论“亲亲相隐”扭曲正义感的负面效应

Abstract

In the two famous cases of Lunyu (the Analects) 13:18 and Mengzi 7A35, both Kongzi and Mengzi definitely hold that, even the filial son has known his father’s criminal offences such as stealing a sheep and murdering an innocent, he should still try his best to conceal his father’s crime and even take his father to flee in order to prevent his father from moral condemnation and lawful punishment according to the Confucian basic spirit of “consanguineous emotionale”. It may be argued through a close analysis that this typical Confucian idea seriously violates the bottom line of “humaneness and justice (renyi)” clearly set up by Kongzi and Mengzi themselves, and encourages people to do substantive harm to their fellow humans merely for the sake of kinship love as well as the selfish interests of their relatives. In such an in-depth ethical paradox, this idea is also sharply different from those legal provisions of contemporary Western society about family concealment and right to privacy or to silence, and shows the in-depth paradox of Confucianism as a moral doctrine in distorting people’s common sense of justice as “no harm to fellow humans”. In reality, this distortion has brought about a lot of serious negative effects in Chinese society till now, so that we should re-affirm the ultimate significance of the sense of justice as “no harm to fellow humans” through the profound criticisms of the Confucian spirit of “consanguineous emotionale” as well as its idea of mutual concealment between relatives.