Democracy “Without a Self”: A Comparative Political Philosophy of Civilization-Selves in Christianity, Islam, and Confucianism

Why does Western-style democracy produce the paradox of “procedural justice legitimately destroying itself”? This paper proposes the analytical category of “civilizational self” to analyze the paradox of “procedural justice legitimately eliminating the civilizational subject.” By distinguishing between the “secular self” and the “sacred self,” this paper systematically compares the political-philosophical foundations of the three major branches of Christianity, Islam, and Confucianism. Findings: Protestant theology endows the individual soul with ultimate value, relativizing the inviolability of the secular collective, causing procedural justice to become a tool of self-dissolution under a “selfless” foundation. In contrast, Eastern Orthodoxy, Islam (Ummah), and Confucianism (this-worldly “self”), because they possess a resilient secular self, do not allow procedural justice to override civilizational survival. The paper reveals a negative correlation between “institutional secularization” and “secular self strength,” and proposes a psychodynamic cycle of “sin – atonement – turning the other cheek” to explain the deep psychological mechanism of Protestant civilization’s self-dissolution. By examining phenomena such as Turkey’s backlash, the differential spread of Protestantism in China and Korea, and the instrumentalization of welfare fraud, this paper offers a descriptive perspective for understanding the dilemmas of contemporary Western civilization. The Protestant theological foundation revealed in this paper is a deep, broad, and hidden cause of the above phenomena, but not the sole determining factor. The occurrence of specific phenomena also requires the joint action of moderating variables such as power status, elite strategies, institutional paths, external pressure, and internal counter-forces. The foundation interacts with moderating variables, not a linear determination. This qualification runs throughout the paper.