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84 L. Du

Year of Duke Wen” of Zuo’s Commentary to The Spring and Autumn Annals (《左传 ·
文公十三年》).
The relationship between the sovereign and his administration provides
another perspective on the issue of the political legitimacy. Weber defined the
relationship between the two factors as “personal.” The executive branch, he
wrote, is subordinate not to the law, but to specific individuals appointed by the
rulers who are either prescribed or established conventionally. If in ancient China,
the state officials were genuinely mainly composed of Confucians or those who
had received Confucian ideas, then these officials should have had no personal
relationship with the emperor. Although they served in the imperial court and
carried out the emperor’s decrees, they did not obey the emperor as an individual,
but the person on the throne. According to the Confucian ideal, a specific emperor
played merely one role in the ruling order, performing the duties of that position.
Therefore, the officials actually did no more than obey their own ideal, or the so-
called “Confucian orthodoxy.” This tradition was established by Confucius, who
observed, “A minister serves his monarch by following the Way (dao, 道), and
resigns if he can’t” (from “Xian Jin” of The Analects,《论语 · 先进》). And Xunzi
put it more explicitly: “Follow the Way, not the monarch” (“On the Way of
Ministers” in Xunzi,《荀子 · 臣道》).
In ancient China, it was not the succession of the throne according to the rules
of “the traditional ruling order” but the inclusive “virtue” required of the monarch
(as approved by Confucianism) that determined the legitimacy of his authority.
Only by virtue of this “virtue” can the correctness and validity of his authority
and the ruling order be guaranteed. Correctness, which is a belief in the right of
authorities to rule and of members to obey (Easton, 1965, p. 288) and validity
(Weber, 1980, pp. 122–124) lie at the core of legitimacy, so we should, on the
grounds of its unique correctness and validity, present our conception of a unique
“type of legitimate authority” of ancient China —“ethics-politics.” In this way, we
can truly grasp the essence of Chinese politics and understand it better. At the same
time, we take advantage of and modernize this ideological resource in a way proper
to China.

3 The Historical Origins and Principles of “Ethics-
Politics”

“Ethics-politics” as a “type of legitimate authority” is not just an “ideal type” of
concept for government or a fantasy, but a crystal clear historical fact, which dates
back at least to the Western Zhou Dynasty.