", and occasionally felt that Rousseau and Burke can be called the two most representative figures in the theory of natural human rights and the theory of human rights.
Rousseau, as the most important theoretical forerunner of the French Revolution, has a basic thesis about it in the first volume of The Social Contract. These basic arguments have not been developed in depth, and are essentially metaphysical innate concepts, so there is no and no need for any factual corroboration.
The book begins with the statement that "man is born free, but he is always in chains", so he should break his chains and regain the rights he has been deprived ofFor "man is not a slave, but the master of everything." To say that "a man gives himself without gratuition" is in itself "absurd and inconceivable", and that "such an act is not lawful and invalid simply because the person who does it has lost his sound sanity." "Freedom is an innate right, a right that cannot be given up or given under any conditions," and to give up one's freedom is to give up one's qualifications to be a human being, that is, to give up one's human rights, and even to give up one's obligations. "Such abstentions are inhumane;And he has abolished all freedom of his own will, that is, he has abolished the morality of all his actions. All of this is taken for granted, as it should be, and does not need to be proven.
Talent, "nature" and "humanity" are just one word in the original text (nature, naturel). Nature is absolute, so human nature is absolute, and all the rights of old people are absolute. This method of reasoning seems to be a slip of the drain, and there is nothing far-fetched or difficult in between. At the beginning of the 20th century, the term "natural rights" in China was translated as "natural human rights", and the meaning of the term "natural rights" seemed to be slightly different, but the meaning was understandable. Natural rights are for the divine right of kingship. Historically, the arguments of kingship theorists have been "carried by heaven" and "the Son of Heaven is ordained by heaven", so human rights theorists have proposed that the people are under the banner of nature to oppose itThe two are opposite to each other. However, the word "talent" is not as natural as the original text.
Although human rights are natural, the state, political power, society, fashion, order, and so on are not natural, but man-made. Everything that is man-made must be subject to human consent. Thus, "the social order is not based on nature, but on conventions." What man creates is by human power (power or force), but power does not become the basis of power. Otherwise, if there is another "power over the former," the latter force "takes over its (the former)'s rights." This is tantamount to taking power as the basis of power and might as a right. Power is not power, it does not depend on power, it is independent of power and is not governed by power. Its legal basis lies only in the fact that it is a self-disciplined or autonomous act. As for the relationship between a master and a group of slaves, it is "only an aggregation, not a union";"If this man is destroyed, his empire will fall apart with it."
Rousseau's belief that rights (or human rights) are based on natural law is much like a scientist's belief in natural law. Since rights are natural and the state or society is man-made, the state or society "must always go back to an initial agreement with [people]". Politics is governance, not repression;"There is always a huge difference between the suppression of a group and the governance of a society". Rousseau's "Principles of Political Rights" (which is the subtitle of his book) is about how to govern a society well, not how to use force to suppress a group of people.
Rousseau's theory of natural rights was still only a theory on paper, and 20 years later, the American and French revolutions codified it into a set of practical programs, although both typical texts were born out of the abstract principles of Enlightenment philosophy. The Declaration of Independence of 1776 begins with the banner that human rights are "conferred upon men by the law of nature and by the law of God of nature," and then states: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, namely, that all men are created equal, and that they have been endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among which are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." In order to guarantee these rights, people created **. They receive their rightful power by the consent of the governed. As soon as these purposes are defeated, the people of any form have the right to change it or abolish it, and to create a new one, to base it on such principles and to organize its power in such a way that it may best serve to promote their security and well-being. ”
The preface to the Declaration of the Rights of Man of the French Revolution of 1789 can be seen as a summary of the theory of natural human rights, which not only draws on the spirit of the American Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, but also includes the enlightenment ideas of Montesquieu, Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau, the Encyclopédies, and the Physiocrats. It asserts that the state or society is the union of individuals who are "free and equal". This starting point is individualistic, and it is also very different from the traditional way of thinking in ChinaHistorically, China's way of thinking has never regarded the individual as the first, but only as an organic component subordinate to the whole, and the whole is by no means derived from the individual. The Declaration of the Rights of Man, on the other hand, openly declares that the union of men (state, society) is aimed at "protecting their natural rights (natural human rights)".
In its preamble, the Declaration of Human Rights stresses that "contempt for human rights or human dignity is the root of all political evils and corruption", followed by a sprinkling seventeen points, the original texts of which are excerpted below
All human beings are and will always be free and have equal rights. (Article 1).
The purpose of political union is to preserve the natural and inalienable rights of the human person, namely the right to liberty, the right to property, the right to inviolability and the right to resist oppression. (Article 2).
The entity of sovereignty exists in the people as a whole, and no authority can be exercised by any group or individual without a public mandate. (Article 3).
Freedom is the right to do anything that does not harm others. Thus the natural rights of every human being are limited only by the necessity that others have the same right to liberty. (Article 4).
The law is a public expression of public will. Every citizen has the right to participate in legislation in person or through their representatives. (Article 6).
No one may be convicted, arrested or imprisoned for an offence which is not legally prescribed and without the procedure established by law. (Article 7).
No one must be presumed innocent until he or she has been convicted. (Article 9).
No one should be subjected to ** for his or her own opinions. Article 10).
The free exchange of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious human rights, and any citizen is free to speak, write and publish his or her opinions, within the limits of the freedoms established by law. (Article 11).
In societies where rights are not guaranteed or powers are not separated, there is no constitution. (Article 16).
The essence of the above set of political rights is that human rights are inherently inalienable and therefore inalienable and non-transferable. This has always been the case with the two manifestos from Locke to Rousseau to the United States and France. The above quotations from so many original texts seem to indicate that the so-called human rights refer to the rights of the individual, and that the state, society, collective, etc., are merely means or instruments in the service of this individual right. Only the person (individual) is not a tool in itself, but an end. In traditional Chinese thinking, the individual has always been nothing more than a tamed tool of the collective (or some kind of interpersonal ethical relationship), so one should give everything to the collective. In his book, Rousseau repeatedly argues that one must not sacrifice oneself to become a slave to others, because this does not make logical (at least in the logic of the theory of natural rights). There is no organization in the world that is above the individual, and all organizations are only the combination of individuals;So Rousseau even went so far as to discuss whether a person could quit his own country.
Historically, natural human rights are the intellectual product of the eighteenth-century middle class (third estate), but the question is whether they also have their ahistorical elements, i.e., those that do not shift with historical conditions. Truth is always discovered under certain specific historical conditions, but once discovered, the eternal elements in it belong to all eras, are universal, and will not be confused for centuries, regardless of the specific historical conditions of the time and place. Rousseau seemed to have a premonition that someone would oppose him on the pretext that it did not conform to historical facts, so he declared: "I am the first right and reason, not arguing about the facts." He doesn't ask what the facts are, but only how the truth should be saidBecause what the facts are does not prove the truth, it should be what it should be. In all the ideas of all past historical epochs, there are always certain elements that have been inherited by the new ideas of the new era;It is not simply to discard and negate, but to absorb, use and transform it to enrich the new ideas that come after. The more successful this work is, the more vibrant the new ideas will be;Thus the thought of the previous era is not dead, it lives in the new thought. The two declarations are more than 200 years old, but the constitutions of many countries and the documents of the United Nations still list words and phrases that are basically born out of the theory of natural human rights (such as personal freedom and freedom of thought and belief, freedom of speech, press or assembly, association, etc.), which shows that its influence cannot be ignored, at least it is still officially recognized by more than 100 members of the United Nations around the world.
Two. The objection to the theory of natural rights was, as Rousseau had predicted, from the 19th-century school of history. One of the arguments of the historical school can be traced back to Burke at the end of the 18th century. This historical evolution is played out in a more condensed form and at a faster pace in modern Chinese history. Yan Fu, the representative of the Western school camp in the late Qing Dynasty, preached Rousseau in his early years (Liang Qichao also propagated it, not to mention Zou Rong, Chen Tianhua and even the later revolutionaries), and after entering the **, he wrote an article on "The People's Covenant and Peaceful Discussion" to refute Rousseau, which caused a controversy in the academic and ideological circles.
Burke was a staunch opponent of the French Revolution, and his fame to this day is largely due to his writing of a Treatise on the French Revolution. What we call the theory of human rights does not mean that human rights are unnatural. On the contrary, it is also natural, the result of natural evolution. The relationship between the state, society, rulers and the ruled, customs, Xi and laws are all formed by natural evolution. The traditions thus formed, in turn, continue to nurture and shape people's lives and thoughts. Who gave us the rights?Rousseau's answer is gifted;Burke's answer is man-given, the crystallization of human wisdom through the ages. It is in this tradition that the concept of human rights is nurtured and grown. This tradition is sacred in Burke's eyes, so we must love it, Xi learn from it, and look to it for guidance. Our rights are not born ready-made, but shaped by tradition. In this sense, we can call it human empowerment. Burke was often dismissed as a "conservative" because of his opposition to the principles of the French RevolutionBut he was conservative but not stubborn;He sympathized with the American Revolution, he **Irish Catholics suffered from the British authorities**, and attacked the British Viceroy for the darkness and corruption of India. What he saw in the French Revolution, however, was pride, arrogance, greed, ambition, cruelty, and intrigue. Of course, there is no doubt that there will always be all kinds of ugly phenomena in the world. In a peaceful and prosperous world of peace and contentment, these ugliness generally do not emerge in large numbers, and can be regarded as an abnormal state;But when it comes to violent turmoil, all the ugliness has the opportunity to emerge one after another. This would have been a natural and unsurprising thing. At such a juncture, at such a juncture, the old guard will inevitably appeal to the good tradition to oppose the agitated change. Burke is no exception. The frenzy of the French Revolution came together and swept away all the traditional order. Without order, there can be no guarantee of freedom, and the result will only be chaos and chaos. In the final analysis, it is only tradition, "the principle of inheritance, that provides the most definite principle for transmission and continuation, and at the same time does not preclude the principle of improvement".
Nature is God's arrangement, and society is also a part of nature, so the social order is also part of the natural order. To obey the social order is to obey the natural order, that is, to obey the order of God or the will of God. This obedience constitutes the true basis of morality. Therefore, it can also be said that the basis of society is religious belief. Historically and geographically, the state is a carrier of a nation, which embodies the social function of the human being, and it is passed down from generation to generation. This has become a tradition worthy of respect, which contains the essence of the wisdom of mankind for generations. Therefore, we should cherish the tradition and never recklessly deny it or even smash it. Tradition is the foundation on which we make progress. Ugliness in real life is inevitable, and the remedy is for us to look to tradition for wisdom. Tradition should not be smashed, and it is impossible to smash it completely. But the French Revolution violently destroyed the good traditions accumulated over a long historyIt destroys human rights and the order of the legal system with demagogic slogans.
Burke and Rousseau represent two different positions, but they are on the same fundamental point. Both are full of enthusiasm more than strict reason, both are the forerunners of romantic thought, both beautify their ideal country, and both beautify human nature;However, one is oriented to tradition, and the other is to look forward to nature;One is based on real life, and the other is based on legal principles. Tradition itself is not static, but it can only grow, evolve and adapt itself to new situations. In the real world, good and bad, good and evil are always mixed and intertwined. If we blindly pursue the ideal of perfection that is pure and pure, the result can only be deceptive and will lead to ** and corruption. In this way, the French Revolution became a revolution of violence against violence, that is, in the name of false purity and purity, to carry out its ** and corruption. Burke supported the British and American Revolutions because the purpose of the British and American Revolutions was to preserve and promote the good values of tradition. But the French Revolution was aimed at destroying tradition. The freedom flaunted by the French Revolution was in fact a metaphysical abstraction, not a freedom adapted to tradition and in accordance with the natural order. Freedom is subject to specific realities, first of all tradition. Here, too, Burke seems to have overlooked the fundamental problem that violence, although ultimately manifested through human qualities and virtues, thoughts and psychology, has a deeper reason that is not subject to human will. Burke's overemphasis on the power and role of tradition is just as wishful thinking as the Enlightenment philosophers overemphasized the power and role of reason. In the 19th century, the rise of the school of history specifically refuted the theory of natural rights based on historical facts. However, historical facts alone do not falsify the principles of jurisprudence, just as the principles of jurisprudence alone do not prove or falsify historical facts. The two sides operate at different levels and on different tracks of thinking, so the two sides do not and cannot have a common basis on which to judge right and wrong. The historical school does not refute the theories put forward by the natural law school, just as the natural law school does not negate the facts presented by the historical school. The truth of both sides can only be "self-evident" in its own starting point, that is, it cannot be verified or falsified.
The over-exaltation of tradition gave Burke's thought a kind of religious piety;But if we replace the term "religious belief" with other terms, such as "the ideological cohesion that unites a society," then it seems acceptable that some elements of Burke's argument have universal significance. At that time, the philosophers of the French Enlightenment had boundless confidence in the perfection and omnipotence of reason, just as most thinkers of the next century would do with science, and believed that reason would be enough to create a heavenly city on earth for mankind. Burke, on the other hand, believed that perfection could never exist in reality, so one should not indulge in the rational dreams of the Enlightenment philosophers, but should be soberly aware that the task of realpolitik is only how to enable people to avoid or correct the mistakes or evils of real life. In this regard, conventional wisdom is the only arsenal on which we can rely and make use of it. Otherwise, humanity has no hope of improvement.
Three. The above two points of view seem to be diar, one side only talks about legal principles, and the other side only asks about reality. Here, it seems that we might as well consider this question from another angle, that is, from the perspective of the way of thinking.
In a sense, we might as well reduce our understanding to the product of two different ways of thinking, that is, the historical way of thinking and the ahistorical way of thinking. We must put certain things in a historical coordinate system, and we must know their historical background before we can understand them, otherwise we cannot understand them. This is what people call "looking at things historically". The traditions of our Chinese culture can only be said to be too familiar with this way of thinking, as if things cannot be understood without being linked to history. Of course, understanding things sometimes requires a specific historical context, and this is an important way of thinking.
But it's not our only way of thinking. In addition, there is a non-historical way of thinking. Our knowledge or understanding of many scientific and artistic issues does not necessarily require a historical way of thinking. For example, the Pythagorean theorem (we Chinese are called Shang Gao's theorem), we can only understand it by pure logical reasoning, we do not need to know whether Pythagoras was a representative of the slave-owning class in history, nor do we need to know under what specific conditions and for whose interests he proposed this theorem named after him. Another example is the Archimedes' principle, which of course has a well-known historical story, which is probably heard by the teacher in the classroom. But telling this historical story is only to arouse the interest of the students, and it is completely unnecessary to understand the principle itself. You can only understand or comment on the truth or falsity of these truths in terms of their own truths, and you don't need to "look at the problem historically." Another example is that the red scholar has spent his entire life studying the year in which the author died and where his bones were buried. Even if a reader memorizes the genealogy and living notes of Cao Xueqin, the author, it will not help him understand "Dream of Red Mansions" itself. After all, the only basis for understanding or experiencing "Dream of Red Mansions" can only be "Dream of Red Mansions" itself. Truth can be factual, or reasonable;However, in the final analysis, there is no need to ask whether such a fact exists in the objective world. There are no geometrical "points" in the objective world, and of course there are no straight lines, circles, etc., but who can deny the great value of Euclidean geometry because of this?Truth is something of a higher level, and the judgment of its truth and falsity does not depend on the existence of such a fact in the objective world.
Mencius said on poetry: "Praise his poems, read his books, and don't know who he is."Therefore, it seems that our understanding must be knowledgeable about the world. It's certainly a beneficial way of thinking, but it's by no means the only way to think anyway. A large part of our knowledge or understanding is beyond history and time. Truth does not depend on time, place, or condition, but only whether it is right or not. Broadly speaking, the true pursuit of truth does not necessarily require thinking within a historical framework. We don't have to always think historically. Most people are doing the same, but they don't have that kind of realization. We carry too much historical baggage, and we always feel that we cannot cut off history;As everyone knows, most of our thinking about the truth is carried out outside the historical framework. Thirty years ago, there was a debate in the field of history about historicism, which was heated for a while, and then turned silent. I don't know exactly what "historicism" meant at that timeBecause the noun can have many different meanings. In any case, presenting facts and reasoning are, after all, two different things. Facts alone do not justify the way they should be. Just because we fully understand the historical context does not mean that we have clarified the truth.
Of course, I have no intention of opposing the historical way of thinking. It is necessary for the understanding of history and therefore for the study of history. But that doesn't mean in any sense that it's the only way people think. The pursuit of truth is more important to rely on ahistorical ways of thinking. Let us return the historical way of thinking to the historical facts, and the non-historical way of thinking to the truth. Neither pure reason, nor practical reason, nor judgmental reason, does not need to resort to historical ways of thinking. Examples of pure rationality, such as Euclidean geometry that we mentioned above. Examples of practical reason, such as: You can't use people as tools;This norm (like human rights) cannot be satisfied with mere historical elucidation if it is universally valid regardless of time, place and conditions. Examples of judging rationality, such as "boundless falling trees and Xiao Xiao, endless Yangtze River rolling", you don't have to know that this is the feeling of a poet whose country is ruined and his family is in the midst of displacement;"Chenjiang is fortunate to go around Chenshan, for whom to shed Xiaoxiang", you don't have to know that this is a faraway lyricist writing his heartbroken love affair;When you listen to Schubert's unfinished symphony, you don't have to know that it is the petty-bourgeois sentimentality and depression of an artist after the defeat of the democratic revolution. Even if you know this, it will not help you to understand and appreciate these works of art. We understand or appreciate them through themselves (per se), not by knowledge of their historical background. Otherwise, you are (as Rousseau put it) "arguing about the facts" and not "**right and reason".
Our Chinese tradition has always been too Xi to the historical way of thinking, always thinking that only theories based on facts existing in the objective world can stand. We are not Xi to non-historical ways of thinking. In this way, they actually limit their thinking and horizons. These are two different ways of thinking. But they are not necessarily mutually exclusive. The thinking of the historical school may be more suitable for our Chinese ideological Xi. However, in the past, when we accepted the theory of natural rights of the Jurisprudence school, we did not seem to encounter any insurmountable difficulties. If we can be inclusive of both of these views, it may be able to enrich the heritage of human thought and culture that we have accepted.
Article**: He Zhaowu, Weeds: Essays on the History of Western Thought, Peking University Press, 2019.