公民权利论的迷思:历史中国的国人、村民和分配正义

The Theoretical Myth of Civil Rights:Countrymen,Vilagers and Distributive Justice in Historical China

历史中国未产生公民概念并非一种智识或制度上的"缺失"。公民概念是城邦的产物,作为一种特权,也是一种区分和歧视。在作为农耕大国的历史中国,除极少数政治文化精英外,普通百姓通常只是国家自在但并不自觉的成员——国人,同时也作为其生活村落的更为活跃的成员——村民,这种身份制度是大国的必然。虽然没有公民以及相应的公民权利制度,历史中国还是以独到的方式大致公正系统有效地处理了百姓在国家和村落这两个共同体中的分配正义问题。

The fact that historical China had not produced the concept of citizen is not an indication of intellectual or institutional deficiency. The concept of citizen, as a privilege as well as a distinction/discrimination, is a product of city-states. In historical China, which was a big agricultural country, the people, apart from a very few political and cultural elites, were mere unconscious members of the country, namely countrymen. Meanwhile, they were also more active members of the villages in which they lived, namely villagers. The emergence of such a status system was inevitable in a big country. Despite the lack of the concept of citizen and the corresponding civil rights system, historical China had realized distributive justice by a unique method within the two communities of the state and villages in a more or less just, sys- tematic and effective way.