Based on this theory, Guo Kang believes that in the foreseeable future, it will be impossible and unnecessary to touch upon internal family issues.
Because bureaucracy replaced feudalism, the prerequisite was that material conditions and education levels could keep up. But in reality, even the Central Plains civilization that first started this system was far from reaching this level. There is no need to take care of these things.
In the early years of the Purple Horde Khanate, like other Central Plains dynasties, they formulated laws to manage disputes within families, but they soon gave up.
The first is that it cannot be managed - due to limited capabilities, in many places it is good to be able to manage a single farm well. More specific management basically depends on the level of the local chief official, and the management details must also be based on local customs. Therefore, these items are basically a piece of paper;
Secondly, they can't manage it well - the Purple Horde Khanate has been short of qualified officials all year round, and until now it can't be said to have solved this problem. If someone is sent to deal with it, they can only intervene simply and roughly, which often leads to bad things.
Therefore, after reflection, the Purple Horde agreed with the church's point of view: everything has its appropriate scope, and if there are things that should not be mixed up, don't mess with it and let the people solve it on their own, which will be better for everyone. Since then, the Khan's court has basically ignored these things.
From the perspective of future generations, this choice is indeed the right one. Problems within families and families were almost all about fighting for the distribution of property. By Guo Kang's time, there was still no hope of solving such problems.
The government's attempt to intervene in management and impose its own likes and dislikes on ordinary people will indeed only make the situation worse. Moreover, these consequences will eventually be fed back to the court itself.
As a bureaucracy, the imperial court also has the instinct to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages. When the feedback is weak, it will not attract attention; but if the feedback becomes strong and threatens the stable environment that the government values most, then the attempt will definitely have to be abandoned.
Rather than going through all the trouble, letting the common people and grassroots officials suffer, and the court itself losing face, it would be wiser to give up as soon as possible. Therefore, the choice of the Purple Horde Khanate is very reasonable.
In Guo Kang's view, even if Shi Huizhen came from an ordinary family, it would be wrong for the Khan's court to intervene forcefully and interfere with her family's choices.
Applying the same feudal model, we can find the problem: this is tantamount to the feudal king forcibly intervening in the internal affairs of the vassal, and even interfering in the selection of the vassal's successor.
Many times, this is indeed an effective way to annex and control vassals, but its cost is as huge as the gain. This is tantamount to breaking everyone's default feudal rules, and will put other vassals into a situation where everyone is in danger. What if the enemy comes next time and the vassals are unable to do their work?
Moreover, the reason why people's feudal kings interfere with their vassals is because they can really benefit from the vassals. What can you gain by interfering with a family now?
At that time, King Xuan of Zhou interfered with the succession issue of Lu State and forcibly abolished the elders and established younger ones, which finally triggered a civil war. Although the Emperor of Zhou later led his army to defeat the people of Lu and supported the monarch he hoped for, later generations believed that this was an important sign of the complete collapse of Zhou Li.
Guo Kang believes that any bureaucrat with a little bit of education should know that he cannot get involved in this kind of thing. Although the people of the Purple Horde Khanate have limited culture, they are not unable to understand such things.
Therefore, Shi Huizhen's hope will definitely not be realized. He suggested that we should find other ways and not continue to worry about this.
It's a pity that Shi Huizhen didn't seem to listen in the end. Judging from what happened afterwards, Guo Kang felt that his talk was probably in vain...
Among the many scholars in the church, Guo Kang is already the most moderate. According to the views of other philosophers, the current state of "legal recognition but default disregard" is wrong.
I also took revenge for my father as an example. Although this topic itself cannot be discussed, during the Eastern Wei Dynasty, there was a public debate on the law in the court. An official named Dou Yuan believed that the law at the time stipulated that even if the mother killed the father, the children could not report the mother. This goes against the superiority relationship between parents.
Citing the views of Han Confucians, he believed that throughout history, it can be found that only beasts and savages only value mother and biological blood relationship. The more developed the civilization and the more advanced the society, the more people become more and more transcendent of animalistic reproductive behaviors and begin to pursue a higher order of the clan and the country, and therefore the closer they are to the education of etiquette and morality.
This statement was refuted by another official, Feng Junyi. Feng Junyi believes that the hierarchy within the family and the relationship between parents and children are two unrelated systems. For children, parents should be equal.
He believes that the relationship between superiority and inferiority is endowed by nature, while the gift of procreation is formed innately. Therefore, nature should surpass nurture and occupy a dominant position, and nature cannot negate the relationship between nature and nature. There is no motherless country in the world. The relationship between mother and child cannot be severed and cannot be changed based on specific behaviors.
Dou Yuan's view is actually a summary of the theory of Fu Qian, a great Confucian in the Eastern Han Dynasty. The theory of Fu Qian was a popular knowledge in the Northern Dynasties at that time; while the view of Feng Junyi was inherited from Du Yu and has been the mainstream theory in the Southern Dynasties for a long time. Therefore, this debate actually also brought about the dispute between Han Confucianism and Jin Confucianism, and the dispute between the South and the North.
However, in the end, perhaps because of the greater influence of Du Yu and the Southern Dynasty doctrines, the law remained unchanged under the ruling of the emperor and the minister. In later generations, the laws of the Sui and Tang Dynasties were learned from those of the Eastern Wei and Northern Qi. The laws of the Liao Kingdom were inherited from the Tang Dynasty, and the Purple Horde Khanate copied a large number of legal codes from the Liao Kingdom and the Yuan Dynasty. Therefore, this dispute really had a great impact on the Purple Horde Khanate.
In the view of local scholars, this is the most imperfect part of Seris philosophy and the legal system guided by philosophy - they do not understand the soul.
If you only stick to the physical performance, then no matter how much you debate or argue, in the end it will be nothing more than the level of Dou Yuan and Feng Junyi. In that head-to-head debate, both sides demonstrated their hundreds of years of accumulation and basically threw out their most complete theories. The result of the debate is basically the final conclusion: after hundreds of years, until today, there is indeed no more in-depth discussion.
And until the end, the Seris scholars failed to unify several principles and form a common set of principles of superiority and inferiority.
Greek scholars were very moved by this. The Seris people's theoretical system is actually very advanced, and their social organization model is also very sound, even better than Rome. But the problem lies precisely in this "shortest piece of wood in the barrel". It is precisely because this piece is missing that they can only stay stuck here.
We only discuss ethics at the physical and secular levels, but do not discuss the differences at the soul level; we only discuss the dignity and inferiority from the perspective of mortal children, and do not discuss the dignity and inferiority before God... Surely this cannot lead to a comprehensive conclusion?
And if Greek philosophy is introduced, the problem can be solved instantly - the souls of women and men are different. If we take this into account, everything will be solved.
Therefore, the development of a civilization does sometimes encounter bottlenecks, and it is difficult to solve them on its own. If we really want to develop well, we must learn from each other and make progress together.
Maintain an open and inclusive attitude, learn from each other among different civilizations, and combine Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism with Greek Neo-Confucianism. It is the mission of contemporary scholars to gather the essence of the two major civilizations, form a complete Aristotle-Zhu Xi theoretical system, and establish a complete ethical system.
(End of chapter)
