Eirik Lang Harris

(Free download from the Cambridge University Press website until June 2) This volume explores a range of conceptions of politically relevant merit found in the philosophical texts of pre-Qin China (before 221BCE). It demonstrates both that the role accorded to political merit was substantial and that the ideas of what constituted politically relevant merit were heavily contested. Through a focus on four texts, the _Xunzi_, the _Mozi_, the _Laozi_, and the _Han Feizi_, it sketches out a long-standing debate over questions including the appropriate source of merit, the relationship between political merit and moral merit, and how merit should be nurtured and directed in the political arena. In doing so, it hopes to show why contemporary discussions of Asian-inspired political meritocracy, its promise, and its perils, are impoverished if they limit themselves to 'Confucian' notions of meritocracy rather than exploring more fully the wider variety on offer.

The relationship that the great realist political philosopher Han Fei had with the Laozi has long been discussed by scholars and the conclusions drawn run a wide gamut. Some argue that Han Fei cynically (mis)appropriated the Laozian vision for “Legalist” ends. Others argue that we find within the _Han Feizi_ the correct interpretation of the Laozi’s teachings. And still others argue that those chapters of the _Han Feizi_ that comment upon the Laozi or draw upon its ideas must not have come from Han Fei’s own hand, for the positions advocated therein conflict with the overarching political philosophy that can be gleaned from the _Han Feizi_. This chapter will provide little for those concerned with the authenticity debate, for its focus is more on philosophical questions. However, I shall suggest that it may be a useful heuristic to read “Explaining the Laozi” (“Jie Lao 解老”) chapter of the _Han Feizi_, which constitutes the earliest extant commentary on the Laozi, as if were written by Han Fei. Following this heuristic allows one to more clearly see the connections between the broader _Han Feizi_ and the “Jie Lao” itself. More importantly, it aids us in seeing the extent to which the _Han Feizi _may have been inspired and influenced by the Laozi. Further, the “Jie Lao” provides us with an additional lens through which to view the Laozi itself – and yet another interpretation of the protean text that is the Laozi. And finally, it provides us with reasons to prefer certain interpretations of the broader _Han Feizi_, those that read the text as not simply a handbook for a totalitarian ruler but rather as a text that grapples with coming to an understanding of the world around us and how most effectively to survive in such a world.

In this article, I endeavour to use Xunzi’s 荀子 views on the hegemon and Han Feizi’s 韓非子 depiction of his ideal ruler to draw out fundamental differences in their political theories. In doing so, my goal is to articulate not merely the similarities and differences between these two sorts of rulers but also what they imply about the goals of rulership for each thinker. The defects that Xunzi attributes to the hegemon help clarify the concerns that he would have with Han Feizi’s ideal ruler. Additionally, Han Feizi’s articulation and defence of his ideal ruler not only leads to an articulation of concerns with rulers that possess the qualities that Xunzi attributes to the true king, but also to problems with rulers who possess the motivations that Xunzi attributes to hegemons.

In terms of philosophical thought, the Mozi and the Han Feizi are perhaps the two most maligned texts from early China, in part because of their opposition to Confucianism. This chapter examines the thought of these texts, focusing on often overlooked similarities. They share a fundamental orientation – that of state consequentialism – and this sets them apart from the majority of philosophical texts from their time period. They also share similar positions on the role of laws and punishments, as well as the appropriate role for moral cultivation, and in this as well find themselves at odds with many of their contemporaries. Identifying these similarities is useful not only for positioning these two texts in opposition to others of the time period, however. Doing so also allows for examining in more detail exactly where and why these texts diverge in their social visions, as well as demonstrating to us the variety of directions open to those who take a well-ordered state and its consequential goods to be central to normative philosophizing.

Most investigations of the great pre-Qin political philosopher Han Fei begin their analysis of his thought by investigating three facets of his philosophy: law, positional power, and administrative techniques. While understanding these concepts is essential to understanding Han Fei’s thought, beginning with them and interpreting them in light Han Fei’s predecessors to whom their origin is often attributed may lead us to an inaccurate understanding of Han Fei’s thought as a whole. This chapter argues that in order to understand Han Fei’s political philosophy, it is essential to come to a deeper understanding of his conception of the dao (way) and how it undergirds this philosophy. In this preliminary attempt to understand Han Fei’s conception of the dao, I argue that he sees this dao as underlying all natural and human processes and that his advice to the ruler about the various methods, laws, and techniques that are appropriate are all aimed in ensuring that the members of the community act in the ways that will best ensure the community’s survival, particularly in instances in which the members would otherwise be disinclined to so act. Han Fei, then, uses his conception of the dao as the basis for constructing a mechanical bureaucratic and legal leviathan to which the ruler plays the role of the phantom oiler. Emulating the cosmic dao while at the same time tying all his tools back to this dao, the ruler remains a mysterious figure, one whose image is made all the more awesome by the inevitability of his reactions to those within the state whose actions do not accord with his conception of the dao.

This chapter examines the development of the role of law in the early Chinese philosophical corpus. It argues that Confucians were not as anti-law as often portrayed, many Legalists were not primarily concerned with the power of the ruler, and neither thought of the value of law as arising from its being a command of the ruler. For the vast majority of early Chinese philosophical texts, the benefits of the law were understood as arising, in part at least, from its naturalistic sources. To the extent that laws were seen as effective, they bore a necessary relationship to a range of underlying patterns in the natural world.

While most discussions of political realism in the West draw their inspiration from thinkers such as Thucydides, Machiavelli, and Hobbes, they were far from the only political theorists developing such an approach. Rather, we see realist approaches to politics not only in a vast array of European thinkers throughout history, but also in in a diverse range of non-European traditions. From Kautilya’s 2nd c. BCE Sanskrit classic to the eponymously named Han Feizi from China, a variety of realist visions were developed alongside arguments detailing structural problems in the more idealist political visions of their rivals. One such thinker, whose ideas have largely been lost to the contemporary world was the Chinese philosopher Shen Dao (c. 350-275 BCE). One of the most philosophical intriguing arguments Shen Dao develops focuses on the sources of political resentment and the necessity of eliminating them as a prerequisite to a strong and stable society and state. This essay develops Shen Dao’s argument that resentment arises not merely when people’s desires are not fulfilled but rather when there was an expectation that they could have been fulfilled and work to demonstrate how he envisions eliminating sources of resentment in the political sphere. In doing so, it engages with much more prevalent Confucian views, demonstrating that Shen Dao presents a trenchant criticism of one of the very bases of Confucian political philosophy and, indeed any political theory that develops itself from moral foundations. This paper closes with an analysis of how Shen Dao’s ideas may be brought into conversation with those of political realists more familiar to a Western audience, with a goal of “pursuing the ideal of working with similarities in differences and differences in similarities.” In particular it raises the question for students of why the worries of resentment were not foregrounded in the West in the way that they were by Chinese realists. This provides students with entry into examining the ways in which different cultures approach very similar topics and allows us to more deeply reflect not only on why certain things were emphasized in a particular tradition but why others were de-emphasized or seemingly ignored.

This chapter focuses on a particular strand of thought in classical Chinese political theory that has often come under the umbrella of the term “Legalism,” a translation of the Chinese term fajia法家. While its exact boundaries vary, depending on who is using the term the Han Shu, lists the works of Shen Buhai 申不害, Shang Yang 商鞅, Shen Dao 慎到, and Han Fei 韓非 under the fajia label, though it was compiled several hundred years after their deaths. My primary goal here is to examine strands of what we might think of as political realism in the early Chinese traditions. While they certainly do not speak with one voice, the texts and fragments that purport to record the ideas of Shen Buhai, Shen Dao, Shang Yang, and Han Fei do share an approach to political theorizing. They all seem to take the strength and security of the state as foundational and all else to be instrumentally valuable insofar as it benefits this goal. Furthermore, they share similar, though not identical, conceptions both of the content of human dispositions and the plausibility of altering these dispositions. They also all see their task as in part to develop a set of tools that will allow them to create a system that can reliably ensure the safety, stability, and strength of the state without having to depend on the ruler possessing particular traits or characteristics. in doing so, these thinkers diverge a range of morally infused trends in early Chinese political theory to develop what they all argue is a more achievable political methodology rooted in the realities of the limitations placed upon us by the world around us and our own dispositions.

This chapter examines a variety of discussions in the Shenzi Fragments that might lead one to think that there is some sort of morality undergirding its political philosophy including: 1) positive references to conventional virtues, 2) an advocacy of according with the overarching Way, and 3) the development of a form of state consequentialism. While it would be possible to construct moral reasons in support of each of these three positions, the Shenzi Fragments does not do so. Rather, as this chapter argues, the justification of each of these positions arises from practical considerations of political order. The normativity at work, then is political in nature, rather than moral.

This chapter argues that the _Shenzi Fragments_, _Shangjunshu_, and _Han Feizi_ all contend that, from the perspective of creating and maintaining political order, the most effective method is for the state to employ the already existing motivations of those over whom it rules. Once human motivations are understood, it becomes a relatively simple task to channel those motivations to get people to act in ways that the state wishes. Implicit in this claim are at least two other commitments: 1) whatever the content of human motivations, this content is sufficiently similar across all human beings that the methods employed to channel it need not vary person by person and 2) human motivations are fairly stable, and their content does not shift in any appreciable way over time. Whether these texts think it is possible to change such motivations, is less clear, though they all argue that attempts to do so at the political level will lead to disaster. While important differences arise amongst these three texts, they are most often differences in focus and detail.

Throughout the text of the Han Feizi, we see opposition to traditional (and often Confucian) perspectives on a wide range of state activities, both internally and externally. This antipathy towards the traditional morally-based criteria for justifying state actions extends to the questions of when, how, and if to wage war. In what we may today think of as reasoning akin to Western conceptions of political realism, Han Fei argues that considerations of morality have no place, either in questions of war and peace or, indeed, in broader questions of politics more generally. This is not, though, to say that Han Fei is uninterested in broader questions of when ware and peace are justified. However, such justifications are based not to be justified by appeal to moral concerns. Rather, the fundamental question to be answered is how the strength, security, and flourishing of the state would be affected by warfare. By viewing questions of war and peace from the perspective of state consequentialism, Han Fei believes that we can ascertain the answers to questions not only about when and if to engage in warfare, but also to questions of what particular actions can be justified within the context of war.

This includes a full translation of the following chapters of the Han Feizi: Ch. 5 – The Way of the Ruler; Ch. 6 – Having Standards; Ch. 7 – The Two Handles; Ch 12 – The Difficulty of Persuasion; Ch 27 – Employing the People; Ch. 29 – The Great Whole; Ch. 40 – A Critique of the Doctrine of Positional Power; Ch. 43 – Establishing Methods of Government; Ch. 49 – The Five Vermin. Ch. 50 – On the Illustrious Schools of Thought Additionally, it includes translations of short sections of the following chapters: Ch. 32 – Collected Illustrations • Outer Part • Upper Left Section; Ch. 35 – Collected Illustrations • Outer Part • Lower Right Section; Ch. 47 – Eight Explanations.

In early Chinese philosophical discussions, a range of prominent philosophers developed conflicting moral and political philosophies and evinced, at times, a certitude of the correctness of their views that leave the reader with the strong impression that no evidence could be proffered that would lead to a chance of these views. Furthermore, in a wide variety of ways, acting on any of these views requires both substantial and comprehensive changes in one’s actions and values in both the personal and political spheres. These elements have led some to describe such philosophers as fanatics, and the political views espoused as fanatical. Without pre-judging the appropriateness of such descriptions, this paper works to examine the philosophical insights that may be gained by turning the lens of (Western) conceptions of fanaticism on a range of early Chinese philosophers.

This paper argues that Han Fei provides us with a theory of punishment that needs not rely upon any sort of moral justification. Furthermore, feelings, including those of disgust, resentment, and anger, are completely irrelevant to the question of punishment. Rather, punishment is simply seen as a mechanistic tool that is employed when some aspect of the political system breaks down, such as when a minister’s proposals do not match their deeds or their deeds do not match their job description. These ideas are quite closely tied to his views on desert, a concept of desert quite different from what we see in the West. Not only does his view lack certain elements that Western desert theorists such as Joel Feinberg consider essential to the very concept of desert, he is quite conscious of this lack and provides a defense of his view. In particular, he offers a conception of desert that does not require that it be conceptually and morally prior to social institutions. As such, Han Fei provides us with a unique lens through which to analyze punishment and its justification that is importantly different from either retributivist or consequentialist justifications.

There is a wide array of contemporary arenas toward which the ideas of Han Fei may be directed. One of these is the arenas where Han Fei may potentially be of use is that of corporate and business ethics. Even if we disagree with Han Fei’s pessimistic assumptions about human dispositions and the plausibility of moral cultivation, we may find such a framework useful for analyzing how businesses, corporations, indeed any sort of bureaucracy can and should function. Milton Friedman was of course famous for his claim that “there is one and only one social responsibility of business―to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game.” On this account, businesses not only do, but should act in a fashion which bears stark similarities to how Han Fei believes that human dispositions lead them to act at the individual level. He then draws a range of conclusions from this, and it is worth exploring the extent to which these conclusions are useful as we determine how to analyze, evaluate, organize, and limit corporate behavior.

What is Chinese Realism and how to update its research program? Realism analyses the world as it is – not as it should be. Realists, then, propose dealing with actual, real-world problems using actual, real-world instruments, such as incentives, rewards, and punishments. Once a major power in classical Chinese philosophy, Realism, or Legalism, fell out of favor early on in Chinese history. Its ideas, however, remain alive and powerful. This edited volume shows that many of the Legalist recipes for creating strength, security, and order can still be applied today. Whether in international relations or corporate ethics, whether in the organization of the public sector or in the role that bureaucrats and politicians play, Realism offers unique ways of aligning these inherently particularistic actions with the broader common good.

The political philosophies of Kongzi, Mengzi, and Xunzi can fruitfully be understood as focusing substantially on politically relevant merit – and as having conceptions of politically relevant merit intertwined with their conceptions of morality and virtue. In short, on their account, politically relevant merit finds its necessary foundation in morally relevant merit. In critiquing this position, Han Fei questions four positions that must be true in order for the early Confucian position to succeed: 1) Politically relevant merit is necessarily tied to moral merit; 2) Virtuous individuals who possess the relevant moral merits can reliably be identified even by those who are not themselves virtuous; 3) Moral cultivation is actually possible; and 4) Those qualities that make someone virtuous can reliably be ascertained. This paper examines the worries that Han Fei has with these positions and offers up an account of Han Fei’s own account of politically relevant merit – a non-moral alternative tied to task specific competencies.

In the Western philosophic tradition, virtue theory has rarely been extended to the political realm. There is a long tradition that advocates the role of virtue in ethical theory, but the implications of this tradition for political theory have largely been neglected. However, in the Chinese tradition, we very early on see the use of virtue-based theories not only in ethics but in political thought as well. Indeed, one of the most sophisticated early Confucian philosophers, Xúnzǐ 荀子 (fl. 298–238 BCE), believes that a virtue-based political theory is a natural extension of his virtue-based ethical theory. At the same time, a prominent anti-Confucian political philosopher, Hán Fēizǐ 韓非子, was diametrically opposed to allowing virtue, or, indeed, any other moral quality, serve as the basis for political theory, arguing instead that a clear set of laws should serve as the fundamental basis. Therefore, this tradition offers us a very clear debate on the problems and promise of a virtue politics. This debate is not only of historical interest, however. To the extent that contemporary philosophers interested in the possibility of extending virtue theory to the political realm take themselves to be prescribing for everyone, as opposed to simply for those within their own cultural background, they must be willing to take into account other traditions that have wrestled with similar issues. In early China we not only see a version of virtue politics, we also see a sophisticated debate about its viability. And, while Xúnzǐ himself may not be capable of answering all of Hán Fēizǐ’s objections, analyzing this debate affords us the opportunity to see how and where a particular conception of virtue politics succeeds and fails, providing contemporary philosophers not only with a set of problems that must be overcome but also with a promising way forward.

In this paper, I wish to examine the plausibility of two distinct but interrelated claims that might arise out of reading the Mozi . First, I want to examine the plausibility of understanding Mohist philosophy as quite naturalistic, notwithstanding the Mozi’s apparent discussion of a Heaven (tian 天) that has desires, likes, and dislikes and ghosts and spirits who do Heaven’s bidding. In this vein, I wonder if the Mohists think that it is simply a fact of the universe that Heaven cares for all humans impartially, in much the same way that certain other thinkers in the Chinese tradition understand Heaven as having a set of regularities that can be understood and acted upon. Arising from this may be the idea that the right thing to do, in a hypothetical rather than categorical sense, is to accord with Heaven. This then leads to the second part of this paper – questioning the substantive moral normativity often ascribed to the Mozi. Once we remove the supra-natural understanding of Heaven from Mohist thought, we may understand the normativity within as a non-moral normativity. Perhaps it is not that we morally ought to accord with Heaven’s will and act impartially or morally ought to accord with the natural world and follow the Dao. Rather, these can simply be seen as success criteria. Insofar as we wish to have a strong, flourishing, and prosperous state – or, in the Mozi’s terms a wealthy, populous and well-ordered state – it is necessary to accord with how the world is actually structured.

Chapter 15 of the Xunzi stands as the most comprehensive account of the early Confucian analysis of warfare. Unlike a range of other early, non-Confucian discussions on warfare, particular strategies and tactics are taken to be of secondary importance. Thus, Xunzi refuses to discuss practical military strategy without framing it within a much broader ethical, social, and political context. On his account, a well-ordered, flourishing state necessarily rests upon a particular set of rituals and social norms in which people can cultivate themselves morally. Such a state has nothing to fear from any enemy, no matter how tactically sophisticated or militarily skilled. To many, such a view seems overly. However, given that Xunzi is anything but Pollyannaish in other parts of the text and is quite pessimistic about human nature in general, it behooves us to dig a bit more deeply into his ideas about military affairs and examine whether they can be understood in a more plausible light. This article provides a reading of Xunzi’s views on military affairs that is internally consistent and corresponds with Xunzi’s broader ethical and political views, while also showing why someone of Xunzi’s obvious intellectual acumen might hold such a view.

This essay examines the role that the the ethical plays in early Confucian political philosophy. By focusing primarily on the political thought of Xunzi, I argue that there is a necessary relationship between ethical ideas and political ideas in texts such as the Analects, Mengzi, and Xunzi. In particular, I argue against a more ‘realist’ reading of the tradition which argues that for early Confucians political order was not only a goal independent of ethical goals but also one in which morality had no role to play. In doing so, I show that interpreting the early Confucians constructing their political thought on top of the scaffolding of their ethical views allows us to make more sense of the broader array of ideas on the political realm appearing throughout these texts.

This essay examines whether an invocation of an epistemological privilege on the part of supposed moral experts prevents potential students from being able to evaluate among potential candidates for the role of plausible moral teacher. Throughout, it works to demonstrate that it is possible for even the untutored student to distinguish between a fanatic and a moral expert. In particular, this essay focuses on the version of virtue ethics espoused by the early Chinese philosopher Xunzi. It argues that by reflecting on the attributes of fanatics, as well as on Xunzi's ideas and arguments about students and teachers, it is possible to arrive at a general set of principles that provide beginners with the tools necessary to distinguish dangerous fanatics from plausible moral teachers, even given the fact that both claim for themselves an epistemological privilege.

One of Han Fei’s most trenchant criticisms against the early Confucian political tradition is that, insofar as its decision-making process revolves around the ruler, rather than a codified set of laws, this process is the arbitrary rule of a single individual. Han Fei argues that there will be disastrous results due to ad hoc decision-making, relationship-based decision-making, and decision-making based on prior moral commitments. I lay out Han Fei’s arguments while demonstrating how Xunzi can successfully counter them. In doing so, I argue that Xunzi lays out a political theory restricting the actions of the ruler through both the use of ritual and law, which allows him to develop a theory that legitimizes government while at the same time constraining itself. Xunzi’s political theory makes important strides in its attempt to recognize the importance of the ruler as a moral exemplar while also restricting his control in the political process.

Although there has been a resurgence of interest in virtue ethics, there has been little work done on how this translates into the political sphere. This essay demonstrates that the Confucian thinker Xunzi offers a model of virtue politics that is both interesting in its own right and potentially useful for scholars attempting to develop virtue ethics into virtue politics more generally. I present Xunzi’s version of virtue politics and discuss challenges to this version of virtue politics that are raised by the Legalist thinker H an Fei. I show that not only is Xunzi’s virtue politics capable of surviving the challenges raised by his contemporary, he offers an account that is in many ways both attractive and plausible, one that may usefully be brought into conversation with contemporary visions of virtue politics

In much of pre-Qin political philosophy, including those thinkers usually labeled Confucian, Daoist, or Mohist, at least part of the justification of the political state comes from their views on morality, and the vision of the good ruler was quite closely tied to the vision of the good person. In an important sense, for these thinkers, political philosophy is an exercise in applied ethics. Han Fei, however, offers an interesting break from this tradition, arguing that, given the vastly different goals of moral theory and political theory, it would be disastrous to rely upon the former to undergird the latter. He develops a distinctly amoral political philosophy that avoids many of the problems he sees as arising from a reliance on particular virtues on the part of the ruler or others within the state. In this paper, I analyze the source of normativity in Han Fei’s political philosophy, arguing that he demonstrates a keen understanding of the problems inherent in any system that relies upon moral standards to develop a strong, stable, and prosperous state. Rather, he demonstrates how an understanding of human nature, along with a recognition of facts about the natural world, allows for the development of a non-moral political philosophy that relies on a systematic bureaucracy and an inviolate system of law, one which will be much more successful, he believes, than anything his competitors can construct.

In this paper, I analyze the ‘Da ti’ chapter of the Han Feizi 韓非子. This chapter is often read as one of the so-called Daoist Chapters of text. However, a deeper study of this chapter allows us to see that, while Daoist terminology is employed, it is done so in a way that is certainly not reminiscent of either the Zhuangzi 莊子 or the Laozi 老子. Neither, though, does it have quite the flavor of other chapters in the Han Feizi where scholars have often read Han Fei s advocating a system of government based on laws promulgated by the ruler, the content of which is left solely to the ruler’s discretion. Throughout this paper, I hope to demonstrate that a reading of the ‘Da ti’ chapter allows us to understand that Han Fei is not simply advocating a system of government based on laws promulgated by the ruler, the content of which is left solely to the ruler’s discretion. This chapter can help us begin to understand that Han Fei has a much more nuanced system and that he advocates law that accords with the overarching pattern of the universe. In doing this, I will show that the idea of fa 法 (standard, law) that we see utilized by Han Fei, both in these chapters do not fall neatly into Western conceptions of law, and thus previous scholars who have worked based on these conceptions have missed important aspects of Han Fei’s thought. I also attempt to demonstrate that this interpretation of law is consistent with the way that it is used in the rest of the Han Feizi.