Comparing Chinese and Western Approaches To Valuing Love and Law

Xiangyang Qian, University of Edinburgh, has published Love Beyond Law: A Chinese/Western Contrast on Law and Emotion. Here is the abstract.

It has been a tradition in China to value emotion over law until today as shown by a recent case in 2014. Such an attitude makes a sharp contrast to the Western one in terms of the law/emotion relation. The differences are rooted in the understanding of the fundamental concepts of reason, emotion and law. China holds a concept of intuitive reason, concrete and broad concept of emotion, and positive and narrow concept of law while the West has the rational reason, analytic and narrow concept of emotion, and abstract and broad concept of law. The Western conceptualization seems to prevail over the Chinese one, epistemolgocially and technically.

Download the article from SSRN at the link.