A Study On The Jurisprudential Basis Of Spiritual Damage Compensation

Civilization, on one hand, is reflected by the control which is carried out byhuman over the nature, which aims to protect the material supply of human survivalneeds; on the other hand, it emerges in controlling human nature to maintain thesecurity and stability of the human society. The development of human civilization ischaracterized by the progress of human society and the evolution of human being. Inthe contemporary era, materials which can be owned by mankind has been quite rich.The pursuit of human being has evolved from the possession of material wealth to themaintenance for their own spiritual freedom and spiritual interests. With the advanceof human’s understanding and thinking abilities, the cognition on human’s ownspiritual world has been gradually deepened. When it has been becoming more andmore important to maintain their own independent spirits and the normal developmentof demands, people’s legal requirements on spiritual rights and interests have beenincreasingly appealed. For these requirements, there was a positive attitude intheoretical cycle. People in the theoretical cycle insisted that people’s spiritual rightsand interests should be comprehensively protected thought law. In that case, theprotective provisions for people’s spiritual rights and interests in the main countries ofthe world have been established legally. Within these legal provisions, spiritualdamage compensation system is doubtlessly a strong indemnificatory institution.In this context, spiritual damage compensation system has recently become one ofthe hot focuses in the field of the juristic research. However, this system still has someweaknesses, and we should continue to research and perfect it. For spiritual damage,which is the preventive object of this system, the academic circles has not had ain-depth research so that the cognition and understanding on this problem areambiguous in theory. In our country, the theoretical ambiguous defects are that thedevelopment of spiritual damage compensation system has chronically lagged behindthe people’s practice expectations. Thought probing into the essence of the spiritualdamage, we can confirm the juristic basis of the spiritual damage, which is helpful forthe development and improvement of the spiritual damage.We think the core of the spiritual damage compensation is the cognition on thespiritual damage. When we have already defined the actual connotation of mentaldamage and cleared the real existence of the spiritual damage, it may clarify whetherneed to compensate. Therefore, in the introduction of this essay, we will research thegains of cognition on mental damage, and find out the real situation and weaknessesof spiritual damage in the legal practice and juristic researches. Based on this, thisessay presents the way of argumentation on the juristic basis of the spiritual damage.This thesis considers that man is a combination of physical and mental body, and themental body is an independent part of human. The essence of the mental damage isreferred to the damages on the mental or spiritual body of people. To clarify this pointprimarily, this essay is about to confirm the gist of the spiritual damage in aspects oftheories.This dissertation divides into five parts:The first part primarily focuses on the origin of mental body of human being andexplores the development history of mental body from the angle of people’s evolution.Thought the evolution of human being, we can find out that the mental body ofmankind has experienced a developmental and mature process. We could not discoversomething about mental body at the beginning of human birth. When human evolvedinto the homo sapiens phase and escaped from the survival problems, they had enoughtime and energy to think about the mental world. Then, the independent mental bodyappeared. However, mankind was still in a state of nature, and the mental body wasalso in the immature period. Until people integrated into the society and evolved intoa state of civilization, the mental body of mankind moved towards maturity.Meanwhile, the connotation of the mental body gradually plumped up.The second part mainly presents the cognitive process of mental body of mankind.According to researches, the ancient Greeks first began to systematically explore thespiritual world of human being. They believed that there was a part, which wasdifferent from the physical body, existing in the human body, they called it “soul”. Inthe early stage, the ancient Greeks proved that the soul independently existed from thematerial aspect such as air, fire, water, and the immaterial aspect such as Logos.During the classical age, the ancient Greeks explored the independent existence ofsoul from entities, attributes and atomism. In the Middle Ages, although everythingwas ruled by theology, someone like Aquinas adhered faithfully to search the mentalpart which was independent in human body. In the modern times, which have beenregarded as a rational and illuminative age, Descartes established that mental bodywas the main body status in the human body. After that, Spinoza and Rockdemonstrated the spirit was a independent part of people from the different angles.The third part states the independence of mental body within human body and itsunique mode of operation. According to the general principles which are used bymankind to cognize things from external to internal, we primarily analyze the physicalbody in aspects of the static characters and the dynamic structures. We can find outthat there is an independent existence-- mental body-- in human body, which iscompletely different from the physical body. From the spatial characteristics, uniqueattributes and internal closure, we prove the mental body independently exists. Then,we analyze the internal structure of mental body. However, because the mental bodyhas its immaterial attribute, we cannot analyze the static characters of the mental bodyin the aspects of composition and structure but from the aspect of the dynamicstructures. We find out that the mental body contains consciousness at the awarenesslevel, which is the object of mental damage.The fourth part basically defines the connotation of the spiritual damage so as todiscover the nature of the causes of spiritual damage. Before starting the discussion,we need to provide the cognitive premise for the following arguments: Only under themode of Three-People Society, we can accurately define the connotation of mentaldamage by using rational thinking. According to this, we have analyzed the“damage”—which is one of the important factors of mental damage, which is as thetheoretical foundation for the accurate definition of the connotation of spiritualdamage. At the end of this part, we put forward our understanding of the connotationof spiritual damage based on the criticism and existing research results — the“spiritual damage” actually means that the mental body of human being suffersunfavorable situation. So far, we have found that the essential reason of mentaldamage was the infringement on the mental body of mankind. This conclusion is theprerequisite to determine the juristic basis of the compensation for spiritual damage.The last part chiefly demonstrates the juristic basis of the compensation for spiritualdamage. As is mentioned above, we have found out the essential reasons of mentaldamage. On the basis of this, we confirmed the authenticity of this damage. Accordingto Tort Law, which stipulates that the compensation for damage should be paid, weanalyze the rationality and legitimacy of the compensation for spiritual damage fromthe juristic theory of law. When the compensation for mental damage is confirmed, wecan analyze the rationality of the compensation for spiritual damage in the form ofmoney. In the light of this, it is proposed that we should adhere to the principles andconsiderations to determine the compensation for spiritual damage.