The Research Of Chen Liang’s Legal Thoughts Of People’s Livelihood

Chen Liang was the main representative of the Yongkang school，and he was the firstone of “Shi Gong Philosophy” in Yongkang. He emphasized strongly that the Southern SongDyansty should be ruling by “Shi Gong Philosophy”. Attention to the people’s livelihoodinherent in Chen Liang’s “Dao” philosophy of emphasis on “Shi Gong” and “Be of use tosociety”. The ultimate aim of “Making the Course of Nature Existent and the Desire ofHuman Extinct” for Zhu Xi who was the representative of “Li Xue” was attacked by ChenLiang’s philosophy.“Li Xue” tried to destroy the foundation of Human nature, and itsobjective was superb human morality.Chen Liang affirmed the inner desire of human nature, he was opposed to vaguelydiscuss morality, and Chen Liang focused on people’s livelihood, which was clearly itsunique products of “Dao” philosophy. The most prominent one was that Chen Liangconsidered that law was an important means of achieving the people’s livelihood. The logicwas as follows: First, he distinguished the people’s livelihood into the concrete one andabstract one, and law was related to concrete aspects of people’s livelihood. Second, heformed his own unique legal concept upon the unique concept of people’s livelihood--thelegal view of combining law with people’s livelihood, broke through the traditional conceptof criminal law. Third, the construction of legal system correlated with people’s livelihood.First one, the guiding values of legislation was “Legislation to Public”. Second one, theobjective of establishment of legal system was “Clear Penalties to Life for All”. The fourthone was that it depend on the role of law making “Private to Public”. The fifth one, the aim ofoperating the law into society was “Using Law for Public”. As a result, there was aninstitutional system of protection of people’s livelihood. In this sense, Chen Liang has brokenthrough the traditional path of the solution to the problem of people’s livelihood, completelytransformed the angle of the inspection of the people’s livelihood problems. People’slivelihood transformed from the morality dimension to normative dimension of the legalsystem. Chen Liang relied on “Shi Gong Philosophy” to focus on the social effects onpeople’s livelihood, Chen Liang would evaluated institutional systems by social effects onpeople’s livelihood. At the same time, we should also recognize its shortcomings, for example, he overly concerned with all the social effects on people’s livelihood, and inevitably resultedin his legal thoughts: there was some sort of tension on the guarantee of individual rights.