Legalism (Chinese philosophy)
Fajia, or the School of fa, often translated Legalism, was a bibliographic school of primarily Warring States period classical Chinese philosophy, incorporating more administrative works traditionally said to be rooted in Huang-Lao Daoism. Addressing practical governance challenges of the unstable feudal system, their ideas 'contributed greatly to the formation of the Chinese empire' and bureaucracy, advocating concepts including rule by law, sophisticated administrative technique, and ideas of state and sovereign power. They are often interpreted along realist lines. Though persisting, the Qin to Tang were more characterized by the 'centralizing tendencies' of their traditions.
The school incorporates the more legalistic ideas of Li Kui and Shang Yang, and more administrative Shen Buhai and Shen Dao, with Shen Buhai, Shen Dao, and Han Fei traditionally said by Sima Qian to be rooted in Huang-Lao. Shen Dao may have been a significant early influence for Daoism and administration. These earlier currents were synthesized in the Han Feizi, including some of the earliest commentaries on the Daoist text Daodejing. The later Han dynasty considered Guan Zhong to be a forefather of the school, with the Guanzi added later. Later dynasties regarded Xun Kuang as a teacher of Han Fei and Qin Chancellor Li Si, as attested by Sima Qian, approvingly included during the 1970s along with figures like Zhang Binglin.
With a lasting influence on Chinese law, Shang Yang's reforms transformed Qin from a peripheral power into a strongly centralized, militarily powerful kingdom, ultimately unifying China in 221 BCE. While Chinese administration cannot be traced to a single source, Shen Buhai's ideas significantly contributed to the meritocratic system later adopted by the Han dynasty. Sun Tzu's Art of War recalls the Han Feizi's concepts of power, technique, wu wei inaction, impartiality, punishment, and reward. With an impact beyond the Qin dynasty, despite a harsh reception in later times, succeeding emperors and reformers often recalled the templates set by Han Fei, Shen Buhai and Shang Yang, resurfacing as features of Chinese governance even as later dynasties officially embraced Confucianism.
The Han Feizi's combination
Likely only meaning "law-abiding families" in Mencius's time, It is unlikely anyone ever literally politically identified themselves as a "Fajia" or fa school. As a model prototype of the idea, Xun Kuang criticizes Shen Dao as "obsessed by fa", comparing figures with the School of Confucius. Han Fei named Shang Yang's current as a fa school; combining Shang Yang with Shen Buhai, the Confucian archivists probably decided that Han Fei was Master of the fa school, putting them under Li Kui as preceding Shang Yang.As chancellors of neighboring states, the doctrines of Shang Yang and Shen Buhai would have intersected before Qin imperial unification, and the Han Feizi is Shang Yang's first preserved reference outside Qin, with the Book of Lord Shang likely going into broad circulation alongside the Guanzi in the late Warring States period. A privileged scion of the Han state, a real Han Fei would been well positioned to acquire information on both his own state's Shen Buhai, and the neighboring Qin state's Shang Yang.
What the Confucians archivists later classed together as the broader fa school is based on this intersection. Later listed together under Fajia in the Hanshu book catalogue, the Han Feizi's chapter 43 contrasts Shen Buhai and Shang Yang as two different schools, with Shang Yang's school focused on fa as including law, ordinances, decrees, reward and punishment, and Shen Buhai fa method, differentiated as Shu technique. Shen Dao is discussed in the Han Feizi's chapter 40 for his views on shi power, depicted as akin to a dragon floating on clouds, much as he is depicted in the Zhuangzi.
Earlier simply identified together under the Han Feizi's doctrine termed Xing-Ming, while Han Fei's predecessors have fa in common, they only become formally identified with the fa school after Sima Tan named schools in the Records of the Grand Historian. As the only other prior evidence for its indirect usage, Han Fei likely contributes to a view of Shang Yang and Han Fei's other predecessors as a Legalist fa school. Seeking to demonstrate superiority, Han Fei elementalizes his predecessors, defining Shang Yang's current as a narrowly "Legalist" "fa school", similarly reducing Shen Dao to a doctrine of shi positional advantage.
Taking Wu Qi as a model reformer of the Chu state, Han Fei actually considers Shang Yang for instance as more comparable with Wu Qi, and these figures not for categorized together in the early Records of the Grand Historian. starting with the Huainanzi Shen Buhai and then Han Fei are gradually paired with Shang Yang over the Han dynasty. Shang Yang, and then Shen Buhai and Han Fei are gradually blamed for the fall of the Qin dynasty.
Posthumous category
While the Book of Lord Shang did have disciples, those the Confucian archivists grouped under Fajia "fa school" in the Hanshu book catalogue probably never formed organized schools to the extent of the Confucians or Mohists, and were not entirely separate from their contemporaries. While the Xunzi and Han Feizi are more advanced as late Warring States period texts, Han Fei's predecessor Chancellor Shen Buhai was not for instance more advanced than other Chinese, just more focused on bureaucracy.Shang Yang, Shen Buhai and Han Fei were more interested in fa law and administrative method because they were from the ruling class. Though there is not enough information on the Warring States, their development was not that dissimilar to Qin, particularly in terms of economic centralizing tendencies. Qin was mainly unique in the degree of its reform, registering and mobilizing all male adults, and setting Qin on a path to dominance. It wasn't fully differentiated from other "feudal" states until the late Warring States reform of Fan Sui, which centralized power in the throne and adopted a more brutal military policy.
Fa as including laws are not the exclusive domain of the school, and Shang Yang and Han Fei's goal of addressing social chaos is comparable to other major figures of the era, Confucius, Laozi, Mozi, Zhuang Zhou, Mencius, and Xun Kuang. While Shang Yang was more radical and successful, agriculture and conscription concerned most thinkers of the Warring States period, with different solutions. Contemporary to Shen Dao, the Confucian Mencius also considered fa necessary, at least in the sense of measurement, instead arguing that a benevolent ruler would attract dedicated soldiers.
Referring to exemplars, with law as a kind, fa was not an independent general principle in the early period. At "the center of the classical discourse", early Mohist thinkers considered fa an "aid in following the Dao". Ancient Chinese thinkers generally argued that they, their ideal society or ruler follows the Dao. Han Fei would never assent that he was simply a Legalist. Han Fei as presented in the Han Feizi would have insisted that his ruler follows the Way of the Ruler. The Book of Lord Shang instead opens by arguing the necessity of changing with the times. While Sima Qian does not see Shang Yang as a Daoist, Sima Tan sees "changing with the times" as an argument about the Dao.
Monarchism
Including chapters like "Way of the Ruler", Han Fei presents the various techniques of fa as tools of the ruler's power. As "the unifying thread of Warring States period political thought", his ideology is arguably monarchist, a position shared by all of his contemporaries, holding in common the necessity of the ruler as figure changing laws to fit the times. Though Han Fei does argue the benefits of fa, it was only possible to overcome the aristocracy with the support of a powerful monarch. While the Book of Lord Shang is more focused on the state than ruler compared with the Han Feizi, Shang Yang as a figure follows this historical pattern, and the first chapter of the book opens centering around the monarch.Although noting similarities to rule of law, Chinese scholarship dating back to Liang Qichao considered Han Fei as relying on a combination of both fa as including law, and what they termed "rule by man", including ideas of "techniques of rule" and "positional power". As long as the ruler has the power to abolish laws, "the ideal of the 'rule of fa'" is "ultimately reduced" to a person, or what modern Chinese scholarship explains as "a reflection of the unshakable monarchic form of traditional Chinese government." The contradiction between a rule of monarch and law is not one of logic, but contemporary politic.
Yuri Pines opposes a view of Han Fei as simply an advocate of “monarchic despotism”; recalling A.C. Graham's Legalist interpretation, he questioned whether Han Fei might be an insincere monarchist, advocating fa law and method at the incompetent ruler's expense. With hesitation, Pines eventually concluded Han Fei is an unwavering monarchist, institutionally, even if he ultimately has low expectations of the average monarch. Intelligent average monarchs will restrain themselves and rely on the system. It is "unthinkable" to abolish monarchism itself, even supposing it might benefit the state; Han Fei instead hopes that intellectuals will show respect to a mediocre monarch and rule in his stead, with "men of service of law and techniques" serving as a model for him.
Late introduction
Situated in the then-remote mountainous west, the early Qin were a minor state until Shang Yang’s reforms propelled it to power in the early Warring States period. He arguably becomes the "most famous and influential statesman" from "the Warring States period." But he was most successful and influential as an officeholder contributing to the founding of Imperial China, not a philosopher who generated a school of disciples.Outside Qin, the classical period likely knows nothing of a Legalist school before Han Fei. Employed as a sociologist at the Jixia Academy, Shen Dao was more evidently broadly well known earlier, in connection with the flourishing academy. Xun Kuang and Han Fei are said to attended later. Xun Kuang demonstrates familiarity with Shen Buhai and Shen Dao, but doesn't seem to know about Shang Yang. What remains of the Zhuangzi is familiar with Shen Dao.
Qin was not considered culturally different until the late period. While its ascent does increase brief discussion of Qin in most texts, such a later major figure as Mencius remained largely indifferent toward it. With late Warring States opinion of the Qin declining to become considered barbarian, the period's major texts produced little about it, despite an increasing interest due to its conquests. Some of Shang Yang's policies continued until later in the Han dynasty, but by the late Warring States period, the Lushi Chunqiu's own internal opinion of him had already declined, and Qin law diverged significantly from the philosophies of works later defined as Legalist.