ENTRE INFERNOS : UMA PONTE OU UM ABISMO?在地獄之間：橋樑或深淵？
The article discusses the configuration of "hells" in Sino-Taoist religious thought and examines their relationship with models of earthly justice, proposing that the image of punishment in the afterlife constitutes not merely a moral metaphor, but a cultural device that articulates law, governance,...
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| Published in: | Review of Culture |
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| Format: | Articles |
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Instituto Cultural de Macau
2014
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| Online Access: | https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/pdfViewerParts/40048/2350 |
| Summary: | The article discusses the configuration of "hells" in Sino-Taoist religious thought and examines their relationship with models of earthly justice, proposing that the image of punishment in the afterlife constitutes not merely a moral metaphor, but a cultural device that articulates law, governance, and social order. Based on the hypothesis that a structural analogy exists between underworld courts and human judicial practices, the author argues that infernal punitive rituals mobilize principles intended to be equivalent to Chinese positive law, customary norms, and even categories associated with "natural law" — engaging in a dynamic between transcendence and legality. The analysis, supported by theoretical frameworks on punishment and power (including comparative readings of Ruthven and historiographic references on the Western evolution of "torments"), compares the corporal logic of punishment — at times as retrospective retribution, at others as a mechanism of coercion — with the ambivalence present in both torture and infernal punishments. It concludes that, although Western modernity tends to shift punishment toward correction and discipline, the visual and normative culture of hells in China preserves the centrality of the body, integrating it into theologies, Confucian precepts, and mechanisms of religious justice. |
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| ISSN: | 1682-1106 |