LIBERALISM, in politics, is a doctrine that holds that constitutions, laws, and political proposals should promote individual liberty based on the exercise of rational will. Because this criterion is ambiguous, a great variety of conflicting views have claimed the title “liberal.”

在政治学中，自由主义是一种秉持宪法、法律，以及政治建议应该根据理性意志的运用来促进个人自由的学说。由于这种准则是有歧义的，各种各样相互矛盾的观点都声称“自由主义者”这个头衔。

One way to grasp the idea central to liberalism is to consider what liberalism is not. From a liberal point of view, the slave and the serf are the most miserable of men—the slave because he is at the mercy of arbitrary despotism, and the serf because his life is repressively regulated by customary rules and duties. Neither can exercise his rational will. Despotism and feudalism are thus the twin enemies of liberalism.

把握自由主义核心观念的一种方式是考虑什么不是自由主义。从自由主义的观点来看，奴隶和被压迫者都是最悲惨的人—奴隶，因为他受制于随心所欲的专制，而被压迫的人，因为他的生活受到习俗规则和义务的压制性管制。两者都不能行使他的理性意志。因此，专制和封建主义是自由主义的双重敌人。

The word “liberal” may be used to describe either a type of constitution or the tendency of a political party. A liberal constitution is characterized by the establishing of the rule of law, freedom of political organization, an independent judiciary, and a government responsive to public opinion. Within such a constitutional system, the word “liberal” generally describes the party or tendency that promotes change by constitutional means, as against the “conservative” tendency that generally opposes change and upholds inherited values.

“自由派”一词既可用来描述一类宪法，也可用于描述一种政治党派的倾向。自由主义的宪法是以建立法治、政治组织的自由、独立的司法系统，以及回应民意的政府为特征。在这样的宪法系统中，“自由派”一词通常是描述通过宪法手段促进变革的党派或倾向，而“保守派”的倾向通常是对抗变革并维护继承的价值观。

The model for this distinction between liberal and conservative tendencies is British politics of the 19^th century. Even this model is imperfect, however, because political parties in liberal countries commonly have only a loose attachment to any political principle. For example, in the United States in the mid-20th century, the two major political parties might both have been described as “liberal,” though in different senses of the word. The Republicans stood for a minimum of governmental interference with the affairs of individuals, while the Democrats generally favored legislation to supply underprivileged individuals with what were thought to be the essential conditions for the exercise of individual liberty.

在自由派和保守派之间这种区别的模式是19世纪的英国政治。然而，即使这种模式也是有瑕疵的，因为，在自由国家中的政治党派通常对任何政治原则仅有宽松的依恋。例如，在20世纪中叶的美国，两大政治党派，双方都被描述为“自由派”，尽管在这个词上有不同的意义。共和党支持政府对个人事务进行最小的干预，而民主党通常支持立法为弱势人群提供被认为是行使个人自由的基本条件。

Whatever and whenever it has become current, “liberal” has acquired local overtones. In France it has been associated with anticlericalism, because the Roman Catholic Church was viewed as the embodiment of feudalism. In Germany liberals have always supported party politics against the old Prussian tradition of absolute government. In Russia and Spain the liberals traditionally have supported a policy of political democracy and industrial modernization, in contrast with those who believed that such innovations would destroy the unique moral qualities of Russian or Spanish life.

无论何时何地，它已变成了趋势，“自由派”已获得了地方色彩。在法国，它与反教权主义相联系，因为罗马天主教会被视为封建主义的化身。在德国，自由主义者一直支持政党政治来反对普鲁士专制独裁政府的旧传统。在俄罗斯和西班牙，自由主义者传统上支持政治民主和工业现代化的政策，与相信这样的创新会破坏俄罗斯或西班牙生活的独特道德品质的那些人形成了对照。

Origins of Liberalism. Because liberalism, in its most abstract sense, is a belief in the value of individual liberty with a minimum of state intervention in personal life, its origins may be sought as far back in remote times as one chooses. The Devil has been called the first Whig (liberal), because, in the form of a serpent, he persuaded Eve to throw off the authoritarian yoke of God. But not until the 16^th and 17^th centuries did a political doctrine arise that may confidently be regarded as liberal. This was the social contract theory, which asserted that political authority had originally been established by free and rational individuals as a device for combining freedom with the fruits of social cooperation. Government, accordingly, rested on consent.

自由主义的起源。因为，在其最抽象的意义上，自由主义是一种国家对个人生活干预最少，对个人自由价值的一种信仰，作为人们的选择，它的起源可以追溯到遥远的时代。因为，以毒蛇的形式，魔鬼被称为第一个辉格党（自由派），他劝说夏娃摆脱上帝专制的枷锁。但直到16世纪和17世纪，出现了可以被自信地认为是自由主义的政治学说。这就是社会契约论，它宣称，政治权威起初是由自由和理性的个体，作为将自由与社会合作的成果相结合而建立的。因此，政府取决于许可。

By the 18th century the social contract theory of government had displaced its main rival, the divine right of kings doctrine, which asserted that rules exercised authority by gift from God. The popular version of the social contract envisaged a contract between rulers and ruled and granted the people the right to displace rulers thought to have broken the contract. The metaphor of a contract requires an impartial party to judge whether the contract has been broken, and in politics no such party exists. The more carefully considered versions of the theory—those of Hobbes, Locke, and Spinoza—all take this difficulty into account. Later liberal writers have tended to dispense with the metaphor of a contract.

到了18世纪，政府的社会契约论已经取代了它的主要竞争对手，国王的神圣权利学说，该学说宣称行事准则的权威来自上帝的礼物。社会契约的流行版本在统治者与被统治者之间设想了一个契约，并赋予人民取代被认为破坏了契约的统治者的权利。契约的隐喻需要一个不偏不倚的党派来判断契约是否已被破坏，而在政治活动中却不存在这样的党派。该理论更为深思熟虑的版本—霍布斯、洛克和斯宾诺沙的那些版本—都考虑到这个困难。后来的自由主义作家倾向于摒弃契约的隐喻。

 Beginning in the 18th century the many strands of liberalism became vastly complicated. The best simplification is to consider first the history of what may be called “classical” liberalism—classical because it was the first, and remains possibly the purest, of liberal tendencies. Then we should consider the parallel political views that came to share the name liberalism and rose to dominance.

18世纪开始，自由主义的许多部分变得非常复杂。最好的简化是首先考虑可以称为“古典”自由主义的历史—古典，因为它是第一个，并且依然可能是最纯粹的自由主义倾向。然后，我们应该考虑并行的，后来开始与自由主义同名，并上升至主导地位的政治观点。

Classical Liberalism. After the Revolution of 1688, Britain was thought to be the country whose political practices were the most free. The revolution had ensured that rulers would act according to legal process and that the judiciary was independent of political control. French writers like Voltaire and Montesquieu contrasted this situation with that of France where, although government in many respects was mild, it could act in an arbitrary way. Sentiments favorable to liberty were also widely promoted in the 18th century by a passionate admiration for ancient Rome that was especially strong in France and the American colonies.

古典自由主义。在1688年的革命之后，英国被认为是那种政治实践最自由的国家。革命确保了统治者会按照法律程序行事，并且司法机构独立于政治控制。法国作家，像伏尔泰和孟德斯鸠将这种情况与法国的情况进行了对比，尽管政府在许多方面都是温和的，但它却会以随心所欲的方式行事。通过对古罗马热诚的钦佩，有利于自由的情绪在18世纪也获得了广泛的提升，以至于在法国和美国的殖民地特别强烈。

The American Revolution gave further impetus to liberalism. The rhetoric of the Declaration of Independence asserted the liberal principle that all men have the right to “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It was soon echoed by the French Declaration of the Rights of Man, which made liberal ideas the vehicle of a revolutionary ferment throughout Europe.

美国革命给予了自由主义进一步的动力。《独立宣言》的论辩修辞宣称了自由主义的原则，即人人都有“生命、自由和追求幸福”的权利。不久，它便得到了《法国人权宣言》的回应，它使自由主义思想成为了整个欧洲革命发酵的载体。

Liberalism in the 19^th century may be seen as the political wing of a larger movement toward the rationalization of traditional practices and the exploitation of the resources of the earth. But complications invaded liberal thinking, which have rendered liberalism ambivalent ever since. Many liberal-minded persons became concerned with the conditions of the poor and the plight of other groups considered “underprivileged.” It seemed to them that liberalism’s basic objection to state intervention was not appropriate to these problems. Many problems could be solved only by collectivist measures taken by representative government.

19世纪的自由主义可被视为使传统的习惯作法合理化和开发地球资源的一个更大运动的政治派别。但复杂性入侵了自由主义的思路，从那时起，它使得自由主义变得矛盾起来。许多思想解放的人们开始关注穷人的状况和其他被认为是“贫困阶层”群体的困境。在他们看来，自由主义对国家干预的基本反对意见并不适用于这些问题。许多问题只能通过代议制政府采取的集体主义措施来解决。

One result of this opinion has been vast quantity of social welfare legislation. It has also produced a persistent incoherence within liberal doctrine. For liberalism encompasses strong tendencies hostile to anything more than a minimum amount of state regulation of social life and, on the other hand, equally strong tendencies to employ the state’s powers of compulsion to solve a variety of problems ranging from racial prejudice to industrial pollution.

这种观点的一个结果是大量的社会福利立法。在自由主义学说中它还造成了持续的非连贯性。因为，自由主义包含着强烈的倾向，对任何超过国家对社会生活管理最低限度的事物都怀有敌意，而另一方面，对采用国家强制权力解决从种族偏见到工业污染的种问题同样有强烈的倾向。

The “New” Liberalism. To understand the growth of this second tendency, a virtually separate history of liberalism must be considered. This view of liberalism derives from a conception of the modern state not as an association of independent individuals but as a productive enterprise to be managed by its ruler. It is a concept held by men otherwise as different as John Calvin and Francis Bacon, and it has its theological roots in the Christian injunction that men should enjoy the fruits of the earth. In the 18^th century this concept was developed and popularized as a set of doctrines called by its promoters “enlightenment.”

“新自由主义”。要理解这第二种倾向的增长，就必须考虑一段几乎是独立的自由主义历史。自由主义的这种观点源于现代国家的概念，不是作为独立个体的联合体，而是作为由其统治者管理的生产性企业。这是一个由约翰·加尔文和弗朗西斯·培根分别持有的概念，并且具有基督教禁令的神学根源，即人应该享受土地的果实。在18世纪，这一概念被发展和普及为一套它的促进者称为的“启蒙运动”。

“Enlightened” ideas spread quickly throughout Europe, finding favor in two very different quarters: among the middle classes of the towns, who generally were excluded from political activity, and among many of the absolute rulers of Europe. A result was the that, in the second half of the 18^th century, politics commonly resolved itself into a struggle between a reforming king supported by a largely middle-class bureaucracy, on the one side, and entrenched corporations and parliaments, generally aristocratic, on the other.

“开明”的思想迅速传遍了整个欧洲，在两个非常不同的方面获得了青睐：在通常被排除在政治活动之外的城市中产阶级中，以及在许多欧洲绝对的统治者中。结果是，在18世纪下半叶，一方面，政治活动通常将自身解决为主要由中产阶级官僚机构支持的改革派国王的斗争，而另一方面，根深蒂固的公司和国会，通常是贵族。

The “enlightened despot” justified his absolute powers by regarding himself as “the first servant of the state” and his subjects as equal in the eyes of the state. He established schools to teach useful knowledge and a civil service based on merit, and he sought to inaugurate town planning to reduce church privileges, and to increase the wealth of the state.

“开明的暴君”把自己看作是“国家的第一仆人”和他的臣民在国家眼中是平等的来证明他绝对权力的正当性。他建立学校教授有用的知识，并基于功绩的公务员制度，而且他试图开创城市计划来消减教会的特权，并且增加国家的财富。

This type of policy was followed, with varying success, by Frederick the Great in Prussia, Catherine in Russia, Joesph II in Austria, and Charles III in Spain, among others. The reforming rulers, supported by the philosophers of the Enlightenment, found themselves locked in a struggle with the aristocracy and the church. The issue was between feudal custom and a centralizing rationality that sought to turn the state into an efficient institution.

普鲁士的弗雷德里克大帝，俄罗斯的凯瑟琳，奥地利的约瑟夫二世，以及西班牙的查尔斯等都遵循了这类政策，取得了不同的成功。由启蒙运动的哲学家支持的改革派统治者发现自己陷入了与贵族和教会的争斗中。问题是在封建习俗和试图将国家转变为高效机构的中心化合理性的问题。

The crucial case was that of France, where a series of reforming monarchs and ministers failed to make much impact upon the church and the aristocracy. Finally, a violent revolution swept aside the ineffective Bourbon monarchy in favor of the far more ruthless revolutionary and Napoleonic governments, which carried through the programs of the reformers much more successfully and which consequently achieved great military power. Similar reforms in Germany during the 19^th century also greatly increased military efficiency.

决定性的案例是法国的情况，一系列改革派君主和大臣无法对教会和贵族产生很大的影响。最终，暴力革命排除了无效的波旁王朝，偏向于更加无情的革命和拿破仑政府，更成功地实施了改革者的计划，并因此获得了强大的军事力量。在19世纪，类似的改革也极大地增强了军事效率。

This form of liberalism has been dominant on the European continent. It is allied to classical liberalism by virtue of sharing some planks of policy and one enemy: feudal and entrenched interest. But, whereas classical liberalism is consistently hostile to the power of the state in any form, the newer liberalism is friendly to any state power that shares its aims.

自由主义的这种形式在欧洲大陆已经占据了主导地位。它凭借分享一些支撑和一个敌人，与古典自由主义结盟：封建和根深蒂固的利益。鉴于古典自由主义一贯敌视任何形式的国家权力，但是，新自由主义却友好地对待任何分享其目标的国家权力。

Many later intellectual developments have given impetus to the new liberalism. First, toward the end of the 18^th century, a compassionate sensibility developed among Europeans. The old political concern with justice was jostled by a new concern with happiness, and political discussion concerned itself with classes of persons who were thought to have deprived of happiness by the arrangements of society: slaves, prisoners, women, the poor, prostitutes, racial minorities, and so on. Preoccupation with such concerns led many persons in the 19^th century from liberalism to socialism, which, in some forms, is a modified version of modern liberalism.

许多后来的思想发展给新自由主义赋予了动力。首先，到18世纪末，在欧洲人中发展了一种富有同情心的感性。旧政治对正义的关注受到对幸福的新关切的冲击，而且政治讨论自身关注的是那些被认为因社会安排而失去了幸福的人群阶层：奴隶、囚犯、女人、贫困者、妓女、少数族裔等等。全神贯注于这种关切导致了19世纪许多人从自由主义走向社会主义，在某种形式上，它是现代自由主义的改良版。

Second, many persons became fascinated with the possibilities of bureaucratic organization, by contrast with which the hit-and-miss of capitalist entrepreneurs seemed outmoded and inefficient. Third, moral admiration was directed away from the person who mastered his passions and submitted to authority and toward the one who struggled against authority. Fourth, many things previously attributed to the “original sin” of human nature came to be attributed to the irrationalities of social structure. And finally, these enlightened ideas, although they had earlier been associated with despotism, gained democratic favor from their sponsorship by the French revolutionaries. All these considerations facilitated the advance of modern liberalism.

其次，许多人开始着迷于官僚组织的可能性，与此形成对照的是资本主义企业家的命中注定似乎是过时的和低效的。第三，道德的钦佩指向了远离掌握了自己的激情，并且归因于权威的人和趋向于与权威斗争的人。第四，许多先前归因于人性“原罪”的东西开始归咎于社会结构的不合理。而最终，这些开明的思想，尽管它们早些时候曾与专制主义联系在一起，却从法国革命者的赞助中获得了民主的青睐。所有这些考虑都推动了现代自由主义的进步。

（待续）

                                                                                 K. R. MINOGUE

                                                                       London School of Economics

                                                                                    K. R. 米诺格

                                                                                 伦敦政治经济学院

（该部分词条位列《大美百科全书》1985年版，第17卷，第294页至296页）