Are We Bound By Law

Are we bound by law? Although this question seems like a very modern and legal one, it is in fact one of the key notions that ancient Chinese philosophy, more specifically the Confucian school of thought, deals with. To fully understand the true answer to this question, we must first try and interpret what this statement truly means. According to the definition of the Cambridge dictionary, being bound by something is having the ‘legal or moral duty’ to act upon something (1). If something is mandated by law then it is obvious that one has the legal duty to act, according the to definition tautologically. Therefore, the discussion here can be simplified down to whether one has the ‘moral duty’ to do something bound by the justification of the

Consider a passage from the Analect (lúnyǔ論),wei zheng(為政), where the master states that instead of governing people with punishments, we must govern people with virtue and Li so that they can have ‘shame’ and ‘decency’(2). This passage shows that Confucius believed rule by virtue is of higher value than rule by politics and punishments. Also, it helps us understand that Confucian thought dismisses harmful use of law and praises personal virtue. Of course it is important to note that Confucius wasn’t inherently against the necessity for punishment. He simply divides the two concepts and emphasizes the necessity of proper application of law in accordance with

However, this notion also has its own fatal flaws. As Raz puts it, sentiments of unreliability of individual judgment often leads to unconditional compliance to authority (Raz, 1995). Confucius shares such beliefs, as can be seen in another excerpt on the Analect, in Li Ren (里仁), where he states that a junzi, or a noble man, should ‘set the entire world as his standard’. He argues that for a noble man, there is no set right or wrong. The notion of righteousness goes ‘with him’ (4). This basically means that we must overcome being subordinated by the preexisting notions and create new standards, arguing that individual judgment of morals can be a standard for contemplating whether to deem the law