Chinese Legalism the collective views of the Chinese ‘school of laws’ theorists, so called in recognition of the importance given to strict application of laws in the work of Shang Yang (390–338 B.C.) and his most prominent successor, Han Fei Tzu (d. 223 B.C.). The Legalists were political realists who believed that success in the context of Warring States China (403–221 B.C.) depended on organizing the state into a military camp, and that failure meant nothing less than political extinction. Although they challenged the viability of the Confucian model of ritually constituted community with their call to law and order, they sidestepped the need to dispute the ritual-versus-law positions by claiming that different periods had different problems, and different problems required new and innovative solutions. Shang Yang believed that the fundamental and complementary occupations of the state, agriculture and warfare, could be prosecuted most successfully by insisting on adherence to clearly articulated laws and by enforcing strict punishments for even minor violations. There was an assumed antagonism between the interests of the individual and the interests of the state. By manipulating rewards and punishments and controlling the ‘handles of life and death,’ the ruler could subjugate his people and bring them into compliance with the national purpose. Law would replace morality and function as the exclusive standard of good. Fastidious application of the law, with severe punishments for infractions, was believed to be a policy that would arrest criminality and quickly make punishment unnecessary.
Given that the law served the state as an objective and impartial standard, the goal was to minimize any reliance upon subjective interpretation. The Legalists thus conceived of the machinery of state as operating automatically on the basis of self-regulating and self-perpetuating ‘systems.’ They advocated techniques of statecraft (shu) such as ‘accountability’ (hsing-ming), the demand for absolute congruency between stipulated duties and actual performance in office, and ‘doing nothing’ (wu-wei), the ruler residing beyond the laws of the state to reformulate them when necessary, but to resist reinterpreting them to accommodate particular cases.
Han Fei Tzu, the last and most influential spokesperson of Legalism, adapted the military precept of strategic advantage (shih) to the rule of government. The ruler, without the prestige and influence of his position, was most often a rather ordinary person. He had a choice: he could rely on his personal attributes and pit his character against the collective strength of his people, or he could tap the collective strength of the empire by using his position and his exclusive power over life and death as a fulcrum to ensure that his will was carried out. What was strategic advantage in warfare became political purchase in the government of the state. Only the ruler with the astuteness and the resolve to hoard and maximize all of the advantages available to him could guarantee continuation in power. Han Fei believed that the closer one was to the seat of power, the greater threat one posed to the ruler. Hence, all nobler virtues and sentiments – benevolence, trust, honor, mercy – were repudiated as means for conspiring ministers and would-be usurpers to undermine the absolute authority of the throne. Survival was dependent upon total and unflagging distrust.
See also FA, HAN FEI TZU, SHANG YANG.
R.P.P. & R.T.A.