유가철학에서 본 正義

Abstract

It is difficult to try to define the concept of ‘justice’. While the Oriental term “義” means ‘justice’ or “righteousness”, that is the ethical concept, the concept of ‘justice’ in the Western thoughts often is defined with ‘social justice’ that mainly contains the social and political meanings. Discussions about ‘justice’ in our society, of course, are not extricable from the questions of political philosophy in the Western society. I think that the concept of justice as ‘fairness’ in the Western philosophy seems to be excluded with human emotion, moral feelings. ‘Civil society’ in the Western world has been established by the theory of ‘Social Contract’ which was base on the “rationality” in Modern age. On the other hand, the Confucian philosophy as the mainstream of Eastern thought emphasize that Justice should be based on moral human nature and then only has a true meaning. Because human is the subject which can compose the righteous society, can realize public justice. According to the viewpoint of Confucianism, social institutions(order, law) without moral subjectivity of human, could not realize the righteous society. From this basic viewpoint, political thought of Confucius also contains a lot of meaningful public ethics. Concept of Confucian “公(public)” cannot be regarded with the “public goodness” in modern society, but it’s meaning still has a lot of vitality in these days. In this paper, I tried to analyze the concept of “Justice” and it’s implications in the Confucian tradition, compared with definition of Western political philosophy. “Justice” is the most important concept in Eastern and Western political philosophy, relations to social justice, ideal society in human world. From a comparative analysis of Justice in Eastern and Western definition, it will provide for the ultimate principle and possibility of consilience between the East and the West.