Chinese Just War Ethics: Origin, Development, and Dissent

Description

This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of warfare ethics in early China as well as its subsequent development. Chinese attitudes toward war are rich and nuanced, ranging across amoral realism, defensive just war, humanitarian intervention, and mournful skepticism. Covering the five major intellectual traditions in the "golden age" of Chinese civilization: Confucian, Daoist, Mohist, Legalist, and Military Strategy schools, the book's chapters immerse readers in the proper historical contexts, examine the moral concerns in the classical texts on their own terms, reframe those concerns in contemporary ethical idioms, and forge a critical dialogue between the past and the present. The volume develops fresh moral interpretations of classical texts such as The Art of War, Mencius, Xunzi, Mozi, and the Daodejing and discusses famous philosophers such as Han Fei and Wang Yang-ming, representing antithetical schools of thought about warfare. Attention is also given to the military ethics of the People's Liberation Army, examining its thinking against the backdrop of its own civilizational context. This book will be of much interest to students of just war theory, Chinese politics, ethics, and philosophy, military studies, and International Relations in general. Cover Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Foreword Preface and acknowledgments Notes on citation styles and Romanization List of contributors Introduction 1 Varieties of statecraft and warfare ethics in early China: an overview PART I The military strategy tradition 2 The Art of War corpus and Chinese just war ethics past and present 3 Warfare ethics in Sunzi’s Art of War? Historical controversies and contemporary perspectives PART II The Confucian tradition 4 The classical Confucian position on the legitimate use of military force 5 Classical Confucianism, punitive expeditions, and humanitarian intervention 6 Xunzi’s moral analysis of war and some of its contemporary implications 7 Wang Yang-ming’s ethics of war PART III The Daoist, Mohist, and Legalist traditions 8 “Weapons are nothing but ominous instruments”: the Daodejing’s view on war and peace 9 Zheng (征) as zheng (正)? A Daoist challenge to punitive expeditions 10 Mohist arguments on war 11 Legalism and offensive realism in the Chinese court debate on defending national security 81 BCE General index Citation index