Review On The Theories Of Civil Rights And State Authority Falling Under Liberalism

Liberalism, starting in 17^th century, has become the dominant Western ideology and social orthodox values after more than 300 years of development. Political and ideological liberalism, initiated in the Western society, has been concerned about civil rights and state power, focusing on the resolution of the personal, social and national relations, limitation of reasonable personal freedom, provision of effective legal protection. (In other words, the government right should be reasonably defined, limited and effectively constrained).In the meanwhile, as the Western philosophical and political thoughts were introduced to China at the turn of 20^th century, Western ideas such as natural rights, monarchical power delegated by people, separation of the executive, legislative and judicial powers had a strong impact on the feudal autocratic totalitarian political system in the early 20th century, aroused a sense of the rights in the people, and gradually reversed the whole community's blind worship of the state authority. While Chinese people accepted the rational essence of political liberalism, they also inevitably implanted the Chinese Characteristics into it.Based on the review of various Chinese and Western theories about civil rights and state authority, this paper attempts to grasp the whole picture of the theory development. Methodologically, this paper has adopted historical, dialectical and comparative analyses. Through all these analyses, the paper extracts four distinctions, i.e., "instrumental rationality and value rationality", "gradual improvement and radical innovation", "individual rights and group utilitarian", "civilian politics and elite politics". The achievement of this paper is also meant to benefit the current related research and practice.