In this essay I revise, based on the notion of the ‘enlightened ruler’ or mingzhu and his critique of the literati of his time, the common belief that Han Fei was an amoralist and an advocate of tyranny. Instead, I will argue that his writings are dedicated to advising those who ought to rule in order to achieve the goal of a peaceful and stable society framed by laws in accordance with the dao

Bárcenas, Alejandro

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Han Fei’s Enlightened RulerAlejandro BárcenasIn this essay I will revise, based on the notion of the ‘enlightened ruler’ or mingzhu andhis critique of the literati of his time, the common belief that Han Fei was an amoralistand an advocate of tyranny. Instead, I will argue that his writings are dedicated toadvising those who ought to rule in order to achieve the goal of a peaceful and stablesociety framed by laws in accordance with the dao.The sage who makes the laws effective in the state is always acting contrary to theprevailing opinions of the age, but is in accord with the dao and excellence.1Han Feizi, XIVThe interpretative literature on Han Fei has traditionally focused on criticizing hispolitical philosophy, generally accusing him of being the ‘staunchest possible sup-ported of absolute power’ (Pines, 2013, p. 84). As a result, little to no effort has beenplaced in trying to coherently construct his own philosophical perspective. Forinstance, considering how much Han Fei has been judged for allegedly giving ‘eviladvice’ to rulers, there is surprisingly little effort dedicated to studying how heconceived the possibility of an ideal monarch.2 Among other issues, Han Fei’scriticism of the Confucian literati of his time has proven to be a significant factorin the lack of interest that interpreters tend to show with regard to the Legalist’spolitical vision.3 Because of the dominance played by Confucianism in China, begin-ning early in the Han dynasty under the rule of Han Wudi (漢武帝),4 his legacy haspaid a lofty price: his ideas have been subject to considerable disdain and, in the ‘best’cases, consigned to oblivion. When it comes to the research done in Westernlanguages, it seems that the lack of interest in Han Fei’s politics becomes evenmore glaring with regard to his notion of the ideal ruler. Han Fei used a specificterm to refer to such a ruler—no doubt a term of great significance to him since itappears in the text on over 90 occasions. Han Fei called his ideal ruler mingzhu (明主), the ‘enlightened ruler’.5In this essay I will revise, based on his notion of the ‘enlightened ruler’, the extentto which Han Fei is supposed to have justified the use of power in accordance to theidiosyncratic and manipulative will of the ruler or turned power into an end in itself.Correspondence to: Alejandro Bárcenas, Philosophy Department, Texas State University, San Marcos, TX 78666,USA. Email: ab75@txstate.eduAsian Philosophy, 2013Vol. 23, No. 3, 236–259, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09552367.2013.807129© 2013 Taylor & FrancisI will also ponder if it is really the case that for Han Fei, ‘his treatment [of the ruler] isfrequently driven by political ambitions rather than philosophical reflection’ (Lai,2008, p. 173). In addition, I will call into question the idea that what Han Fei wrote isjust a ‘behavioral science’ (Schwartz, 1985, p. 321) or, even worse, that Han Fei‘professed to have no use for morality whatsoever’ (Watson, 2003, p. 7) and conse-quently wrote ‘an amoral science of statecraft’ (Graham, 1989, p. 267).6 Thoseappreciations, instead of clarifying the intentions of his philosophical project, seemto have led a number of interpreters to characterize Han Fei as an apologist oftyranny.7Learning from the PastIn order to understand the intellectual environment in which Han Fei developed hisidea of the ‘enlightened ruler’, I will begin by expounding in general terms the role ofthe past as a model during the third century BCE in China. Han Fei’s writings seemto transmit to the reader the sense that the issue of the meaning of the past was one ofgreat contention during his time (Goldin, 2008). However, this issue was not by anymeans a new one: some two centuries earlier it had already become for Confucius oneof the pillars of his philosophy.Confucius was particularly interested in the prosperous time of the Zhou dynastythat began about the twelfth century BCE and lasted until about the eight centuryBCE, when it lost its centralized government (Pines, 2002a, p. 3; Watson, 2003, p. 5).Confucius, who lived about 250 years after the destruction of the central capital of theWestern Zhou, considered the Zhou dynasty superior to other previous dynasties.8His repeated praise of the Zhou in the Analects guided his disciples in their attempt tofollow the master and apply the wisdom that gave prosperity and integrity to severalgenerations of rulers. With time a certain group of ‘officials’ or ‘literati’, known as shi(士), who filled the middle and lower rank of the civil government became known asru (儒)9 for their concern in transmitting the culture of the Zhou. During thefollowing years, mastery of the Zhou rituals and texts became a valuable qualificationfor public office.Although after the time of Confucius this group of literati became loosely associatedwith Confucianism,10 recent studies on the subject suggest that by the time of Han Feithe ru included a quite broad spectrum of people, from experts in social life, discourseand religious rituals to professional artists and advisors.11 In general, it seems that atleast a significant number of them became quite derailed from the original pursuit ofbecoming accomplished (ren仁) to the extent that, in retrospect, they could hardly beconsidered Confucian at all. For instance, as Cho-yun Hsu explains in his book AncientChina in Transition, they had an attitude of strict respect for the past in which‘tradition determined the criteria for propriety’ (Hsu, 1965, p. 154) and ‘innovationand novelty were indeed seldom acclaimed’ (Hsu, 1965, p. 154). This attitude did nothave any of the openness advocated by Confucius himself (Ames, 1994, p. 3) and, Hsuargues, it seemed to be inspired at least in part by the literati’s literal reading andAsian Philosophy 237utmost devotion to bronze inscriptions and certain stories from texts such as the Bookof Songs (Hsu, 1965, pp. 22–23).12 Han Fei showed particular concern with thedamaging effects to society brought by their corrupt personas and by their stubbornrepetition of past formulas since the actual applicability of their skills appeared to havenothing to do with the pressing issues of the time.13According to Kung-chuan Hsiao’s suggestion, the attitude of those in that periodwho ‘observed the vast and unprecedented transformations underway in society andwho tried to devise positive responses during this time’ (Hsiao, 1979, p. 378) can be,in broad terms, divided into two groups. The first group—formed by scholars ofdiverse tendencies—regretted the fall of the feudal order of the Zhou and wished torescue or recreate it in some form or another. The other group, to which Han Feiseemed to belong, ‘observed that the feudal order was not worth saving and wasalready ready to let it wither away’ (Hsiao, 1979, p. 378). But the issue at hand seemsto be more complex than Hsiao’s simple, but useful, categorization. The separationinto two completely different groups is not entirely accurate. First, it is important torealize that for Han Fei not everything from the time of the Zhou needed to vanish.As the Legalist philosopher explained in chapter XVIII:Whether or not ancient standards should be changed, whether or not establishedstandards should be removed, all depends upon the question whether or not theyare still useful for the present.14As this passage shows, it is possible to argue that, for Han Fei, the Zhou legalfoundation did not need to disappear entirely, but rather become actualized accordingto the current circumstances. In effect it is quite possible, as Hsiao also argued, thatHan Fei’s entire Legalist philosophy might have been inspired by a whole body ofthought concerned with governing by laws that had its origins during the Zhouperiod (Hsiao, 1979, pp. 376–377).By the late third century BCE it seemed from Han Fei’s point of view as if theru, despite their best efforts, had failed to find or educate those people capable ofrealizing a society inspired by the Zhou institutions. Han Fei felt that the literatihad plenty of opportunities to apply their ideas and address the social andpolitical problems of the time. His assessment was that, not only had they failed,but also time appeared to be running out for civilized society before violence andchaos became completely unmanageable. There is a sense of urgency in Han Feithat seems to leave him without any patience to concede more time to thescholars who had become a common sight in the courts of the states thatcomprised China at the time.In this regard, Han Fei’s ideas originated, to a great extent, as a response to thefailure of the literati to apply the model of the Zhou society and of ancient kings tothe political circumstances of the period. While the institutions and the moral fabricof the society continued to decay, it appears that the literati succumbed to the mistakeof turning the pursuit of the ‘traditional Zhou cultural forms’15 into an end in itself.Han Fei was critical of this inflexible stance because it had become stagnant and, thusincapable of adapting to the always-changing circumstances.238 A. BárcenasOnly those who have no understanding of effective government always say ‘do notchange traditions, do not change what is established’. Change or no change, thesage does not listen [to those with no understanding], for he aims only at therectification of government.16In order to further clarify his criticism of those whom he considered to have ‘nounderstanding’ of how to rectify government, because they had shown themselvesincapable of adapting to the political needs of the day, Han Fei tells a story about afarmer who abandons his everyday duties, wishing instead that an unusual momentof luck could strike twice.A man from Song was plowing his field, in which there was a stump. A rabbit ranthrough the field and crashed into the stump, breaking its neck and dying. Fromthen on, the man laid aside his plow and kept watch over the stump, hoping that hewould get another rabbit. But he got no more rabbits in this way, and was thelaughingstock of Song. If one desires to use the government of the ancient rulers toeffectively govern (zhi治) the people of today, one would be doing the same as theman from Song who watched the stump.17Taking into consideration the intellectual background, the point of the passage isquite clear. Han Fei used a metaphorical critique of the literati’s attitude of thetime to mock those who naively thought that history could repeat itself in thesame exact way. For a careful student of the past, such as Han Fei, the thoughtthat an event could happen in the exact same way in two different periods was asign of unfamiliarity with the processual nature of historical events. Historicalrecords showed that just because an event occurred once in history, it did notmean that it could do so again in the same way. In other words, there was nochance that a prosperous dynasty (like the Zhou) could reemerge spontaneouslythrough the blind replication of its institutions and customs. So, if the literatithought that history behaved as a series of events designed by luck, they wereleading society into disaster.Like the man from Song, for Han Fei, the literati of the time were just preaching ablind repetition of the past, and were not concerned with a careful investigation of thesocial and political situation at hand. They had learned a series of set formulas andsimply did not know how to adapt and act intelligently according to the changingcircumstances.In fact, in another passage Han Fei seems to remind the scholars of his time thatthey have forgotten a key teaching from their self-proclaimed master: the intrinsicmutability of everything in the world and the need to be in harmony with it. Itseemed to Han Fei as if they had forgotten that dao ‘denotes the active project of“road building”’ (Ames & Rosemont, 1998, p. 45)18 and not traveling a road made byothers. This means that ideas, like everything else, need to develop if they are to beeffectively applied in a world of ‘silent transformations’.19 Han Fei seems to remindthe scholars that such notions—those that are effectively applied—need to be inharmony with the dao, but when they are alienated from reality, because its histori-cally defined content is not comprehended, they only lead to chaos. In chapter LI, hewrote:Asian Philosophy 239All under the heavens affirm the dao of filial piety (xiao 孝), fraternal respect (ti悌), loyalty (zhong 忠), and obedience (shun 順) but none of them understand toprobe into it and to practice it critically; therefore, all under the heavens is inchaos.20Given the desperate times of the Warring States period, failure to adapt was morethan just a simple and harmless blunder. The actual situation was becoming moredesperate by the day, as society itself faced utter disintegration. The literati continuedto show that they lacked the capability to reflect and consider the foundationalnotions of a society and kept hoping for a return of the Zhou order. Their advicehad become repetitive and lacked the necessary insight to conform to the changingcircumstances; hence, it had become clear for Han Fei that the literati had lost touchwith the political needs of their time.Furthermore, Han Fei observed in another passage that they had become afraid ofchange and continued to mindlessly apply failed policies that, in the best of cases, didlittle more than serve the immediate satisfaction of the people and their rulers.However, one could understand why the literati would prefer to cling to one set ofstandards with considerable devotion when the general feeling of the time was that‘the standard of true and false ceased to exist, so that the permissible and the non-permissible fluctuated from day to day’ (Hsiao, 1979, p. 369). In this regard, they feltas the guardians and providers of stability for a time characterized by contingency. AsHsü explains, they were hoping that ‘if time had stood still the upper elements of thestructure would have retained their conviction of divinely granted superiority, and thelower elements would have had to accept their lot ungrudgingly’ (Hsu, 1965, pp. 22–23). In effect, it seems that they got so accustomed to proposing principles andinstitutions already familiar to them that they behaved as if they did not care aboutthe consequences of applying them to the present, in spite of the fact that thehistorical circumstances had changed.Those who are against changing the ancient traditions do so because they dreadaffecting the stability of the people. Those who do not change the ancient traditionsare following on in the footsteps of chaos. Those who only satisfy the people’sfeelings encourage unrestrained vices. Obtuse people do not understand what leadsto chaos, and if the ruler is weak and cannot implement change, this leads to thefailure of the effective government (治 zhi). Enlightened rulers are able to under-stand the conditions of effective government. Their constancy is such that they areable to implement an effective government even if it goes against the feelings of thepeople.21The harsh reality of the third century BCE was that the ancient institutions andtherefore their social customs (li禮) continued to disintegrate in spite of the scholars’best efforts. For Han Fei, if a new age of prosperity was ever to return to the land, itneeded to be formulated not just as a state of things that perhaps could occur in thefuture, but in a way that could be applied in the present conditions of war anddisorder.Even if a society based on Confucius’ ideas was possible, the fact was that itrequired time to grow and develop, but time had passed by and little had changed.240 A. BárcenasTwo centuries before Han Fei’s era, even Confucius himself admitted that, ‘it wouldtake one hundred years if truly efficacious people (shanren 善人) were in charge ofgovernment to be able to overcome violence and dispense with killing altogether.’22Han Fei realized that even after all this time, ‘among one hundred people there is noteven one who would practice a conduct of high level.’23 Hence, there was no reasonfor a society to continue following a path that only led to failure and, from his pointof view, would continued to do so. The nature of the whole political enterprise neededto shift.During those 200 years between the death of Confucius and Han Fei’s time, thecollapse of the Zhou feudalism gave way to a new set of powerful local feudal lordswho did not belong to the ancient hereditary noble families. Those new feudal lordsbegan an aggressive campaign of war and annexation among neighboring states.Among those states, the land of Qin accumulated more military might than anyother state and by the third century BCE Han Fei’s home territory, the state of Han(韓) as well as many others, faced utter destruction. In other words, neither Han Feinor the people from his land could afford to wait ‘one hundred years’ to achieve peaceand prosperity.In this regard, it is quite possible that Han Fei felt the same way toward the ideal ofa Confucian society as Aristotle did toward Plato’s inability to make the ‘best city’(ἄριστος πολιτεία).24 a political reality. Aristotle clarified in the Politics that it was notenough to be able to formulate in theory the best society, but not know how toachieve its realization:For the best city is often unattainable, and therefore the true legislator and states-man ought to be acquainted, not only with what is best in the abstract, but also withthat which is best relative to circumstances.25Rhetoric and Private Interests (si 私)The failure of the ru to make their view of society a reality was manifested by theadvice given by them to the rulers and their courts. Han Fei saw the literati of his timeas consumed by the pursuit of their private interests (si 私). As a consequence, theywere showing a pervasive disregard for any formulation of standards that could limittheir self-centered enterprise. ‘Most ministers of today defend their private (si 私)ideas,’ Han Fei complained, ‘they do not follow the law, regard wickedness as wisdomand establish their own interests beyond the boundary of the law. To restrict suchconduct, is the dao of the ruler.’26In time, the pursuit of private interests made the literati turn their backs on thepeople they were supposed to help according to the teachings of Confucius, and, inaddition, made them disloyal to the government they were expected to serve. Aconsequence of the private pursuits of the literati, François Jullien writes, was that‘individual knowledge is doomed to remain fragmentary, incomplete and thereforetainted by subjectivity’ (Jullien, 1992, pp. 45–46). As Jullien explains, the literati’s self-centeredness made them ‘fragmentary’ and, therefore, alienated from the overall goodAsian Philosophy 241

Han Fei's Enlightened Ruler

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Han Fei's Enlightened Ruler

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