古典中国法律解释的哲学智慧

The Philosophical Wisdom of Classical Chinese Construction of Law

"仁道精神"构成了中国古代哲学的基础。"仁道精神"的核心在于寻求自然秩序中的和谐。在此影响下,古典中国人的法律生活充满了温情的协调色彩,追求情、理、法的和谐统一。古典中国法律的使命主要是为了辅助地求取一种符合"仁道精神"的社会生活,而不是构筑西方社会追求的那种符合个性自由精神和"科学意识"的社会生活。在古代中国,法律也不是至高无上的"真理",人们并不通过法律达到某种"真知",法律主要执行着实现"仁道精神"的功能,法律经常被变通,甚至被替代。当情与法或善与真发生冲突时,法便要让位于情,真要让位于善。中国古代法律解释中的趋善抑真恰恰就是对实践之善的趋向和对法定之善(真)的抑制。正是这样一种法律解释的价值追求,才使得法律即使自身不能很好地实现德礼教化的功能,也能通过一定的法律解释而通达教化的境地。

The spirit of benevolence constitutes the basis of ancient Chinese philosophy, the core of which is to pursue the harmony in natural order and influenced by which the legal life of ancient Chinese are full of harmonious hues, pursuing the harmony and unity of emotion, reason and law. The mission of classical Chinese law is not to construct the social life in harmony with the spirit of freedom of personality and scientific conscious in the Western society but chiefly to pursue a social life in accordance with the spirit of benevolence. In ancient China, law was not the supreme truth; people would not reach the truth by way of law, the functions of which were mainly to implement the reality of the spirit of benevolence with laws always being stretched a point and even replaced. While either reason and law or the good and the true conflicted with each other, law would be prior to reason and so would the true. The rule of favoring the good and restraining the true in the interpretation of ancient Chinese law is just to check the tendency of the good in practice and the good (or the true) in statutes. Just the pursuit of value in the interpretation of law made the law fulfill its functions of sensibility and cultivation through certain interpretation of law, though the functions of cultivation in morality and manners could not be realized appropriately by the law itself.