UC Riverside

This dissertation aims to discuss the subject of “inherited responsibly” in Ancient Greece and Early China via a comparative lens. By “inherited responsibility”, I under most circumstances mean the inheritance of the responsibilities down the lineage in a family, or to quote Solon, “the guiltless will pay for the deeds later: either the man’s children, or his descendants thereafter”, which is also echoed continuously in the Taiping Jing (太平经, The Canon of Grand Peace). In light of the immense and complex nature of the materials covered and of the topic itself, I would like to simplify the connotation of the guilt, since guilt, under the context of inherited responsibility, could take various forms, sometimes vague enough for us to know their exact meaning, the kakon in Solon’s poems, or e (恶, evil) in the Taiping Jing, for instance. In this dissertation, guilt will be understood in their own contexts, without having to conform to one set of system to be judged. Matters such as hereditary social status, which is a very common element concerning inherited responsibility in aristocratic societies but is less relevant to our present discussion, will not be excluded, but referred to when necessary. Moreover, collective punishment, the radical expression of inherited responsibility, will also be incorporated into our analysis.

Inherited Responsibility plays a major role in the reflections of both cultures on divinity, society, laws, and human knowledge in nearly all the Greek genres, epic, lyric poetry, tragedy and historiography, and in early Chinese historiography, laws and religions. The prominence of this phenomenon in ancient Greece and early China is highly dependent on the patriarchal nature of their societies, which emphasizes ancestry, blood descent and family continuation. The similar social structure also allows us a solid foundation for the purpose of a comparative study. This dissertation attempts to further our understanding of the role of inherited responsibility that is played in both cultures in general. And through comparison, we are able to observe some striking similarities of its place in establishing theodicy in philosophy and in historiography, aside from many differences due to particulars in cultural contexts, which also belong to our discussions.