Judge Dee's Unquenchable Thirst for

Judge Dee's Unquenchable Thirst For Finding The Truth, When Solving Legal Cases Readers of conventional American mystery novels may be somewhat taken aback by the contrary assumptions evident in the plots of the Judge Dee novels. The Judge Dee novels are based upon a real-life Chinese historical personage named Judge Dee, a Tang magistrate, and were only later, in the 20th century, translated for an American readership.

In more conventional American mystery novels, the detective protagonists often work outside the law of the land as private hired guns, or at very least do not function as the objective arbiters of justice. Detectives are self-interested persons working within flexible schemas of morality and pay little attention to ethics or theology, unless these ideals are part of the detective's personal motto or creed.

But the Judge Dee novels are grounded in large societal ethical hermeneutic of Confucian and Taoist morals, whereby finding the truth is a sacred duty of Judge Dee's office, and great dishonor will fall upon the head of any judge who accidentally condemns an innocent man. In fact, if a magistrate like Judge Dee executed someone who was later found to be innocent, the magistrate himself would be executed.

In the pursuit of truth, and as an arm of the emperor Dee also had to show scrupulous fairness to everyone, regardless of the accused or the victim's places in society, even though he had to be mindful of his own, higher place in the Confucian hierarchy of social status and morality. Confucian morality is based upon ancestor-worship and filial duty, and also duty to one's superiors.

Thus, when Judge Dee is presented with a mystery, he is not merely being presented with a professional duty in his paid line of work. As part of the imperial judicial system, under an emperor who rules in fulfillment of his a mandate from heaven, Dee must discover the truth, as he exists as part of the cosmological, imperial hierarchy of order. Order must be restored, according to the Confucian schema of ethics.

Judge Dee must also seek to restore the cosmological order in a moral fashion, when seeking justice, with honesty and with an eye upon the truth. Although, over the course of the mysteries, beautiful women may throw themselves in Dee's way, Dee must not satisfy his own pleasures until the world is returned to its rightful state of affairs and the truth is revealed. His pleasure must be for justice, not the inferior pleasures of the body, unlike the criminals he seeks to capture.

A mystery unsolved is not merely a blight for society, it has implications that touch upon all human affairs as it causes a tear in the fabric of how the world ought to function in an orderly manner. Over the course of the collected works entitled Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee, several cases are brought to the judge's attention. First, the judge is called to arbitrate between the murders of two silk merchants at a hotel.

Second, he must grapple with the problem of the sudden death of a husband at the hands of his adulterous wife. Third, he must confront the horrible prospect of the possible poisoning of a bride upon her wedding night by her young, student husband. The three crimes in this novel are not related, as a reader might suspect, rather they are simply designed to illustrate Dee's prowess and the execution of his beliefs in the service of his office.

Their only common connection in theme is the figure of Dee, and the fact that all illustrate a sundered obligation in the Confucian understanding of the world -- between guest and house (or hotel) owner, and husband and wife. For example, in the first case, the owner of the hotel where the two dead men resided is the most obvious suspect.

The warden of the town assumes the man's guilt because of his low status although Dee does not -- Dee looks to the dead merchants' characters, and beyond personal prejudices. Although Confucianism is based upon a hierarchy of mutual obligations and respect, this does not mean that it is just and right to condemn someone merely because of his or her low status, provided he or she behaves with decorum.

The wife's strange behavior in the second case eventually illustrates her guilt -- Dee finds she has taken a young lover to satisfy her desires, in violation of her wifely duties. Finally, in the third case, the tension-laden time when a new bride comes into the home of a new family and assumes a new set of duties becomes the occasion of an apparent, mysterious poisoning where the bridegroom seems to blame.

One morally striking aspect of all of these tales to the modern reader's notions of justice may the fact that the upstanding Judge Dee investigates the crimes accompanied by a small band of trusted bailiffs. This is the Tang equivalent of a police force, but most of them are former bandits trained in the martial arts! Dee is not the physical enforcer of morality, usually his cohorts get their hands dirty instead.

However, these former bandits are not entirely lawless persons, rather they were selected by Judge Dee to serve a function in aiding him in knowledge of the underworld, and they show and are rewarded for their proper deference before Judge. Although two of them are admitted former thieves, they are loyal and that is what is important. This narrative device allows Dee to behave scrupulously, even while his dearest compatriots may flaunt the law in the name of truth.

Dee does not see these individual's dubious morality as potentially influential upon his own morality. He acts as a teacher and a conduit of ancient wisdom, rather than seems affected by any of the corruption and foolishness around him. The excesses of his friends, when convenient, seem merely part of the natural cycle of his ever-changing circumstances, or the Tao, that permits Dee to find the truth. This attitude also highlights Dee's fairness in all judicial matters -- he embraces all persons, high and low, even amongst his friends.

Over and over again, Dee does not prejudge the victims or the accused, or these former bandits who strive to serve him, rather he tries to piece together what has occurred from his knowledge of the facts and morally teach persons who are willing to learn. Another shocking feature of the Judge Dee tales, besides the lawless background of the police force, is that Dee also occasionally results the use of torture as a judicial tool to find the truth.

However, the purpose of Dee's schema of justice is not to ensure individual rights, but to create an overall society of harmony, although society is constantly in a state of disruption and crime. The hero of the Chinese mystery shows that through the forces of a district magistrate like Dee, truth on earth is necessary and achievable, although he may sometimes have to use extreme measures to realize this ideal.

So long as the extreme measures are done in the name of truth and according to the law, they are acceptable. Dee does not strive to be above the law; he strives to act as an enforcer.

To Western eyes, the use of torture seems like a flagrant violation of the Confusion Golden Rule, of not doing unto others what one would not want done to one's own self, but the necessity of confession under protocol in the Dee novels seems to override this impulse and also shows that no moral creed it obeyed perfectly. The guilty parties have violated their sacred obligations to those on the hierarchy of Confucianism; hence little sympathy is shown to them in the context of the novel.

It is noteworthy that in his stories, Dee functions as both judge and jury, mans the police force in the name of Emperor -- and there are no legal checks and balances of other state officials to protect the rights of the potentially guilty defendant as in America. A magistrate is part of the imperial bureaucracy that traces its authority, its way, its Tao to heaven.

Even the guilty are aware of this -- the accused persons always and must lower themselves before Dee, afraid and also in awe of his power, despite their wickedness. They are mindful of the social protocols that require their deference. Finally, the magistrate must not only determine who is guilty, but also persuade the guilty parties to confess, for it was apparently against the law in Tang-ruled China to convict anyone who has not confessed, another reason why torture was acceptable.

It should also be noted that if a suspect died of the torture without confessing, the magistrate was likely to be executed as well, which was meant to act as a pressure not to torture an individual beyond human endurance. In the name of Chinese justice, the guilty must receive their punishment and the good their reward, and if this did not occur than the magistrate must take the guilty person's place, to fulfill the balance that was necessary of good and evil, yin and yang.

Another oddity to the sensibilities of the modern reader when reading the Dee tales is the relative accuracy of the ever-present dreams, supernatural foreshadowing, and ghosts that enable Dee to find the truth. The connection between the afterlife and the world today was another important aspect of Confucianism. The ability of the supernatural to point the way to the truth shows the essential harmony of nature -- the entire cosmos shows that 'the way' is there, so only if mortal man look to find it, it is there.

There are some features of Dee's detection are similar to modern police work, and do not cause a non-Confucian reader to raise.