Legalism (Chinese philosophy)

Huang-LaoLegalism or Fajia (Chinese: 法家; pinyin: Fǎjiā) is one of Sima Tan's six classical schools of thought in Chinese philosophy. Literally meaning 'house of administrative methods' or 'standards' (fa), the 'school' represents several branches of realist statesmen, or 'men of methods' (法術之士; fǎshù zhī shì), who played foundational roles in the construction of the bureaucratic Chinese empire. In the Western world, Legalism has often been compared to Machiavellianism, and considered akin to an ancient Chinese philosophy of Realpolitik. The Legalists emphasized a realist project of consolidating the wealth and power of the state and its autocrat, with the goal of achieving order, security and stability. With their close connections to the other schools, some Legalists would go on to be a major influence on Taoism and Confucianism, and the current remains highly influential in administration, policy and legal practice in China today.'Names are orders: by manipulating a network of names from his polar position, the ruler keeps everything under control. While his orders descend step by step through the official hierarchy to the furthest corners of the realm, performances ascend to be checked by him.'Now Shen Buhai spoke about the need of Shu ('Technique') and Shang Yang practices the use of Fa ('Standards'). What is called Shu is to create posts according to responsibilities, hold actual services accountable according to official titles, exercise the power over life and death, and examine into the abilities of all his ministers; these are the things that the ruler keeps in his own hand.One who murders the ruler and takes his state,' Shen says, 'does not necessarily climb over difficult walls or batter in barred doors or gates. He may be one of the ruler's own ministers, gradually limiting what the ruler sees, restricting what he hears, getting control of his government and taking over his power to command, possessing the people and seizing the state.'The ruler is like a mirror, reflecting light, doing nothing, and yet, beauty and ugliness present themselves; (or like) a scale establishing equilibrium, doing nothing, and yet causing lightness and heaviness to discover themselves. (Administrative) method (Fa) is complete acquiescence. (Merging his) personal (concerns) with the public (weal), he does not act. He does not act, and yet as a result of his non-action (wuwei) the world brings itself to a state of complete order.If the ruler's intelligence is displayed, men will prepare against it; If his lack of intelligence is displayed, they will delude him. If his wisdom is displayed, men will gloss over (their faults); if his lack of wisdom is displayed, they will hide from him. If his lack of desires is displayed, men will spy out his true desires; if his desires are displayed, they will tempt him. Therefore (the intelligent ruler) says 'I cannot know them; it is only by means of non-action that I control them.'The Dao of ruler and ministers is that the ministers labour themselves with tasks while the prince has no task; the prince is relaxed and happy while the ministers bear responsibility for tasks. The ministers use all their intelligence and strength to perform his job satisfactorily, in which the ruler takes no part, but merely waits for the job to be finished. As a result, every task is taken care of. The correct way of government is thus.If one rabbit runs through a town street, and a hundred chase it, it is because its distribution has not been determined... If the distribution has already been determined, even the basest people will not go for it. The way to control All-under-Heaven and the country lies solely in determining distribution.The state has the li of high and low rank, but not a li of men of worth and those without talent. There is a li of age and youth, but not of age and cowardice. There is a li of near and distant relatives, but no li of love and hate.When an enlightened ruler establishes ('duke' or 'public interest'), desires do not oppose the correct timing , favoritism does not violate the law, nobility does not trump the rules, salary does not exceed one's position, a officer does not occupy multiple offices, and a craftsman does not take up multiple lines of work... neither overworked his heart-mind with knowledge nor exhausted himself with self-interest (si), but, rather, depended on laws and methods for settling matters of order and disorder, rewards and punishments for deciding on matters of right and wrong, and weights and balances for resolving issues of heavy or light...The reason why I discuss the power of position is for the sake of… mediocre rulers. These mediocre rulers, at best they do not reach the level of Yao or Shun, and at worst they do not behave like Jie or Zhou. If they hold to the law and depend on the power of their position, there will be order; but if they abandon the power of their position and turn their backs on the law, there will be disorder. Now if one abandons the power of position, turns one's back on the law, and waits for a Yao or Shun, then when a Yao or a Shun arrives there will indeed be order, but it will only be one generation of order in a thousand generations of disorder... Nevertheless, if anyone devotes his whole discourse to the sufficiency of the doctrine of position to govern All-under-Heaven, the limits of his wisdom must be very narrow.Tao is the beginning of the myriad things, the standard of right and wrong. That being so, the intelligent ruler, by holding to the beginning, knows the source of everything, and, by keeping to the standard, knows the origin of good and evil. Therefore, by virtue of resting empty and reposed, he waits for the course of nature to enforce itself so that all names will be defined of themselves and all affairs will be settled of themselves. Empty, he knows the essence of fullness: reposed, he becomes the corrector of motion. Who utters a word creates himself a name; who has an affair creates himself a form. Compare forms and names and see if they are identical. Then the ruler will find nothing to worry about as everything is reduced to its reality.'If the ruler wishes to bring an end to treachery then he examines into the congruence of the congruence of hsing (form/standard) and claim. This means to ascertain if words differ from the job. A minister sets forth his words and on the basis of his words the ruler assigns him a job. Then the ruler holds the minister accountable for the achievement which is based solely on his job. If the achievement fits his job, and the job fits his words, then he is rewarded. If the achievement does not fit his jobs and the job does not fit his words, then he will be punished.'He must be anything but an arbitrary despot if one means by a despot a tyrant who follows all his impulses, whims and passions. Once the systems which maintain the entire structure are in place, he must not interfere with their operation. He may use the entire system as a means to the achievement of his national and international ambitions, but to do so he must not disrupt its impersonal workings. He must at all times be able to maintain an iron wall between his private life and public role. Concubines, friends, flatterers and charismatic saints must have no influence whatsoever on the course of policy, and he must never relax his suspicions of the motives of those who surround him.'(Han Fei's) ruler, empty of thoughts, desires, partialities of his own, concerned with nothing in the situation but the 'facts', selects his ministers by objectively comparing their abilities with the demands of the offices. Inactive, doing nothing, he awaits their proposals, compares the project with the results, and rewards or punishes. His own knowledge, ability, moral worth, warrior spirit, such as they may be, are wholly irrelevant; he simply performs his function in the impersonal mechanism of state.'When the congregation of ministers has assembled, the ruler lets each do as he will (zi ming). If result coincides with claim, this is known as 'upright'; if it does not, this is known as 'hollow'.'The right way to understand all these (things) is to remain in a state of formlessness and non-being. Only if one remains in such a state, may he thereby know that (all things) necessarily possess their forms and names as soon as they come into existence, even though they are as small as autumn down. As soon as forms and names are established, the distinction between black and white becomes manifest... there will be no way to escape from them without a trace or to hide them from regulation... will correct themselves.See also: Hundred Schools of Thought Legalism or Fajia (Chinese: 法家; pinyin: Fǎjiā) is one of Sima Tan's six classical schools of thought in Chinese philosophy. Literally meaning 'house of administrative methods' or 'standards' (fa), the 'school' represents several branches of realist statesmen, or 'men of methods' (法術之士; fǎshù zhī shì), who played foundational roles in the construction of the bureaucratic Chinese empire. In the Western world, Legalism has often been compared to Machiavellianism, and considered akin to an ancient Chinese philosophy of Realpolitik. The Legalists emphasized a realist project of consolidating the wealth and power of the state and its autocrat, with the goal of achieving order, security and stability. With their close connections to the other schools, some Legalists would go on to be a major influence on Taoism and Confucianism, and the current remains highly influential in administration, policy and legal practice in China today. Though the origins of the Chinese administrative system cannot be traced to any one person, the administrator Shen Buhai (c. 400 BC – c. 337 BC) may have had more influence than any other on the construction of the merit system, and might be considered its founder, if not valuable as a rare pre-modern example of abstract theory of administration. Sinologist Herrlee G. Creel sees in Shen Buhai the 'seeds of the civil service examination', and perhaps the first political scientist. Concerned largely with administrative and sociopolitical innovation, Shang Yang (390–338 BC) was a leading reformer of his time. His numerous reforms transformed the peripheral Qin state into a militarily powerful and strongly centralized kingdom. Much of Legalism was 'principally the development of certain ideas' that lay behind his reforms, and it was these that helped lead to Qin's ultimate conquest of the other states of China in 221 BC. Shen's most famous successor Han Fei (c. 280 – 233 BC) synthesized the thought of the other Legalists in his eponymous text, the Han Feizi. Written around 240 BC, the Han Feizi is commonly thought of as the greatest of all Legalist texts, and is believed to contain the first commentaries on the Tao Te Ching in history. The explicit Legalist school can be traced to him. Sun Tzu's The Art of War incorporates both a Taoist philosophy of inaction and impartiality, and a Legalist system of punishment and rewards, recalling Han Fei's concepts of power (shi) and tactics (shu). Attracting the attention of the First Emperor, It is often said that succeeding emperors followed the template set by Han Fei. Calling them the 'theorists of the state', sinologist Jacques Gernet considered the Legalists to be the most important intellectual tradition of the fourth and third centuries BC. The Legalists pioneered the centralizing measures and the economic organization of the population by the state that characterized the entire period from the Qin to the Tang dynasty: the Han dynasty took over the governmental institutions of the Qin dynasty almost unchanged. Legalism rose to prominence again in the Mao Zedong era, when it was hailed as a 'progressive' intellectual current. The Zhou dynasty was divided between the masses and the hereditary noblemen. The latter were placed to obtain office and political power, owing allegiance to the local prince, who owed allegiance to the Son of Heaven. The dynasty operated according to the principles of Li and punishment. The former was applied only to aristocrats, the latter only to commoners. The earliest Zhou kings kept a firm personal hand on the government, depending on their personal capacities, personal relations between ruler and minister, and upon military might. The technique of centralized government being so little developed, they deputed authority to feudal lords. When the Zhou kings could no longer grant new fiefs, their power began to decline, vassals began to identify with their own regions, and schismatic hostility occurred between the Chinese states. Aristocratic families became very important, by virtue of their ancestral prestige wielding great power and proving a divisive force. In the Spring and Autumn period (771–476 BC), rulers began to directly appoint state officials to provide advice and management, leading to the decline of inherited privileges and bringing fundamental structural transformations as a result of what may be termed 'social engineering from above.' Most Warring States period thinkers tried to accommodate a 'changing with the times' paradigm, and each of the schools of thought sought to provide an answer for the attainment of sociopolitical stability. Confucianism, commonly considered to be China's ruling ethos, was articulated in opposition to the establishment of legal codes, the earliest of which were inscribed on bronze vessels in the sixth century BC. For the Confucians, the Classics provided the preconditions for knowledge. Orthodox Confucians tended to consider organizational details beneath both minister and ruler, leaving such matters to underlings, and furthermore wanted ministers to control the ruler.