公民间关系、慎议政治与当代自由主义的国家观

The Relationship among Citizens and the Contemporary Construction of the Liberal Conception of the State

罗尔斯的政治自由主义基于对公民间的伦理-政治关系的理解,将自由平等的公民作为社会契约的主体,从而构造了一种自由主义的政治社群。这种社群是一种内在的善,但它所依据的原则是公民们运用公共理性进行公共推理的结果,从而并不在本体论上享有相对于个体的优先性。公共理性的运用过程,与当代慎议民主理论所主张的慎议政治在本质上是契合的,后者为政治自由主义提供了必需的独立政治概念的基础,而这种契合也表明,自由主义政治社群的构造要求自由主义克服自身与民主主义之间的张力。

Proceeding from its understanding of the ethical-political relationship among citizens,Rawls's political liberalism takes the free and equal citizens as the parties of the social contract,hence constructs a liberal political community.This community is an inner good,but it does not enjoy an ontological priority over individuals,since the principles on which it relies are the outcome of the citizens' public reasoning in terms of public reason.The use of public reason is congruent in nature with the deliberative politics proposed by the contemporary theories of deliberative democracy,and the latter offers a freestanding concept of the political necessary for political liberalism.Meanwhile,this congruence suggests that liberalism has to overcome the tension between itself and democracy in order that a liberal political community can be constructed.