A Beginning from the People-first Idea toward Democracy——A Concurrent Comment on“the People-first Limit”

Based on an inheritance of the traditional Confucian people-first idea,Huang Zongxi pushed it forward to its extreme and even went beyond its traditional limit in his work entitled A Ming Barbarian Waiting for a Visitor,ow- ing to his reflections on historical lessons about the fall of the Song and Ming dynasties and his own special experience as a descendant of“Men of the Donglin Party.”He dispelled the monarchy's automatic legitimacy and absolute divinity,and denied the idea of superior sovereign and inferior subject.He set to consider the question of how to condition power by power in the political institution.Hence,Huang Zongxi's political thought could be regarded as a beginning from the peo- ple-first idea toward democracy.