The Humble Opinion On The Revenge In Song Dynasty

In Chinese traditional society, people highly promoted etiquette, attached great important to the ethics of filial piety. While theoretically be supported by the Confucian culture, the concept of revenge is popular for the people obey traditional ethics. Revenge transform from simple emotional instincts into the personal manifestation of filial piety and ethics under the influence of Confucianism. Revenge acts, which was given the justice, gradually transformed into the revenge of the system under the new historical conditions. The practices of bringing retaliation system into law category by past dynasties help further study the relationship between rite and law. Though retaliation met ancient moral value orientation among common people, it couldn’t integrate into law quite often. In the construction of legal system, introducing rite into law made ritual system collide with legal culture. Different ages show different severeness of retaliation and attitudes towards it from rulers to civilians also changed with times. Legal deficiency and judicial corruption caused the phenomenon of retaliation rise and fall. The short-term factor which affected the social consciousness came from the legislative sway in terms of retaliation while the long-term factor came from the judicial sway. The rulers at the beginning of Song Dynasty’s mitigation measure towards retaliator played an important role in the development of retaliatory thought during their reign.Through analysing the related cases in Song Dynasty find that the influence of Confucian thought on filial piety was still can not be ignored in this period. By discovering the methods and ideas of the avengers, and the trial of revenge cases by the state officials, even the treatment attitudes of the rulers, it is easily to find out there was a favourable view of revenge in the mainstream of social consciousness in Song Dynasty. Revenge is the externalization of the contradiction between rite and law in Chinese ancient society. Trying to take the legal treatment about the revenge cases as a breakthrough point for seeing the mutual fusion trend of this contradiction, and how did them become a common specification to maintain the ancient social order. The revengeful complex is deeply rooted in Chinese traditional concept which built a unique revenge culture system. It is not only an opportunity to grasp the traits of the ancient society, but also a breach for the comprehension of the ideology of revenge that is still has a certain influence on today’s society by understanding the revenge culture.