ABSTRACT
Traditionally, Confucianism in its multifarious and sometimes ambiguous manifestations has shaped the political landscape and the political thought of East Asia. For the Confucian, the central concern of the state, as of the enlightened individual, is the cultivation of virtue from which the political goods of peace, unity, order and prosperity flow. The deceptive ease of reconciling opposites through the tao undermined any creative tension that might have existed between a Taoist-legalist version of power politics and the Confucian conservative vision. Political Confucianism came casuistically to accommodate a strict application of law within a hierarchically ordered society. The scattered epigrams of the doctrine's founder Kung fu tz, reveal the initial conditionalities of this understanding of rule, morality, law and obligation. The chapter considers the ideal character of the East Asian understanding of rule and obligation and extents to which it may be considered analagous to or separable from a western understanding of law, constitutionalism and moral identity.
