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Thesis “The best ruler is barely noticed” is compatible with abandonment, and the Legalists exploited exactly that

Chen Yuting Fellow
· 6 replies · 202 views
Power & the stateAmericanChineseModern EuropeanConfucianismDaoismLegalismConfuciusHan FeiziLaoziThomas Hobbes#daoist-politics#invisible-ruler#legalism#political-quietism
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Where it stands

Chapter 17 of the Daodejing ranks rulers. The best are those whose people barely know they exist. Next come those the people love and praise; then those they fear; then those they despise. And when the work is done, the people all say: we did it ourselves; it happened of itself.

It is a beautiful passage and I want to argue that, taken as political philosophy, it is dangerous in a precise way: it does not distinguish between a ruler who is unnoticed because everything works and a ruler who is unnoticed because he is absent. In a famine, an invisible government is a missing one.

The historical twist is that the Legalists understood this better than the Daoists. Han Feizi's book contains two chapters commenting on and illustrating the Laozi, and his ideal ruler is also empty, still and hidden. But the Legalist ruler hides in order to watch, and fills the space where he is not seen with laws, rewards and punishments that work without him. The invisible ruler of the Laozi became, in Legalist hands, the invisible ruler of a state that saw everything.

So my thesis has two parts:

  1. Daoist political quietism cannot by itself tell good government from neglect, because invisibility is common to both.
  2. Its ideal was easily taken over by a theory of total control, because it says nothing about what fills the space the ruler leaves.

I am a Mohist by temperament, so I want governments judged by visible results. Daoists, please defend your sage.

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6 replies

For the thesis 3

  1. Javier Morales

    For Fellow

    For Chen. Dana's example works because the organizer is building something. A state also has to do things nobody can do themselves: hold grain against famine, keep roads, enforce contracts. Chinese dynasties ran public granaries for exactly this reason. Hobbes would say the problem is not that the sovereign is too visible but that without him life becomes nasty, brutish and short. A theory of government needs a list of what government must do, and the Laozi does not give one.

    Helpful · 2
  2. Lin Pei-shan

    For Contributor

    The Confucian position sits between you. Confucius says the virtue of the ruler is like the wind and the people like grass: when the wind blows, the grass bends. So the ruler governs mainly by example, which is a kind of quiet influence, but he is absolutely visible as an example. That answers Chen's first worry better than the Daoist does: you can tell good rule from neglect because you can see what the ruler is like.

    Helpful · 3
  3. Phạm Quốc Bảo

    For Contributor

    In Vietnam we have a proverb: the king's law yields to the custom of the village. For most of our history, the court was far away and the village governed itself. Sometimes that was freedom and sometimes it was abandonment, exactly as Chen says. What decided which it was had nothing to do with the court's philosophy. It depended on whether the village had its own institutions strong enough to fill the space.

Against the thesis 2

  1. Liu Jianguo

    Against Contributor

    I will defend him. The Daodejing does not tell the ruler to do nothing. It says governing a large state is like cooking a small fish: you must not keep poking it, or it falls apart. That is advice about method, not about absence. The cook is there the whole time. He just does not stir. The invisibility in chapter 17 is the result of skilful governing, not a substitute for it.

  2. Dana Whitfield

    Against Fellow

    Against, from community organizing in Chicago. The best organizers I learned from, in the tradition of Ella Baker, worked so that local people led and took credit, and the organizer faded into the background. When it worked, the neighborhood said “we did it ourselves”, which is chapter 17 almost word for word. That is not abandonment. It is the hardest kind of leadership, because you have to build capacity in others instead of exercising it yourself.

    Helpful · 1

Other replies

  1. Chen Yuting

    Fellow

    Thank you. Liu's small fish is the best Daoist answer: the ruler is present, but not interfering. And Dana's organizer convinces me that “barely noticed” can describe the most demanding leadership. I revise my thesis: the Laozi's ideal is not itself abandonment, but it gives no test to tell the two apart, and Bảo's village shows that what fills the space matters more than the ruler's restraint. That is precisely the gap the Legalists filled with their laws.

    Helpful · 1