The Construction And Deconstruction Of The Confucian's Rites To Northern Wei Dynasty's Imperial Power

The rite plays the most important role not only in the ancient political life but also in the ancient social life. The rite and the ancient law share the same values of the rite righteousness, and then they build up the social order system in ancient China together. With the deepening of awareness about ancient society and the legal culture, the rite began to enter the researchers' view and get their attention. As the main part of the Traditional Law, the rite actually plays more important role than the ancient law, for example, the rite has achieved a good effect in the aspect of limiting imperial power which is beyond the reach of the law. Although the imperial power is in Pyramid ' s peak of the political power in the feudal society, however, the establishment of its legitimacy, the exercise of its political power, and even the implementation of its social control need the rite. The prosperity and decline of the previous imperial power is closely linked to the rite as well. Therefore a study on the relationship and the interaction between the rite and the imperial power is also a key to understand the ancient Chinese social order of the rite and law.This paper uses the research method of legal history mainly and uses the integration of interdisciplinary research, comparative research and case studies and other research methods together. This paper restores the original appearance of the rites and imperial power of the Northern Wei Dynasty in order to get a glimpse of the relationship of ancient ritual system and the imperial power and the effect of the ritual system on the imperial power, based on the rich historical materials and cases. Except for the introduction and the conclusion, the essay is divided into three parts. The first section summarizes the Confucian's theory of the legitimacy of the imperial power based on the Confucian's rite. In the viewpoint of the Confucians, the imperial legitimacy comes from the mandate of Heaven, the change of the meaning of Confucian's Heaven made the highlights of role of the rite, in which the imperial legitimacy had been proved in the field of making sacrifice, renewing the reign title role and etc. In addition, the role of the Confucian rite on the effect to the imperial power had changed from criticism to construction, and the change strengthened the role of ritual in building a system of imperial power. This part lays the theoretical foundation of the whole paper. The second part expounds the specific roles of rite in building the imperial legitimacy. The third part examines the deconstruction of the Confucian rite to the imperial power, namely limiting the imperial power through Name thought, and the decline of Confucian rite leading to the change of the regime. In short, not only does the rite support imperial legitimacy from the level of the faith, but also provide the maintenance and safeguard foe the regime from the level of system. Only relying on the rite, the imperial power can be established, at the same time they have to be subject to such a universal social order and values. Thus, in ancient times, whether it is the Central Han regime, or the minority regime, the rite actually played a role as which the law limits the political power in modern society, so it established the political system of enlightened despotism.