The
Psychological Mechanisms of the
Transition from Democracy to Dictatorship A Preface by the Translator of
Chinese Version Yan Jian183
The
Ambivalences of Le Bons The Crowd Robert
K. Merton217
Preface
253
Introduction:
The Era of Crowds 261
Book
I. The Mind of Crowds273
Chapter I. General Characteristics of Crowds275
Chapter II. The Sentiments and Morality of Crowds289
Chapter III. The Ideas,Reasoning Power,and Imagination
of Crowds317
Chapter IV. A Religious Shape Assumed by All the
Convictions of Crowds331
Book
II. The Opinions and Beliefs of Crowds341
Chapter I. Remote Factors of the Opinions and Beliefs
of Crowds343
Chapter II. The Immediate Factors of the Opinions of
Crowds367
Chapter III. The Leaders of Crowds and Their Means
of Persuasion385
Chapter IV. Limitations of the Variability of the Beliefs
and Opinions of Crowds411
Book
III. The Classification and Description of the Different Kinds of Crowds427
Chapter I. The Classification of Crowds429
Chapter II. Crowds Termed Criminal Crowds437
Chapter III. Criminal Juries445
Chapter IV. Electoral Crowds457
Chapter V. Parliamentary Assemblies471
译名对照表495
內容試閱:
The
Psychological Mechanisms of the Transition
from
Democracy to Dictatorship[1]
A Preface by the
Translator of the Chinese version
Its heard that upright
people exist even when crooked officials dominate, but its never heard that
upright officials exist when they are surrounded by frenetic people.
HanFeizi
What seemed to
be love for liberty turns out to be mere hatred of a despot
.Alexis de
Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the Revolution
People are bewildered
by the voice of utopia. They struggle to enter the gate of the heaven. But when
the door behind them is closed, they would suddenly find they are actually in
the hell. Such a scenario convinces me that history likes playing jokes.
Milan Kundera, The Joke
Whose
role in history is more important, heroes or ordinary people? Although a questionthat
the historians have been struggling to respond, it is actually a hard one to
answer. There is a Chinese saying A hero always enjoys a crowd of followers.
Its simplistic connotations hit the targets well and relieve us from the
painful dialectical thinking on the aforementioned question. The academic
attention devoted respectively to the heroes or the evil greats and their follower
in history, however, isunbalanced by number. For thousands of years, tremendous
amounts of works have been written either to study the
heroes or to provide them with suggestions. Before the advent of mass society,
it is the emperors, generals, ministers and all sorts of powerful figures
across the world that steered the history trajectory. The followers of heroes
were seldom treated as meaningful subjects for studies. Thingsbegan to changeonly
with the advent of the democracy era. In Democracy as a Life Style,an
unfinished paper concerned with the process of secularization, written just
before his death, Karl Mannheim deeply and vividly depicted the silent changes
occurring in peoples life attitudes and esthetic tendenciesas a result of the
changes of folklore, arts and architecture of late medieval age, which consisted
of the determinants of upcoming political democratization process. According to
Mannheim, one striking outcome of this process was the gradual erosion of secular
monarchies, either based on cult or heredity, bydemands for equal human rights
and broader participation. This heralded a big shift in the origin of political
legitimacy. Hereditary claims, divine right or Mandate of the Heaven were all
losing their glamour. On the contrary, any ambitious man for the thrones had to
seek the delegation of power from the populace. Now, the masses started to
dominate the central stage.