Despotism
Critiques of arbitrary power and voluntary servitude in early modern Europe (including a Chinese translation)
Liberty Crushing the Hydra of Despotism by Charles Antoine Callamard (1769 - 1821), Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen
The term despotism is among the most remarkable but badly neglected words in the political vocabulary of early modern Europe. It had roots in ancient Greece, where the word despotēs (perhaps from the Mycenaean Linear B word do-po-ta) originally referred to the benevolent rule of a husband over his wife and children and slaves within the household. The word was used during the Byzantine Empire as a court title, to refer to the sons or sons-in-law of reigning emperors. During the course of the sixteenth century, especially in France, the old word despotism was revived, with great energy and political effect. It not only became what German scholars call a basic concept (Grundbegriff), a word that attracted great attention, stirred up public controversy in the world of newspapers, books and pamphlets. For a while, despotism also functioned as an Orientalist signifier, as a word used by European scholars to describe and normatively judge peoples and governments in Turkey and Persia and the Indian sub-continent all the way to China and Japan. But the word proved to be highly promiscuous. It came to have other, more disruptive meanings.
When applied to European monarchies, as happened during the 18th century, the word despotism became a signifier of resistance to arbitrary power. It ignited political upheavals that helped bring down monarchies in the American colonies, in Haiti and in France. For three centuries, it helped trigger important public controversies about the nature of power, the mechanisms of political obedience and the meaning of good government. But its popularity as a basic concept of political analysis did not last. During the course of the 19th century, this essay shows, the term despotism faded and fell into disuse. A word that once aroused great public interest and life-and-death struggles for and against power was largely forgotten, left behind on the scrapheaps of history, leaving behind questions about whether the idea of despotism is today merely of antiquarian interest, or whether it remains relevant for efforts to understand the contours and conflicts of contemporary politics.
Oriental despotism
The historical record shows that despotism was used at first as a term to differentiate and praise Christian Europe from powers to the East. It was an Orientalist signifier of abuse, a fighting word in the European imaginary, a key term that served as the heir to Christian disparagement of the world of Islam. From the sixteenth century, fed by casual anecdotes and formal reports about the behaviour of Grand Seigneur sultans provided by European embassies in Constantinople, Ottoman Turkey came to be seen as the perfect embodiment of the seductively dark powers of despotism.[i] For many observers, it was a byword for the destruction of individual property, the widespread ignorance produced by the state ban on printing presses, sexual perversions and arbitrary rule by fiendish sultans. Despotism was understood as a political order centred on the sultan’s seraglio, a space of unimaginable luxury where the ruler administered power through subalterns, who were subject to strangulation if they fell from favour. The seraglio was a point of unrestrained power serviced by a strange cast: dwarfs, mutes, black and white eunuchs, hordes of captive women of Christian origin, hand-picked to satisfy the lusts of a ruler more inclined to ‘unnatural’ practices. The 18th century French political writer Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu thought in this way. The reports in his possession on Persians, Turks, Arabs, Tartars, Siamese, Japanese, Chinese and the peoples of the Indian sub-continent convinced him that they were willing accomplices and victims of despotism. Many other observers agreed, among them Colonel Alexander Dow, an English employee of the East India Company, a writer whose widely read work The History of Hindostan (1772) included ‘A Dissertation Concerning the Origin and Nature of Despotism in Hindostan’. Dow was sure that ‘the faith of Mahommed is peculiarly calculated for despotism…it is one of the greatest causes which must fix for ever the duration of that species of government in the East’. Other causes (said the Colonel) included fear, the soporific effects of frequent bathing and sweltering heat: ‘the languor occasioned by the hot climate of India, inclines the native to indolence and ease’ and ‘the labour of being free’. Prohibitions on drinking wine added to the torpor of subjects: ‘It prevents that free communication of sentiment which awakens mankind from a torpid indifference to their natural rights.’ He added that the victims of despotism ‘become cold, timid, cautious, reserved and interested [biased]; strangers to those warm passions, and that cheerful elevation of mind, which renders men in some measure honest and sincere.’[ii]
The Orientalist picture of pusillanimous Hindus falling victim to Muslim despotism was widely believed, but it was to be challenged. Along came a surprise: a remarkable change of meaning, and political function, of the word despotism happened. During the 18th century, the ‘phantom of despotism’ (the often-quoted phrase of the 18th-century translator, writer and scholar of the history, geography, religions and laws of the Indian sub-continent, Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron) began to haunt the house of Europe, and beyond. For a variety of reasons, in the Atlantic region, the topic of despotism became a topic of intense public debate among the privileged literate classes, especially in France.
One far-reaching reason was the frontal challenge posed by better informed writers who cast doubt on Montesquieu’s influential assertion in his Spirit of the Laws (1748) that despotism was a ‘naturalised’ feature of the major states of Asia. His work certainly proved influential among many Europeans who pondered Asian societies during the second half of the eighteenth century. Scholars, merchants, travellers and empire-builders swallowed whole the thesis of oriental despotism. But when Europeans began to receive a rush of fresh reports from the world beyond Europe, intellectual challenges were launched against the reigning orthodoxy. These provocations had the not-always-intended effect of loosening up the category: opening its mind and widening its horizons. The category became less predictable, more restless and politically promiscuous.
Partly this happened because some writers dared cast doubt on the standard pictures of the East. Among the most influential masterpieces written by those who concentrated their attention on Asia, and who dissented from the orthodoxy, was Anquetil-Duperron’s treatise Législation Orientale (1778). It accused Montesquieu and others of mis-describing governments and societies of the East. They had formulated ‘un système de despotisme qui n’existe réellement nulle part’. The political orders of Turkey and the mogul empire were not instances of arbitrary and unchecked power wielded by abusive despots served by obsequious officials, Anquetil-Duperron urged. There were slaves in Asia but not everybody there was enslaved. In reality, the rulers of these polities were mutually bound to their subjects by customs and written and unwritten laws. Their actions were constrained by the countervailing powers of notables and religious authorities, by petitioners seeking justice, the practice of court consultations (durbars) and widespread access to public gazettes containing details of government business. Power was similarly checked by the customary and legal protection of religious diversity, as in the early Mogul empire of Akbar, and rights of property in land and trade; Anquetil-Duperron even insisted that private property was better protected in Ottoman Turkey than in England.
Législation Orientale masterfully noted how talk of despotism was connected to European imperial expansion by merchants and missionaries. Anquetil-Duperron not merely questioned its ‘assertions sans preuves’ and offered a more accurate account of Eastern polities. By portraying the polities of the East as unstable systems of arbitrary power, discourses on despotism surmised that European colonisation was a generous gift to the cause of bringing social stability and good and lawful government to peoples who had been suffering under the fear and violence and inequities of despotism. He thus accused his opponents of using the word despotism as an alibi to excuse the oppression practised by Europeans in Asia. Their conviction that the East enjoyed no private property, for instance, served as a justification of the colonial confiscation of native lands. Anquetil-Duperron predicted that by defaming the colonised as victims of despotism, imperial expansion would itself heap indignity and misery upon the peoples of the East.
The scholar-adventurer Anquetil-Duperron had a point, taken up by later distinguished scholars.[iii] But in a strange twist of fate, in ways he most definitely didn’t intend, his case was anticipated or extended by writers and public officials who argued that Eastern despotisms had attractive features that were worth bringing home to Europe. Pointing to the reforms promoted by tough 18th-century monarchs such as Frederick II of Prussia, they were sure despotism could be benevolent. Among the first thinker who reasoned in this way was the famous opponent of torture and the death penalty, Milan-born author Cesare Beccaria, whose Dei delitti e delle pene (1764; On Crimes and Punishment) made a case for a new species of benevolent monarchy in which ‘the despotism of many can be corrected only by the despotism of one man, and the cruelty of a despot is proportional not to his strength, but to the obstacles he has to contend with.’[iv] His plea for undivided power was read carefully and quoted by Catherine II of Russia; such were the times that the book landed him jobs with the reforming Habsburg rulers Maria Theresa and Joseph II. Without doubt, the most influential champions of despotic government were the French Physiocrats. During the last years of the long reign of Louis XV (1710 – 1774), they promoted a new type of absolute monarchy based on what they described as natural laws, such as free trade in grain. The job of government, they said, was to safeguard the free operation of these natural and necessary laws of government and society. They proudly called such government based on natural laws despotisme légale and ‘enlightened despotism’. Along these lines, with examples of rulers like Catherine II and Leopold of Tuscany in mind, the Milanese aristocrat Giuseppe Gorani (1740 – 1819) similarly published a widely-read case for a ‘true despotism’ that would work to establish ‘natural order’ by strengthening a monarchy actively committed to getting rid of cramping taxation schemes, rules and regulations so as to unleash market forces of trade and commerce against the caste privileges of such intermediary bodies as the church, magistrates and local assemblies. François Quesnay’s Le Despotisme de la Chine (1767) put things even more sharply. He insisted that ‘the government of China’ was impressive and certainly worth emulating exactly because it was a ‘legal despotism’ in that ‘the sovereign of that empire takes into his own hands exclusively the supreme authority’ and consistently applies ‘wise and irrevocable laws’ which are ‘the laws of the Natural Order’.[v]
Arbitrary Power
Such reasoning stood at right angles to the old Orientalist disparaging of Eastern despotism. It was striking for a less positive reason: it proved there were moments when European intellectuals were easily seduced by fantasies of undivided sovereign power and the despotic patronage and employment it dangled under their noses.[vi] The historical record nevertheless shows that the intellectual tango with despotism sparked furious public backlashes, by those who figured despotism was a global phenomenon, and a global menace. The semantic shift had deeper roots, in the second half of the seventeenth century, when the phrase ‘arbitrary and despotic power’ had first been used by pamphleteers to attack the absolutism of the Sun King Louis XIV.[vii] But helped along by Gorani and Quesnay and the good intentions of Anquetil-Duperron, during the 18th century trouble erupted, with great political consequences. The new-fangled word despotism pushed its way into the English language in 1727, from the older French despotisme. It quickly joined the forces of revolution. The shift was fuelled by several forces combined, including general alarm at talk of the advantages of despotism, mounting evidence of the territorial ambitions of monarchies in Austria, Prussia and Russia and dramatic political events such as Louis XV’s coup d’état (1771) and the first partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1772). With the help of honest confessions by reigning monarchs (‘there are and always will be monsters among princes’ wrote Frederick II[viii]), political radicals began to say that European monarchies were beginning to resemble despotisms elsewhere, for instance in their aggressive taxation policies, suppression of religious minorities and wooing of public opinion by uncontrolled, arbitrary power.
The new interpretation owed much to the writings of the distinguished 18th-century French political thinker Montesquieu. Under despotism, he famously remarked in his classic De l’esprit des lois (1748), those who rule are reckless. ‘When the savages of Louisiana want fruit, they cut down the tree and gather the fruit. There you have despotic government.’ Mutual suspicion and fear among the subject population flourish. Nobody is safe. The lives, liberties and properties of subjects are always up in the air. They are at the mercy of the frightful maxim ‘that a single person should rule according to his own will and caprice’.[ix] In his earlier Lettres Persanes (1721), Montesquieu expressed similar thoughts, this time in epistolary form, through the allegory of Persian travellers in France describing life in a Persian seraglio gripped by ‘horror, darkness, and terror’. Despotism (Montesquieu had in mind the monarchy of Louis XIV and Louis XV) is a synonym for cruel arbitrary power, odious laws that excuse perfidies and injustices, nurture blind hunger for unlimited wealth and princes who love ‘trophies and victories’ and drink to their ‘sovereign grandeur’ while heaping favours on ‘some men without enquiring after their real merit’ and ‘putting to death all who displease them’. Despotisms are ruled by despots who are so drunk on power that ‘if triangles were to create a god, they would describe him with three sides’.[x]
Denis Diderot (1713 – 1784)
Denis Diderot, famous co-editor of the Encyclopédie, the great Enlightenment reference work for the arts and sciences, was also among those leading the charge. ‘A despot’, he wrote, ‘even if he were the best of men, by governing in accordance with his good pleasure, commits a crime.’ He added: ‘A first despot, just, steady, and enlightened, is a great calamity; a second despot, just, steady, and enlightened, would be a still greater one; but a third, who should succeed with all these great qualities, would be the most terrible scourge with which a nation could be afflicted.’[xi] His compatriot journalist, parliamentarian and librarian Jean-Louis Carra called upon his fellow citizens to resist despotism because it threatened to ‘enslave’ his ‘beautiful’ native France ‘under the ruins of her moeurs, her fortune, and her liberty’. Moved by ‘honesty and rage’, the resistance to despotism that had oppressed the French people ‘for nine hundred years’ was finally coming to an end. He added: ‘What a triumph!’[xii] For his efforts, Carra was later guillotined (in October 1793) by local blood-thirsty Jacobin revolutionaries, but his sentiments were echoed across the Channel by the English writer and Anglican priest Vicesimus Knox, who caused a great stir by attacking the British monarchy in the name of the principles of the French Revolution. ‘The grand adversary of human virtue and happiness is DESPOTISM’, he thundered, in upper case. ‘Look over the surface of the whole earth, and behold man, the glory and deputed lord of the creation, withering under the influence of despotism, like the plant of temperate climes scorched by the sun of a torrid zone.’ He added: ‘Despotism is indeed an Asiatic plant; but brought over by those who have long lived in Asia, and nursed in a hot-house with indefatigable care, it is found to vegetate, bloom, and bear fruit, even in our cold, ungenial climate.’[xiii] The idea that despotism had little to do with climatic conditions, and that it could travel, and threaten liberty everywhere, found its greatest populariser in the quill of Thomas Paine. His publishing sensation, Rights of Man (the explosive first part was published in London, in March 1791), railed against the arbitrary power of despotic governments everywhere. ‘Government with insolence is despotism’, he wrote, ‘but when contempt is added it becomes worse; and to pay for contempt is the excess of slavery.’ He added a memory from the time when he actively contributed to the military struggle of the American colonists against British imperial troops and their German allies. ‘This species of government…reminds me of what one of the Brunswick soldiers told me who was taken prisoner by the Americans in the late war: “Ah!” said he, “America is a fine free country, it is worth the people’s fighting for; I know the difference by knowing my own: in my country, if the prince says eat straw, we eat straw.” God help that country, thought I, be it England or elsewhere, whose liberties are to be protected by German principles of government, and Princes of Brunswick!’ [xiv]
Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man, first printed by Joseph Johnson in London in February 1791, was immediately withdrawn for fear of prosecution. J. S. Jordan dared to publish the book three weeks later, on 16th March. The attack on despotism and the case for a republic caused a public sensation. Paine was soon hunted into exile in France
Intended to be read aloud to not-yet-literate peoples who gathered in gin parlours, coffee houses and public squares, this kind of rhetoric proved powerful. It showed how a term with a deeply prejudiced past had turned politically aggressive, and progressive, in support of government based on power-sharing and democratic representation. By the last quarter of the 18th century, throughout the Atlantic region, the language of despotism and talk of its fickle bossiness had become a deadly weapon in the resistance to the arbitrary power of monarchs, whatever their qualities, charming, benevolent or cruel. The figure of the despot as a ‘monster’ became central in the politics of defending society against ‘criminal’ rulers gripped by whim and wildness.[xv] The semantic shift was later recorded in the shared reminiscences of the ageing Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, who served as the first Vice-President and second President of the United States. Adams confided that ‘the fundamental Article of my political Creed is, that Despotism, or unlimited Sovereignty, or absolute Power is the Same in a Majority of a popular Assembly, an Aristocratical Counsel, an Oligarchical Junto and a Single Emperor. Equally arbitrary cruel bloody and in every respect, diabolical.’ Jefferson agreed: ‘I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on steady advance…even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and liberties of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them. In short, the flames kindled on the 4th. of July 1776 have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism. On the contrary they will consume these engines, and all who work them.’[xvi]
Voluntary Servitude
Following the late 18th-century American and French revolutionary upheavals the whole idea of despotism lived on, for a while. John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were not alone when speaking the language of despotism. Scotsman James Mill (in his 3-volume The History of British India, first published in 1818) argued that despotism was not just a product of exotic Asia but a ‘semi-barbarous’ form of government that exists in all nations in their formative stages. In Mill’s treatment, despotism was the product of desire and imagination unrestrained by knowledge and discipline. Its most extreme variant was ‘the Hindu form of government’ and its ‘degrading and pernicious system of subordination’. His father John Stuart Mill, the most influential liberal philosopher and parliamentarian of this period,
elaborated the point, in strangely contradictory ways. He preserved the line of thinking of his father to say that since ‘no spring of spontaneous improvement in the people themselves’ and the absence of private property and ‘good despots’ are the hallmarks of Asian societies, their improvement in matters of government and property requires help from colonial powers and ‘intermediate’ bodies like the East India Company. The word despotism had once been used as an Orientalist signifier. Now it became a keyword in the language of colonisation and empire. ‘Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians’, John Stuart Mill wrote, ‘provided their end be improvement’. What was needed, he concluded, was a ‘ruler full of the spirit of improvement’, a ‘vigorous despotism’ that prepared the way for its own supersession, into representative government.[xvii]
Greatly interesting is the way the word despotism was used during the 18th and 19th centuries for almost opposite purposes, to highlight a new phenomenon: the willing obedience of subjects to ruling powers governing in the name of ‘the people’. A preoccupation with the strange mechanics of ‘voluntary servitude’, let us call it, ran through the Atlantic-region writings of many thinkers, poets and essayists, all of whom pointed out that despotism is a strangely puzzling form of rule because ‘despotists’ who ‘despotize’ (the words are no longer in use) manage to nurture popular support in effect by signing a ‘silent contract’ with their trusting and obedient subjects. Montesquieu, who is better remembered for his understanding of despotism as arbitrary rule by fear, sometimes noted that modern despotisms foster subjects’ entanglement in intricate spiders’ webs of power. The sway of despots, he noted at several points in his writings, functionally requires dependence upon others. Despots thrive upon dishing out favours to their dependents. They feed upon the ‘busy laziness’ of diligent sycophants. Despots suppose that their ‘sovereign grandeur’ entitles them to disburse favours to anyone who displays loyalty, regardless of merit, so that obsequiousness is rewarded according to the rule that dependents are ‘made excellent simply by the decision to honour them’.[xviii]
The point is bigger than Montesquieu imagined; or that the influential English liberal democrat John Stuart Mill, writing a century later, could comprehend when insisting, in a moment of biting sarcasm, that a ‘good despotism’ cultivates to perfection the art of ‘relaxing and enervating…the thoughts, feelings, and energies of the people’.[xix] Denis Diderot expressed the point succinctly. ‘The arbitrary rule of a just and enlightened prince is always bad’, he wrote. ‘His virtues are the most dangerous and the surest form of seduction: they lull a people imperceptibly into the habit of loving, respecting, and serving his successor, whoever that successor may be, no matter how wicked or stupid.’ [xx]
The reference here to the political dangers of seduction by rulers had deep Eastern taproots, traceable back through the classical Greek despótēs (from dómos house and pósis husband, spouse) to its earliest cognates in such languages as Avestan (də̄ng patoiš, lord of the house) and Sanskrit (dámpati-s). Note the originally positive connotations of the word despot. It meant the master responsible for taking good care of his household, which is why, as we have seen already, some early modern observers praised the benevolent quality of despotism.[xxi] Most others despised and feared its grip on the present. Voluntary servitude was soon seen as the gelling agent of despotism by a wide range of Atlantic region political thinkers and writers, including aristocrats (Fénelon and Montesquieu among them) and radical republicans (such as Thomas Gordon and John Trenchard) who feared the possibility of a durable alliance of kings and the common people based on a combination of favours, pensions, manipulation and vote buying.[xxii] Those who put their finger on the problem of voluntary servitude often said that despotism was much more than the rule of one for the sake of one, or a plague on the lands of the East. They maintained that the really worrying feature of modern despotism is the way it seduces and enslaves its subjects. It does so by infecting and degrading language, family life, ethics and social customs and rituals. It destroys equality and friendship among citizens. Despotism showers its subjects with patronage (noted Abbé Raynal) that induces ‘the lethargy of the people….kept up by acts of kindness’.[xxiii] Despotism breeds despots. It trains up its subjects to become creepers and crawlers, lickspittles and toadies.
Diderot’s counterpart, the French mathematician, musicologist, philosopher and co-editor of the Encyclopédie, Jean-Baptiste le Rond d’Alembert (1717 – 1783) chipped in by recommending further research into the topic of the ‘despotisme des bien-faiteurs’ (despotism based on patronage, favouritism and benefactors). The really worrying thing (he said) about despotism is the manner in which it paralyses its public critics. Despotic rule corrupts the republic of letters by rendering writers dependent on their patrons, so crushing their capacity for clear-headed thought, public eloquence and courageous censure of unbridled power.[xxiv] The Anglo-Irish politician and formidable scribbler Edmund Burke issued a similar warning about the dangers of despotism. Describing it as a type of government ‘where all the inferior orbs of power are moved merely by the will of the Supreme’, he warned of its spread. ‘Scarcely any part of the world is exempted from its power. And in those few places where men enjoy what they call liberty, it is continually in a tottering situation’. While Burke vigorously denounced despotism as a type of rule that is capricious, foolish and violent, he noted its strangely attractive and imperishable quality: ‘the truth is’, he wrote, ‘this unnatural power corrupts both the heart and the understanding. And to prevent the least hope of amendment, a king is ever surrounded by a crowd of infamous flatterers, who find their account in keeping him from the least light of reason, till all ideas of rectitude and justice are utterly erased from his mind.’[xxv]
Several major mid-19th century public thinkers anxious about the spread of modern despotism tried to give a novel twist to the whole idea of voluntary servitude. John Stuart Mill worried that citizens living under conditions of representative government could be swallowed alive by state bureaucracies in which ‘all the collective interests of the people are managed for them, all the thinking that has relation to collective interests done for them, and in which their minds are formed by, and consenting to, this abdication of their own energies.’ Citizens would then leave ‘things to the Government, like leaving them to Providence’. Their subservience to government policies would be ‘synonymous with caring nothing about them, and accepting their results, when disagreeable, as visitations of Nature’.[xxvi] Mill’s thoughts on ‘naturalised’ servitude were inspired by his acquaintance Alexis de Tocqueville, who had earlier linked the corrupting effects of despotism to the dynamics of representative democracy.[xxvii] Especially worrying, he argued, is the advent of a gentler but highly invasive form of servitude bound up with the growth of democratic entitlements. ‘I think the type of oppression threatening democratic peoples is unlike anything ever known’, he wrote. He had in mind a new form of popular domination fostered by the growth of impersonal but invasive centralised state power. In a wide range of matters, from supplying bread to the hungry and jobs for the unemployed to care for the sick and education of the young, government becomes ever more meddlesome in the daily lives of people. In the name of democratic equality and talk of ‘the people’, government becomes regulator, inspector, adviser, educator and punisher of people’s lives. The trend is undisturbed by the ‘rare and brief exercise of free choice’ ritual of periodic elections. It is reinforced by the rise of capitalist manufacturing industry. The new industrial class (unlike Marx, Tocqueville lumps together capital and labour and labels them an ‘aristocracy’) calls on government to regulate the lives of workers and to provide the harbours, canals, roads and other large-scale infrastructural projects deemed necessary for wealth creation. States themselves become directly involved in manufacturing, employing large numbers of engineers, architects, mechanics and skilled workers. The consequent spread of state administration is more invasive, more controlling, than any previous species of despotism, Tocqueville asserted. ‘Day by day citizens fall under the control of the public administration, to which they insensibly surrender ever greater portions of their individual independence. These very same citizens, who periodically upset a throne and trampled on the feet of kings, more and more submit themselves, without resistance, to the smallest dictate of a clerk.’ This modern form of despotism prides itself on its gentleness. It claims to do away with autos-da-fé, fetters and executioners. Its mission is to ‘civilise’ its subjects. It sets out to build all-embracing techniques of control that feel benevolent, mild and life-enhancing. This despotism dispenses with identifiable despots. It brings to perfection the governing arts of voluntary servitude. It cultivates a form of disciplinary power that treats its citizens as subjects, yet wins their support and robs them of their wish to participate in government or take an interest in the public good. ‘Over these [citizens] is elevated an immense, tutelary power, which takes sole charge of assuring their enjoyment and of watching over their fate. It is absolute, attentive to detail, regular, provident, and gentle.’ He added: ‘It works willingly for their happiness, but it wishes to be the only agent and the sole arbiter of that happiness. It provides for their security, foresees and supplies their needs, guides them in their principal affairs, directs their testaments, divides their inheritances.’ In the name of expanding democratic equality, the new despotism ‘renders the employment of free will less useful and more rare; it confines the action of the will within a smaller space and bit by bit it steals from each citizen the use of that which is his [sic] own. Equality has prepared men [sic] for all of these things: it has disposed them to put up with them and often even to regard them as a benefit’.
Endings
The embrace of the term despotism by James Mill and his son John Stuart Mill, and by Tocqueville, turned out be its swansong. For a variety of reasons that have much to do with liberal imperial optimism about the coming of ‘laissez-faire’ and representative government in its Atlantic heartlands, the concept of despotism gradually faded from political life. Nobody could foresee what was around the corner: two global wars, aerial bombardment, concentration camps, chemical weapons, totalitarianism and the atomic bomb, followed by the rise in the early years of our century of new doubts about the viability of what Americans came to call liberal democracy. During the course of the 19th century, dictionaries still trotted out stale definitions, as if they were saddled with the obligation to record things past; and there were periodic splutters of interest in the subject of despotism by scholars who however tended to regard it either dismissively or with mere antiquarian interest. A late-19th century dictionary, for example, defined despot as a ruler ‘who exercises or possesses absolute power over another’; and despotism as ‘absolute control over others’.[xxviii] There was nothing new there. There was only antiquarian fatigue at the thought of an outdated mode of rule outperformed by liberal, parliamentary government.
On the scholarly front, Emile Durkheim’s study of Montesquieu’s writings was symptomatic of the shift of perception. It accused the master of misleadingly making a fetish of sovereignty and forms of state. Durkheim helped bury the whole idea of despotism. He said monarchy and despotism should be treated as epiphenomena, as political symptoms of underlying social orders that required a genuinely sociological explanation of their peculiar societal dynamics. The bad habit of treating state forms ‘at first sight’ as the ‘most important’ dynamic produces a misunderstanding, Durkheim said. ‘Since the ruler stands…at the “summit” of society and is often, quite understandably, called the “head” of the political system, everything is thought dependent on him’. In reality, argued Durkheim, political forms are expressions of underlying social dynamics. Monarchy is an expression of social factors: differentiation, particularity of interests and competition for honour. Despotism is different. It is a kind of ‘monarchy in which social orders have all been abolished and there is no division of labour, or a democracy in which everyone, except the ruler, is equal, but in servitude. It is like a monster in which only the head is alive, having absorbed all the energies of the body’.[xxix]
Such treatments ensured, during the early years of the 20th century, that despotism became a zombie term that belonged to the political language of yesteryear. There were stray political scientists, lawyers and journalists who continued to use the term, but despite their best intentions their wise counsel was ignored, and forgotten.[xxx] Terms like ‘dictatorship’, ‘corporatism’, ‘autocracy’, ‘total state’ and ‘totalitarianism’ prevailed. Despotism became a forgotten keyword of a bygone era.
This short Cold War documentary ‘Despotism’ was released by Encyclopaedia Britannica Films in 1946. The chief consultant was the prominent political scientist Harold D. Lasswell
NOTES
[i] Franco Venturi, ‘Oriental Despotism’, Journal of the History of Ideas 24 (1963): 133–142; R. Koebner, ‘Despot and Despotism: Vicissitudes of a Political term’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 14 (1951), pp. 293 -296; Patricia Springborg, ‘The Contractual State: Reflections on Orientalism and Despotism’, History of Political Thought, volume 8, 3 (Winter 1987), pp. 395 – 433; and Alain Grosrichard, Structure du sérail. La fiction du despotisme asiatique dans l'Occident classique (Paris 1979).
[ii] Alexander Dow, The History of Hindostan (London 1772), volume 3, pp. vii – xxxvii.
[iii] Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (Princeton, NJ, 1978) has shown that modern despotism in the world of Islam was typically the poisonous fruit of concerted efforts by European colonisers to destroy local civil society institutions, customs and codes of law and to install and support mocked-up kings and shahs and one-party rulers; and Mikhail Rostovtzeff’s classic Caravan Cities (Oxford 1932) describes the long history of contractual legal codes that served in the same region to protect the property and rights of traders well before the European invasions and conquests.
[iv] Cesare Beccaria, An Essay on Crimes and Punishments (London 1804), pp. 111- 112. The positive defence of despotic power by name is usually credited to the French political writer Charles-Irénée Castel, abbé de Saint-Pierre (1658 – 1743), still well-known today for his visionary proposals for international peace, who was sure that a strong, undivided monarchic state could benevolently protect its subjects from the mischief caused by petty tyrants, such that ‘when power is united to reason, it cannot be too great or too despotic for the greatest utility of society’ (‘Pour perfectioner le Gouvernement des Etats’, in Ouvrajes de politique [Rotterdam 1733], volume 3, p. 197).
[v] Guiseppe Gorani, Il vero dispotismo (London, 1770), 2 volumes; François Quesnay, ‘Foreword’, Le Despotisme de la Chine (Paris, 1767), in Lewis A. Maverick, China A Model For Europe (San Antonio, 1946), pp. 141, 264. The ways of thinking and practical contributions of the Physiocrats are well captured by Georges Weulersse, Le mouvement physiocratique en France (Paris 1910), 2 volumes.
[vi] The 18th-century intellectual fascination with the vision of undivided state power as ‘an almighty pedagogue’ is emphasised by Carl Schmitt, Die Diktatur: Von den Anfängen des modernen Souveränitätsgedankens bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf (Berlin 1978 [1928]), pp. 97- 129.
[vii] The attack on ‘les triste effets de la puissance arbitraire et despotique de la cour de France’ was led by the anonymously published series of ‘mémoires’ or dissertations Les Soupirs de la France esclave, qui aspire après la liberté [The Sighs of a France Slave Who Yearns After Liberty] (Amsterdam, 1689), 3rd part (15 September), p. 29. Often attributed to the French Calvinist pastor Pierre Jurieu (1637 -1713), its attack on selfish and reckless uses of power caused a great stir despite its banning and burning by the royal censors.
[viii] Frederick of Prussia, Refutation of Machiavelli’s Prince: or, Anti-Machiavel, edited Paul Sonnino (Athens, Ohio, 1981), pp. 32 – 33: ‘Just as kings can do good when they want to do it, they can do evil whenever they please…In every country there are honest and dishonest people just as in every family there are handsome persons along with one-eyed, hunchbacks, blind, and cripples…there are and always will be monsters among princes, unworthy of the character with which they are invested’.
[ix] Montesquieu, De L’Esprit des Lois (Paris 1979 [1748]), book 5, chapter 13, p. 185; book 2, chapter 5, p. 141.
[x] Montesquieu, Lettres Persanes (Paris 1873 [1721]), volume 1, letters 148, 146, 102; and volume 2, letters 59 and 37. Compare Montesquieu’s remark in Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline (New York and London, 1965 [1748]) that under conditions of despotism ‘there is always real dissension. The worker, the soldier, the lawyer, the magistrate, the noble are joined only inasmuch as some oppress the others without resistance. And, if we see any union there, it is not citizens who are united but dead bodies buried one next to the other’ (chapter 9, p. 94).
[xi] Denis Diderot, Mémoires pour Catherine II, edited Paul Vernière (Paris 1966), pp. 117 – 118; the follow-up remark is found in the best-selling anti-colonial tract by Abbé Raynal, A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the West and East Indies (London 1783), volume 8, p. 32.
[xii] Jean-Louis Carra, L’orateur des Etats-Généraux, pour 1789 (Paris, 1789), p. 12.
[xiii] Vicesimus Knox, The Spirit of Despotism (London 1795), pp. 3, 27. As the forces of Jacobinism seized the upper hand during the early phase of the French revolution, Knox (unlike poor Jean-Louis Carra) saved his skin by recalling the work and thereafter refused publication until an anonymous edition appeared in 1821.
[xiv] Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Being An Answer To Mr. Burke's Attack On The French Revolution (London 1791), p. ; and see my Tom Paine: A Political Life (London and New York, 1995).
[xv] Michel Foucault, Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France 1974 – 1975 (London and New York, 2003), pp. 94 - 95: ‘The despot can promote his will over the entire social body only through a permanent state of violence…The despot is the permanent outlaw, the individual without social ties. The despot is the man alone. The despot is someone who…performs the greatest crime, the crime par excellence, of a total breach of the social pact by which the very body of society can exist and maintain itself…The despot is the individual who promotes his violence, his whims, and his irrationality as the general law or raison d’Etat…The first monster is the king. The king…is the general model from which, through successive historical shifts and transformations, the countless little monsters who people nineteenth-century psychiatryand legal psychiatry are historically derived….All human monsters are descendants of Louis XVI.’
[xvi] John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, (Quincy) 13 November 1815, Founders Online, National Archives; Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, (Monticello), 12 September 1821, Founders Online, National Archives. The promiscuity of the language of despotism was evident in the well-known plea of Abigail Adams (31 March 1776) to her husband to ‘Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favourable to them than your ancestors’ because all men ‘would be tyrants if they could’. John Adams replied, as men still do, that in practice men ‘have only the Name of Masters’ so that empowering women further would bring the ‘Despotism of the Peticoat’ (14 April 1776); Adams Family Papers (Massachusetts Historical Society), available at https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L17760414ja
[xvii] James Mill, The History of British India (London 1820), second edition, volume 2, pp. 166 -167; John Stuart Mill, ‘Considerations on Representative Government’, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, edited John M. Robson (Toronto and Buffalo, 1977), volume 19, p. 567; ‘On Liberty’, ibid., volume 18, p. 224.
[xviii] Montesquieu, The Persian Letters (Indianapolis, 1976), letter 37.
[xix] John Stuart Mill, ‘That the Ideally Best Form of Government is Representative Government’, in Considerations on Representative Government, chapter 3 , in J.M. Robson (ed.), John Stuart Mill, Essays on Politics and Society (Toronto and Buffalo, 1977), p. 403.
[xx] Denis Diderot, ‘Refutation of Helvétius’, in Lester G. Crocker (ed.), Diderot’s Selected Writings (New York 1966), pp. 297 – 298.
[xxi] George B. Cheever, The Hierarchical Despotism, Lectures on the Mixture of Civil and Ecclesiastical Power in the Governments of the Middle Ages Etc. (New York, 1844).
[xxii] On Fénelon and Montesquieu see Louis Althusser, Montesquieu-Rousseau-Marx: Politics and History (London and New York, 1972), pp. 82 – 83; and the early attacks on despotism by Thomas Gordon, The Works of Tacitus…To which are prefixed political discourses upon that author (London, 1728 -1731) and (with John Trenchard), Independent Whig: Or, A Defence of Primitive Christianity (London 1721) and Cato’s Letters (London 1724).
[xxiii] Abbé Raynal, A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the West and East Indies (London 1783), volume 8, p. 32.
[xxiv] Jean-Baptiste le Rond D’Alembert, ‘Essai sur la société des gens de lettres et des grands’ in Mélanges de littérature, d’histoire et de philosophie (Berlin 1753), especially pp. 384 – 386, 398.
[xxv] Edmund Burke, ‘A Vindication of Natural Society’ (1756), in The Works of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, volume 1 (London 1899), pp. 80 – 82.
[xxvi] John Stuart Mill, ‘That the Ideally Best Form of Government is Representative Government’, Considerations on Representative Government (1861), in John M. Robson (ed.), The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (Toronto and London, 1977), volume 19, chapter 3.
[xxvii] The following quotations are from Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique, preface by François Furet (Paris 1981), volume 2, pp. 385, 379. All translations are my own.
[xxviii] Webster's Complete Dictionary of the English Language, revised and improved by Chauncey A. Goodrich & Noah Porter (London 1886), p. 363.
[xxix] See Emile Durkheim, Montesquieu: Quid Secundatus Politicae Scientiae Instituendae Contulerit, edited W. Watts Willer (Oxford 1997 [1892]), 29e, 31e, 39e–40e and 41e.
[xxx] The few examples worth noting include the attack by Lord Hewart, Lord Chief Justice of England, on the Westminster Parliament’s surrender of its precious legislative powers to the ‘administrative lawlessness’ of a bloated civil service bureaucracy in The New Despotism (London 1929); the Tocqueville-style defence of the ‘old American “horse and buggy” road of democracy with the Constitution as its foundation’ against the worship of state power by the ‘Prophets of the New Deal’ in Raoul E. Desvernine, Democratic Despotism (New York 1936), pp. 231-243; the anti-fascist reflections of Charles E. Merriam, The New Democracy and the New Despotism (New York and London, 1939); Harold D. Lasswell, ‘Democracy, Despotism and Style [1949]’, in On Political Sociology (Chicago and London, 1977), pp. 251 – 256, who was the consultant for the short documentary, ‘Despotism’ (Encyclopaedia Britannica Films,1946); and Robert Nisbet’s account of the dangers posed to a ‘free society’ by centralized ‘military, police, and bureaucratic power’ in ‘The New Despotism’, Commentary (June 1975), pp. 31 – 43.
CHINESE TRANSLATION
The Chinese translation of this essay is forthcoming in State Study, volume 1, 1 (Beijing, 2022)
专制: 欧洲近代早期政治分析的基本概念
约翰·基恩[1]
“专制”,或“专制主义”(despotism)[2]一词是近代早期欧洲政治词汇中最引人注目但却被严重忽视的词汇之一。它起源于古希腊,在那时,单词despotēs (可能来自do-po-ta这一迈锡尼线性文字B中的词汇)最初指的是丈夫对妻子、孩子和家奴的仁慈统治。这个词在拜占庭帝国时期被用作宫廷头衔,指在位皇帝的儿子或女婿。16世纪,尤其是在16世纪的法国,“专制”这个古老的词汇被激活了,获得了巨大的活力,产生了重要的政治影响。它不仅成为德国学者们所称的“基本概念”(Grundbegriff),引起了许多人的注意,而且在报纸、书籍和小册子中激发了公共争议。一段时间里,“专制”也成了东方学专家(Orientalist)的一个指称,被欧洲学者用来描述和规范地评判土耳其、波斯、印度次大陆,一直到中国和日本的人民和政府。但事实上,这个概念的意涵过于混杂,它也逐渐有了其他更具颠覆性的含义。在18世纪,当它被用于指代欧洲君主政体时,“专制”一词成为了抵抗专断权力的象征。它引发的政治动荡,促使推翻了美国殖民地、海地和法国的君主制。三个世纪以来,它催生了许多关于权力的本质、政治服从的机制以及好政府意涵的重要公众争论。但作为政治分析的基本概念,它的流行却并没有持续多久。本文表明,在19世纪的历史进程中,“专制”这一术语逐渐消失,并不再被使用。这个曾经引起公众极大兴趣、激起许多为争取权力和反对权力而展开生死斗争的语汇,在很大程度上被遗忘了,被留在了历史的垃圾堆里。这一情状为我们留下了这样的问题:“专制”,或“专制主义”的观念在今天是否仅仅是一个能够满足考古爱好者的文物,还是它仍然与我们在当下理解当代政治的轮廓和冲突的努力密切相关。
“东方专制主义”(Oriental despotism)
据史料记载,“专制主义”最初是为了赞美基督教欧洲并将其与东方列强加以区分的一个术语。它是东方学专家(Orientalist)所使用的指代,是一个在欧洲人的想象中富有战斗性的词汇,是一个作为基督教世界贬损伊斯兰世界这一悠久传统的新表现形式的关键术语。从16世纪开始,借助于驻君士坦丁堡的欧洲大使馆提供的关于大领主苏丹所作所为的各种正式或非正式的官方报告和传闻轶事,奥斯曼土耳其逐渐被视为具有诱惑力的黑暗专制力量的完美化身。[3]在许多观察家看来,专制成为一个代名词,用以指破坏个人财产、因国家禁止出版所造成的普遍无知、残忍苏丹的性变态和专断统治。“专制”被理解为一种以苏丹的后宫(seraglio)为中心的政治秩序。这是一个超乎想象的奢侈空间,统治者通过臣属管理权力,但这些臣属一旦不幸失宠,就会被勒死。后宫意味着一种不受约束的权力,在后宫中有众多奇特的角色,包括侏儒、哑巴、黑人与白人太监,以及一群基督教出身的被俘妇女,他们被精心挑选出来以满足一个更倾向于“反常”行为的统治者的肉欲。18世纪的法国政治作家孟德斯鸠(Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu)就是这么想的,他掌握的关于波斯人、土耳其人、阿拉伯人、鞑靼人、暹罗人、日本人、中国人和印度次大陆人民的报告使他相信,他们是“专制”的帮凶和受害者。许多其他观察家也同意他的观点,其中包括东印度公司的英国雇员亚历山大·道(Alexander Dow)上校,他的著作《印度斯坦史》(The History of Hindostan ,1772)被广泛阅读,其中包括《论印度斯坦专制制度的起源和本质》(A Dissertation Concerning the Origin and Nature of Despotism in Hindostan)。道确信,“穆罕默德的信仰是专门为专制设计的……这是使得东方那种政府能够得以永久延续的最重要原因之一。”上校说,其他原因包括恐惧、频繁洗浴的催眠效果和闷热:“印度炎热的气候引起的倦怠,使当地人倾向于懒惰和安逸”,以及“随心所欲的劳动”(the labour of being free)。禁止饮酒更加剧了臣民们的麻木:“它阻止了人们自由地表达情感,而这种自由表达能够将人类从对他们自然权利(natural rights)的冷漠中唤醒。”他还说,“专制”的受害者“变得冷漠、胆怯、谨小慎微、内向和怀有私心;对那些使人在某种程度上变得真诚坦率的炽热激情和令人愉快的心灵升华感到陌生。”[4]
“东方主义”认为懦弱的印度教徒沦为穆斯林“专制”的牺牲品,这一观点被广泛接受,但也不无挑战。同时令人惊奇的是,:“专制”这个词的意义和政治功能发生了显著的变化。在18世纪,“专制的幽灵”——这是18世纪在印度次大陆的历史、地理、宗教和法学方面的翻译家、作家和学者安克蒂尔-杜佩隆(Abraham-Hyacinthe Anquetil-Duperron)经常引用的一个短语——开始萦绕在欧洲和欧洲以外的地方。由于种种原因,在大西洋地区,尤其是法国,“专制”成为了受过教育的特权阶层内部激辩的公共话题。
一个影响深远的原因是,一些更有见地的作家正面提出了挑战,他们质疑孟德斯鸠在他的《论法的精神》(De L’Esprit des Lois,1748)中提出的有影响力的论断。孟德斯鸠在《论法的精神》中说,“专制”是亚洲主要国家的“自然化”(naturalised)特征。他的著作无疑对许多思考18世纪下半叶亚洲社会的欧洲人产生了影响,学者、商人、旅行者和帝国的缔造者们把“东方专制主义”的论点全盘吞下。但是,当欧洲人开始收到大量来自欧洲以外世界的新报告时,“东方专制主义”这一正统观念遭遇了智识上的商榷。这些挑战行为产生了一种意想不到的效果——让这一类别的边界得以软化:开阔了这一范畴的思想内涵,拓宽了这一范畴的囊括范围。这个类别变得更难以预测、更不稳定以及在政治上变得愈发混杂。
某种程度上,这是因为一些作家敢于质疑关于东方世界的标准叙事图景。那些将注意力集中在亚洲,并与正统观点持不同意见的人所写的最有影响力的杰作之一是安克蒂尔-杜佩隆的论文《东方法律》(Législation Orientale,1778)。它指责孟德斯鸠和其他人错误地描述了东方的政府和社会,建构了“一个在任何地方都并非真实存在的专制制度体系”(un système de despotisme quin ' exist réellement nulle part)。杜佩隆强烈主张,土耳其和莫卧儿帝国的政治秩序并不是由被阿谀奉承的官员侍奉的暴君(despot)[5]运用专断的和不受限制的权力的案例。亚洲也有奴隶,但不是每个人都被奴役,事实上,这些政体的统治者与他们的臣民借助习俗、成文法和不成文法的力量相互约束。他们的行动受到以下因素的限制:名人和宗教权威的对等权力、寻求正义的请愿者、法院协商会议(court consultations;durbars)的行动以及可以被广泛获取的载有政府事务细节的公报。他们的权力同样受到宗教多样性的民风和法律保护的制约,就像如果身处阿克巴(Akbar)的早期莫卧儿帝国,这一清单还应当再加上土地和贸易的财产权;杜佩隆甚至坚持认为,在奥斯曼土耳其,私人财产权得到了比英国更好的保护。
《东方法律》巧妙地指出了关于“专制主义”的讨论是如何与商人和传教士的欧洲帝国扩张关联在一起的。杜佩隆不仅质疑那些他所言的“没有证据的断言”(assertions sans preuves),而且提供了对东方政体更准确的描述。通过将东方的政治组织描绘成专断权力的不稳定体系,“专制主义”的话语认为,欧洲的殖民是一份慷慨的礼物,因为它为那些一直在专制制度所带来的恐惧、暴力和不平等下受苦的人民带来了社会稳定性和善好、合法的政府。因此,杜佩隆指责他的反对者使用“专制主义”一词作为借口,为欧洲人在亚洲实行的压迫开脱。例如,反对者们坚信东方政体并不致力于保障私人财产权,这就成为了殖民者收夺土著人土地的理据。但是杜佩隆预言,通过将被殖民者诽谤为专制制度的受害者,帝国扩张本身反而将给东方人民施加屈辱和苦难。
作为一名学者兼冒险家,安克蒂尔-杜佩隆陈述了他的观点并被后来的杰出学者采纳。[6]对他来说,这理应是件好事。但是,命运发生了奇怪的扭曲,他的案例以一种他绝不希望的方式被一些作家和政府官员接受或延伸了。这些作家与官员认为东方的专制制度有一些具有吸引力的特征,而这意味着,东方专制制度的某些方面值得欧洲效仿、应当在欧洲大地上生根发芽。他们援引18世纪以普鲁士的腓特烈二世(Frederick II,另译“弗雷德里克二世”)为代表的强势君主所推动的改革为例,确信专制可以是仁慈的(benevolent)。最早以这种方式推论的思想家之一,是著名的反对酷刑和死刑的米兰作家切萨雷·贝卡利亚(Cesare Beccaria),在其著作《论犯罪与刑罚》(Dei delitti e delle pene,1764)中,他提出了一种新型的仁慈君主制(benevolent monarchy),在这种君主制中,“许多人的专制只能通过一个人的专制来纠正,暴君的残忍与他的力量不成比例,而是与他必须对付的障碍成比例。” [7]俄国的凯瑟琳二世(Catherine II)仔细阅读并引用了他对未经分割的权力的辩护;也正是这个时候,这本书为贝卡利亚寻得了与哈布斯堡王朝改革派统治者玛丽亚·特蕾莎(Maria Theresa)和约瑟夫二世(Joseph II)共事的机会。毫无疑问,专制政府最具影响力的拥护者是法国的重农主义者们,在路易十五(Louis XV ,1710 – 1774)长期统治的最后几年,他们提倡一种基于他们所描述的“自然法”(natural laws)——比如允许谷物自由贸易——的新型绝对君主制(absolute monarchy)。他们说,政府的工作是保障这些自然和必要的政府法令以及社会法律的自由运行,他们自豪地称这种基于“自然法”的政府为“合法专制”(despotisme légale)和“开明专制”(enlightened despotism)。按照这些思路,考虑到像凯瑟琳二世和托斯卡纳的利奥波德(Leopold of Tuscany)一般的统治者的例子,米兰贵族朱塞佩·格拉尼(Giuseppe Gorani,1740 – 1819)同样发表了一个被广泛阅读的“真正的专制”(true despotism)案例,“真正的专制”通过加强致力于积极摆脱束缚性的税收体制、规则和规章制度的君主制,来释放贸易和商业的市场力量,反对诸如教会、治安官和地方议会等中间机体(intermediary bodies)的社会等级特权,最终确立“自然秩序”(natural order)。在这一问题上,弗朗索瓦·魁奈(François Quesnay)在《中华帝国的专制制度》(Le Despotisme de la Chine,1767)中的描述更为尖锐。他坚持认为“中国的政府”令人印象深刻,当然也值得效仿,因为它是一个“合法专制”( legal despotism),“帝国的君主将帝国的最高权力完全掌握在他自己手中”,并始终运用“明智的和不可更改的法律”,即“自然秩序的法律”。[8]
专断权力(Arbitrary Power,或译“专权”)
这样的推论角度与蔑视东方专制政体的旧东方学家是完全一致的。它之所以引人注目,是因为一个不那么积极的原因:它证明,在某些时刻,欧洲知识分子很容易被“专制主义”为他们展示的有关不可分割的主权权力、专制恩惠和就职的幻想所诱惑。[9]然而,历史记录显示,知识分子与“专制主义”的共舞激起了公众的愤怒反弹,质疑者认为专制是一种全球现象与威胁。这种语义上的转变有更深的根源,在17世纪下半叶,“专断和专制权力”(arbitrary and despotic power)这一短语首次被小册子作者使用,来攻击太阳王路易十四(Sun King Louis XIV)的“绝对主义”(absolutism)。[10]18世纪,这一自上世纪下半叶延续下来的麻烦终于爆发,并带来了巨大的政治后果,然而吊诡的是,这一事态却是在格拉尼和魁奈的帮助与杜佩隆的善意下产生的。1727年,“专制”,或“专制主义”这一具有新内涵的单词从更古老的法语(despotisme)进入英语(despotism),它很快便加入了革命的力量。这一转变是由几种因素共同推动的,包括对专制政体所占优势的普遍警惕,越来越多能够证明奥地利、普鲁士和俄罗斯君主政体领土野心的证据,以及一些戏剧性的政治事件,比如路易十五的政变(1771年)和波兰-立陶宛联邦的第一次分裂(1772年)。在某位在位君主坦率自白的帮助下(腓特烈二世写道:“在君主里面,现在不缺怪物,将来也不会缺。” [11]),政治激进派开始声称,欧洲的君主制度开始与其他地方的专制政体相似,比如两者都制定了咄咄逼人的税收政策,都致力于镇压宗教上的少数派,以及通过不受限制的专断权力来争取公众舆论。
这种新的解释在很大程度上要归功于18世纪杰出的法国政治思想家孟德斯鸠的著作。还是在他那本经典著作《论法的精神》中,他提出了一个著名的观点,专制政体的统治者是无所顾忌、不计后果的(reckless)。“当路易斯安那州的野蛮人想要水果时,他们会把树砍倒来采集果实,这就是专制政府的行为方式。”在专制政体中,弥漫在人与人之间的互相猜疑并对彼此感到恐惧的心理状态发荣滋长,没有任何人是安全的,臣民的生命、自由和财产权悬而不定,他们被这个可怕的格言支配:“一个人应该根据他自己反复无常的意愿来统治国家”。[12]在他的早期作品《波斯人信札》(Lettres Persanes,1721)中,孟德斯鸠表达了类似的思想,只不过这一次是以书信的形式,通过呈现身处法国的波斯旅行者的寓言,孟德斯鸠描述了被“恐惧、黑暗和惊骇” (horror, darkness, and terror)所笼罩的波斯后宫生活。“专制”(在孟德斯鸠心目中,这种政治制度指的是路易十四和路易十五的君主制)是残酷的专断权力的同义词,意味着为背信弃义和不正义开脱的可憎法律。专制制度培育了对无限财富的盲目渴望以及那些喜欢“战利品和胜利”的君主们,这些君主沉醉在自己所谓的“君主荣耀”之中无法自拔,滥施恩惠,狂予名誉但“不过问他们的真正功德”,甚至“处死所有忤逆与触怒他们的人”。专制政体是由醉心于权力的暴君统治的,“如果三角形能够创造一个神,那么臣民就会形容他们的君主具有三条边”。[13]
德尼·狄德罗(Denis Diderot,1713 – 1784),作为《百科全书》(Encyclopédie)这一伟大的启蒙艺术和科学参考著作的著名联合主编,也是向专制政体与专制君主发难的先锋者之一。“一个专制统治者,”他写道,“即使他是最好的人,按照他自己的良善意愿统治国家,也是犯罪”。他又说:“第一个专制统治者,公正、稳重、开明,是大灾难;第二个专制统治者,公正、稳重、开明,还将是一个更大的灾难;第三个专制统治者,如果他能在所有这些伟大的品质上取得成就,这将是一个国家所能遭受的最可怕的灾难。” [14]他的同胞记者、国会议员和图书管理员让-路易·卡拉(Jean-Louis Carra)呼吁他的公民同伴们抵制专制,因为专制政体威胁要在法国国家的民情(mœurs)、财富和自由的废墟下‘奴役’他的‘美丽’祖国法兰西。在“坦诚与愤怒”的感化下,对压迫法国人民“九百年”的专制制度的反抗终于迎来了胜利的结局。卡拉补充道:“多么伟大的胜利!” [15]虽然由于他的影响力,卡拉后来被当地嗜血的雅各宾派革命者送上了断头台(1793年10月),但他的观点在英吉利海峡的对岸产生了回响,被英国作家、英国国教牧师维西西姆斯·诺克斯(Vicesimus Knox)赞同,诺克斯以法国大革命的原则之名攻击英国君主制,引起了巨大的轰动。 “人类美德和幸福的最大敌人是专制(DESPOTISM)”,他用大写字母怒吼道,“看看整个地球的表面,再看看人类,这个承载着造物主的荣耀、担当着造物主代表的物种,竟然在专制的影响下萎靡不振,就像温带气候的植物被炎热地区的太阳炙烤一般!”他还说:“专制政体的确是一株来自于亚洲的植物;但是被那些长期生活在亚洲的人带到了这里,那些人将它栽种于温室之中,不知疲倦地培育它。这样,即使在我们这般寒冷、对它并不友善的气候里,它竟不断生长,乃至开花,并最终结果。” [16]这种认为专制与气候条件无关,可以传播,并威胁各地的自由的观点,在托马斯·潘恩(Thomas Paine)的羽毛笔下获得了最广泛的普及。他那轰动一时的公开出版物——《人权》(Rights of Man,拥有爆炸性论点与影响力的第一部分于1791年3月在伦敦出版),痛斥各地专制政府的专断权力。“傲慢的政府就是专制”,他写道,“但如果加上轻蔑,情况就更糟了;而为轻蔑付出的代价就是过度的奴役”。他还回忆起自己积极参与美国殖民地居民对抗英国帝国军队及其德国盟友的军事斗争时的情景。“这种政府体制……让我想起了一位在战争后期被美国人俘虏的布伦瑞克士兵对我说的话:‘啊!’他说,‘美国是一个美好的自由国家,它值得人民为之奋斗;因为我也了解我自己的国家,所以我知道这其中的区别:在我的国家,如果君主说吃稻草,我们就得吃稻草。’上帝保佑那个国家吧,我想,不管是英国还是其他自由受到德国政府原则和布伦瑞克君主们保护的地方!”[17]
这本书的本意是向聚集在杜松子酒馆、咖啡馆里和公共广场上的尚未识字者大声朗读,事实证明,这种修辞非常有力。它展示了,一个过去的意涵带有深刻偏见的术语如何在政治上变得富于攻击性和进步,以支持基于权力分享和民主代表制的政府。在18世纪的最后25年之前,在整个大西洋地区,专制的话语和对其反复无常的专横的谈论已经成为抵抗君主专断权力的致命武器,无论他们的品质是迷人的、仁慈的还是残忍的。专制统治者作为“怪物”的形象成为了保卫社会、对抗因一时冲动和野性而“犯罪的”统治者的政治叙事的中心。[18]后来,上了年纪的托马斯·杰斐逊(Thomas Jefferson)和曾担任美国第一任副总统和第二任总统的约翰·亚当斯(John Adams)在共同回忆中记录了这种语义上的转变。亚当斯透露说:“我的政治信条的基本条款是,专制,或无限主权,或绝对权力,和一个平民议会的多数,一个贵族顾问会,一个寡头联盟和一个单一的皇帝是一样的。他们都同样的专断、残忍、血腥,并且在各个方面都是恶魔。”杰斐逊表示同意:“我在即将离开这个世界时不会不抱这样一个希望:光明和自由正在稳步前进……即使野蛮和专制的阴云再次遮蔽了欧洲的科学和自由,这个国家仍然会为他们保留和恢复光明与自由。简而言之,在1776年7月4日点燃的火焰已经蔓延了地球上太多的地方,不可能被专制的脆弱机器扑灭。相反,他们将消耗这些机器和所有使用它们的人。”[19]
“自愿为奴”(Voluntary Servitude)
随着18世纪后期美国和法国的革命性剧变,“专制主义”的整个理念内涵在一段时间内得以延续。除约翰·亚当斯和托马斯·杰斐逊之外,还有人使用“专制主义”这一语汇。苏格兰人詹姆斯·密尔(James Mill)在他于1818年首次出版的三卷本《英属印度史》(The History of British India)中认为,“专制主义”不仅是来自亚洲的异域产物,而且是一种存在于所有还在形成中的国家的“半野蛮”(semi-barbarous)政府形式。在詹姆斯·密尔的观点中,专制制度是不受知识和纪律约束的欲望和想象的产物,它最极端的变体是“印度的政府形式”及其“有辱人格的和有害的从属制度系统”(degrading and pernicious system of subordination)。他的儿子约翰·斯图亚特·密尔(John Stuart Mill)是这一时期最有影响力的自由主义哲学家和国会议员,以一种奇怪而矛盾的方式阐述了这一要点。约翰·斯图亚特·密尔保留了他父亲的思路,他说,由于“人民自身没有自发改善的希望”,私有财产权和“好的专制统治者”(good despots)的缺失是亚洲社会的标志,因此,他们在政府和财产事务上的改善需要来自殖民列强和“中间”机体(‘intermediate’ bodies,如东印度公司)的帮助。“专制”这个词曾经被用作东方主义的意符(Orientalist signifier),现在,它成为了殖民和帝国话语中的一个关键词。约翰·斯图亚特·密尔写道,“专制是应对野蛮人的一种合法政府模式,前提是,他们的目的是改良”,为此则需要,他总结道,一个“充满改良精神的统治者”、 一个为自身在未来能够被代议制政府取代铺平道路的“充满活力的专制制度”。[20]
非常有趣的是,在18和19世纪,“专制”这个词被用于几乎相反的目的,被用来强调一个崭新的现象:臣民对以“人民”(the people)的名义统治的统治权力的自愿服从。横贯大西洋地区的许多思想家、诗人和散文作家的著作都关注到一种我们姑且称之为“自愿为奴”的奇异机制,他们都指出,专制是一种奇怪的和令人费解的统治形式,因为“实行专制”(despotize,这个词已不再使用)的“专制者”(despotists)通过与他们轻信和顺从的臣民签订一份“无声的契约”(silent contract),实际上成功地培养了民众的支持。在人们的心目中,孟德斯鸠更多的是因为他将专制理解为以恐惧为核心要素的专断统治而被铭记,不过,他有时也指出,现代专制制度助长了臣民在错综复杂的权力蛛网中的纠缠。他在自己的文章中多次指出,专制统治者的统治在功能上需要依赖他人,他们靠向臣属给予恩惠而充满活力,他们以那些勤奋的马屁精的“忙碌的懒惰”(busy laziness)为生。专制统治者们认为,他们的“君主威严”使他们能够对任何表现出忠诚的人施惠,而不管其功德如何,因此,谄媚可以得到回报这一点所依据的规则是,“只要决定赋予他们荣耀,他们就会变得出类拔萃”。[21]
这一要点的意涵比孟德斯鸠想象的还要丰富。一个世纪后,颇具影响力的英国自由民主主义者约翰·斯图亚特·密尔在一次辛辣的讽刺中坚持认为,“精妙的专制”(good despotism)将“松弛和削弱人民的思想、感情和精力”的艺术培养到完美。[22]德尼·狄德罗简洁地表达了这一点,“一个公正开明的君主的专断统治总是不好的”,他写道,“他的美德是最危险的,也是最可靠的诱惑形式:它们使人民在不知不觉中养成热爱、尊重和服务他的继任者的习惯,无论继任者是谁,无论他是多么邪恶和愚蠢。”[23]
此处提到的来自统治者诱惑的政治危险有很深的东方根源,可以追溯到古希腊的despótēs(由dómos “房子、家庭”和pósis “丈夫、配偶”而来),甚至到它在阿维斯陀语与梵语中的最早的同源词(阿维斯陀语:də̄ng patoiš,“房子、家庭的主人”;梵语:dámpati-s)。我们要注意“专制统治者”(despot)这个词最初的积极含义,它的意思是主人有责任照顾好他的家庭,这就是为什么,正如我们已经看到的,一些现代早期观察家称赞专制的仁慈品质。[24]但是其他大多数人都厌恶和害怕它对其时的统摄,而“自愿为奴”很快就被大西洋地区的众多政治思想家和作家视为专制的粘合剂,其中不仅包括贵族——费奈隆(Fénelon)和孟德斯鸠也在其中,也包括激进的共和主义者——如托马斯·戈登(Thomas Gordon)和约翰·特伦查德(John Trenchard),他们担心国王和普通民众可能在恩惠、养老金、操纵和贿选这一组合的基础上结成持久的联盟。[25]那些研究“自愿为奴”问题的人经常说,专制远不止是一个人为了他自身的利益而独掌大权,或者是东方土地上的瘟疫。他们坚持认为,现代专制制度真正令人担忧的特点是它引诱和奴役臣民的方式,它通过败坏和摧残语言、家庭生活、伦理和社会习俗与仪式来做到这一点,它破坏了公民之间的平等和友爱。专制使臣民沐浴在恩惠之下——雷纳尔神父(Abbé Raynal)注——而这种恩惠导致“人民的沉沉暮气……被仁慈体贴的行为维持着。”[26]专制制度养育了专制统治者,它把自己的臣民训练成爬行动物、谄媚小人和马屁精。
狄德罗的同伴,法国数学家、音乐学家与哲学家,《百科全书》的另一位联合主编让-巴蒂斯特·勒朗·达朗贝尔(Jean-Baptiste le Rond d’alembert, 1717 – 1783)也加入了讨论,他建议进一步研究“恩主专制”(despotisme des bien-faiteurs,基于恩惠、恩宠和恩赐的专制)这一主题。(他说)专制真正令人担忧的是它使公共批评瘫痪的方式,专制统治使作家依赖于他们的赞助人,从而腐蚀了“文学共和国”(republic of letters),摧毁了他们清醒的思考能力、面向公众的雄辩技艺和勇于谴责不受约束的权力的能力。[27]盎格鲁-爱尔兰政治家、令人敬畏的作家埃德蒙·柏克(Edmund Burke)对专制的危险发出了类似的警告。他将其描述为这样一种政府,在这种政府中,“所有低等的权力体都只受最高意志的支配”,他警告说,这种政府的蔓延将使得,“世界上几乎没有任何地方不受它权力的影响,而在少数几个人们仍旧享有所谓自由的地方,自由持续性地处于摇摇欲坠的境地。”虽然柏克大力谴责专制是一种任性、愚蠢和暴力的统治,但他也注意到它具有奇怪的吸引力和无法朽坏的品质:“事实是,”他写道,“这种不自然的力量既腐蚀了心灵,也败坏了人的理解力。为了防止任何改良的希望,国王总是被一群臭名昭著的谄媚者所包围,而这些谄媚者们也会发现他们的所作所为使国王失去了理智,直到一切正直和正义的想法被完全从他的头脑中抹去。”[28]
19世纪中叶的几位主要的公共思想者对现代专制制度的蔓延感到焦虑,他们试图对“自愿为奴”的整个概念进行新的转化。约翰·斯图亚特·密尔担心,生活在代议制政府处境下的公民可能会被国家的官僚机构活活吞噬,在这种政治生活中,“人民的所有集体利益以为着人民自身的原则而得到管理,所有与集体利益有关的思想观念也都是围绕这一特征展开的;在这种政治生活中,他们放弃了自主思考的思想活力,这是他们的观念得以被塑造的前提,而此种自我否弃乃是经过了他们的同意。”然后,公民们就会把“事情交给政府处理,就像交给神意处理一样”,他们对政府政策的顺从“意味着他们其实对此毫不关心,并且如果他们对自身的境遇感到不满,他们也会像接受大自然伟力的降临一样接受他们的处境”。[29]密尔关于“自然化”(naturalised)奴役的想法是受到了他的熟识亚历克西·德·托克维尔(Alexis de Tocqueville)的启发,后者早些时候曾将专制的腐败效应与代议制民主的动力机制联系起来。[30]他认为,尤其令人担忧的是,一种温和但具有高度侵略性的奴役形式出现了,而这种奴役形式却与民主权利的增长密切相关,他写道:“我认为这种威胁处于民主处境中的人民的崭新的压迫形式是前所未有的。”他想到了一种新的民众统治(popular domination)形式,非个人的但具有侵略性的中央集权国家权力的增长促进了这种统治形式。从给饥饿的人提供面包和给失业者提供工作,到照顾病人和教育青少年,在这些范围广泛的事务之中,政府越来越多地插手人们的日常生活。在民主平等(democratic equality)和“人民”的话语(talk of ‘the people’)下,政府成为人民生活的监管者、检查员、顾问、教育者和惩罚者。这种趋势没有被“罕见而短暂的自由选择实践”——定期选举仪式干扰,而资本主义制造业的兴起也加强了这一趋势。新生的工业阶级(与马克思不同,托克维尔把资本和劳动力放在一起,并将其称为“贵族”)呼吁政府规范工人的生活,并提供港口、运河、道路和其他被认为是为着创造财富而必需的大型基础设施项目。国家直接参与制造业,雇用大量工程师、建筑师、机械师和熟练工人,托克维尔断言,随之而来的国家行政力量的扩张比以往任何一种形式的专制制度都更具侵略性和控制力。“公民们一天天地落入公共行政的控制之下,他们不知不觉地向公共行政交出了越来越多的个人独立性。而正是这些公民,曾经不时地推翻君主的宝座,踩踏国王的双脚,现在却越来越毫无反抗地就服从一个职员最细碎的命令。”这种现代形式的专制以其所具有的温和(gentleness)品性而感到自豪,它声称要废除宗教法庭的火刑(autos-da-fé)、镣铐和刽子手,它的使命是“教化”(civilise)臣民,旨在建立一种能够使人感到仁慈、温和并且生活能够得以改善的,包罗万象的控制技术。这种专制主义抛弃了可被识别的暴君,它使“自愿为奴”的管理艺术臻于完美。它培养了一种规训权力(disciplinary power)的形式,这种形式的规训权力将公民视为臣民,却还能赢得他们的支持,并剥夺他们参与政府事务或关心公共利益的意愿。“在这些[公民]之上,一种巨大的、保护性的权力得以抬升,它负责确保他们的快乐,并监视他们的命运。这种力量是绝对的,它关注细节,富有规律性,具有远见并温和”。他补充说:“它心甘情愿地为他们的幸福而工作,但它却希望成为这种幸福唯一的代理人和仲裁者。它为他们提供安全,能够预见和满足他们的需要,引导他们处理他们所需要处理的主要事务,指导他们留下临终嘱托,并划分他们的遗产。”在扩大“民主化的平等”(democratic equality)的名义下,新型专制“使自由意志的运用变得不再那么有用,并且更加罕见;它把意志的活动限制在一个更小的空间之内,一点一点地从每个公民那里窃取了这个本该属于他们[原文如此]自己的东西。平等让男人们对[原文如此]所有这些事情做好了准备:它让他们倾向于忍受这些,甚至常常倾向于把它们视为一种好处。”
结语
詹姆斯·密尔、他的儿子约翰·斯图亚特·密尔以及托克维尔对“专制”这个术语的采纳,最终成为了它的绝唱。由于种种原因,专制的概念逐渐从政治生活中消失,这些原因在很大程度上与“自由主义帝国的乐观主义”(liberal imperial optimism)有关,这种乐观主义认为“自由放任”(laissez-faire)和代议制政府会在大西洋沿岸地区的中心地带出现。没人能预见即将发生的事情:两场全球战争、空中轰炸、集中营、化学武器、极权主义和原子弹,还有于本世纪初开始抬头的、对美国人后来称之为“自由主义民主”(liberal democracy)的可行性的新质疑。在19世纪的历史进程中,字典仍在不断重复陈旧的定义,好像它们有义务记录过去的事情似的;此外,学者们也不时对“专制”这个课题产生转瞬即逝的兴趣,但他们对此要么感到轻蔑,要么只是出于对古董的兴趣。例如,19世纪末的一本词典将“专制统治者”定义为“对他人行使或拥有绝对权力”的统治者;“专制”是“对他人的绝对控制”。[31]这个定义根本就没有什么新鲜之处。一想到一种过时的统治模式已经被自由主义的议会制政府所超越,人们就只会感受到一种对老古董的厌倦之情。
在学术方面,埃米尔·迪尔凯姆(Emile Durkheim,另译“埃米尔·涂尔干”)对孟德斯鸠作品的研究是观念转变的征兆。它指责这位大师误导性地迷恋主权和国家形式,迪尔凯姆帮助埋葬了整个“专制主义”的观念。他说,作为深层社会秩序的政治症候的君主制和专制应当被视为副现象,真正需要做的工作是对其特殊的社会动力机制进行真正意义上的社会学解释。迪尔凯姆说,把国家形式“第一眼”视为“最重要”动力机制的坏习惯制造了一个误解。“由于统治者站在社会的‘顶峰’, 可以被理解的是,统治者通常被称为政治体系的‘首脑’,所以人们认为一切都取决于统治者。”事实上,迪尔凯姆认为,政治形式是深层社会动力机制的外在表现,君主制就是分化、利益的特殊性和对荣誉的争夺等社会因素的表现。而专制,则与君主制不同,这是一种“废除所有社会秩序、没有劳动分工的君主政体,或者是一种除统治者外人人平等但均处于奴役状态的民主政体。它就像一个只有头活着的怪物,头部吸收了身体的所有能量。”[32]
在20世纪早期,这样的处理确保了“专制”成为一个只属于过去政治语言的僵尸术语。还有一些并非主流的政治科学家、律师和记者继续使用这个词,尽管他们的出发点是好的,但他们明智的建议却被忽视和遗忘了。[33]像“专政”(dictatorship)、“统合主义”(corporatism)、“独裁”(autocracy)、“全能国家”(total state)和“极权主义”(totalitarianism)这样的术语盛行,“专制”,或“专制主义”(despotism)成为了一个已然被遗忘的、属于过去时代的关键词。
[1] 约翰.基恩(John Keane), 悉尼大学和柏林社会科学研究中心的政治学教授。译者李健,北京大学中国政治学研究中心博士研究生。
[2] 考虑到“despotism”一词具有思想意义上的“专制主义”与制度意义上的“专制制度”两种意涵,故译者在翻译“despotism”一词时,根据语境采用了“专制”、“专制主义”、“专制制度”与“专制政体”等多种译法。
[3] Franco Venturi, ‘Oriental Despotism’, Journal of the History of Ideas 24 (1963): 133–142; R. Koebner, ‘Despot and Despotism: Vicissitudes of a Political term’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 14 (1951), pp. 293 -296; Patricia Springborg, ‘The Contractual State: Reflections on Orientalism and Despotism’, History of Political Thought, volume 8, 3 (Winter 1987), pp. 395 – 433; and Alain Grosrichard, Structure du sérail. La fiction du despotisme asiatique dans l'Occident classique (Paris 1979).
[4] Alexander Dow, The History of Hindostan (London 1772), volume 3, pp. vii – xxxvii.
[5] 根据语境情感色彩的不同,译者将“despot”灵活翻译为“暴君”与“专制统治者”。
[6] Hanna Batatu, The Old Social Classes and the Revolutionary Movements of Iraq (Princeton, NJ, 1978)已经表明,伊斯兰世界的“现代专制主义”是典型的欧洲殖民者们一同培育的毒果,他们以“现代专制主义”为武器摧毁当地的公民社会机构、习俗和法律规范,扶植和支持傀儡国王、沙哈和独裁党的统治者; 此外,Mikhail Rostovtzeff’s classic Caravan Cities (Oxford 1932) 描述了在欧洲人入侵和征服之前,同一地区致力于保护商人财产和权利的契约法典的悠久历史。
[7] Cesare Beccaria, An Essay on Crimes and Punishments (London 1804), pp. 111- 112.对专制权力的明确捍卫通常要归功于法国政治作家查尔斯·伊瑞内·卡斯特尔,圣-皮埃尔神甫(Charles-Irénée Castel, abbé de Saint-Pierre,1658 – 1743),直到今天,他仍然以其在国际和平方面充满洞见的建议而闻名,他确信一个强大的、不可分割的君主国家可以仁慈地保护其臣民免受小暴君的伤害,这样,“当权力被理性地统一时,它就不会因太大或太专制而不能符合社会的最大利益” (‘Pour perfectioner le Gouvernement des Etats’, in Ouvrajes de politique [Rotterdam 1733], volume 3, p. 197).
[8] Guiseppe Gorani, Il vero dispotismo (London, 1770), 2 volumes; François Quesnay, ‘Foreword’, Le Despotisme de la Chine (Paris, 1767), in Lewis A. Maverick, China A Model For Europe (San Antonio, 1946), pp. 141, 264.重农主义者的思维方式和行为贡献被这一文献很好地把握到了: Georges Weulersse, Le mouvement physiocratique en France (Paris 1910), 2 volumes.
[9] 18世纪将不可分割的国家权力设想为“一个全能教育者”的智识憧憬被这一文献强调:Carl Schmitt, Die Diktatur: Von den Anfängen des modernen Souveränitätsgedankens bis zum proletarischen Klassenkampf (Berlin 1978 [1928]), pp. 97- 129.
[10]对“法国宫廷专断与专制权力的沉重影响”(les triste effets de la puissance arbitraire et despotique de la cour de France)的攻击被这一匿名出版的系列回忆录或论文领导: Les Soupirs de la France esclave, qui aspire après la liberté [The Sighs of a France Slave Who Yearns After Liberty] (Amsterdam, 1689), 3rd part (15 September), p. 29. 这本书常被认为是法国加尔文教牧师皮埃尔·朱里欧(1637 -1713)的作品,尽管它被皇家审查官禁止和焚烧,但它对自私和鲁莽使用权力的抨击引起了巨大的轰动。
[11] Frederick of Prussia, Refutation of Machiavelli’s Prince: or, Anti-Machiavel, edited Paul Sonnino (Athens, Ohio, 1981), pp. 32 – 33: “就像国王可以随心所欲地做好事一样,他们也可以随心所欲地为非作歹……每个国家都有诚实和不诚实的人,就像每个家庭都既有英俊的人,也有独眼、驼背、瞎子和跛子一样……在君主中间,总有与他们所被赋予的品格不符的怪物。”
[12] Montesquieu, De L’Esprit des Lois (Paris 1979 [1748]), book 5, chapter 13, p. 185; book 2, chapter 5, p. 141.
[13] Montesquieu, Lettres Persanes (Paris 1873 [1721]), volume 1, letters 148, 146, 102; and volume 2, letters 59 and 37. 比较孟德斯鸠在这本书中的评论:Considerations on the Causes of the Greatness of the Romans and Their Decline (New York and London, 1965 [1748]) 。在专制的境况下,“ 总会存在真正的分歧。工人、士兵、律师、法官、贵族之所以结合在一起,只是因为有些人压迫其他人而没有遭遇任何反抗。而且,如果我们在那里看到任何联合,那不会是公民团结在一起,而是尸体被一个接一个地埋葬在一起” (chapter 9, p. 94).
[14] Denis Diderot, Mémoires pour Catherine II, edited Paul Vernière (Paris 1966), pp. 117 – 118; 后面的评论可以在雷纳尔神父(Abbé Raynal)畅销的反殖民小册子中找到:, A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the West and East Indies (London 1783), volume 8, p. 32.
[15] Jean-Louis Carra, L’orateur des Etats-Généraux, pour 1789 (Paris, 1789), p. 12.
[16] Vicesimus Knox, The Spirit of Despotism (London 1795), pp. 3, 27.
在法国大革命早期,雅各宾主义的势力占了上风,诺克斯(不像可怜的让-路易斯·卡拉)通过回忆这部作品来挽救自己的生命,此后他拒绝出版这部作品,直到1821年出版了一个匿名版本。
[17] Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, Being An Answer To Mr. Burke's Attack On The French Revolution (London 1791), p. ; and see my Tom Paine: A Political Life (London and New York, 1995).
[18] Michel Foucault, Abnormal: Lectures at the Collège de France 1974 – 1975 (London and New York, 2003), pp. 94 - 95: “ 暴君只有通过一种永久的暴力状态才能把他的意志推广到整个社会体上…暴君是永久的逃犯,是没有社会联系的个人。暴君就是一个孤立的人。暴君…犯下了最大的、最卓尔不群的罪行,完全违反了社会体赖以生存和维持自身的社会契约…暴君把他的暴力、奇想和非理性作为普通法或国家理性(raison d’Etat)…第一个怪物是国王。国王…是一个普遍的模型,经过连续的历史变迁和转变,19世纪精神病学和法律精神病学中的无数小怪兽从历史上衍生出来…所有人类怪兽都是路易十六的后代。”
[19] John Adams to Thomas Jefferson, (Quincy) 13 November 1815, Founders Online, National Archives; Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, (Monticello), 12 September 1821, Founders Online, National Archives.在阿比盖尔·亚当斯(Abigail Adams)对丈夫的著名恳求(1776年3月31日)中,专制话语的彼此交合显而易见。“请记住女士们,并且对待女士们要比对你的祖先更加慷慨与友善”,因为所有的男人“只要他们可以,就会成为暴君”。约翰·亚当斯(John Adams)仍然像男人那样回答说,实际上,男人“只有主人的名义”,因此,一旦赋予妇女权力,这将会带来“裙子的专制主义”(Despotism of the Peticoat)(1776年4月14日);Adams Family Papers (Massachusetts Historical Society), available at https://www.masshist.org/digitaladams/archive/doc?id=L17760414ja
[20] James Mill, The History of British India (London 1820), second edition, volume 2, pp. 166 -167; John Stuart Mill, ‘Considerations on Representative Government’, Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, edited John M. Robson (Toronto and Buffalo, 1977), volume 19, p. 567; ‘On Liberty’, ibid., volume 18, p. 224.
[21] Montesquieu, The Persian Letters (Indianapolis, 1976), letter 37.
[22] John Stuart Mill, ‘That the Ideally Best Form of Government is Representative Government’, in Considerations on Representative Government, chapter 3 , in J.M. Robson (ed.), John Stuart Mill, Essays on Politics and Society (Toronto and Buffalo, 1977), p. 403.
[23] Denis Diderot, ‘Refutation of Helvétius’, in Lester G. Crocker (ed.), Diderot’s Selected Writings (New York 1966), pp. 297 – 298.
[24] George B. Cheever, The Hierarchical Despotism, Lectures on the Mixture of Civil and Ecclesiastical Power in the Governments of the Middle Ages Etc. (New York, 1844).
[25] 有关费奈隆和孟德斯鸠,可参见:Louis Althusser, Montesquieu-Rousseau-Marx: Politics and History (London and New York, 1972), pp. 82 – 83; 此外,对专制的早期批评,可参见:Thomas Gordon, The Works of Tacitus…To which are prefixed political discourses upon that author (London, 1728 -1731) and (with John Trenchard), Independent Whig: Or, A Defence of Primitive Christianity (London 1721) and Cato’s Letters (London 1724).
[26] Abbé Raynal, A Philosophical and Political History of the Settlements and Trade of the Europeans in the West and East Indies (London 1783), volume 8, p. 32.
[27] Jean-Baptiste le Rond D’Alembert, ‘Essai sur la société des gens de lettres et des grands’ in Mélanges de littérature, d’histoire et de philosophie (Berlin 1753), especially pp. 384 – 386, 398.
[28] Edmund Burke, ‘A Vindication of Natural Society’ (1756), in The Works of The Right Honourable Edmund Burke, volume 1 (London 1899), pp. 80 – 82.
[29] John Stuart Mill, ‘That the Ideally Best Form of Government is Representative Government’, Considerations on Representative Government (1861), in John M. Robson (ed.), The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill (Toronto and London, 1977), volume 19, chapter 3.
[30] 下面的引用来自于:Alexis de Tocqueville, De la démocratie en Amérique, preface by François Furet (Paris 1981), volume 2, pp. 385, 379. 所有的翻译都是由我(笔者)完成的。
[31] Webster's Complete Dictionary of the English Language, revised and improved by Chauncey A. Goodrich & Noah Porter (London 1886), p. 363.
[32] See Emile Durkheim, Montesquieu: Quid Secundatus Politicae Scientiae Instituendae Contulerit, edited W. Watts Willer (Oxford 1997 [1892]), 29e, 31e, 39e–40e and 41e.
[33] 值得提及的几个例子包括:英国首席大法官赫华特勋爵(Lord Hewart)抨击威斯敏斯特议会将其宝贵的立法权拱手出让,向臃肿的行政部门官僚无法无天的行为妥协in The New Despotism (London 1929);对“老美国以宪法为基础的‘马与小汽车’(horse and buggy)式民主”的托克维尔风格的辩护,以反对“新政的先知”(Prophets of the New Deal)崇拜国家权力in Raoul E. Desvernine, Democratic Despotism (New York 1936), pp. 231-243; Charles E. Merriam的反法西斯思考, The New Democracy and the New Despotism (New York and London, 1939); Harold D. Lasswell, ‘Democracy, Despotism and Style [1949]’, in On Political Sociology (Chicago and London, 1977), pp. 251 – 256, who was the consultant for the short documentary, ‘Despotism’ (Encyclopaedia Britannica Films,1946); and罗伯特·尼斯贝特(Robert Nisbet)对中央集权化的“军事、警察与官僚权力”对一个“自由社会”所造成的危险的描述,in ‘The New Despotism’, Commentary (June 1975), pp. 31 – 43.