"Tigers do not grow wings", which seems to be a descriptive state of fact, is actually an ideological value judgment, which contains the pragmatic logic and value premise that "tigers should not grow wings by nature". This is not only an early Chinese philosophical view, but also a simple natural law and justice concept. Nature represented by heaven and earth not only determines the inevitability of human survival, but also determines the order and rules of human existence.
Why can't tigers grow wings? Because the addition of wings by the tiger not only violates the laws of nature, but also breaks the laws of competition and destroys the ecological balance. Different from the evolutionary logic of the Western modern era, traditional Chinese natural law emphasizes the natural symbiotic order between the strong and the weak, the strong may not be constantly strong, the weak may not be permanently weak, and the strong and weak are nothing more than a kind of survival dialectic that is both antagonistic and dependent in a specific context. If the people are water, the king is the boat, the water can carry the boat, and it can also overturn the boat, and the strength and weakness can be reversed in an instant. If the tiger really "soars all over the world with wings" as Zhuge Liang said, it will become an absolute strongman. But the weak eat up, and in order to survive, the strong can only fight with their lives, devour the same kind, and eventually perish.
This is the Chinese style of natural law justice. This understanding of natural nature not only restored the essential aspects of world existence, but also gave birth to China's natural law ideas and legal system design. At the level of natural law thought, Lao Tzu's thimble rhetoric of "man law and earth, earth law and heaven, heaven law and tao law nature" emphasizes the supremacy and uniqueness of nature; "Zhuangzi ZhibeiYou" emphasizes the eternal absoluteness of nature and man's obedience, perception, and imitation of the natural order: "The earth has great beauty without words, the four times there is a clear law without discussion, and all things are reasonable without saying." ”
At the level of the legal system, traditional legal culture not only pays attention to the basic ethics between people, but also realizes the relationship between people and nature. If people are proud of themselves, blindly take what they want, fish with all their might, and kill chickens and eggs, the final result can only be that all things are exhausted and people cannot eat each other. It is worth noting that the "meaning of life" and the "meaning of life" in the philosophy of the I Ching provide ultimate support for the law from the two dimensions of natural law and moral law, respectively: understanding the Heavenly Dao, opening up humanity, and responding to the Heavenly Dao with humanity.
This kind of natural law justice not only provides institutional momentum for human survival, but also gives birth to valuable concepts of order and norms of behavior. Dong Zhongshu's "Three Strategies for Heaven and Man" emphasizes the principle of being big and not taking the small is a natural fair arrangement: elephant rhinoceros has sharp teeth and sharp horns, it can only become a vegetarian; the Tyrannosaurus rex is a carnivore, brave and cruel, it will never be able to give birth to wings again; a person who is in a high position and has a good fortune can no longer covet small profits and seize people's food and clothing. This is both a law of nature and a moral consciousness and a political ethic.
In the relationship between people, Western method culture emphasizes the competition between the strong and weak in survival, and in the relationship between man and nature, it emphasizes the subjective status of man and the conquest and use of nature; while China focuses on the unity of human ties and heaven and man, and eventually develops into an ethical philosophy of the interaction between moral discipline and legal norms.
In short, the tiger's lack of wings belongs to China's simple natural law justice, that is, the so-called "natural righteousness" as the proverb: heaven and earth encompass all temporal and spatial dimensions, representing universality and unity; the scriptures point to natural laws and social laws, representing legitimacy and constancy, undeniable, uncontravening, untouchable, and even more unsubversible. (The author is a professor at the Law School of Guangzhou University and a researcher at the Institute of Real Estate Research)
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Editor: Wang Yue