Confucian Concept Of Justice

As an important component of the traditional Chinese culture, Confucianism has influenced people's thoughts for more than two thousand years. Unfortunately, it has begun to come down since the May Fourth Movement. As far as I am concerned, the seeming fall of Confucianism is only a reflection of people's criticism of the tradition. Deep in the Chinese hearts exists a complicated emotional knot, the so-called"knot for old time's sake". The collision between sense and sensibility has thus caused some conflicts: on the one hand, voices against Confucianism still exits; on the other hand, Confucianism appears to be renewed. In fact, Confucianism is widely concerned with philosophy, religion, humanities, anthropology, politics and so on. Confucian tradition is not only a historical phenomenon, but also a phenomenon of life. It's not easy to carry out a comprehensive study of Confucianism so this dissertation will only focuses on its justice concept. After an overall study of Confucianism, the author tries to analyze its justice concept, the impact on China's ancient judicial activities and legislation, the impact of Confucian justice concept on the building of traditional judicial culture. At the same time, the author hopes to find the general value which is beyond time and space limitation so that we can develop the useful and discard the useless contents in Confucian justice concept.In the preface part, the author explains the motives and importance of this dissertation. Besides, the author also introduces the current situations of Confucianism. Then the dissertation can be divided into three parts.First, the author deals with how to grasp the justice concept of Confucianism. In ancient time, there were no comments on justice concept, which was contained in the legal thoughts of Confucianism. To be more specific, it was only a component of the integrated Confucianism. In order to summarize Confucian justice concept, the author focuses on Confucius, Mencius and Xunzi. It is their justice concepts that make up the overall Confucian justice concept. The later Confucians may have achieved some special things in philosophy or politics, but their justice concepts are all around the predecessors. This dissertation focuses on the following justice concepts: hierachical justice, moralizing, benevolence and so on.Second, the author explains the current impact of Confucian justice concept. Since Dong Zhongshu in the Western Han Dynasty (Xihan), the Confucian justice concept has...