Justice in East Asian Thought

Once the Qin dynasty was established and a greatly enlarged Chinese imperial state was brought into being (221 B.C.E.), standards of ethical and political life shifted gradually from legalistic and Huang-Lao forms of life to a dominant Confucian cultural standard. For most of the 2,200-year-long imperial period, Confucian advocates dominated the political arena. Nevertheless, the Huang-Lao school did have a revival and development during the third and fourth centuries, especially as seen among the writings of "neo-Daoists" or advocates of Abstruse Learning (Xuánxué). They envisioned the "lone transformation" (duhua) of all persons, developing a theme advocated by Master Zhuang. This included a radical form of egalitarianism, but also advocated a reformist vision of changing institutions according to the times and conditions of life.

The most outstanding contributions to Confucian traditions came during the Song dynasty (ninth to twelfth centuries). Confucian scholars then promoted a form of political justification that based all social values on heavenly patterns (tianli), resembling many aspects of a natural-law system of ethics and governance. Justice was then determined by alignment with patterns of heavenly harmony and was rationalized in a rigorous manner by Zhu Xi (1130–1200), whose interpretive precedents became the standard Confucian teachings for much of the subsequent seven hundred years. Under these more expansive cosmological influences, the roles of women became framed within a set of more subordinate conditions associated with universal symbols systematically denoting the passiveness and receptivity of earth, flexibility, coolness, fecundity, and hiddenness. Family rituals were established by Zhu Xi that formalized these relationships in a manner that reflected patriarchal values and that had been less systematic during earlier centuries. Though mothers in particular were highly honored within systems of filial allegiance, their own roles within the family were largely restricted. This became all the more entrenched in general society during the Ming and Quin dynasties (fourteenth to early twentieth centuries).

Alternative Confucian visions included remarkably advanced democratic ideals opposing imperial policies in Huang Zongxi's (1610–1695) writings—ideals that were never realized and became justifications for revolution in 1911—and the utopian egalitarian vision of a great commonwealth (datong) advocated by the influential reformer, Kang Youwei (1858–1927). This latter vision was unusual in both its pseudoscientific idealism, promoting government-sponsored eugenic reconstructions of human societies, and its advocacy of a radical egalitarian worldview based on a relatively hedonistic ethic, thus offering much more freedom to women than had been previously considered proper or feasible.