The Analects and Sense of Justice: The Spirit of Law and Historical Practice

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

Moralism generally does not constitute a major part of the content of modern Western legal scholarship, but it must occupy the very center of any meaningful discussion of Chinese law. In short, there can be no real understanding of Chinese law without grasping its moral anchor and content. This article focuses on the most important of classical Chinese moral texts, the Confucian Analects, to show how it in fact formed both the core content and the overarching framework for Chinese law since the establishment of Confucianism as the official state ideology in the early Han period. Our approach, unlike previous scholarship, focuses on the Analects as a legal text.