Shang Yang seemed to act according to his own teachings,[163] and the translator Duvendak described him as “like a bamboo frame holding a straight bow, and one could not get it out of its simplicity,” even though it was spoken by some pre-modern Chinese in defiance of Qin`s case. Although Duvendak wrote in 1928, he believed that Shang Yang should be of interest not only to sinologists, but also to Western jurists. [165] Li Shanchang (1314-1390), the founding prime minister of the Ming Dynasty, studied Chinese legalism. It is said that Li was the closest comrade of the Hongwu Emperor during the war and contributed the most to his final victory and thus to the founding of the Ming Dynasty. [302] Hongwu had deep confidence in the emperor,[303] consulted Li on institutional matters. [304] Li planned the organization of the “six ministries” and participated in the drafting of a new code of law. He established salt and tea monopolies based on yuan institutions, eliminated corruption, restored minted currency, opened iron foundries, and introduced taxes on fish. It is said that the income was sufficient, but the people were not oppressed. [305] Most of his other activities appear to have supported the Hongwu Emperor`s firm control over his regime. He was primarily responsible for detecting disloyalty and factionalism among military officers, using a system of reward and punishment reminiscent of the Han Feizi, and perhaps having some sort of secret police at his service.

Sometimes he was responsible for all civilian and military officials in Nanjing. [305] [306] John Man describes Mao`s early days as an “inveterate” legalist or “a `wise leader` similar to Lord Shang who defined the law according to revolutionary needs.” [312] Now, Shen Buhai has spoken about the need for Shu (“technical”) and Shang Yang practices the use of Fa (“Standards”). What Shu calls is creating positions based on responsibility, holding real services accountable according to official titles, exercising power over life and death, and examining the abilities of all his ministers; These are the things that the sovereign holds in his hands. The Fa includes warrants and ordinances issued to government agencies, punishments that are final in people`s minds, rewards due to careful observers of norms, and punishments imposed on those who violate orders. This is what the subjects and the ministers take as a model. If the ruler is without Shu, he will be eclipsed; If subjects and ministers lack Fa, they will be rebellious. Thus, both can be dispensed: both are devices of emperors and kings. [129] [6]: 94 [130][131][132]: 184 [133][134] Legalism is just one of the many intellectual currents that flourished in China in the three centuries preceding imperial unification in 221 BC.

Often referred to as the age of the “hundred schools,” this period was exceptionally rich in terms of political thought. The burst of interest in political issues is no coincidence: it took place in the context of a serious systemic crisis. The late spring and autumn period (Chunqiu 春秋, 770-453 BC) was marked by the gradual disintegration of political structures in the Zhou 周 Empire (the Chinese world at that time). Gradually, the Zhou world became entangled in a web of crippling battles between rival communities, between powerful nobles and lords within each community, and between aristocratic lines and rival branches within the main lines. In the fourth century BC. J.-C., a certain degree of centralization was achieved in individual communities, but interstate war continued to intensify, giving the new era a disturbing name in retrospect: the era of warrior kingdoms (Zhanguo 戰國, 453-221 BC). As wars became bloodier and more devastating, and there were no adequate diplomatic means to resolve the conflicts in sight, most thinkers and statesmen understood that the unity of “Everything Under the Sky” (tianxia 天下) was the only way to achieve peace and stability (Pines 2000). How to achieve this unity and how to “stabilize everything under the sky” became the central theme raised by competing thinkers. In the final presentation, the ability of legalists to give the most convincing answers to this question became the sole source of their ideological appeal. Unlike other famous philosophers of the time, Han Fei (韓非) was a member of the ruling Han family; In this context, his works have been interpreted by some scholars as being addressed to his cousin, the King of Han. The entire recorded work of Han Fei is collected in the fifty-five chapters of Han Feizi. Han Fei`s philosophy borrowed Shang Yang`s emphasis on laws, Shen Buhai`s emphasis on Shen Dao`s techniques, and Shen Dao`s ideas on authority and legitimacy.

The other main source of his political theories was Lao Zi`s Taoist work, the Tao Te Ching, which he interpreted as a political text and on which he wrote a commentary (chapters 20 and 21 of his book Han Feizi). He saw the Tao as a law of nature that everyone and everyone had to follow. At the same time, he believed that an ideal leader made laws, as an inevitable force of nature that the people could not resist. R. Eno of Indiana University writes, “If one were to trace the origins of legalism as far as possible, it might be appropriate to date his beginnings as prime minister to Guan Zhong (720-645 BC).” [92)”, which “can be seen as a source of the idea that good government implies qualified system design.” Guan Zhong`s reforms applied taxes and economic specializations at the village level instead of the aristocracy, transferring administrative responsibility to professional bureaucrats. He valued education. [93] Promotion should be separated once and for all from the personal judgments of the leader (or his or her ministers). It is enough to check the performance of an incumbent at the lower level of the bureaucracy and promote him to higher positions with more and more responsibility. This objective process of promoting measurable and objective merits became one of the hallmarks of the Chinese administrative system throughout the imperial period and beyond. Shen took it upon himself to try a new analytical solution, advocating fairness as a new virtue, avoiding the interview appointment in favor of mechanical distribution (“the basis of equity”), with the immutable Fa dividing each person according to their performance. The scholar Sugamoto Hirotsugu attributes the concept of Fen, or social resources also used by the Guanzi and Xunzi, to Shen, to whom a “dimensional” difference is given through the Fa, social relations (“Yin”) and division.

[213] [116]: 122, 126, 133-136 Shen Dao emphasizes the possibility that ministers are motivated by moral commitment; On the contrary, these exceptional people should not be employed at all. This sentiment is repeated in Han Feizi, a text that expresses with the greatest clarity his conviction that each member of the elite – like every member of society – pursues his own interests (cf. Goldin 2005: 58-65; 2013). There are morally honest officials, but they are extraordinary individuals: “You cannot even find a dozen men of service with integrity and trustworthiness (shi 士), while there are hundreds of officials inside the borders. If only men of service with integrity and trustworthiness can be employed, then there will not be enough people to fill the positions” (Han Feizi 49:451). This realization is the source of the thinker`s great concern about the ongoing and intractable power struggle between the ruler and members of his entourage (see below) and is also a source of Han Fei`s (and other legalists`) insistence on the priority of impersonal norms and regulations in dealing with leader-minister relations. A strong administrative system should not be based on the trust and respect of ministers; On the contrary, they should be strictly controlled. A political system that presupposes human selfishness is the only viable political system. It became common to adapt legalistic theories to the Han state by justifying them with the classics or combining them with the concept of the “way” or “model of the cosmos” (“The way brought out the law” Huangdi Sijing).

Some scholars “mourn” the lack of pure examples of Taoism, Confucianism, and legalism under the Han Dynasty in general. [292] The Han sources will nevertheless come to “treat legalism as an alternative to the methods of classical philologists.” [293] During the decline of the Han Dynasty, many scholars became interested in legalism, Taoism, and even Mohism,[294] and a number of Confucians attacked “legalistic” methods to combat the growing disregard for the law. [143] This is a strange recommendation: the sovereign should cancel himself completely, both to preserve his authority against the plotting ministers, and to protect himself – wrongly! – to gain a good reputation at the expense of the Minister. But this sovereign, who has neither desires nor observable views, becomes the ultimate slave of his office. For the sake of self-preservation, he must abolish his personality, which is completely flooded by the system he is supposed to operate. A.C. Graham provocatively notes that in Han Fei`s system, the rule “has no functions that cannot be performed by an elementary computer. Could it even be said that in Han Fei`s system, it is the ministers who pass the judgment? (Graham 1989:291).