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Thesis Han Feizi was right that good government cannot wait for good rulers

Chen Yuting Fellow
· 6 replies · 214 views
Power & the stateChineseJapanese & KoreanConfucianismLegalismConfuciusHan FeiziOgyū Sorai#fa#legalism#rule-of-law#virtue-politics
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Where it stands

I spend most of my time with the Mohists, but I read Han Feizi to understand why the Confucian picture of government lost so many arguments in the Warring States period, and I want to defend one of his central claims.

The Confucian ideal, put briefly, is government by the ruler's cultivated virtue and by ritual: the ruler sets the example and the people are transformed. Han Feizi's objection is simple. Sages are rare. A system that works only when a sage is on the throne will work once in a thousand years. What you need is a system that works with an average ruler, through fa: public, impersonal standards, applied through what he calls the two handles of punishment and reward, with officials held to account for whether their results match their words.

He mocks his opponents with the story of a farmer from Song who once saw a hare run into a tree stump and break its neck, and then gave up farming to wait by the stump for another. Those who want to govern by the ways of ancient kings, he says, are waiting by the stump.

My thesis is narrow: on this point he was right. Good government must be designed for ordinary rulers. That is why impersonal standards, published and applied regardless of who is in front of the official, matter more than the virtue of the person at the top.

I know the obvious objections: Qin's brutality, and that Han Feizi's fa binds the subjects and not the ruler. I want to hear them argued well.

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6 replies

For the thesis 2

  1. Hamza Qureshi

    For Fellow

    For, as a lawyer, with a big qualification. The core of the rule of law is exactly Han Feizi's insight: don't rely on the character of whoever holds power. Publish the rules, apply them equally, hold officials to their words. But a rule of law worth the name also binds the ruler, and Han Feizi's fa is the ruler's instrument. So he got half of the idea: impersonality without constraint at the top.

    Helpful · 2
    1. Chen Yuting

      Fellow

      Hamza, I accept that, and it is the most serious objection. Interestingly, some texts of the period go further. Silk manuscripts found at Mawangdui, associated with the Huang-Lao current, open with the claim that the Dao generates fa, which at least suggests a standard above the ruler who announces it. I don't want to overclaim what those texts mean. But it shows the idea of law binding the ruler was not unthinkable in that milieu.

      Pei-shan, the shame point is strong. My reply is that shame also needs institutions. Confucian ritual is itself an impersonal standard, applied regardless of the person.

      Helpful · 3
  2. Javier Morales

    For Fellow

    For. Madison put Han Feizi's premise in one line in the Federalist: if men were angels, no government would be necessary. The whole architecture of checks and balances assumes the people in office are not sages. Where Madison goes beyond Han Feizi is applying the same suspicion to the ruler himself. So perhaps the thesis should be: Han Feizi was right about the premise and stopped one step short of its conclusion.

    Helpful · 1

Against the thesis 3

  1. Lin Pei-shan

    Against Contributor

    Against. Analects 2.3 answers Han Feizi before he was born: lead the people with regulations and keep them in line with punishments, and they will avoid trouble but have no sense of shame; lead them with virtue and keep them in line with ritual, and they will have shame and correct themselves. Han Feizi gives you compliance without conscience. Qin unified China in 221 BCE and collapsed within fifteen years. That is not a coincidence; a state of people who obey only when watched needs to watch everyone.

    Helpful · 1
  2. Ji-woo Park

    Against Fellow

    Against the either-or. The Joseon dynasty, which was officially Neo-Confucian through and through, also produced a comprehensive legal code, the Gyeongguk daejeon, completed in the fifteenth century. Korean scholar-officials did not think they had to choose between virtue and law. They thought law was what a virtuous ruler would establish, and virtue what made the law liveable. The debate as you frame it is a Warring States debate; later East Asian states mostly treated it as a false dilemma.

  3. Kenneth Leung Chi-ho

    Against Fellow

    Against, or at least sideways. Ogyū Sorai, in eighteenth-century Japan, offers a Confucian answer that takes Han Feizi's point seriously. He argued that the Way is not a natural order inside us but a set of institutions, rites, music, punishments and government, created by the ancient sage kings. So virtue in the people comes from good institutions, not from the ruler's inner cultivation. That is a Confucian who agrees with you about design and disagrees about what design is for.

    Helpful · 2