自由与平等两种激情的遭遇——读《旧制度与大革命》

以自由与平等为圭臬的法国革命,却以拿破仑专制而告终.追求自由的结果何以成了独裁政治下平等的仆役?重读托克维尔的《旧制度与大革命》,反思那一时期的法国历史,可以得出一些答案.大革命中,自由与平等两股激情相互交织,最终平等压倒了自由.自由与平等在大革命中的冲突,并非由于两者学理上的悖论,关键在于法国旧制度以来一以贯之的政治专制与浓重的社会平等意识,正是这些使法国人对专制政治产生了极强的依赖性.一个专制的社会里,人们追求自由的结果往往是平等--专制下的奴役的平等.要"在自由中享有平等,在平等中自由地生活",必须铲除专制的根基,致力于民主社会的建构.

encounter of two passions:liberty and equality--reflections on the Old regime and the French Revolution

with the aim of liberty and equality, The French Revolution ended in Napoleon' s dictatorship. Why did people seek after liberty but became equal manservants under dictatorship in the end? Why did France upholding the banner of democracy undergo great hardship on the way to freedom? Through rereading the Old regime and the French Revolution written by Tocqueville, French liberal thinker, reflecting on the French history at that time, the readers would get the possible answers.During the Great Revolution, the two passions-liberty and equality interwove with each other and assaulted the old system violently. But finally the passion of equality gained the upper hand. In France, the passion of equality was much deeper and lasted longer than that of liberty.In the Great Revolution, the disharmony between equality and liberty did not lie on theoretic conflicts, but greatly related to the social structure and political institutions of France in old system. France, which smallholders were dominate, lacked freedom of towns and communities and had no powerful intermediate groups. Absence of freedom of association and legal independence made Frenchmen rely greatly upon autocratic system in political mentality.Thus it can be seen that the relationship between liberty and equality may be compared to a scale. Whether two sides are in balance is related to quantitative proportion, and to stability of scales' base even more. In other words, social structure or political institution is the key of whether liberty and equality are balanced or not. Under the appropriate condition of society, it is possible to come to the harmony between liberty and equality. If people want to "enjoy equality in liberty and live a free life in equality" , they must root out the base of dictatorship and devote themselves to constructing a democratic society.