| This paper attempts to analyze the reason why the revolution of1911broke out and the Constitutionalism suffered the setback in the late Qing dynasty and early period of the republic of China from the perspective of political philosophy. Firstly, the paper reviews the two modes of thinking, namely Revolutionary mind and Constitutional mind, the former reflect the constructive rationalism and radicalism, the believer of this mind attempted to overthrow Qing dynasty by force, and to design and transform China politics and society under the guidance of the revolutionary ideology, to some extent, this mind originated the rationalism in China politics of20th Century; the later mind advocated constructing Constitutionalism by political reform and signified building Constitutionalism for prosperity. Secondly, the paper summaries the practical efforts of those two political minds, the revolutionary mind induced the revolution of1911, however, the post revolutionary regime claimed to govern the country by revolutionary doctrine, compared with the previous power, which seems to be more concentrated and the rule is more comprehensive, the revolutionary party once claimed to establish republic constitutionalism, but stopped at the political tutelage, in brief, the revolution was deified, then disillusionment and finally alienation; while Constitutional mind placed all the hope on government and gave up the initiative to push forward constitutional process, due to the deliberately perfunctory of government, china’s constitutionalism largely been stalled which induced a new round of attack of revolutionary party, in addition, the constitutional mind connected the necessity of constitutional system with the prosperity of the country, on the one hand, this misreading of constitutionalism deconstructed the inner meaning of constitutional system which implies restricting the power of government and protecting the rights of citizens, on the other hand, in a particular political crisis, this modified tone of constitutional view couldn’t achieve its declared goal and was regarded as a slow remedy cannot meet an urgency, in the early twentieth century, the constitutional government would no longer be a society consensus. Thirdly, this paper summarizes the conflict between two political minds, and explains the reason why revolution prevailed over the constitutionalism through the aspects of Utopia temptation of revolutionary ideology and the weak point of constitutional thinking. Revolutionary mind holds that it will accomplish the whole task at one stroke, which catered to the change emotion and revenge impulse of people in the social and national crisis, furthermore owning to lacking of political participation, the Chinese people didn’t understand the calamitous effect of political rationalism and eventually accept the revolutionary ideology; the weak point of constitutional mind lied in that it didn’t obtain the actively cooperation from the government, also failed to laying the foundation of constitutionalism on Chinese tradition, and more important, it regarded the authoritarian government’s reform rather than social reform as the driving force of constructing constitutionalism, which, to some extent, indicated the gloomy prospect of China’s constitutionalism. Finally, this paper analyzes the catastrophic effect of revolutionary mind and explains the reason why we should farewell to revolution, which is advocated by Professor Li Zehou and Professor Liu Zaifu, from the perspective of political philosophy and also puts forward some suggestions to revise the constitutional mind that we should learn the experience and lessons from our predecessors, which consists of probing into the connotation of constitutionalism, exploring the constitutional factors in Chinese traditional culture and system and breeding small communities and so on, removing some recognizable obstacles in the road to constitutionalism and pushing the constitutional progress quietly and prudently. |
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