Abstract:

LI Meng's Natural Society is a landmark work on the modern political order of the Chinese academia in recent years. Here the so-called "political" includes not only the general political sense, but also the orders of human nature, morals, society and laws. This paper argues that the core of the Natural Society is to explore the relationship between "individual" and "society" which is a classic theme in the modern thoughts, that is to explore how is the common life constituted by modern solitary individuals, how to understand the reality and the tensions of common life forms including modern family, society, morality and state. On this basis, the paper attempts to discuss the following four subjects: first, Robinson solitary is not equivalent to "lonely", but also involves a new possibility of social life; and second, regarding the doctrine of modern natural law, it contains a variety of solitary individuals described by Grotius, Pufendorf and Hobbes, whose subtle differences is indispensable for understanding the order of modern minds; third, regarding the individual image described by Hobbes, its modern temperament not only contain its breaking with the traditional world, but also point to a new kind of expanding the modern human nature; fourth, regarding Hobbes' theory on the state, the laws of nature itself is not the moral foundation of modern states, but the human nature shaped by the laws of nature indeed provide a kind of moral cause. Thus, the paper argues that the development of modern spirit has not yet exhausted itself, and we can more confidently grasp our own situation and fate only if more fully understand its inherent richness and openness.

Key words: Robinson, solitary individual, Hobbes, covenant, state of nature