牟宗三先生提倡政道民主，被視為「中體西用」之雜拌 兒的現代翻版和無批判地擁抱西方自由主義的「西化」，此種批評 的根據是，民主來自西方且經西方歷史檢驗、能在實踐中取得善治 之效。但這實是誤解。牟先生是因民主與政權概念之本性相一致、 是能確保政權概念的本性得以實現之「共法」而提倡民主。因此， 牟先生當做「用」的政道民主，乃關聯著「體」，即中華民族文化 生命及其精神方向而起實現政權概念本性之「用」，故不得視為「西 化」。不過，牟先生的政道民主觀源自政權概念的集團屬性、國父 的政一治觀念及19世紀的「民有」理想。從根本上講，其關於民主 的思考主要集中在語義學問題和規範性問題，缺乏對民主的描述性 分析和現實觀照。

It is said that the reason why Mou Zong-san advocates the democracy of regime or democratic arrangement of regime, is that it came from the West and was tested, by the Western history, to be an effective administration and regime, therefore, some people criticize that Mou5s opinion is a modern version of “Chinese learning as the essence and Western learning as the utility”, and a patchwork of Chinese and Western. However, this is an utmost misunderstanding. Actually, the reason of Mou’s support to the democratic arrangement of regime, is in that democracy is consistent with the nature of the conception of regime, and is the only way of actualizing the nature of such conception. Although democracy firstly appeared in the West, it is hard to say that democracy belongs exclusively to the West. In fact, it is the shared way to actualizing the nature of the conception of regime. The standard of Chinese culture westernizing or not, does not consist in democracy, but in whether insisting the most primary Chinese cultural life and its spirit and orientation. As far as it is concerned, the democratic arrangement of regime, which is regarded as utility, must be attached to the essence, i.e. the most primary Chinese cultural life and the nature of the conception of regime. But in the final analysis, it is the nature or aggregative property of the conception of regime from which Mou Zong-san’s view on the democratic arrangement of regime derives, and it is a combination of the ideal of a government of the people and Sun Yat-sen’s idea of Zheng-zh/^^- 治).Basically, Mou’s thoughts of democracy mainly focus on the semantic and normative questions of democracy, and lack the descriptive analysis and a realistic concern.