Abstract

The paper devotes to studying the difference of group consciousness and private consciousness, emotionalism and rationalism on legal cultures between China and western countries in perspective of the movie Kramer vs. Kramer. Reasons for these differences are including, first, different legal bases: Chinese legal culture is collective-based while western legal culture is personal-based. Second, legal culture in China is ethicized for the great influence by Confucianism while in western countries legal culture is mostly affected by Christianity, etc. As the globalization has been a rather obvious tendency for the progress of the whole world since the age of 1980s, intercultural communication between China and other countries is more and more intensive than ever. Consequently, studying such differences, evidently, is a helpful way for us to realize more about the western world, and meanwhile, contributes to improving our intercultural communication with western countries.

KEYWORDS:Differences of legal culture; Group consciousness; Private consciousness; Emotionalism; Rationalism

摘要

本研究以电影《克莱默夫妇》为视角，通过联系中国的法律文化来比较中西法律文化的差异，这些差异具体表现在集体主义和个人主义，感性主义和理性主义方面的取向不同。经过研究，造成这些差异的原因包括第一，法律的本位不同，中国法律文化是集团利益本位，而西方法律文化则是个人利益本位。第二，中国法律文化受儒家思想影响，具有强烈的伦理性而在西方，宗教，尤其是基督教对西方的法律形成影响甚深，这导致了西方法律文化具有强烈的宗教色彩等。研究中西方法律文化存在的差异，对我们在日益丰富的跨文化交际活动中减少因互相了解不深而引起的摩擦和提高跨文化交际活动的质量无疑是有重大意义的。

关键词:法律文化差异；群体意识；个人意识；感性主义；理性主义

1. Introduction
As the globalization has been a rather obvious tendency for the progress of the whole world since the age of 1980s, intercultural communication between China and other countries is more and more intensive, contributing to further realization for both. However, for the different cultural backgrounds, the intercultural communication between China and western world is not always going smoothly. Because of lacking of mutual understanding, many problems occur during the process of intercultural communication, including the problems resulted from misunderstanding for the exotic legal cultures. As a result, studying on the difference of the legal cultures between China and western countries possesses a great significance, considering the better understanding for both sides it will bring about and fewer conflicts will occur in the process of intercultural activities. Movie works, among all the ways of studying on legal cultures, is perceivable and intuitive for common audience to taste the differences by themselves, deserving our more attention and exploration.