ON EARLY STATES:STRUCTURE, DEVELOPMENT, AND FALL

• 来源期刊: 世界古典文明杂志（英文版）
• 年，卷（期）: 2012,（1）
• 页码范围: 1-37
• 页数: 37页
• 语种: 英文

摘要

1.The State:General Considerations Scholars have long being interested in the state and the running of it.Among them,there were philosophers,historians,sociologists and anthropologists.We may go as far back as to Confucius and Lao Tze,or to the Greek philosophers Plato and Aristotle1,and if we want to stay closer to our time,we can mention the Italian political scientist Machiavelli,who wrote in the 16th century I1 Principe (The Prince),or the British scholar Hobbes,who in the 172 century justified the existence of monarchy in his Leviathan.Yet,interesting though their views are,their works have all in common that the data available to them were extremely limited.They mainly theorized from a self-conceived past to a wished-for future,or tried to explain only half-known phenomena with data that were totally inadequate for that purpose2.