The Confucian Conception Of Justice And Its Value Today

As a major component of Chinese culture, Confucianism plays an important role in Chinese ideological history. By dealing with the Confucian conception of justice, this thesis tries to explore its significance today. Studying Confucianism, especially, the Confucian conception of justice can deepen our understanding of Confucianism, and is conducive to the promotion of traditional Confucian culture. It also helps us to absorb the essence of traditional Confucian cultural and use it in building social justice today.Starting from traditional Confucian conception of justice, this thesis introduces the connotations and evolution of it and systematically analyzes the basic components of the Confucian conception of justice. With reference to the researches of other scholars, this thesis points out four basic components of the Confucian conception of justice:its highest principles, basic theories, core values and standards. In other words, they are the Confucian ideas of "Dao, Ren, Yi, Li". Confucianism starts with Ren, with Li as its ritual system. Yi connects the two categories of ideas while Dao functions as the guiding principle and law that incorporates and regulates all the other three categories of ideas. The conception of justice can be found in all four Confucian ideas of Dao, Ren, Yi, Li, and has formed its own systematic theories. This thesis then gives a modern interpretation of the Confucian conception of justice from aspects such as economic life, political institution, social and cultural life. After that, the author expounds on how this conception is embodied, how it influences rulers, policy-makers, and ordinary people. Moreover, this thesis attempts to apply the Confucian conception of justice of to the social life today by taking its essence. Finally, based on the positive values of the Confucian conception of justice, this thesis puts forward several issues of building social justice of China today:upholding Marxism as the guiding principle, focusing on developing productive forces, adopting the general principle of conciliation as a major means to achieve social justice, alleviating social conflicts through macro-control; attaching importance to the building of institutional justice to guarantee the free and all-round development of people. Besides, this thesis also points out that it is of great significance in building social justice today to absorb the ideas of Confucian humanism which emphasizes self-cultivation as an important means to achieve social harmony. Finally, the thesis borrows some excellent western justice thoughts to solve the "equity-efficiency" problem so that everyone can enjoy equal opportunities in education, job market and competition.While discussing the Confucian conception of justice, we need to grasp its basic principles and features as our theoretical basis rather than the changes of certain periods. At the same time, we should pay close attention to its changes and inclusiveness and understand that the Confucian conception of justice evolves with the development of the society, which is why it can meet today’s needs. To build the social justice today, we need to combine the value rationality and instrumental rationality, base on the realities of Chinese society, form a social justice theory with Chinese characteristics and actively explore a road to the realization of justice.