The Classical Confucian Position on the Legitimate Use of Military Force

Twiss, Sumner B.; Chan, Jonathan

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9795.2012.00531.x

Cited by 36 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Mengzi invoked these two revolutions three times in his dialogue with kings and with his own students, but not to encourage them to start a just war. Many recent studies wrongly assess this didactic purpose (Bell 2006, 38–40; Twiss and Chan 2015a, 99–100), and so the three passages must be analyzed in greater detail with consideration of their relevant historical backgrounds.…”

Section: Mengzi On Just Warmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gratian and Mengzi

Lo¹

2020

Journal of Religious Ethics

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In this essay, I compare two pioneer thinkers of the “just war” tradition across cultures: Gratian in the Christian tradition, and Mengzi (Mencius) in the Confucian tradition. I examine their historical‐cultural contexts and the need for both to discuss just war, introduce the nature of their treatises and the rudimentary theories of just war therein, and trace the influence both thinkers’ theories have had on subsequent just war ethics. Both deemed just cause, proper authority, and right intention to be necessary conditions for initiating a just war. However, Gratian’s theory has a presumption against injustice whereas Mengzi’s theory has a presumption against war. As a jurist of the Church, Gratian sought to discriminate just from unjust wars, while Mengzi, a moral‐political advisor to rulers, was more concerned with avoiding bloodshed and building lasting peace. In addition to examining these thinkers’ respective historical influences, I submit that Gratian’s Decretum and the Mengzi are pioneering in two more senses. First, they offer important clues to understanding how just war ideas were developed very differently in medieval Europe and in premodern China. Second, both embodied features that helped shape their subsequent intellectual tradition, which in turn molded the different legacies of these two works.

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Section: Mengzi On Just Warmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gratian and Mengzi

Lo¹

2020

Journal of Religious Ethics

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“…In another paper soon to be published, we attempted to reconstruct and analyze the classical Confucian position on the legitimate use of military force (Twiss & Chan 2012). That paper focused on the moral and political thought of two important figures (Mencius and Xunzi) who developed their ideas on the subject during the Warring States period (403Á221 BCE), a time when regional war lords Á following the collapse of the Zhou Dynasty Á were aggressively annexing smaller states and consolidating them into ever larger centralized ones.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Classical Confucianism, Punitive Expeditions, and Humanitarian Intervention

Twiss

Chan

2012

Journal of Military Ethics

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“…36 36 This ad bellum requirement of authorization by a sovereign authority is even more conspicuously present in the classical Confucian texts, for example, the Mencius (compare Twiss and Chan 2012). …”

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confidence: 99%

THE ART OF WAR CORPUS AND CHINESE JUST WAR ETHICS PAST AND PRESENT

2012

Journal of Religious Ethics

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The idea of “just war” is not alien to Chinese thought. The term “yi zhan” (usually translated as “just war” or “righteous war” in English) is used in Mencius, was renewed by Mao Zedong, and is still being used in China today (zhengyi zhanzheng). The best place to start exploring this Chinese idea is in the enormous Art of War corpus in premodern China, of which the Seven Military Classics is the best representative. This set of treatises served as the military bible in imperial China from 1078 CE. Ideas analogous to ius ad bellum and ius in bello can be found in these texts. These norms are present in these military texts, elaborated in subsequent commentaries, understood as a matter of fact in Chinese political history, and recently and briefly acknowledged by a few Chinese military scholars in the mainland and in Taiwan. This Chinese just war ethics has its distinctiveness vis‐à‐vis James Turner Johnson's articulation of the Western classic view. It differs from Johnson's claims that military lethal violence is intrinsically morally neutral and that last resort is not a primary consideration in deciding for war. Contemporary Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) military publications show that the PLA understands the general idea of just war, but they acknowledge only the ad bellum part, not the in bello components.

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The Classical Confucian Position on the Legitimate Use of Military Force

Cited by 36 publications

References 8 publications

Gratian and Mengzi

Gratian and Mengzi

Classical Confucianism, Punitive Expeditions, and Humanitarian Intervention

THE ART OF WAR CORPUS AND CHINESE JUST WAR ETHICS PAST AND PRESENT

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