Legal Culture in Chinese Literature：Focus on the Concept of 〝Yi〞

• Main Authors: Huang, Chiung-Fang, 黃瓊芳
• Other Authors: Liu, Shing-I
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2008
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/73461855980220962478

碩士 === 國立臺北大學 === 法律學系一般生組 === 96 === In order to find out the traditional Chinese thought of justice, we have to research it from the values of traditional Chinese culture. Although the folks were deeply influenced by the governing class, however, according to their conditions of life, they also developed their ideas of justice which were different from those ruled by the governing class. Therefore, I decide to take the classical novels which are close to folks’ life as my research topic in this thesis. There are six chapters in the thesis, and the main content of the thesis is abstracted as follows: Chapter 1 It introduces the research motivation, research purpose and method, framework, range and limit of the thesis. Chapter 2 First of all, it discusses the western viewpoint of justice, and generalizes a conclusion from the disscussing and common consensus of justice. Then it discusses the traditional Chinese thought of justice from the concept of “Yi”, and finally finds out that the core concept of the justice between Chinese and western cultures is “Yi”. Chapter 3 The core concept in justice was confirmed in Chapter 2; however, the meaning of the justice in various cultures is different. The next step is to discuss the background of the justice in traditional Chinese culture. Because the mode of governance in the Chinese history is ”bringing rites into law” and ”morality-guiding and punishment-supplementing”, therefore, it discusses the primary viewpoint of heavenly mandate, then follows the concept of rites ruling status society, and subordination of law and non-litigation. Besides, the prevailing of Buddhism and Taoism in the folk society also influences the development of justice. Chapter 4 In this chapter, it studies traditional Chinese literature through the fields of moral justice and legal justice. Moral justice contains the values of loyalty, benevolence, and trust, filial duty; however, legal justice contains vengeance system and justice in the judicial system. In addition, it also discusses the aspects of chivalry and karma. From this chapter, we can find out that the concepts of justice in traditional literature and legitimate justice fields are similar, but there are still some difference between them. Chapter 5 In this chapter, it makes a self-examination of unjustness in traditional Chinese literature. Several novels of new trend of though appealed in Ming and Ching Dynasty discuss the feudal class system, ritual captivity, the definition of upright officials and legal system etc.. The novels begin making a self-examination of part of the traditional viewpoint of justice. Even it implies the western viewpoint of individualism in the novels. Chapter 6 Finally, in this chapter, I summarize the main concepts of aforementioned chapters, and propose my conclusion of this thesis.