Han Feizi Research Articles

Shen Dao’s Own Voice in the Shenzi Fragments

Shen Dao 慎到 is known as one of the Legalists who influenced Han Feizi 韓非子 in terms of the concept of shi 勢 (circumstantial advantage, power, or authority). This argument is based on the “A Critique of Circumstantial Advantage (Nanshi 難勢)” chapter of the Hanfeizi, where Han Feizi advances his own idea of shi after criticizing both Shen Dao and an anonymous Confucian. However, there are other primary sources to contain Shen Dao’s thought, namely, seven incomplete Shenzi 慎子 chapters of the Essentials on Government from the Assemblage of Books (Qunshu zhi yao 群書治要) and other fragments preserved in other Chinese texts. This article examines the Shenzi fragments in order to ask whether Shen Dao stresses the concept of shi.

Han Feizi’s Thought and Republicanism

Han Feizi’s philosophy is usually represented as an amoral autocracy where the ruler is the sole political power and runs the state by controlling the people through rewards and punishments. While his system is formally autocratic, this article argues that the purpose behind this system bears some similarity to the republican political ideal of non-domination. In this interpretation, Han Feizi makes the ruler the sole power to mitigate the danger of the state being dominated by ministers. He does not employ republican institutions, but attempts to discourage the ruler from using his power capriciously in order to increase order and security in the state, which are his ultimate political values. Han Feizi is not a republican, but this similarity suggests that when revised for today’s very different circumstances, Han Feizian philosophy’s focus on impartial law can make a contribution to contemporary Chinese political thought.

Han Fei Zi’s Philosophical Psychology: Human Nature, Scarcity, and the Neo-Darwinian Consensus

Han Fei Zi’s Philosophical Psychology: Human Nature, Scarcity, and the Neo-Darwinian Consensus

Han Feizi's Criticism of Confucianism and its Implications for Virtue Ethics

AbstractSeveral scholars have recently proposed that Confucianism should be regarded as a form of virtue ethics. This view offers new approaches to understanding not only Confucian thinkers, but also their critics within the Chinese tradition. For if Confucianism is a form of virtue ethics, we can then ask to what extent Chinese criticisms of it parallel criticisms launched against contemporary virtue ethics, and what lessons for virtue ethics in general might be gleaned from the challenges to Confucianism in particular. This paper undertakes such an exercise in examining Han Feizi, an early critic of Confucianism. The essay offers a careful interpretation of the debate between Han Feizi and the Confucians and suggests that thinking through Han Feizi's criticisms and the possible Confucian responses to them has a broader philosophical payoff, namely by highlighting a problem for current defenders of virtue ethics that has not been widely noticed, but deserves attention.

Rational Choice Analysis In Classical Chinese Political Thought: TheHan Feizi

Area specialists and others have criticized the rational choice approach to political analysis as culture-bound, reflecting a modern western ethnocentric perspective. A study of the Han Feizi, the main text of the classic Chinese Legalist school, shows that the approach applies in cultural contexts greatly different from the contemporary west, and that it can be used to analyze not simply democratic politics but also the politics of despotism. The Han Feizi also makes clear, however, that rationality cannot be understood in the abstract, but only in the context of what the text calls the shi (roughly, “circumstances”). The more useful forms of political analysis are not restricted to a reconstruction of what is rational, but trace out the characteristics of the shi—the political, historical, cultural, and psychological context conditioning action and defining, at least in part, what constitutes rationality.

Psychology in China and the Chinese Psychological Society

Psychology in China and the Chinese Psychological Society

The Internal Morality of Chinese Legalism

It is widely held that there are no indigenous roots in China for the rule of law; it is an import from the West. The Chinese legal tradition, rather, is rule by law, as elaborated in ancient Legalist texts such as the Han Feizi. According to the conventional reading of these texts, law is amoral and an instrument in the hands of a central ruler who uses it to consolidate and maintain power. The ruler is the source of all law and stands above the law, so that law, in the final analysis, is whatever pleases the ruler. This essay argues, to the contrary, that the instrumentalism of the Han Feizi is more sophisticated and more principled than the conventional reading recognizes. It suggests that, by examining the text of the Han Feizi through the lens provided by American legal theorist Lon Fuller, we can observe an explicit articulation of what Fuller called the internal morality of law. The principles of this morality are elaborated and their importance explained. In this way, the Han Feizi is retrieved as a significant reference point for thinking about legal reform in China today.

Han feizi's legalism versus kautilya's Arthashastra

Writing only decades apart, Han Feizi (ca. 250 BCE) and Kautilya (ca. 300 BCE) were two great political thinkers who argued for strong leaders, king or emperor, to unify warring states and bring peace, who tried to show how a ruler controls his ministers as well as the populace, defended the need for spies and violence, and developed the key ideas needed to support the bureaucracies of the emerging and unified states of China and India respectively. Whereas both thinkers disliked the new merchants, Han Feizi seems content with a traditional feudal economy, whereas Kautilya wanted to use the state to increase production and the wealth in the king's treasury. Kautilya also had much more extensive discussions of war and diplomacy.

Han Fei's Doctrine of Self-interest

Chapter 49 of the Han Feizi, entitled 'Wudu' ('The Five Vermin'), includes one of the earliest discussions in Chinese history of the concepts of gong and si: Han Fei (d. 233 B.C.) takes si to mean 'acting in one's own interest'. Gong is simply what opposes si. 'Acting in one's own interest' is not inherently reprehensible in Han Fei's view; but a ruler must remember why ministers propose their policies: they are concerned only with enriching themselves, and look upon the ruler as nothing more than a resource to be exploited in their quest for material aggrandizement. The interests of the ministers and the ruler are diametrically opposed. Ministers hope for a comfortable career; a ruler must weed out the posers in his search for those rare and invaluable adjuvants who are genuinely capable of administering the state. In short, if si is the self-interest of the minister, gong is the self-interest of the ruler.