China & East Asia · c. 280–233 BCE
Han Feizi
Prince of Han who synthesised Legalist thought
Combined law (fa), positional power (shi) and administrative technique (shu) into a theory of rule that relies on self-interest rather than virtue. A student of Xunzi, he died in a Qin prison.
Life and thought
Han Fei was a prince of Han, the weakest of the warring states. Sima Qian says he stammered and so wrote rather than spoke, and that he and Li Si studied together under Xunzi. His essays reached the King of Qin, the future First Emperor, who admired them. When Han sent Han Fei to Qin as an envoy in 233 BCE, Li Si, perhaps jealous, persuaded the king that a prince of Han could never be loyal to Qin; Han Fei was imprisoned and forced to take poison.
He fused earlier Legalist ideas into one theory of rule. A ruler needs fa, clear published laws backed by the “two handles” of reward and punishment; shi, the authority of his position; and shu, techniques for controlling ministers, such as holding them to account for matching their words with results. Rule must rest on self-interest, not hoped-for virtue, and must change with the times: clinging to ancient ways is like the farmer of Song who waited by a tree stump for another hare to run into it. Qin applied his ideas; later dynasties wrapped Legalist methods in Confucian language.
Works
Teachers
c. 310–235 BCEXunziConfucian realist who held human nature to be badShaped by
c. 390–338 BCEShang YangQin minister whose reforms built Qin’s powertraditionally 6th c. BCELaoziLegendary sage credited with the DaodejingMeanwhile, in other traditions
c. 360–270 BCEPyrrhoFounder of Pyrrhonian skepticism, who went to India with Alexander341–270 BCEEpicurusFounder of the Garden, a philosophical community near Athensc. 334–262 BCEZeno of CitiumMerchant from Cyprus who founded Stoicism in Athensc. 279–206 BCEChrysippusThird head of the Stoa, its great systematiser and logicianc. 3rd–2nd c. BCE (traditional)JaiminiTraditional author of the Mīmāṃsā SūtraOn the record
Xunzi taught Han Fei, and his “Human Nature Is Bad” chapter argues against Mencius.
Han Fei (d. 233 BCE) and Li Si (d. 208 BCE) are recorded among Xunzi’s former students. The “Human Nature Is Bad” chapter is framed as an argument with Mencius, who was probably long dead; its title may not be Xunzi’s own.