Justice in East Asian Thought
Law And Justice During The Ming And Quing Dynasties
Legal codes during the last two dynasties of imperial China were framed under values undergirding patrifamilial order and class differences. In principle, lands belonged to a family in perpetuity, but when faced with the need for survival many commoners sold these lands under leases that often brought privilege and power to the already wealthy. Courts did uphold reclaiming these properties, as a form of traditional justice, when the previously needy families had overcome their difficulties, but otherwise debts were in principle to be paid. Only in the case of economic desperation, hinging on basic survival, were compromises reached, mostly outside of court. These compromising tendencies, however, led to situations in which women could be sold as daughters, wives, or widows in order to raise adequate funds to meet basic needs. Though a woman might be able to return to her natal home if other needs were demonstrated, she was seen always as a passive agent in a social context where men's choices dominated. So, for example, a married woman could be expelled from marriage and sent to her natal home for seven basic reasons under these patrifamilial assumptions: barrenness (especially, bearing no male child), licenciousness, negligence in the care of her parents-in-law, talkativeness, theft, jealousy, and chronic illness. Though female virtues could also be employed legally to protect a woman's dignity, such an endeavor regularly required extensive evidence, and the burden of proof was often costly in both social and personal terms. In this regard, traditions generally supported patrifamilial structure, so that women were disadvantaged in inheritance, personal choices, and political options. Major legal changes in these areas began to take place only after 1911 with the advent of republican China.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PRIMARY SOURCES
Legge, James. The Chinese Classics. Oxford: Clarendon, 1893–1895. A standard rendering and authoritative interpretation of the Four Books and three ancient Confucian canonical scriptures by this famous Scottish missionary-scholar.
——. The Sacred Books of China. Oxford: Clarendon, 1879–1891. Six volumes in the Sacred Books of the East, edited by F. Max Müller. Vols. 3, 16, 27, 28, 39, 40. Revised and new translations of Confucian and Daoist canonical scriptures.
SECONDARY SOURCES
Bontekoe, Ron, and Marietta Stepaniants, eds. Justice and Democracy: Cross-Cultural Perspectives. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1997. Includes helpful articles on Asian and comparative perspectives.
Cheng, Chung-ying, et al. Special Issue on Rawlsian and Confucian Justice. Journal of Chinese Philosophy 24, no. 4 (December 1997). Consists of six separate articles addressing different aspects of this comparison.
Feng, Youlan. A History of Chinese Philosophy by Fung Yu-lan. 2 vols. Translated by Derk Bodde. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1952–1953.
Huang, Philip C. C. Code, Custom, and Legal Practice in China: The Qing and the Republic Compared. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001. Describes actual cases, including accounts about land ownership, handling of debts, old age provisions, and dynamic and oppressive elements in stipulations related to women in general society.
Lee, Lily Xiao Hong. The Virtue of Yin: Studies on Chinese Women. Broadway, Australia: Wild Peony, 1994. Poignant stories about Chinese women, including an essay on Ban Zhao.
Lee, Seung-Hwan. "Was There a Concept of Rights in Confucian Virtue-Based Morality?" Journal of Chinese Philosophy 19 (1992): 241–261. Seminal article claiming that rights-like concepts did exist in ancient Confucian texts and were norms for practice in ancient Chinese societies.
Liú Zéhuá, ed. Zhōngguó Zhèngzhì Sīxiang Shi. Hangzhou, China: Zhejiang People's Press, 1996. 3 vols. A thorough study covering twenty-five hundred years of Chinese political thought, including Confucian, Daoist, and Buddhist contributions.
Peerenboom, Randall P. "Confucian Justice: Achieving a Humane Society." International Philosophical Quarterly 30 (1990): 17–32. A comparative philosophical analysis of a secularized version of justice from a Confucian-inspired vision of humane society.
Pfister, Lauren F. "A Study in Comparative Utopias—K'ang Yuwei and Plato." Journal of Chinese Philosophy 16, no.1 (1989): 59–117. Showing points of comparison between Plato and certain Confucian themes embodied in an unusual work by this nineteenth-century Chinese intellectual and reformer.
Sim, May. "Aristotle in the Reconstruction of Confucian Ethics." International Philosophical Quarterly 41, no. 4 (2001): 453–468. Showing points of comparison between Aristotle and early Confucian traditions.
Wood, Alan T. Limits to Autocracy: From Sung Neo-Confucianism to a Doctrine of Political Rights. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 1995. Provides constructive comparisions between European medieval natural rights ideologies and Song dynasty (tenth to twelfth centuries) principle-centered Confucian political ideology.
Lauren F. Pfister
Fèi Lèrén
Additional topics
- Justice in East Asian Thought - Bibliography
- Justice in East Asian Thought - Subsequent Developments
- Other Free Encyclopedias
Science EncyclopediaScience & Philosophy: Intuitionist logic to KabbalahJustice in East Asian Thought - Preimperial Confucianism, Preimperial Daoism, Subsequent Developments, Law And Justice During The Ming And Quing Dynasties