Abstract
This century saw the crisis of legitimacy in China. The collapse or loss of the transcendent dimension in the realm of law incarnated as the popular disobedience to and severe faithlessness to law, or more accurately, to something such as authority in the sense of positive law. The dysfunction of the whole socio-cultural system turned into the crisis of faith in it.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
John Donne, “An Anatomy of the World”, in his The Complete English Poem (ed. by A.J. Smith), at 276.
- 2.
For a brief biographical description about these figures see Chow Tse-tsung, The May fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China, fn., v and w, at 102–103.
- 3.
Interestingly, John Dewey and his wife were in Beijing and witnessed it when the movement occurred. In a letter to their daughter in 20 June Dewey wrote,
I find, by the way, that I didn’t do the students justice when I compared their first demonstration here to a college boy’s roughhouse; the whole thing was planned carefully, it seems, and was even pulled off earlier than would otherwise have been the case, because one of the political parties was going to demonstrate soon, and they were afraid their movement (coming at the same time) would make it look as if they were an agency of the political faction, and they wanted to act independently as students. To think of kids in our country from fourteen on, taking the lead in stating a big cleanup reform politics movement and shaming merchants and professional men into joining them. This is sure some country.
see John and Alice Chipman Dewey, Letters from China and Japan, at 246–247, also at 209–211.
- 4.
Chow Tse-tsung, The May fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China, at 167.
- 5.
Ibid., at 167–168. The writings on the May Four Movement fill a library. Apart from Chow’s frequently quoted book, for a brief but extremely profound insight, I strongly suggest Professor Tang De-gang’s “It Needs Two Hundred Years Going through the ‘Three Gorges’ of Chinese History”, in 5 Ming Pao Monthly (1999), at 14–16.
- 6.
LSM, “On Students Incident” (1919), 4: 571.
- 7.
LSM, ibid., at 4: 572.
- 8.
LSM, ibid., at 4: 571.
- 9.
LSM, ibid., at 4: 572.
- 10.
LSM, ibid.
- 11.
Cf., Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China, at 168.
- 12.
Cf., John Dewey, “The New Leaven in Chinese Politics” (1920), reprinted in his Characters and Events, at 1: 245, with a new title “Justice and Law in China” (1929).
- 13.
This essay was also published in Review Weekly (May 18, 1919).
- 14.
Ibid.
- 15.
Jeremy Bentham, Of Laws in General (ed. by H. L. A. Hart), at 1.
- 16.
Cf., Liang Shu-ming’s comments about justice as an ultimate goal and value of the Western law in section Law: value and function in Chap. 10 of this book.
- 17.
Feng You-lan regards Liang as the “right wing of (the May Fourth) new cultural movement”, his thought “constitutes a part of the Chinese new culture” rather than the “old” one. He also thinks Liang Shu-ming’s thought “included quite a lot of Western intellectual ingredients.” For details see his “Taking the Revivification of Confucianism as His Mission and Speaking Bluntly for Peasants with Sympathy: in Mourning of Mr. Liang Shu-ming”, in Liang Pei-kuan (ed.) Collection of Essays in Commemoration of Mr. Liang Shu-ming, at 201; also cf., Guo Zhan-bo, History of Chinese Thoughts in the Recent Fifty Years, at 3.
- 18.
Guy S. Alitto, The Last Confucian, at 72.
- 19.
Chew Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement, at 169.
- 20.
John Dewey, “Justice and Law in China”, in op. cit., at 251.
- 21.
Peter Stein, Legal Evolution: the Story of An Idea, at 125.
- 22.
for Habermas’ argument, see “What Does a Crisis Mean Today? Legitimation Problems in Late Capitalism,” in 40 Social Research (winter 1973), at 643–667. This essay appears as Part Two of Habermas’ book Legitimation Crisis.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Xu, Z. (2017). The Source and Crisis of Meaning in the Realm of Law in China. In: The Confucian Misgivings--Liang Shu-ming’s Narrative About Law. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4530-1_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-4530-1_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore
Print ISBN: 978-981-10-4529-5
Online ISBN: 978-981-10-4530-1
eBook Packages: Law and CriminologyLaw and Criminology (R0)