韋伯論傳統中國法律之再探：法律社會學中的多元脈絡性

Max Weber's Traditional Chinese Law Revisited: A Poly-Contextuality in the Sociology of Law

韋伯（1864-1920）的比較社會學帶有三個特徵：雙元的比較（在文化之內與文化之間）、多面向性的比較（宗教倫理與經濟、政治、法律等面向）、遊走在文化之內∕文化之間的交替性參照。這些特質使他混淆了「啟發性的歐洲中心主義∕規範性的歐洲中心主義」之間的分野，把非西方文化的特定階段視為西方文化中較初級的階段。因此，「實質─不理性」法律（指：法律裁判中具有非正式、家產官僚制、統治者恣意等性質的法律型態）不僅用來描繪中世紀歐洲的法律，也被用來描述中國帝國時期的法律。在韋伯的看來，傳統中國的司法是一種「實質─不理性」的「卡迪審判」（Kadi justice），而非西歐大陸所高度發展出的「形式─理性」司法。本文將細緻地考察韋伯的這個比較研究，並指出韋伯受限於西歐法律文化（與其嚴格的法律概念、法律制訂、法律發現），因而對傳統中國法律有所誤解。透過近年來法律史研究的新成果與本文提出的「多元脈絡性」相互印證，本文認為，韋伯對於在傳統中國法研究之中的「規範性歐洲中心主義」可以被去除，而他在分析架構上的相關洞見則可以被保留下來。

German sociologist and jurist Max Weber (1864-1920) articulated his comparative sociology with three characteristics: It is a dual (intra- and intercultural) comparison, a multidimensional (religious-ethical and economic, political, juridical, etc.) comparison, and additionally he used intra- and intercultural comparison interchangeably. This creates a danger: the demarcation between his 'heuristic Eurocentrism' and 'normative Eurocentrism' becomes blurred. He equated (inadvertently but inevitably) a preliminary developmental stage of Occidental culture to the development of another culture leading in a different direction. According to Weber, the 'substantive-irrational' aspect of law and an informal, patrimonial and arbitrary character of adjudication applied not only to the states of the medieval Occident, but also to Imperial China. At the conclusion of his analysis he took traditional Chinese justice as one kind of substantive-irrational 'kadi justice,' in contrast to the modern Western Continental, fully developed 'formal-rational' justice. The authors have analyzed this comparison in detail and concluded, among other things, that Max Weber was biased by Western Continental legal culture with its rigid definitions of law, lawmaking and lawfinding. Using the conceptual device of 'poly-contextuality' supported by new historical research, the research findings consequently suggest that Weber fell prey to normative Eurocentrism in his study of traditional Chinese law and justice.