Sean Lee
Judge Dee Essay
Judge Dee Encompassing Three Philosophies
In the Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, the main character Judge Dee is shaped by late imperial Chinese ideals of the Tang dynasty. Judge Dee combines specifically the legalism, Confucianism, and Daoism isms and uses them to shape his own beliefs as well as the opinions of the general population. Judge Dee can in fact be characterized as encompassing the likes of a strict legalist, ritualistic Confucianist, and spiritual Daoist. He has to uphold his role as the Chang-ping district magistrate to continue to be a logical and leading representative of the state. His rulings as a judge will set the precedent and expectation for the people of the district. There are three cases that
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In Judge Dee’s first case called The Double Murder at Dawn, Judge Dee’s subordinate of the village named Warden Pang is interrogated for a crime that happened in his town that he may have had a hand in. When Warden Pang reveals that he made a mistake in thinking for himself and moving the bodies according to his own will (thus disrupting the crime scene), he is immediately punished with a hundred strokes from a bamboo. Judge Dee does not even hesitate to think about his subordinate or any kind of influence this may have on the overall case. For what Pang’s specific action was, he responded with the legalist punishment. It is clear that Judge Dee does not take even the slightest of matters for granted. He believes that the people must be governed using stringent precedent. This can also be seen in Source 63 of Ebrey. In the first case in the sourcebook, Magistrate Dingyuan punishes Azhong after he confesses to a crime of selling his daughter into re-marriage, which he had originally claimed innocence to. The magistrate orders thirty whipping strokes as well as a wooden collar for Azhong’s neck as public humiliation, and then orders the man to make right otherwise he will not be released and will wear the collar until death. This is quite the strict punishment for what he