The Right and The Expedient: A Warring States Dialectic

Abstract

One theme in the political thinking of the Warring States era was whether political action and human action generally were and should be governed by considerations of abstract morality or by expediency. This study explores how this dialectic played itself out in the Confucian, Mohist, Taoist, and Legalist traditions. The study examines the original texts, as they have come down to us, of the major Warring States traditions, critically comparing them and the ideas they articulate against each other, against later Chinese thinking, and against certain trends of contemporary political thinking. The Confucian tradition, reacting against what was perceived as the social and political deterioration of contemporary society, attempted to restore order on the basis of a universal set of objectively valid moral principles that included the satisfaction of human needs and interests, but was in itself independent of particular interests or desires. The circumstances of the times, however, undermined the credibility of such universal moral claims, and rival interpretations, when they did attempt to ground morality, fell back upon loosely utilitarian principles. But this morality void of objective grounding also failed to provide a convincing principle of order. With the Legalist school order came to be based on moral principles, but on individual will and the ability to impose that will on others.