VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 12, SECTION 2
Four Thousand Years Against Five Hundred, Widen the Range and the Picture Changes
Last section looked at the abundance of five hundred years of political thought. This section covers the most root difference between this book and the great thinkers of five hundred years, the span of the range of sight. How large a picture a researcher sees decides what kind of claims they can put forward. See a small picture, and the claims are confined to that small picture. See a large picture, and the claims can cover a wider reality.
The span of the range of sight is the starting point of any study. The great political thinkers within five hundred years had a range of sight basically of five hundred years plus a European and American civilizational center. This book has a range of sight of four thousand years plus China's twenty-two-hundred-year centralized-authority tradition for its root, plus the actual running of countries the world over today. This difference in the span of sight is not this book's invention, it is an objective difference of historical conditions. But this difference decides that this book can see some pictures the great thinkers within five hundred years could not. This is not to say who is higher and who lower, it is to say that standing a little farther and seeing a little longer, the picture is naturally different.
Look concretely at the range of sight of the main great thinkers within five hundred years. Machiavelli's range was mainly the Italian city-states of the Renaissance plus ancient Greece and Rome, China, India, and the Islamic world basically outside his study. Hobbes's range was mainly England during the English civil war plus ancient Greece and Rome. Locke's range was mainly England around the Glorious Revolution plus ancient Greece and Rome, with only an occasional mention of China. Montesquieu's range was relatively wider, taking Eastern despotism as a system of contrast, but his understanding of the East rested mainly on secondhand material plus inaccurate missionary reports. Rousseau's range was mainly Geneva, France, and Switzerland plus ancient Greece and Rome. Marx's range was mainly the experience of European industrialization, with a brief discussion of Asia, but taking Asia as a sample of stagnation. Weber's range was relatively wider, having studied the religions of China and India, but his root frame was still why capitalism originated in the West, taking the non-West as a counter-example of why it did not originate. Some scholars later had a larger range, beginning to study China's twenty-two-hundred-year political history as a sample of human political history, a major expansion, but the root judgment still setting out from a Western political-science frame.
The range of sight of the great thinkers within five hundred years has several common features. Feature one, the span of time is mainly five hundred years, from the Renaissance to today, plus the citation of ancient Greece and Rome, covering some fifteen hundred years overall, with the more ancient civilizations of ancient Egypt, ancient Babylon, and China's Xia, Shang, and Zhou basically outside the study. Feature two, the geographic range is mainly Europe and America, Europe plus North America the root field of study, Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East mostly as atypical samples or systems of contrast. Feature three, the civilizational range is mainly Christian civilization, other civilizations existing only as contrast or at the margin. This book honestly points out that this is not the great thinkers' fault, it is the objective limit of historical conditions. Western scholars of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries could hardly systematically access the original texts of China, India, and the Islamic world. True comparative politics developed only in the twentieth century. The conditions for cross-civilizational study improved greatly only in the past few decades, an advantage of the present-day researcher and the room this book can try.
The actual span of human political history far exceeds five hundred years. About three thousand one hundred before the common era, ancient Egypt unified upper and lower Egypt, a complete state form appearing, the pharaoh institution plus theocracy plus bureaucracy plus large-scale building. About two thousand three hundred fifty before the common era, ancient Akkad built the first empire in the true sense in human history. About two thousand before the common era, China's Xia already had a complete state organization. About eighteen hundred before the common era, the Code of Hammurabi of ancient Babylon was one of the earliest systematic written laws of humankind. About eight hundred before the common era, the Greek city-states rose. About five hundred fifty before the common era, the Persian Empire was built, the first great empire in human history truly spanning Europe, Asia, and Africa. About three hundred twenty-two before the common era, India's Maurya dynasty, India's first unified great empire. About two hundred twenty-one before the common era, the Qin unified China, humankind's first complete building of a centralized great state, after which China's twenty-two-hundred-year centralized authority endures to this day. From two thousand before the common era to today, the actual span of human political history is some four thousand years, having seen over fifty political bodies with a complete state organization, over ten true great empires, several hundred forms of political institution, and countless contests of centralized authority against scattered politics. The great thinkers within five hundred years studied mainly some five hundred years of this, mainly the European and American range. This book tries to widen the range to four thousand years, adding China's twenty-two-hundred-year centralized-authority tradition for its root.
Widen the range from five hundred years to four thousand, and a wholly different political picture appears. The picture at a range of five hundred years: royal despotism is bad and should be replaced by limited government, the separation of powers is the highest form of political institution, democracy is the ultimate goal of human politics, the development since the Western Enlightenment is progress, and the core problem of political science is how to limit government power plus secure individual rights. The picture at a range of four thousand years is different. Any political institution, whether called royal power, republic, democracy, or despotism, begins from enfeoffment. Centralized authority is a root law crossing all the great civilizations of four thousand years, ancient Egypt, Babylon, Rome, Persia, the Han and Tang, the Ming and Qing all using it. The five common laws of the failure of centralized authority apply across all the failure cases of four thousand years. Democracy and authoritarianism are different forms of centralized authority under different conditions, not an absolute good-bad division. The progress since the Western Enlightenment is, in the four thousand years of human political history, only one brief stage among them, part of a rich political wisdom, but not the end. The range differing, the picture seen wholly differs. This book passes no verdict on which range is correct, the two ranges each having their own reasonableness and their own limit, only honestly presenting the different pictures seen at different ranges to the reader, letting the reader judge for themselves.
This book honestly analyzes why the range of the great thinkers was mainly five hundred years plus a European and American center. Cause one, the limit of language and material, most Western scholars of the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries not knowing Chinese, Arabic, or Sanskrit, not reading the classical texts of these civilizations, a limit only partly resolved in the past few decades. Cause two, taking one's own civilization as the center, the thinker of any civilization unavoidably taking their own civilization as the system of reference, not a fault but a limit any researcher must overcome. Cause three, the special context of the Western Enlightenment age, the West of the seventeenth to eighteenth centuries in an age of opposition to church power and royal power, the works of the great thinkers more or less carrying the context of defending the opposition to the despotism of the time, their age's task, not a universal truth. Cause four, the limit of the age, those thinkers seeing an East mainly in a period already declining, their understanding of the height of China's twenty-two-hundred-year centralized-authority tradition, the Han, Tang, Song, and Ming, limited. These four causes together show that the range of the great thinkers was not deliberately narrow, it was the natural result of historical conditions. Later researchers can try to widen the range on the base of those before, adding the political wisdom of more civilizations, the root way of the progress of human thought, not the later overturning the earlier.
So here is the position this section lays down. We set firm this layer. The span of the range of sight is the starting point of any study, the range of the great thinkers within five hundred years mainly five hundred years plus a European and American center, the range this book tries four thousand years plus China's twenty-two-hundred-year tradition for its root, the range differing, the picture seen differing, the claims drawn differing. This is not the great thinkers' fault, it is the objective limit of historical conditions. The real thing for the reader is several questions to think through for themselves. The political-science works you have read, how large a span of sight do they have? The political ideas you have taken in, from which age, which civilization, which stretch do they come? That the separation of powers is the highest form of political institution is a judgment of the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment, that democracy is the ultimate human institution is the judgment of a particular period, and that centralized authority is simply bad is the judgment of which fragment? Is your standard for judging a political institution good or bad in fact from some particular historical fragment? True political wisdom may need a larger span of sight, not five hundred years but four thousand or even larger, not looking only at Europe and America but at the political wisdom of all civilizations. This book leaves this thinking to the reader and reaches no verdict for the reader. The next section compares this book's core claims one by one with the core claims of the great thinkers of five hundred years, to see the concrete differences.
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.