Relevancy between Corporations and Clans: Ideologies behind Comparative Law

Abstract

This paper places the comparative study of Western Corporations and Chinese Clans in broader historical and ideological perspective. By analyzing that Western legal system traces its tradition to the sacred value, the paper argues that the corporations and corporation law have its origins and benefits from the competition and cooperation among ecclesiastical and secular powers after Papal Revolution in West. On the contrary, tradition Chinese clans have their rootedness in the spiritual orientation of self-cultivation. Confucian self-transformation means a long and unceasing process of delving into his own ground of existence, discovers his true subjectivity not as an isolated selfhood but as a true source of creative transformation. Appreciation of self can only be obtained through genuine communication with other. Ancestral worships--clans are concrete manifestations of the ethicoreligious intention underlying self-cultivation and the established rite in society. By analyzing the radical ideological difference in West and China, the article criticize the methodology of simply mapping Chinese legal practices onto familiar Western conceptual territory, challenging the claim that traditional Chinese family law performed many of the functions that modern American corporation law performs today. The article tries to point out the current comparative study should tolerate difference and compare incomparatbles so as to enjoy the stereophonic quality of the variations between one tradition and the other.