On The Relationship Between Punishment And Li In The Ancient China

This article mainly discusses the relationship between Li (literally, Rites) in Confucianism and penalty law, which were two essential factors in Chinese ancient legal system evolution. This relationship was the bottom of Chinese ancient legal system historical river, leading its basic direction and forming its main spirit. The researches in this field are always hot topics in Chinese tradition law culture study. This thesis explored the interaction and combination course and reason between rites and penalty law at the juristic basis, the legislation and the judicative practice level in Chinese ancient history.This thesis includes five parts. The first part is about the origin and nature of rites and penalty in Chinese ancient times, mainly exploring the different origin and substance of these different forms in Xia Dynasty, Shang Dynasty and Zhou Dynasty time. The second part is about the evolution of relationship between rites in Confucianism and penalty law in Chinese ancient times: from integration to separation, mainly researching the course of integrating in Xia Dynasty, Shang Dynasty and Zhou Dynasty time and Separating in Warring States and qin dynasty. The third part is about the Confucianization of ancient Chinese penalty law, mainly exploring the historical course of rites separating from penalty law during the period from qin dynasty to Wei Jin Southern and Northern Dynasties, lasting almost 6 hundreds years. The fourth part is about "Rule of Morality with Its Priority to Penalty" and "the Syncretism of Rites and Fa (literally, Law)", mainly researching the model of relationship between rites in Confucianism and penalty law in Chinese ancient times, especially the perfect combination of them in Tang Lu as a typical representative example. The fifth part is about the value orientation in combination course between rites and penalty law and its social history reason, which focused on value orientation and carried on rational analysis.This thesis has carried on some new explorations and researches in following three aspects: A. researching the combination course between rites and penalty law, we focus on the juristic basis, the legislation and the judicative practice in Chinese ancient times, and then gave three-dimensional demonstrations; B. we draw our conclusion about the nature of the syncretism of rites and penalty through paying attention on the interactivity of rites and penalty, not only on the unilateralism of them; C. we discuss on the value orientation of the syncretism of rites and penalty by comparing rites with penalty, which was determined by rank, patriarchal clan system, ethicality and sociality.