《旧制度与大革命》探析(上)

Preliminary Study on L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution

《旧制度与大革命》不是我们所熟悉的那种传统的法国革命史著作。作者托克维尔从贵族自由派的立场出发,对旧制度与大革命在政治文化上的某种历史关联做出了许多独到的分析。以该书的四个核心概念——旧制度、大革命、中央集权、政治自由——为支点,从嫉恨情绪的普遍滋长及其社会后果、文学政治的兴起和泛滥、王朝政府行政集权的自毁效应这三个方面,探讨托克维尔对"旧制度何以引发大革命"这一问题的解说,或许对我们有所启示。《旧制度与大革命》这本书的特殊贡献,可能是首次暗示了在现代化进程中避免革命动荡的某种可能的路径。

L'Ancien Regime et la Revolution is not a book on the French Revolution written in the classical way we are familiar with.The author Alexis de Tocqueville,viewing from perspectives of an aristocratic liberal, made plenty of original observations about the historical connections in terms of political culture between the Old Regime and the French Revolution.This article,based on the four core concepts frequently used in the book,such as the Old Regime,the French Revolution,the centralization,and the political liberty,explores Tocqueville's fundamental ideas in answering the central question of his work 'How did the Old Regime generate the Revolution',which had been reorganized in three aspects as follows:the growing and social consequences of the jealousy and hostility under the Old Regime,the rising and flooding of the literary politics,and the self-destroying effect of the royal government's administrative centralization.The most conspicuous feature of the book,according to this article,might consist in that it suggested for the first time some possible ways in avoiding revolutions during the course of modernization.