我祖母过去常说,如果太过,哪怕是件好事,对你也是件坏事。她不是哲学家,是我祖母。当我向她再要些她自己做的好吃的果酱时,她就会这样说。无需赘言,她不会把她对好坏的思考与法治联系在一起。事实上,我想她活了90多岁也不知道法治是什么。她的生命在罗马尼亚度过,经历了20世纪的大部分时间,在那里“法治”还不是一个十分流行的政治口号。但是,现而今,当东欧国家从共产主义中解脱出来,希望加入西方世界的时候,推行法治是他们希图确立的主要社会变革之一。也许没有哪个地方会像那些几十年来法治被大大忽略的地方那样珍视法治。的确,至少在西方世界,长期以来法治一直是和良好秩序社会之观念紧密相连。我们那些没有严格遵循法治的国家,我们为我们因为拥有法治而感到骄傲和自豪。~([1])然而,尽管法治受人欢迎,但是与法治有关的各种观念却常常相互冲突,且常常被人搞混。当某个复杂的理念变 My grandmother used to say that if it was too much, even a good thing would be a bad thing for you. She is not a philosopher, my grandmother. She would say that when I asked her for some more delicious jams made by her own. Needless to say, she does not associate her thinking of good and bad with the rule of law. In fact, I think she lived in her 90s and did not know what the rule of law was. Her life was spent in Romania and for most of the 20th century, where “rule of law” is not yet a very popular political slogan. However, nowadays, when the countries of Eastern Europe are freed from communism and want to join the Western world, the promotion of the rule of law is one of the major social changes they are trying to establish. Perhaps no place will cherish the rule of law as much as places where the rule of law has been largely ignored for decades. Indeed, at least in the Western world, the rule of law has long been closely linked to the notion of a good order society. We in those countries that do not strictly follow the rule of law, we are proud of ourselves because of the rule of law. However, despite the popularity of the rule of law, concepts related to the rule of law often conflict and often become confusing. When a complex idea changes