Legalism (Fajia)

The claim

Three instruments: fa, standardised published law; shu, administrative technique for controlling officials; and shi, the positional authority of the office rather than the person.

What it held

Legalism starts from a refusal. The Confucians want to govern through the ruler's virtue and the people's emulation of it. Han Feizi points out that this requires a sage on the throne, that sages appear about once a millennium, and that a system depending on them will fail for the other nine hundred and ninety-nine years.

So design for the ordinary case. Laws must be written, published and known — Shang Yang is said to have moved a pole and paid the reward to prove the state's word held. They must apply regardless of rank, which is the genuinely radical part in an aristocratic society. And the ruler governs by matching an official's performance to the claim he made when appointed, not by liking him.

Han Feizi's psychology is bleak and clear-eyed. People act from self-interest, including ministers, including family; the carriage-maker wants people rich and the coffin-maker wants them dead, and neither is wicked. Build the incentives accordingly.

The Qin adopted it, unified China in 221 BCE, and collapsed in fifteen years. The verdict on Legalism has been shaped by that ever since — though every subsequent dynasty used its machinery under Confucian language.

How it argued

Political analysis proceeding from assumptions about incentives rather than about character, with historical cases used as evidence.

What it was arguing against

Confucian government by virtue and Mohist government by merit, both of which Han Feizi regarded as wishful.

Where it disagreed with itself

Whether Legalism has any ethics at all or is purely instrumental. Whether the Qin collapse refutes it or reflects its misapplication.

Common misconceptions

That it is simple tyranny. The insistence on published law applying equally to nobles was a limitation on arbitrary power, and Shang Yang was executed under his own statutes when his protector died — which his followers considered a vindication.

How it began

The Warring States, in which reforming ministers were hired to make weak states strong quickly, and had to produce results a generation before any programme of moral cultivation could.

What became of it

Formally repudiated after the Qin fell. Its administrative apparatus was retained by every dynasty afterwards, described in Confucian vocabulary.

Lasting influence

The Chinese imperial state's machinery. Comparisons with Machiavelli are inevitable and largely fair, and Han Feizi is the more systematic of the two.

Why it still matters

The problem it names — how to design institutions that work when staffed by ordinary self-interested people — is the founding question of modern institutional design.

Put another way

A carpenter's square, which does not care whose wood it is measuring.

Where to start

Han Feizi, the chapters on the two handles and on the difficulties of persuasion. Both are short and both are chilling.

The surprising bit

Han Feizi had a stammer and could not argue in person, so he wrote. The First Emperor read him, said he would die content if he could meet the author, and then had him imprisoned and forced to suicide on a rival's advice.

In their own words

Connections

Opposed by

Confucianism (classical), Mohism, Daoism (Dao-jia)

Influenced

Huang-Lao School

The verdict

The most clear-sighted political philosophy of ancient China, discredited by the speed of its own success.

Sources

• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy