The Art of War corpus and Chinese just war ethics past and present

This chapter attempts to delineate the classical Confucian understanding of the legitimate use of military force by focusing on the thought of Mencius and Xunzi. Both Mencius and Xunzi were born in the Warring States Period, which was roughly the second half of the Eastern Zhou Dynasty. They both do in fact tie their articulations of such limits to the normative ideal of instantiating true humaneness and peace for all people which is the essential point and warrant for having, maintaining, and restoring political order. Ching's article deals principally with the provocative topic of how Confucian moral and political thought may be extended to consider the role of weapons of mass destruction in the contemporary world. A large part of classical Confucian political thought pivots on a distinction wrought from the history, namely the distinction between the politics of the Kingly Way and the politics of the Hegemonic Way.