Han Fei

Han Fei the Chinese philosopher of the third century BC (c. 280-233 BC), the greatest theorist of legalism, who systematised the doctrines of law, administrative technique and statecraft and argued that a strong ruler should govern by impartial statutes, rewards and punishments rather than by virtue.

Life and Death

Han Fei was a prince of the ruling house of the state of Han, one of the small and threatened kingdoms of the Warring States period. He is said to have been a poor public speaker but an excellent writer, and the historian Sima Qian records that even as a young man he wrote essays of great force. He is placed in the second half of the third century BC.

He studied under the Confucian philosopher Xunzi, together with Li Si, who later became the chief minister of the Qin dynasty. Distressed by the weakness and corruption of his own state of Han, Han Fei sent essays to the king of Qin, who was so impressed that he summoned him to court. Li Si, jealous of his fellow student, feared that his talent would eclipse his own.

At the Qin court Han Fei fell under suspicion and was imprisoned, and Li Si sent him poison, against which he was forced to take his own life. He died around 233 BC. His book, however, reached the king of Qin and deeply influenced the policies by which that ruler went on to conquer and unify China in 221 BC.

Law, Method and Power

Han Fei built his system from three principal ideas, drawn from earlier thinkers. The first is fa, law or statute, a body of published and impartial rules that apply to all subjects, high and low. The law should be clear, stable and known to everyone, so that reward and punishment follow predictably from conduct.

The second is shu, method or administrative technique, the art by which the ruler controls his officials. The ruler should hold the levers of appointment, assessment and dismissal, match men to offices according to their capacity, and compare their words with their deeds. He should remain impassive and inscrutable, concealing his preferences so that subordinates cannot exploit them.

The third is shi, position or power, the authority that attaches to the throne itself. Han Fei held that a ruler succeeds not by personal virtue but by the power of his position, and that even a mediocre man can govern well if he occupies the commanding place and uses the instruments of law and method properly.

The Critique of Virtue

Han Fei rejected the Confucian confidence in moral example as the basis of government. He argued that the circumstances of the age had changed, and that the methods of the ancient sage kings no longer fitted the conditions of a populous and warring world. To govern by benevolence, he thought, was to attempt to feed people with the ceremonies of a forgotten age.

He also distrusted the influence of the Confucian scholars and of the wandering persuaders who filled the courts. These men taught doctrines that divided the people and undermined the authority of the law, and a wise ruler should therefore suppress them and rely on farmers and soldiers, whose occupations were useful to the state.

His picture of human nature was bleak. Most people, he thought, act from the expectation of reward and the fear of punishment, and only a few are moved by higher motives. Government should therefore be designed for the many, using self-interest as a reliable mechanism rather than hoping for an unattainable virtue in officials and subjects alike.

The Book of Han Feizi

The work known as the Han Feizi is a collection of fifty-five essays, distinguished by clarity and vigour of argument. The most celebrated chapters include On the Difficulties of Persuasion, which analyses the perils of advising a ruler, and The Five Vermin, which attacks the classes in society, including scholars and merchants, that consume without producing.

Two chapters on the two handles set out the theory of reward and punishment as the ruler's tools for controlling officials. Another chapter retells many anecdotes to illustrate the failure of rulers who listened to flatterers or trusted the wrong men, and it draws from history a long series of cautionary examples.

The Zhuangzi and Laozi both left their mark on the work, and some chapters use Daoist language about non-action to describe the ruler's posture. Han Fei interpreted non-action as a technique of government: the ruler should do nothing himself, leaving routine business to officials, while keeping control of the essential levers, so that he remains serene and unreadable at the centre of power.

Influence and Legacy

The influence of Han Fei on the practice of Chinese government was profound. The Qin dynasty, which unified the empire in 221 BC, drew on legalist ideas, and although the Qin fell quickly and its name became a byword for harshness, the administrative structures and the doctrine of impersonal law that it employed survived into the Han and later dynasties.

Chinese rulers of every age combined Confucian rhetoric with legalist practice. The public face of the state was moral and ritual, while its inner machinery of law, census, taxation and bureaucratic control owed much to the tradition that Han Fei systematised. This combination, sometimes described as rule by Confucian doctrine and legalist method, shaped imperial government for two thousand years.

Han Fei is remembered as the clearest and most uncompromising of the legalist writers. His analysis of power, of the incentives that govern officials, and of the techniques of centralised rule has attracted renewed attention in the modern world, and his book remains a classic of political thought, admired and feared in equal measure.

See also

• Legalism
• Shang Yang
• Xunzi
• Qin dynasty