[This article was transcribed and edited from a recording of remarks by Jiang Shigong, professor at Peking University Law School and deputy director of Peking University’s Office of Academic Affairs, at the “Politics: China and the World Forum 2018” and the symposium on “Contemporary Currents of Thought in the World and China’s Tradition of Political Order.”]
【本文根据北京大学法学院教授、北京大学教务部副部长强世功在“政治：中国与世界论坛2018”暨“当代世界思潮与中国政道传统”研讨会发言录音整理。】
With the theme of the 2018 “Politics: China and the World” forum in mind, Guangsheng and I discussed the title of my presentation several times. I chose “Land and Sea: Mackinder and Schmitt,” which happens to complement Professor Xiaofeng’s presentation. In teaching jurisprudence to students over the past few years, I have consistently brought the writings of Mackinder, Carl Schmitt, and Alexandre Kojève together, focusing mainly on the question of nation-states and empires. Today I would like to take this opportunity to share some of my thoughts with you.
围绕 “政治：中国与世界”2018论坛的主题，我和广生磋商了几次论文发言的题目，我选择“陆地与海洋：麦金德与施米特”这一题目，正好和小枫老师的论文演讲相呼应。最近这几年我给学生上法理学课程，一直把麦金德、施米特和科耶夫的文本放在一起来讲，主要讲民族国家与帝国问题。今天借这个机会，和大家分享一些我的想法。
Our political theory today continues to revolve around the political theories of eighteenth-century Enlightenment thinkers, and all these theories take the construction of the “sovereign state” as the basis of their political imagination. Unable to account theoretically for the immense empires of the East, they therefore invented the concept of despotism to characterize them. This is most clearly evident in Montesquieu’s writings.
我们今天的政治理论始终围绕18世纪启蒙思想家的政治理论展开，而这些理论都是以“主权国家”的建构作为政治想象的。因此，对于东方超大型的帝国，他们无法在理论上加以解释，就发明了专制政体这样一个概念来概括。这在孟德斯鸠的著作最明显地体现出来。
Yet Montesquieu was a social theorist and ultimately had to respect social facts. He noticed that the immense empires of the East were connected to their vast geographical extent. He therefore placed particular emphasis on the intrinsic connections between geography, nature, and politics. In this sense, the basis of the legitimacy of empire/despotism lies in geography.
然而，孟德斯鸠是一个社会理论家，终究是要尊重社会事实，他注意到东方超大型帝国与广阔的地理有关。因此，他特别强调地理、自然与政治之间的内在关联。在这个意义上，帝国/专制政体的正当性基础在于地理。
It is precisely by starting from a geographical perspective that we may set aside “idealist” theoretical constructions such as social contract theory and attend instead to the actual effects of more “materialist” forces on political life. If the “state” is a product of theoretical construction, “empire” is a real presence in actual political life.
正是从地理的视角出发，我们可能会抛开社会契约论之类的“唯心主义”的理论建构，而关注更为“唯物主义”的力量对政治生活的现实作用。如果说“国家”是理论建构的产物，而“帝国”则是现实政治生活中真实的存在。
In theory, today’s world consists of several hundred equal sovereign states. But do you really believe that Japan genuinely possesses absolute sovereignty? Everyone knows that it is a “vassal state” of the United States. This means that empire is the scale on which political life actually operates. Struggles between states take the form of “empires.” And the question that Mackinder, Schmitt, and Kojève discuss is precisely that of empire.
今天的世界在理论上是由几百个平等的主权国家的构成的，但你们真正认为日本真的拥有绝对主权吗？谁都知道它是美国的“附庸国”。这就意味着真实的现实政治生活的尺度就是帝国。 国家间的斗争是以“帝国”的形式展现出来的。而麦金德、施米特和科耶夫讨论的就是帝国问题。