Notions of justice
| Date | 01 January 2017 |
| Published date | 01 January 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1365712716676697 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Notions of justice:
A comparative cultural analysis
Delia Lin
The University of Adelaide, Australia
Abstract
This paper compares the conception of justice grounded on the liberal political thought and
the Chinese notion of justice deeply rooted in Confucian and Legalist theories from the
standpoint of the political culture they each supports. It argues that whereas the former
supports the liberal culture marked by the plurality of reasonable doctrines and by seeing
persons as free and equal, the latter supports an authoritarian culture based on a dogmatic,
comprehensive moral doctrine. Such cultural differences have made it difficult for the Chinese
elite holding a Confucian view to negotiate and appreciate the political conception of justice
as fairness. This paper suggests that it is important for a modern state to formulate philo-
sophies that accommodate the plurality of diverse and often incompatible doctrines and also
to think about justice in procedural terms. For China to achieve this requires a change of
political culture.
Keywords
Confucianism, justice, legalism, liberalism, Rawls
In her book Confucius, Rawls and the Sense of Justice, Erin Cline compares moral psychology and
social justice in early Confucianism and Western liberalism (Cline, 2013). Arguing that in the Analects
of Confucius the view of justice is developed through discussion of how a sense of justice is developed
and its role in a harmonious society, Cline believes that such discussion of cultivation of moral capacities
aligns with moral psychology of Rawl’s account of justice as fairness. Despite many merits in her
comparative approach and her attempted empathy with Confucian thought, Cline has mistakenly
assumed that the sense of justice expressed by yi in early Confucianism is the same capacity to feel
or perceive what is fair for each individual entailed in political liberalism.
Built on my recent work on the Confucian and Legalist notions of justice through surveying all the
uses of yi and its related concepts in two Confucian canonical texts, the Analects of Confucius and
Mencius and the Legalist cannon Han Feizi (Lin, in press), this paper draws attention to the differ-
ences in political culture between the Confucian notion of justice based on a dogmatic, comprehensive
moral doctrine and justice as fairness grounded on Western liberal thought. This paper argues that the
Corresponding author:
Delia Lin, Department of Asian Studies, School of Social Sciences, The University of Adelaide, Adelaide SA 5005, Australia.
E-mail: Delia.Lin@adelaide.edu.au
The International Journalof
Evidence & Proof
2017, Vol. 21(1-2) 79–86
ªThe Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1365712716676697
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