Legal Dialectics (The Past, Present, and Future of Chinese Law)

Author: Liang Zhiping
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Publishing Date: Not available
Features: Excerpt 6 Ancient Law: Cultural Differences and the Natural Evolution of Traditional Human Cultures generally undergo similar stages. For example, from Paleolithic and Neolithic cultures to Bronze and Iron Age cultures. This does not negate the diversity of human cultures. While both ancient China and Greece had Bronze Age cultures, they were vastly different, demonstrating similarities within differences. British historian Toynbee believed that civilization can only grow in a model of challenge and response, and the success or failure of the response can determine the fate of a civilization. Extending this theory slightly, one can argue that the way of responding to challenges will determine the style of a civilization. The differences in customs, rituals, religions, and laws among ancient peoples can probably all be explained by this theory. The direct challenges faced by early humans mostly came from nature. Differences in geographical and climatic environments were often decisive. The beliefs of specific groups, their views on the universe, and their unique behavioral patterns initially depended on these naturally generated differences. Historians often base the division between river-valley civilizations and maritime civilizations on this. Later, as civilizations grew, the challenges faced by humans became more social in nature, and human concepts and consciousness were therefore more influenced by social factors. In 587 BCE, the Jewish people were exiled to Babylon and lived there for nearly 50 years. Without this history, there might not have been the "Old Testament" we see today, and later Christianity and Christian civilization might have been just a myth. There are many such events in history, such as the impact of the great migrations on the fate of the Roman Empire, or the influence of foreign invasions on the cultural characteristics of the Han people, and so on. The formation and differences in ancient legal concepts seem to be explainable in a similar way. Ancient legal phenomena had some similarities, even commonalities, but like ancient civilizations, they were repeatedly diverse. Jewish, Babylonian, Egyptian, Greek-Roman, Indian, and Chinese laws were all different. Even by examining the laws of ancient China and Greece-Rome, which we are more concerned about and familiar with, we can gain some thought-provoking insights. From an etymological perspective, the origin of the Chinese character "" is quite ancient, but it was only during the pre-Qin period that this character became popularly used to refer to a specific social phenomenon. Before that, there were legal phenomena, but they were simply not referred to as "." Another character was used to denote this phenomenon: . The general meaning of is well understood, but in ancient times, its meaning was more specialized and narrow. Mr. Lü Simian wrote in his book History of the Pre-Qin Period: "The origin of was likely to deal with foreign peoples. The concept of in ancient times was different from today. The Han people often said, 'A person who has been punished by cannot be reinstated,' or 'A person who has been severed cannot be reinstated,' meaning that it must be a physical separation to be called , while confinement, penal labor, and other punishments do not qualify as ." That is to say, the term at that time specifically referred to corporal punishment and capital punishment, such as the five punishments recorded in the Lü Xing: tattooing, castration, amputation of the foot, castration, and decapitation. Punishments like hard labor, exile, and imprisonment, as understood later, could only be considered "punishments" and not "punishments." Research shows that the formation of this linguistic phenomenon is related to the early historical development of China and cannot be simply attributed to convention.