August 4, 2008

Dear Colleague:  

    Two great empires—the Roman and the Han—stood at opposite ends of the Eurasian continent for some four hundred years. They were aware of each other's existence. Indeed, there was trade between them along the Silk Road. As empires, they had much in common. They were both greatly accomplished in civil engineering, outstandingly, in road building—roads, of course, being necessary for their emissaries and soldiers to keep control over a sprawling territory. They both had outstanding institutions. Rome, during its imperial phase, had a Senate to balance the power of the Emperor. China boasted a huge bureaucracy manned by scholars who, infused by the spirit of Confucianism, were obliged to remind the Emperor of his duties to the people.

    But there were also striking differences that put the Han empire in a more favorable light. Rome was cruel—carnivorous, as one modern historian puts it. Even a schoolboy has heard of Tiberius feeding his slaves to his fishes, Caligula's sexual athleticism and sadism, and Nero fiddling while his capital burnt. Han emperors could be corrupt, cruel, and weak, but nothing on the scale of their Roman counterparts. An institution celebrated by all layers of Roman society—the gladiatorial contest—was quite inconceivable in Han China. Gladiatorial contests were built on humiliation, bloodshed, and death—the more humiliation and gore on the colosseum's floor the better the spectators liked the show and the more they roared their approval of their Emperor, the ultimate provider of the entertainment. Historian Carlin Barton was so nauseated by this wallowing in cruelty and abuse of power that he feared he might himself be corrupted by merely studying it. (See The Sorrows of Ancient Rome: The Gladiator and the Monster).

    Imperial China was saved from Rome's excesses by a combination of Confucian humanism and a cosmological view of the State. Confucianism preached jen, usually translated as benevolence, and li, which means ritual but extends beyond rituals and ceremonials to behavior in all areas of life. In the cosmological view of the State, the Emperor was not a god to be worshiped as god, something Roman emperors claimed for themselves, but rather a mediator between Heaven and Earth. Wrongful behavior on his part could upset the cosmological order, bringing about both natural and manmade disasters. So when flood, drought, or rebellion struck, the Emperor was obliged to fast, pray, and acknowledge his faults (W. Theodore de Bary, The Trouble with Confucianism).

    Cruelty—that is, official cruelty—was manifest in one area of Chinese society: law. The Chinese did not believe in law, putting their faith rather in jen and li. Law was limited to punishing those who committed violence against the order of society. Notoriously in Western eyes, it allowed water-boarding, thumbnail pulling, etc. to be used to extract information from malefactors who, in the eyes of the State, were not just ordinary criminals, but anarchic terrorists. (See Derk Bodde and Clarence Morris, Law in Imperial China). Strange, isn't it? to think that the Bush administration has finally come around to the Chinese view. Torture is indeed inadmissible in all ordinary civil and criminal cases. To Bush and the Chinese, however, torture is justifiable when not just a citizen or even a group of citizens is threatened, but the order of society itself.

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu