| Fundamental conceptions of human nature are essential for any intelligible legal and political theory. The dominant view of human nature in contemporary context of legal and political theory adopts a realistic position, which takes human beings as basically rational agents (or homo economicus) that always try to advance their own interest. Thus, aside from promoting personal liberty, legal and political institution should also aim at controlling the dark side of egoist human nature and facilitate the minimum level of social cooperation. The ancient Confucian philosopher Mencius, however, held a naturalistic conception of human nature that is distinct from the"rational person" view. For him, human nature is the moral capacities or potentialities that people have when they are situated in appropriate natural and social environments. Mencius tries to show that the state should pursue fundamental values other than mere enabling the minimum level of social cooperation. In his view, the legal institution is supposed to provide appropriate natural as well as social environments that could support the development of citizens’ moral capacity and facilitate their exercise of virtues by controlling bad moral luck.By incorporating recent empirical studies of cognitive moral psychology, this essay tries to develop a contemporary Confucian virtue theory of law based on Mencian naturalistic conception of human nature. This version of virtue jurisprudence has a distinctive position and thus differentiates itself from more familiar positions like ethical natural law or liberal right-based theory of law. It claims that the development and practice of citizens’ virtues are one of the central values of law. Legislation should provide institutional supports for the realization of human nature and aim at the cultivation of virtuous citizens. This Mencian virtue jurisprudence could be seen as an endeavor to reconcile the conflict between liberty and virtue. |
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