Look At The Comparison

Modern China is in a very complex situation, which makes the self-reflection more important. To achieve a comprehensive, unbiased evaluation about its own cultural heritage, it is important to reflect itself in a comparative perspective.Taking the comparison between Chinese philosopher, Huang Zongxi and French thinker, Charles Monte Squieu as the example, this paper analyzed the strength and weakness of their thoughts on the political institutional construction, through the comparison between their enlightenment ideas. This is to explore the mode of Chinese political thought reflected in Huang, and then to review its innate limitation in the development of that mode.Both Huang Zongxi and Charles Monte Squieu are very suspicious of the feudal despotism in the West and East. The foundation for Huang is the Min-Ben (the people is the root, 民本) principle of "people is the most importanf which is established by Mencius and inherited by Confucianism. He severely criticized the feudal monarchy despotism, and strongly propagate the idea that people is the lord of the nation, and all the administration, legal system, and after all the governing strategy should be created for the welfare of the whole people. For him, the respect for the human dignity, personality and individuality is a pre-requirement for the development of the society.Monte Squieu also criticized the oppression of individuality by the western feudal monarchy. He revealed the lie, torture and suppression of the medieval feudalism against human being. He believed that the feudalism has neither law nor regulation, and only manipulated by one single person with the principle of terror. Therefore, the division of power by three institutions needed to be set up in order to avoid the abuse of power. The three institutions: administration, legislation, and jurisdiction, the three set the limitation upon, and thus balance each other. In this way, the law-governed nation could be truly established.The anti-feudalism of Charles Monte Squieu is thoroughgoing, and it opens a new way from which the principle of democracy is possible born. In contrast, Huang only criticized the emperors but did not want to abolish the monarchy system. He proposed that the emperors shall take the people as the priority, but not ruled by the people. The source of power is the monarchy but not the people. Therefore, this author believes there is a distinction between these two thinkers.But we must understand this distinction with the background of Chinese history and society. The innate despotism and the kinship-priority value could be regarded as the reason for the limitation of Huang' s thought.