主講人簡介
姓 名：阮才東（Nguyen Tai Dong）
職 稱：越南社會科學院哲學研究所所長
論文題目：Vietnamese Confucianism and Spirit of Democracy
越南儒家与民主精神
論文摘要：
“Dân bản” (民本- People’s will is the root of the country) is the fundamental political conception of Confucianism. Shangshu (The Book of Documents) says: “People’will is the root of the country, the root is more firmly, the country is surely peaceful”. Mecious developed the idea, he thought people were the firstly most important subject, the nation was the second one and the King was the third one.
Depriving from Vietnamese tradition, with Confucious interpretation, Kings in Ly dynasty in the first time of self – controlling period confirmed the extremely significant role of people, people’s will is Heaven’s will. The existence of the nation, royal family, the strength of the country was dependent on people. The conception of people’s will and heaven’s will are always paid attention in most following dynasties and king must be responsible for loving people.
People’s trust is the ground of political stability of a nation. Loving people must origin from morality instead of a political hint. In the thought of Confucious scholars, king must love people because king is people’s parent. The conception was always focused by dynasties in history of Vietnamese feudalism. King is responsible for loving and supporting people towards heaven. Loving people is not only king’s responsibility, it is subjects’ obligation. In Vietnamese history, when starting a dynasty, King often concentrated on people, needed people and made people trust, since then, people’s trust led the great cause become true.
When reading a Vietnamese historical book, it can be found that one of the most critical feature to evaluate a king is whether he cound reach the aim of reassuring people or not. Reassuring is keeping people wealthy, peaceful, stable, unworried about everything, help people to have chance to develop themselves and implement obligations, responsibility with communes and society. The conception deprived from the early period of self – controlling of the nation. If people's lives are not peaceful, people lose trust in a king, civil rights have been violated, resistance to the court is an inevitable requirement.
Self-improvement is required for king and subjects in the the political system of "rightenousness" by Confucianism. In addition to moral factors as intrinsic requirements, an external request is a mechanism to court for receiving comments from citizens. This mechanism in the history of Vietnam is not really strong and efficient, but it existed.
Traditional Vietnamese political system tends to be under control/order instead of being freedom. In fact, both freedom and order have not been limited in political term. Man always has ambition or demand of freedom and discipline adjustment expressed in all political, economic, social aspects as well as culture and legal system. However, order and freedom is associated with and contradicted to each other. Confucious ideology was used by King and subjects in order to mainly remain social stability and security, national stability and social order were always believed more importantly than personal freedom. The concept of people as the subject of the nation, the society is always contradicted with arbitrary regime, therefore, Vietnamese feudal dynasties often found the way to deal with the relation of people’s will and the political mechanism of royal power. The concept of people’s will in tradition had its value in building contemporary democracy in Vietnam today, however, the sparked issue is whether the political system can transform straightly from people’s will to democracy, on the other side, people’w will is the seed of democracy?
