China

7

China

No two ancient political cultures were more different that those that became established in India and China. Knowledge of ancient China has been revolutionized by archaeological discoveries which are still going on. These include discoveries of important philosophical texts. The Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BCE) was replaced in c. 1046 by the Zhou dynasty. This lasted effectively till 771, and in attenuated form till 256. During the Spring and Autumn period (771–453 BCE),1 there was still an overall cultural community, but the country was divided up into de facto independent states in competition with each other. The Zhou kings remained theoretical overlords, but actual power was divided among hegemons (ba), tied to the Zhou by lineage, but in fact independent. Confucius (c. 551–479 BCE) lived at the end of this period.

From 453 to 221 BCE (the ‘Warring States’ period), competition between states intensified. Smaller states were swallowed up by larger, more powerful states, which became increasingly centralized. During this period of political flux and frequent warfare, Chinese philosophy got started—much as it did during the age of independent poleis in Greece.

Reformers advocating different approaches to government competed for the ear of rulers. The followers of Confucius (‘the gentle (ru)’) (ST 41) specialized in advice on the traditional norms and ritual (li) enshrined in the Classics.2 The followers of Mozi (c. 460–390 BCE) (Mohists) were specialists in defensive warfare.3 Mengzi (c. 379–304 BCE) was the most famous and com- mitted disciple of Confucius. Shang Yang (Lord Shang) (d. 338), chief minister of the state of Qin in western China, introduced a new realist way of thinking about public policy and the state. He and those who thought like him became known as Legalists, due to their emphasis on the written laws of the ruler. Xunzi (c. 310–218 BCE) was a Confucian, but also an original thinker who synthesized different approaches. We shall meet with others.

Between 231 and 221 the state of Qin conquered all the other states in a ruthless campaign, and unified the whole of China. Its king, Qin, proclaimed himself emperor (huangdi: lit. august thearch). In 209 a peasants’ revolt resulted in the establishment of the more amenable Han dynasty, which lasted

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until 220 CE. By this time, the main contours of Chinese political thought and culture were well and truly established. The Shang dynasty, like early states everywhere, was a sacred monarchy.

The king was the lineage head (‘I, the one man’); the state was ‘inseparable from the king and the royal lineage’ (Lewis 1999: 15). The royal ancestral line was ‘the centre of the cosmos’ (Aihe Wang 2000: 43). This view of the central role of the state in the scheme of things survived in China much longer than anywhere else, and is still in evidence today. The Shang ruler had supreme authority. This was related to his religious

functions: only he could perform divination rituals, interpret communications from ancestors, and offer the sacrifices which, it was thought, were needed for prosperity and victory. The well-being of society and the natural order were thought to depend upon due performance of rituals by the ruler. Already ‘written documents played a major role in the organisation of the state’;4

bureaucracy had begun. The revolution of c. 1046 BCE was based on, or gave rise to, the belief

that the ‘Mandate (or Decree) of Heaven’ (tian ming) had passed to the Zhou lineage, because of the Shang’s misrule and the virtue (de)5 of the Zhou. The Zhou took the title ‘Son of Heaven’. This was the beginning of a distinctive theory of sacred monarchy in China. The Mandate played the same pivotal role in China as the Covenant played in Israel, except that the Zhou monarchy sought to monopolize access to Heaven. The Zhou succeeded in establishing ‘an understanding . . . of the world that would undergird all sub- sequent Chinese intellectual discourse’, and the ‘canons of governmental propriety’ (CHAC 351). During the Spring and Autumn period government was still based upon

kinship and hierarchy. But the rulers of the several states, while in theory representing the Zhou emperor as ‘Son of Heaven’, in fact relied on their own military force. Attempts to base inter-state relations on traditional norms failed. The power of these hegemons later devolved to warrior elites, based in cities though still organized in aristocratic lineages. During the later Spring and Autumn period larger states emerged. These

were still supposed to be part of the Zhou cultural community, and acknow- ledged, in theory at least, the same system of behaviour and ritual. But domestic and inter-state politics was now based on naked use of force and unrestrained warfare. The Zhou king, though still nominally ‘Son of Heaven’, was ignored. There was a legitimacy deficit.

Power was based ‘on the unique person of the ruler’.6 Hereditary office and obligation were steadily replaced by the direct control of all subjects by the ruler. Kings came to rely on a new stratum of government officials, the shi. These ‘men of service’ were chosen for their skill and mental agility, ‘a class of men similar to the samurai of medieval Japan [and] originally serving as soldiers’ (CHAC 566, 604). They were employed in civil and military roles,

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for purposes both technical and occult. Rulers relied on the shi as experts in politics, management, warfare, and cosmology. Such were the circumstances in which Confucius taught.

At the same time there appeared ‘a new form of military commander, a specialist’ who led ‘through mastery of military techniques’. In place of aristocratic and lineage values, these leaders ‘presented combat as an intellec- tual discipline’, dependent upon ‘the powers of mind and textual mastery’, combined with ‘the unthinking obedience and uniform actions of the troops’. The general was compared to a sage who discovered, or created, ‘pattern in the chaos of battle’ (Lewis 1990: 11, 97, 121, 230). This parallel chain of command during battle overrode that of the king.

The shi, if they were dissatisfied or could find a better post, would move from one state to another. This gave them a certain leverage, and contributed to their intellectual independence. It also reflected the cultural oikoumenē. The shi saw themselves as members of an intellectual community connecting them to their master regardless of time and place. For them, ‘entering the service meant receiving a rank in the state hierarchy’; in this way a shi could become ‘a legitimate member of the ruling elite’.7

This was of decisive importance for the development of Chinese political thought. It was one reason why the political order played such a dominant role in Chinese philosophy, in fact more dominant than anywhere else. In no other culture would the history of thought and the history of the state be so closely intertwined. Ethical and philosophical reflection developed in response to the increasingly problematic political situation. This was the period of ‘a hundred schools’. China produced a greater variety of political ideas than any other monarchical agrarian civilization.

Traditional norms, though still respected by many, were widely disregarded in practice, and wielders of power resorted to unrestrained force. There emerged a variety of ideas about legitimate authority and public ethics. There was systematic debate of an intensity which we find nowhere else except in Greece. Knowledge entered the public arena; ethics and politics were opened up to discussion, argument, and proof.

But discussion was limited to monarchy and did not, as in Greece, consider other types of state.8 Chinese and Greek philosophy and science may be fruitfully compared, as parallel and equally remarkable, although quite differ- ent, achievements (Lloyd 2002). But a similarly close comparison of Chinese and Greek political thought is less easy, because their accomplishments were quite different.

The role of the shi was one of the primary concerns of Confucius, Mozi, and Mengzi. The shi ‘overwhelmingly opted for a political career as a main avenue of self-realization’. Confucius himself, who has been called ‘the first intellec- tual leader of the shi’, ‘shaped decisively their approach to holding office’, by upholding the moral commitment to serve the government, but only on their

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own terms (Pines 2009: 3, 145–6). For Confucius, the truly noble man (junzi)9

was not necessarily an aristocrat, but someone who lived according to the code of behaviour known as ‘the rites (li)’ (below). The difference between the noble and the ‘small’ man was that the former ‘concentrates on right’, the latter on ‘advantage’, especially financial gain (CA 4.16). Confucius’ father, a warrior and administrator, died when Confucius

was young. Confucius’ Sayings (Lunyu: ‘Analects’) were probably compiled between c. 479 and c. 250 BCE by his followers.10 They are ‘the first text in which the term shi’—referring to ‘people with aspirations’—‘itself becomes an object of enquiry’ (Pines 2009: 120). Confucius served as minister and coun- sellor in various states, often as an adviser on ritual. He repeatedly resigned from posts that proved unsatisfactory. The Sayings take the form of miniature anecdotes, snatches of conversation,

question-and-answer exchanges. They leave spaces to be filled in, questions in the mind. Confucius’ unique teaching method was based on the understand- ing that people make mistakes; the important thing is to correct them (CA 15.30). Above all, his concern is with what can be done (CA 13.3). Indeed, the Sayings reveal a specific approach to the relationship between theory and practice. They communicate a method of moral judgment, an approach to life (B&B 197). The focus is on ethics and ritual conduct rather than on politics; this may have contributed to the work’s lasting influence. The Sayings are comparable, in originality and profundity, with the founding texts of moral or religious development elsewhere.

THE MANDATE AND THE PEOPLE

During the Spring and Autumn period writings on political thought and culture began to appear: parts of the Classic of Odes (Shi Jing) and the Classic of History (or Classic of Documents: Shu Jing), though these were heavily re- edited and added to later.11 These and other Classics12 reached their final form under the early Han. Along with Confucius’ Sayings, they became the textual basis of authority in China down to the nineteenth century (Lewis 1999: esp. 196, 217). According to the tradition transmitted in these works, ancient sage kings,

and especially the founders of the Zhou dynasty, received authority from heaven. Heaven was conceived as ‘cosmic moral order’;13 the political order paralleled the order of the universe. According to the Lüshi Chunqiu (Master Lu’s Spring and Autumn Annals), a compendium incorporating ideas from various schools of thought, completed at the court of Qin in 241 BCE, the ruler ‘plays a crucial role in the cosmic order’ as the Son of Heaven.14 Human society, nature, and the world of spirits coexist in a continuum. This was later

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understood to mean that, for example, in a time of misrule there will be heavenly portents and natural disorders, as well as popular discontent.

The central tenet of the Zhou monarchy, and of political thinkers writing in the Zhou tradition (especially the followers of Confucius), was that the monarch ruled through the Mandate of Heaven. This Mandate was not unconditional: Heaven is impartial and decides ‘the fate of people . . . accord- ing to a moral standard’.15 The Mandate depended upon the ruler’s possessing virtue (de).16 This was used to explain the rise and fall of dynasties in the past (and, later on, throughout Chinese history). Heaven commands the removal of an unjust ruler, and it then transfers the Mandate to a new dynasty.17 For earlier dynasties, which had once been ‘cherished’ by Heaven, ‘have let the Mandate fall to the ground . . . because they did not care reverently for their virtue’ (Classic of Documents: ST 36–7). Similarly, if rulers (during the Spring and Autumn period) ‘deviate from the way of virtue and behave oppressively and licentiously, they will lose Heaven’s Mandate’, and it may turn out that they are overthrown (in Pines 2002: 58). According to Dong Zhongshu (fl. 152–119 BCE), ‘unnatural portents [are] a warning to a badly-disposed mon- arch . . . and in the last resort [may be] a prediction of the end of a monarch’s period of rule’ (Loewe 1994: 95). Thus the Mandate had an ethical dimension.

The monarch alone represented Heaven, with which he was the supreme, indeed the only, mediator. In the Classic of Documents, the king’s role is said to be to provide spiritual as well as material benefits: ‘the sovereign . . . concen- trates the five happinesses and then diffuses them so as to give them to his people’ (ST 31). In contrast to Israel or India, there was no independent priesthood, no ‘prophets’ (Pines 2002: 61). In this respect there was no dividing-line between the sacred and the political. The drive towards admin- istrative centralization and efficiency during the period 453–222 BCE ‘did not eliminate the old model of the ruler as diviner’ (Lewis 1999: 39). Similarly, in later times Daoist priests and Buddhist monks had nothing to do with the political order. All this helped to make non-monarchical forms of government inconceivable.

One key component of the ruler’s virtue, and therefore of his claim to the Mandate, was that he should treat the people well. (The granting of the Mandate to the Zhou was sometimes taken to mean that it had been granted to the Zhou ‘people’, meaning the clan lineage as a whole: CHAC 315; Pines 2009: 190.) It was said that one reason why the Mandate had been transferred from the Shang dynasty to the Zhou was that ‘our King of Zhou treated well the multitudes of the people’; he ‘was richly capable of cultivating and har- monizing [the people]’ (in Creel 1970: 84). A writer under the early Han repeated the view that Heaven favours a government that is good to the people; one that fails to provide for the people falls.18

Quite apart from the Mandate, the Way of the ruler was generally conceived as ‘to benefit others’ (Lüshi Chunqiu, in Pines 2009: 49); Heaven ‘sets up the

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ruler to serve as [the people’s] supervisor and pastor, not to make them lose their nature’; or, as a late fourth-century theorist put it, ‘the Son of Heaven is established for the sake of All under Heaven’, and the ruler ‘for the sake of the state’, not the other way round.19

The condition of the common people (min) was a major concern of Confucius and his followers.20 The people, especially the poor and the disad- vantaged or disabled, should be treated kindly by their social superiors (‘lead them, work them . . . Do not weary them’: CA 13.1).21 This was in accordance with the view stated in theOdes: the people are ‘indeed heavily burdened and it is time for them to rest a while’.22

The Classics sometimes said, or implied, that the existence of the Mandate—in other words, the ruler’s legitimacy—could be discerned from the people’s state of mind. For example, the Classic of Documents said that the king should behave virtuously ‘in order that [he], through the little people, may receive Heaven’s enduring Mandate’ (ST 36–7). Another writer said that ‘Heaven inevitably follows the people’s desires’ (in Pines 2009: 189). Mengzi cited a passage (now lost) from the Classic of Documents to the effect that ‘Heaven looks through the eyes of our people, Heaven listens through the ears of our people’ (Graham 1989: 116). Indeed, Lewis suggests that Confucians ‘identified the people with, or substituted them for, Heaven’, and that to Mengzi in particular ‘the Mandate of Heaven was equivalent to the support of the people’ (Lewis 1990: 236). All this might be thought to imply that acceptance by the common people

was necessary for holding the Mandate. An early Zhou document said that ‘the awesomeness and intentions of Heaven are discernible from the people’s feelings’ (in Pines 2009: 189). Others said that those kings of Shang who were wise had ‘feared the brightness of Heaven, and the little people’; a king should ‘fear the danger of the people’ (Creel 1970: 97–8). This view recurs in the Classics. A ruler should strive to be ‘in harmony with the little people . . . [and] prudently apprehensive about what the people say’ (ST 36). This suggests a fear of the unpredictable. A ruler would be well advised to listen to the people, by ‘consulting the grass- and firewood-gatherers’ (Odes, in HCPT 158). With the decline of the Zhou monarchy, the concept of Heaven itself

changed. ‘There was an increasing tendency to identify Heaven as an imper- sonal, natural, and self-operating force’, perhaps even unintelligible (Yang 1957: 273). During the period from 453 to 222 BCE, the transcendental basis of the state was also conceived as the Way (dao). This made political issues potentially more open to ethical and pragmatic criteria. The dependence of the Mandate (in some sense) on the people may

be related to the changing concept of Heaven. For example, the ritual language affirming the quality of sacrificial offerings was interpreted as af- firming the well-being of the state or the people (Pines 2002: 77). This may be

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seen as a kind of secularization of political thought. ‘The Way of Heaven is distant, while the Way of man is near’, it was said in 523 BCE (in ibid. 69). People began to think that ‘the disasters of the people do not descend from Heaven but arise from men’ (ibid. 59). Quite apart from Heaven, gods in general were regarded with a certain

scepticism. The people are more important. Confucius is famous for having dismissed ghosts and the spirits of the dead as irrelevant to the one important task, serving the people (CA 6.22; 7.21; 11.12). As early as 706 BCE, a political adviser is reported as saying: ‘the people are the masters of the deities. Therefore sage kings carried out the people’s affairs first, and then attended to the deities’ (Zuozhuan, in Pines 2002: 76–7). But it was also sometimes said that the people express the gods’ will, implying that if you please the people, you please the gods. ‘When a state is to prosper, [rulers] listen to the people; when it is to perish they listen to the deities’ (in ibid. 78). In other words, relying on the religious interpretation of phenomena is a last resort of a failing regime, and may be misleading. Or, as Pines puts it, ‘it was the people, not the priests, to whom the deities were really attentive’ (ibid. 71). Xunzi implied that prayers and divination are in reality a mere cultural ritual.23

Under the early Han there was a similar move to interpret omens in a more ‘rationalistic’ way, not as ‘signs of natural order or destiny’, but rather as ‘indications of Heaven’s intentions’ (Aihe Wang 2000: 177). According to Lu Jia (fl. c. 206–180 BCE), ‘Heaven communicates with human beings by rectify- ing them with catastrophes’ (in ibid. 177). This too led (paradoxically, it may seem, but only superficially so) to a moralization and politicization of the interpretation of natural phenomena:

the decline of the world and the loss of [the Way] is not what Heaven makes happen, but rather what the ruler of the state causes to happen . . .When the Dao of ruling is missing below, the pattern of Heaven will reflect it above. When evil government spreads through the people, insect plagues will be generated on earth.24

Social disintegration and natural disasters came to be seen by some as the result of bad government rather than of Heaven (Goldin 2007: 148–52). By these arguments, scholars could overturn the authority of shamans and religious specialists, and claim for themselves ‘the highest authority in omen interpretation’.25

Confucians not only expressed compassion for the sufferings of the people, but were also concerned about how the people actually felt. Many shi were of humble origins. In the Sayings, humaneness (below, p. 188) is said to be closer to the people ‘than water or fire’ (CA 15.35). The man of simple means can act virtuously within his small domain. Confucius praised one who ‘had a lowly hall and chamber, but put forth all his strength on ditching and draining’ (CA 8.2).

It seems to us just one step from these sentiments to saying that the people determine who the ruler should be; or at least, who he should not be. The idea

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of Heaven revealing its will through events, among which manifestations of popular discontent may be one, could perhaps have given rise to an idea of the Mandate as bestowed directly by the people. It was from texts exactly like these that political theorists in Europe developed arguments justifying elections, representative parliaments, and the like. Some Chinese writers seem to have come tantalizingly close to this.

According to a sixth-century source, ministers who are members of the royal family could depose a ruler who persists in his mistakes; in doing so, they would be carrying out the will of Heaven and of the people. For Mozi, the ruler is appointed directly by Heaven, which could mean all kinds of things. For Mengzi, Heaven decides who should be Son of Heaven partly on the basis of public opinion. He was the thinker who came closest to what we call constitu- tionalism and democracy. He told a king on one occasion that, ‘when the ruler makes a serious mistake’, his ministers have a duty to admonish him; and if ‘he still will not listen, they depose him’. But when the king appeared upset by this, Mengzi amended his statement to: ‘they retire’. And he also said that ‘nobody should claim he is a new recipient of Heaven’s Decree’ (for Heaven operates in mysterious ways).26 The Guanzi recommended that a benevolent ruler should not ‘keep the throne from generation to generation’, but resign at the age of seventy.27 In the later fourth century there was a groundswell of opinion in favour of abdication as ‘the only means of ensuring orderly rule’. Hereditary succession was modified as views of the Mandate of Heaven

changed. Other methods of appointing the ruler were considered, and some- times preferred. There was a tendency to apply the principle of appointment on merit to the ruler: a good ruler would give his throne, not necessarily to his sons, but to the worthiest of his ministers.28

But the idea of the people bestowing the Mandate was not developed in China. The connection between the Mandate and public opinion was never taken to imply a right to revolt. Rather, it meant that if, as a matter of fact, the people were alienated and disillusioned, this would signal that the Mandate had departed, and the government would in fact fall. The people express the will of Heaven tacitly and almost unconsciously; and to some extent after the event. The Confucian view, similarly, was one of enlightened paternalism: it is the

duty of government to look after the people, but there was no suggestion that the people were to be consulted about how this should be done. On the contrary, the people are, as a matter of observable fact, moulded by whoever is in power: ‘if you desire the good, the people will be good. The virtue of the gentleman is the wind; the virtue of the people is the grass’ (CA 12.17, 19). Similarly, ‘if one day [the ruler] can overcome himself and turn to humane- ness, the world will turn to humaneness along with him’ (CA 12.1; 13.12). The Confucian ideal was a moral ruler and a moral ruling class who would give the people moral leadership. There was a tendency among Confucians to regard

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the people themselves as ignorant and small-minded. Confucians did not give ‘the people’ any authority to act on their own behalf; only the moral and intellectual elite were qualified to speak for them. But, when they did so, they had a kind of popular authority behind them (Pines 2009: 210).

There was thus no question of the people’s active participation in the political process. Yet their opinions were not unimportant; and, if they were ignored, disaster could follow. One reason why thinkers did not develop the people’s role further was perhaps the lack of any institutional means of expressing the will of the amorphous masses. But there seems to have been no inherent philosophical reason why a theory of popular sovereignty should not have developed (Chan 2007).

On the other hand, criticism of the government could be quite open, as when the Classic of Odes said: ‘the people below are all exhausted. You utter talk that is not true’ (in CHAC 335). Both the Mandate and the king’s virtue were sometimes said to depend upon his consulting virtuous counsellors (CHAC 315). Confucius insisted that, if a ruler misbehaves, his minister has a duty to protest (CA 14.22).

STATUS AND MERITOCRACY: ‘ADVANCE THE WORTHY ’

Status and hierarchy were enshrined in the system of li (‘rites’: ethics and manners, ritual conduct). The obligations and privileges of hereditary status had been reinforced by ritual changes in the ninth century which reaffirmed differences in rank.

Alongside this, tradition assigned a distinctive role to ministers and advis- ers. In the period 771–453 BCE ministerial lineages acquired considerable power, and they dominated political thinking (Pines 2002: 90, 161–2). In the Warring States period, when the shi were replacing hereditary nobles as political advisers, there was renewed emphasis on the responsibilities and political standing of ministers, which was after all what the politically articu- late shi aspired to be. The ideal type was the duke of Zhou, brother to the king who had founded the Zhou dynasty. He was portrayed as a model of the loyal and selfless adviser; as Confucius put it in his oblique way: ‘How I have gone downhill! It has been such a long time since I dreamt of the Duke of Zhou’ (CA 7.5).

Confucius’ political priorities were in fact partially democratic and repub- lican in spirit. He believed in equality of opportunity and an overriding duty to serve the state. The central plank in the reform programme of Confucius and his followers was ‘advance worthy talents’ (CA 13: 2): here Confucian values

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and the interests of the shi coincided. Confucians, nevertheless, balanced the claims of merit with those of noble birth.29 The distinction between the ‘noble person’ and the ‘little people’ rationalized transference of power to newcomers without undermining the traditional social structure. Mengzi based status on the distinction between mental and manual labour: ‘Those who labour with their minds govern others, while those who labour with their strength are governed by others’ (ST 132). Xunzi was particularly insistent on the need for differences in rank if society were to be stable.30

The followers of Mozi (Mohists), on the other hand, went much further than the Confucians and rejected noble birth outright as a qualification for office: social distinctions should be based exclusively on merit. Both Mozi and Xunzi were less compromising here than Confucius. For Mozi, ‘advancing the worthy’ and ‘employing the capable’ should mean complete equality of op- portunity.31 One could perhaps say that Mozi pursued Confucius’ thoughts more wholeheartedly than Confucius himself. He rejected the Confucian middle way between the claims of talent and noble birth; the sage-kings of the past had appointed peasants and craftsmen to high office (Graham 1989: 45). Pure meritocracy is essential if a ruler is to fulfil his function. Xunzi argued that descendants of kings and nobles who were unworthy should be reduced to the rank of commoners; descendants of commoners who ‘have acquired culture and learning [and] are upright in their personal conduct’ should be promoted to the highest rank (ST 167).

Legalist thinkers said that office and status should be based solely on ability and achievement. But they rejected virtue as well as hereditary status as a qualification.32 The best chief ministers and generals are those who had risen from the ranks (Han Feizi, Basic Writings, 124). Thus the slogan ‘advance worthy talents’ was proclaimed by Confucians, Mohists, and Legalists, but with different meanings.

PUBLIC SERVICE

Confucians hoped to implement their reforms through their influence as ministers with the right ideas and values. This emphasis on public service as the normal, the best, if not the only, way to exercise virtue, distinguished China from other civilizations. And serving the ruler was the best way of serving the people. ‘Not to serve is to have no sense of duty’ (CA 18.7). Government service ‘was reinterpreted by mainstream thinkers’ (especially Confucius and his followers) ‘as the noblest way to self-realization’ (Pines 2009: 220). Many passages in the Sayings are devoted to the ethics of public service; they emphasize hard work, selflessness, devotion to the interests of the

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people, and humaneness (e.g. CA 15.9, 15, 38). Mengzi records dialogues he had with various rulers.

One reason why public service played such an important part in Chinese political thought was that political ideas were written and promulgated by people who were shi. The development of ethics in China from the sixth to the third centuries BCE was more state-oriented than analogous developments elsewhere. There was no mention of rewards in an afterlife. The closest parallel is the Stoics (below, p. 196). Only the ‘Daoist’ Laozi and the Zhuangzi were opposed to political involvement in principle.33

This is not to say that Confucians in any way played down other activities and other aspects of life. Far from it. The family was the basis and focus of Confucius’ moral teaching. And it is where the virtues of public life begin (‘filiality and fraternity are the basis of humaneness, are they not?’; CA 1.2). The five most important human relationships are father–son, ruler–subject, husband–wife, elder brother–younger brother, and friend–friend. You can cultivate virtue among family and friends (CA 2.21). The concerns of a noble person, said Mengzi, should be his family, his reputation, and the education of talented youngsters. Thus Confucians saw improvement of morals and culture as an end in itself.34

Mengzi, like Confucius, was an itinerant teacher, trying to influence rulers through personal contact. But, living in more troubled times, he was particu- larly concerned about what to do when you cannot engage in public service without compromising your principles. A minister should resign rather than do that. You should only accept office if you can serve the people in a humane way; that is, by persuasion rather than coercion. Mengzi emphasized the possible alternatives to government service more than Confucius, although he personally engaged in public service most of his life. Partly due to the circumstances in which he lived, which meant that one had to look outside politics for fulfilment, Mengzi also emphasized the non-political aspects of li (see below), for example in personal relationships. Here one may see a parallel with the situation Plato found himself in. But government service was still seen by most as by far the noblest occupation.

CONFUCIUS ON LI (RITUAL CONDUCT) AND REN (HUMANENESS)

Li (lit. rites) referred to ritual, decorum, propriety, or ethics: ‘the embodied expression of what is fitting’.35 It included ‘custom, manners, conventions, from the sacrifices to ancestors down to the details of social etiquette’ (Graham 1989: 11): a code of conduct handed down from time immemorial. Li may be

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compared to Hegel’s Sittlichkeit (communal ethics).36 They were an important part of the traditional, and Confucian, view of how society is governed; as someone said in 516 BCE, li had been received by the ancient kings ‘from Heaven and Earth to rule their people’ (Pines 2000a: 16). During the period from 771 to 453 BCE, the scope of li was extended from

conventions of social intercourse to embrace ‘a broad range of political activities, such as personnel policy, [and] proper handling of rewards and punishments’, so that it came to comprise ‘the entire way of governing’ (ibid. 12, 14–15). Crucially, it included the correct relationship between both ruler and ruled, and a ruler and his ministers. Li were also supposed to regulate inter-state conduct within the proto-Chinese world. Confucius saw his mission as, above all, to re-establish li as the norm of

personal and public life. This he saw as the ultimate solution to all social and political problems. (This was presumably why the conservative thinker Michael Oakeshott admired Confucius, as someone who based politics on tradition, rejecting (so Oakeshott thought) ‘rationalism in politics’.) But Con- fucius at the same time revolutionized the whole meaning and import of li by internalizing the notion, changing it from a formality into a moral ideal, ‘a means of self-cultivation, self-restriction and proper conduct’ (Pines 2000a: 18–19). Like the Hebrew prophets, he infused existing practices and social relationships with new moral meaning. Interpretation of the ethical and societal norms of li was the focus of Confucian thought. But the Sayings did not reference antiquity for its own sake. It would be misleading to see Confucius as a conservative thinker in a Western sense (see CA 9.23–4). Li involves asking questions (CA 3.15).

Confucius did not identify li with morality. There is, besides li, yi—justice. This too could mean, in the first instance, ‘the conduct fitting to one’s role or status, for example as father . . . or minister’ (Graham 1989: 11). But yi could also refer to ‘rightness’ in a more general sense, the equivalent of justice in Greek and Western thought. And it included what we call procedural justice; for example, the Classic of Documents stated that ‘rightness’ involves govern- ing ‘without partiality . . . without onesidedness’ (ST 32). Impartiality was a traditional ideal, also expanded by Mozi (below, pp. 100–1). For Confucius, yi and li were two sides of the same coin, the inner and the outer aspects of human conduct: ‘it is the right which the gentleman deems the substance, it is through [li] that he performs it’.37

The ethical principles of Confucius are as open to a ‘democratic’ interpret- ation as are those of Christianity, Islam, or Marxism, if not more so. They are certainly much more friendly to democracy than Plato’s principles. This is even more true of Mengzi. Confucius identified the underlying principle which informed the whole system of li as ren (humaneness, benevolence).38

This was a universal ethical principle; it also defined the noble person. Ren derives from empathy (mutuality: shu) (CA 4.15),39 which may be seen as the

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fundamental Confucian value: ‘if I do not wish others to do something to me, I wish not to do it to them’.40 Ren meant being upright and generous; it is the basis of all human relationships, both in the family and in society at large. Confucius also said that ren requires one to question incisively and reflect on ‘what is close at hand’ (CA 19.6); this gives it an epistemological meaning. Ren also has a practical advantage: the government that treats its people humanely is most likely to prosper and to expand its territory, because it will attract officials, farmers, and travellers from all over the world.41

Confucius once defined ren as ‘to overcome the self and turn to li’ (CA 12.1). He saw ren and li as interdependent: to be put into practice, ren has to be made concrete in li.42 But the li need ren: it is their inner rationale, it is what motivates people to observe them, without it they are just meaningless (CA 3.3).43

The Chinese in general looked down on non-Chinese people as savages, ‘wild dogs and wolves’ (CHAC 993). They thought they were different pre- cisely because they adhered to li. Confucius and Mengzi were the only thinkers who had a notion of humanity at large. Confucius said that one should practise ren in dealings with foreigners as well as with fellow-countrymen (Roetz 1993: 126, 137).

Mengzi went much further. He took Confucius’ thought in a particular direction, making it more consistently humanistic. He argued that humane- ness, rightness (yi), and propriety (li) are rooted in the human mind. Know- ledge of right and wrong and feelings of compassion and shame are ‘possessed by all human beings’. The ‘true nature [of the noble man]—humaneness, justice, propriety and knowledge—is rooted in his heart’.44 This suggests fundamental features that are common to humanity. It is somewhat reminis- cent of the Stoic view of reason and morality.45

But Mengzi also thought that humaneness and the people are the bases of political community. It is humaneness that legitimates the political order. Putting this slightly differently, one has to extend those sentiments that arise within the family, notably humaneness, to all other people, in order to establish a state based on morality. You have to treat members of other families in the same way as you treat your own family. He quoted the Odes on the person who ‘set an example for his wife; it extended to his brothers, and from there to the family of the state’ (ST 122). On this basis, Mengzi proposed a federal empire as the solution to the warring states: the empire is based on the province, the province on the family, the family on the self (ST 115).

Xunzi viewed li in a more schematic and metaphysical way. It was the guide in both public and private matters, ‘the ridgepole of the human way’.46 He gave li a cosmic dimension: ‘the heaven and earth are harmonized by it’ (Schwartz 1985: 301). Yet he insists that the ultimate foundation of li itself is nothing other than the noble person: ‘rites and rightness are the beginning of order, and the noble person is the beginning of rites and rightness’. This

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passage contains a remarkable elevation of the noble person to a cosmic status, prior even to that of li itself. ‘Heaven and Earth produce the noble person, and the noble person provides the patterns for Heaven and Earth . . . [he] forms a triad with Heaven and Earth . . .Without the noble person there would be no patterns in Heaven and Earth, no continuity in rites and rightness, no ruler or leader above, no father or son below’ (ST 169). This is in a passage about ‘the model of a king’. He seems to assign the noble person the kind of cosmic status others would assign to the emperor (below, p. 115). Perhaps it was his best last hope in a time of disasters. For, in general, he held the pessimistic view that ‘human nature is evil’; men are born with ‘a fondness for profit’, and with ‘feelings of envy and hate’ (ST 180)—the very opposite of Mengzi.

PERSUASION, NOT COERCION

Confucius insisted that humaneness was the fundamental norm not only of human conduct, but of political conduct and civilized government. It laid down both the goal and the methods of politics; it stipulated a harmonious society in which the virtuous lead by example. Confucius believed passionately that people could become moral only through the example of the ruler and his officials.47 Government works best when the ruler is humane. The Confucian praxis was government by consensus. This was to be achieved through edu- cation, and through justice on the part of the ruler and the upper classes. Xunzi too thought that people only become good through education (ST 179–80). So long as rulers and ministers devote themselves to li, justice and fidelity, the people will follow them—and the economy will flourish (CA 13.4). Confucius was realist enough to believe that people should first be enriched,

then taught (CA 13.9). Yet it is the ability to put up with poverty that distinguishes the noble from the small person.48 Those in charge of a family or state ‘should not worry that they have little, but worry that the little they have is unevenly distributed’ (CA 16.1).49 Confucius’ approach to wealth may be compared to Solon’s (below, pp. 103–5). Mengzi, in the belief that poverty is the cause of immorality, proposed light taxes, minimal state control, and policies to attract commerce.50 More idealistically, he wanted to see the traditional practices of communal farming restored. Persuasion is better than coercion. Confucius saw violence as the break-

down of politics: a good example removes the need for coercion (CA 13.11; 12.13). Killing has nothing to do with governing; it is hardly sensible to ‘kill those who have not the Way in order to uphold those who have the Way’ (CA 12.19). This was the main point of contention between Confucians and their Legalist opponents (below, pp. 129–30). As the Classic of Documents put it, people should be governed with clemency and by example, rather than by

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‘harsh capital punishments’ (ST 37). Confucius and his followers wanted first and foremost to change attitudes. They believed that good governance and social responsibility would spread by example. This was the Confucian model for education, leadership, and personnel management.

Mengzi, although (or perhaps because) he was writing at a time when rulers were resorting more and more to methods of coercion, went further. A government should educate its people, raise their moral standards, and by these means show them their innate goodness (ST 123). This can only be achieved by example and persuasion, not by force. ‘If the ruler is humane, everyone will be humane. If the ruler keeps to rightness, everyone will keep to rightness’ (ST 141). ‘One who gains the allegiance of the peasants will become the Son of Heaven’;51 this was how Mengzi envisaged the pacification of China. He came close to advocating non-violence. Xunzi, too, though writing in harsher times than Mengzi, and despite his pessimistic view of human nature, still insisted that one cannot achieve one’s goals by coercion alone: ‘one who understands the way to use force does not rely upon force’ (ST 168).

MOZI

Confucian moral teaching was challenged from one side by Mozi, from the other by Legalists. Like Confucius, Mozi saw the means to bring about reform as a right-minded ruler who would employ virtuous and intelligent ministers (‘advancing the worthy’, ‘employing the capable’) (Basic Writings, 48–9). Where Mozi differed from Confucius was in rejecting Confucius’ presumption that li52 were universal norms, and that the society they envisaged embodied justice. Instead, he proposed a radical extension of ren (humaneness) by proposing what he called ‘impartial caring’ (‘universal love’).53 One should value all other persons, regardless of kinship or status, as one values oneself; all other families, as one values one’s own family; all other cities, as one values one’s own city; and all other states, as one values one’s own state. Putting one’s own family, clan, region, or class before others is ‘partiality’. Mozi rejected offensive warfare on principle (Basic Writings, 50–62). His followers urged rulers to adopt a policy of non-aggression, and, on a practical level, to improve their defences.

In other words, everything should be subordinated to the general interests of society at large (compare Bentham’s principle of utility). This was humane- ness without social distinctions.

Mozi derived his principle of universal caring from Heaven, which he saw as an active supreme being with a will. Heaven is ‘all-inclusive and impartial in its activities’.54 Heaven ‘desires’ that powerful states, families, and individuals do not attack or oppress weak ones; that the strong help the weak; that ‘those

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who understand the Way will teach others’; and that those with wealth share it. This was the closest any Chinese thinker seems to have come to the west-Eurasian view of god. Mozi’s Heaven seems particularly similar to Zeus as perceived by his Greek contemporary Aeschylus, and subsequently by the Stoics. Mozi claimed that one could deduce from observation that impartial caring

is the best course of action, by comparing the consequences which different types of action incur. ‘When there is rightdoing in the world, we live, without it we die; with it, we are rich, without it poor; with it, we are orderly, without it disorderly’ (in Graham 1989: 48–9). He also used logic to defend impartial caring as a social strategy: if you want to benefit your parents, then you want other people not to injure them; but this you can only achieve by treating other people’s parents in the same way as you treat your own. Experience shows that reciprocity is a general trait of human behaviour, and that ‘one who loves will be loved by others, one who hates will be hated by others’ (Basic Writings, 46–7). Mozi insisted that impartial caring should override all special claims of

family, rank, and the state, as taught by Zhou tradition and Confucius. In that view, these relationships impose special obligations which one does not owe to those outside one’s own group. Mozi, on the other hand, applied impartial caring without reservations, without regard for sentiments of kinship, for traditional norms or expectations based on status. Conventional mourning ritual, for example, was simply a vast waste of resources (Graham 1989: 40). In other words, Mozi was appealing, not to what was considered reasonable in a particular society, but to what any human beings could expect in their dealings with other human beings on the basis of reciprocity (see above, pp. 7–8). Mozi used rational calculation rather than empathy as the tool of moral judgement. In this respect, and in his method of ‘argu[ing] out alternatives’—‘the begin- ning of systematic debate in China’ (Graham 1989: 36)—he seems the most modern-Western of ancient Chinese thinkers.

THE ORIGINS OF THE STATE

Several Chinese thinkers put forward theories about the origins of the state. These formed an integral part of their political argument. Mozi was the first Chinese thinker, and perhaps the first thinker anywhere, to do this.55 Origin- ally, he thought, ‘everyone in the world has a different morality’, and everyone thinks that other people’s moral opinions are wrong. Consequently, they think that all other people are immoral, and they attack each other, both within the family and throughout society, refusing to cooperate. The solution was a single ruler, the Son of Heaven. Here Mozi used an idealized past as the model for the

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future. In the original, ideal state, ‘the most worthy and able man in the world’ would have been ‘selected’ as the Son of Heaven: Mozi does not say who selected him, but perhaps he meant Heaven itself.56 This Son of Heaven then ‘selected the worthiest and most able men’ to be his ministers. These would realize that the world was too large to be ruled by them alone; and so they ‘divided it up into myriad states and established overlords and rulers of the states’ (in Pines and Shelach 2004: 132). Mozi may have been referring to a hierarchy of village heads, heads of districts, and rulers of states, under the Son of Heaven.

The original problem of human discord, which arose from differing moral viewpoints, was to be overcome by everyone deferring decisions about what is right and what is wrong to the person above them in the hierarchy, all the way up from village head to the Son of Heaven. Everyone should conform with their superiors, and not with their inferiors (‘conforming upwards’). If, on the other hand, ‘the superior commits any fault, his subordinates shall

remonstrate with him’ (in Pines 2009: 50). This system would work, Mozi thought, because ‘the Son of Heaven was able to unify the judgments through- out the world’. The Son of Heaven should ‘conform upwards’ with Heaven. Heaven can depose him in the last resort.57

Thus Mozi, not unlike Hobbes, saw the original problem as moral anarchy, and believed the solution to lie in a single ruler, who would have sole authority in deciding right and wrong. Pines sees Mozi’s most striking innovation as ‘the concentration of power in the hands of the Son of Heaven’ (2009: 33). Mozi believed, however, that this would only work if people identified themselves not only with the Son of Heaven but ‘with Heaven itself ’.58 In other words, he thought a solution depended on the commitment of individuals to moral values (a touch of Augustine here). This differed from Hobbes, but was more humane and possibly more realistic.

Two things strike one about Mozi’s theory of state development: his iden- tification of moral disagreement as the source of social conflicts, and the solution of a single ruler with a quasi-federal hierarchy of authorities. Mozi’s moral universalism produced another version of sacred monarchy. Hobbes and al-Jahiz59 similarly thought that moral disagreements were a major cause of strife. Hobbes, like Mozi, advocated conformity of thought. All in all, Mozi was perhaps the most original political philosopher in ancient China.

Xunzi’s theory of the origins of political society reflected to some extent the priorities of Confucius. He differed both fromMozi and from the Book of Lord Shang and Han Feizi (below) in his emphasis on ranks and ritual—Confucian values. Like Plato, Aristotle, and their followers in Islamdom and the West, Xunzi traced the very capability of human beings to outdo animals to their ability to ‘form a social organization’. And this, he thought, was made possible by ‘distinctions’ (ranks). Without ranks, human society would be strictly impossible, because human beings are naturally competitive and therefore

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prone to conflict; our irrepressible desires would lead to strife.60 Ranks in turn depend upon ‘the sense of propriety’. This is why, he argued—in the face of Legalist thinking—‘it is impossible to abandon ritual and propriety’. The ruler exists to establish these ‘norms of ritual and propriety’. The ancient kings established rites and morality because they ‘abhorred chaos’.61 Rulers and teachers are ‘the roots of order’; along with Heaven-and-Earth and the ances- tors, they comprise the ‘three roots of rites’ (ST 175). According to Xunzi, then, human well-being depends upon ranks; these depend upon an agreed moral system; and this in turn has to be put in place by a ruler.62

These and other theories produced in China (below, p. 106) may be con- trasted with the various ideas about the origin of states put forward by Greek thinkers at about the same time. These based the state (polis) on physical needs, language, and the need for justice; Plato emphasized the need for economic cooperation, and the division of labour (below, pp. 145–6). The outcome of human development was, for them, a polis, not a monarchical state. All the Chinese theories, on the other hand, emphasized the need for a single locus of authority, a quasi-absolute monarch. Lewis thinks that Mozi’s notion of ‘con- forming upward’ actually makes ‘the state the source of morality’ (1999: 67).

SHANG YANG AND HAN FEIZI : COERCION AND REALPOLITIK

During the later fourth and the third centuries, a new, more realist approach to politics and war was articulated by Shang Yang (d. 338) and others. As prime minister of the state of Qin, Shang Yang undertook a radical reform of the government of Qin between 356 and 348. The text that developed his ideas, the Book of Lord Shang (Shang jun shu), was a programmatic explanation of the reasons behind his reforms. Shang Yang and those who adopted his approach became known as ‘Legalists’ because of the emphasis they placed on law (fa), and coercive law-enforcement, rather than on persuading people through teaching. They articulated a view of the state that was in many ways the complete opposite of the Confucians’ view. They focused upon the methods necessary to maximize the military potential of a state, and so to achieve a pacification of China through conquest. One might call them ‘authoritarians’, even perhaps in some cases ‘totalitarians’. These policies provided a model for the king of Qin, who unified China and became the First Emperor. Theirs too was an all-embracing political theory, which in- cluded psychology and military strategy. Shang Yang’s policies included universal military conscription, the com-

pulsory registration of the whole population, and a tax on all households.

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He introduced ‘a detailed legal code [for] the conduct of . . . government and the behavior of the peasantry’ (CHAC 612). The economic and social order was reorganized in order to instil social discipline and maximize the military strength of the state. To increase productivity, the traditional system of land- ownership was changed to one of individual peasant holdings. Families were grouped into sets of five, with each group made jointly responsible for the actions of all its members; this meant ‘joint liability for criminal actions and mutual responsibility to pass judgment upon one another’.63

The early and middle parts of the third century BCE saw the climax of interstate conflict, with warfare and slaughter on an unprecedented scale. The state of Qin deposed the last titular Zhou king in 256 BCE. This period produced two of the most original writers on political theory: Xunzi (c. 312–219 BCE) and Han Feizi (280?–233 BCE). Han Feizi was Xunzi’s pupil, but they were strikingly different. Xunzi developed Confucius’ ideas, though he was more pessimistic than Confucius, and called urgently for a ‘Son of Heaven’ who would restore peace and unify China. Han Feizi combined the realism and statism of Shang Yang with mystical and philosophical ideas derived from the Daodejing (Book of the Power of the Way, written between 350 (?) and 250 BCE and also known as the Laozi after its supposed author). He produced a remarkable rationale for the aggressive policies of Qin. He is reported to have said, ‘if only I could converse with [the king of Qin], I would die without regrets’. But, when he arrived at the Qin court, a rival had him imprisoned and killed. Nevertheless, Han Feizi’s The Way of the Ruler impressed the ruler of Qin.

Success in this view depends upon prosperity and social discipline. As the Guanzi also stated, ‘the means by which a country is made prosperous are agriculture and war’; ‘an extensive territory, an affluent economy, a teeming population and a strong army’ are the foundations of power.64 Or again, ‘food is the foundation of the people, the people are the foundation of the state and the state is the foundation of the ruler’.65 This suggested the same view of the relationship between the state and the economy that we found in Kautilya (above, p. 78).

China’s Legalists were unique in the lengths to which they were prepared to go in the use of social engineering in order to achieve agricultural prosperity. They recommended a combination of financial incentives and compulsion; this involved state planning, a population register, and government by decree (fa). In fact, they aimed to remould society as a whole in order to achieve the internal order necessary for expansion. Agriculture and military service must be made profitable. Shang Yang thought everyone should be either a farmer or a soldier (or both). Farming makes people hard-working, subservient, and dedicated to the ruler—indeed ready to die for him. Shang Yang’s land reforms were also designed to establish a market economy in land, enabling individual farmers to buy and sell their land.66

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He thought artisans and merchants were useless and overpaid. Most of all he detested the shi, ‘itinerant scholars’. Public discussion he saw as enervating, indeed counter-productive, for it breeds laziness and dissent. Opinion must be controlled, intellectuals silenced. According to Han Feizi, even treacherous thoughtsmust be suppressed. State officials should take on the role of teachers, and the ruler’s laws should be their only textbook.67

The Legalists made the written law (fa) of the ruler the primary instrument of government and the supreme textual authority. The traditional position was that kings should not resort to written law because it would make people ‘lose their fear of authority’ and become contentious (Bodde 1981: 177, 171–2). But Han Feizi declared law to be ‘the great standard for the world . . . when all obey the law, this is called great good government’ (in ibid. 182). Law, it was argued, had the advantages of universality and predictability; it was an objective measure which could be applied with minimum human intervention. This was the very opposite of the Confucian approach of influencing people

through teaching and example. Coercive law, as understood by Legalists, was a completely different method of controlling society from the method of li. Shang Yang and others thought that li had been tried for long enough as a basis of governance, and found wanting. Relying on good-will and persuasion has put us in the mess we see around us today. Confucian values are all very well for the few who are up to it, but the ruler has to concern himself with the whole population.68

These ‘administrative realists’ (as some call them) dismissed traditional values of family and social rank. Rather, the family was to be made the instrument of law-enforcement: family members were to denounce one an- other’s crimes—a complete inversion of traditional priorities. And legal pen- alties must be applied irrespective of status. The morality of the ruler does not matter. The Book of Lord Shang put forward the somewhat ‘Machiavellian’ view that crimes are more likely to be punished if those in charge are wicked than if they are virtuous.69

This use of incentives and coercion was justified by a view of human nature propounded both in the Book of Lord Shang and in Han Feizi’s writings. According to these, the springs of human action are not love but self-interest: human beings are rational maximizers. They viewed the relationship between ruler and subjects as ‘an outcome of mutual calculation’: ‘their minds are attuned to utility since they both cherish self-seeking motives’ (the same, Han Feizi observed, is true of master and workman) (Han Feizi, in Hsu 1965: 152–3). This obviously contrasted with the view of Confucius, Mozi, and Mengzi, that human behaviour can be improved by teaching and virtuous example. The Confucian policy of ruling people by humaneness, said Han Feizi, is based on a misunderstanding of human nature.70 Political relation- ships within the state cannot be based on the same sentiments as relationships in the family. Rather, state policy and law-making should recognize that

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‘likes and dislikes are the basis of rewards and punishments’ (Book of Lord Shang, 241).

The reason why we cannot nowadays take antiquity as a model, as Confu- cians do, they argued, is that the circumstances in which people live today have changed; ‘as conditions in the world change, different principles are practised’ (Book of Lord Shang, 227). To prove this point, they put forward a quite different view of social development from that of Mozi and Xunzi. According to Han Feizi, the reason why people in antiquity were more relaxed about material goods was not that they were more benevolent, but that goods were more plentiful. Coercion was, therefore, unnecessary. The reason why there is competition and conflict today is that too many people are chasing too few goods. The model kings of ancient times established rites and laws that were expedient and practical in their day, but these are of no use now.71

The Book of Lord Shang proposed a somewhat different theory of social and political development. At the start, it said, people acted on the principle of ‘sticking to kin’; this meant they were ‘selfish in their concerns’. But, as the population grew, so that people had to interact with non-kinsfolk, there was instability and disorder, because people had divergent aims, and they lacked a common standard of justice (Graham 1989: 271–2). To remedy this, ‘the worthies established impartiality and propriety’, and preached benevolence: this stage was based on the principle of ‘elevation of the worthy’ (Pines and Shelach 2004: 134), in other words, Confucian and Mohist ideas.

But then ‘the worthy’ vied with one another and disputes broke out among them. ‘Therefore, the sages who came next’—by this the author of the Book of Lord Shang would appear to mean himself and those who thought like him—‘originated divisions between lands, between properties and between man and woman’. These, however, were ‘unenforceable without controls, so they established prohibitions’. These in turn required officials to enforce them. And these in turn needed a single ruler to unify them. Laws and ruler are therefore interdependent.72 Therefore, ‘elevating the worthy’ was now re- placed by ‘honouring rank’. Thus the Book of Lord Shang, like Xunzi, saw rank as the most important factor. What is involved in this process of social and political development is neither progress nor decline, but adaptation to changing conditions (Graham 1989: 272).

One should not, therefore, according to the Book of Lord Shang, elevate the norms of either antiquity or modernity, but organize the state and law ‘in accordance with the needs of the times’: ‘the enlightened ruler . . . makes law move with the times’.73 This was the rationale behind the First Emperor’s ban on private scholarship and thought: the past should not be used to criticize the present (ST 210).

Once a ruler grasps what people really want, he can manipulate and control them by decrees, punishments, and incentives. In doing so he may be ignoring their immediate desires, but he will be catering for their long-term needs.

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He undertakes policies which, even though ‘people do not have the sense to rejoice in them’, are for their long-term benefit (Han Feizi, Basic Writings, 128–9); he ‘does not indulge the people’s desires, he simply looks ahead for what will benefit them’.74 Han Feizi insisted on putting ‘the public’ above the private or selfish (Moody 1997: 329). The ruler may have to enforce his measures ‘against the will of the people’ (Han Feizi, Basic Writings, 94). The goals of the state—prosperity, stability, and expansion—were the only ones which would make life tolerable for the majority of people, and they were ones which people would choose if they could see sufficiently far ahead. This was their justification for compulsory labour, taxation, military service, and severe punishments. The aim, then, was still the welfare of the masses. The realist-legalists saw

the two main obstacles to this as social disorder and oppression by the upper classes. Hence Han Feizi and others wanted ‘to ensure that the strong do not override the weak’ (in Bodde 1981: 182), for ‘if penalties are heavy, men dare not use high position to abuse the humble’ (Han Feizi, Basic Writings, 28). This was the reasoning behind the policy, advocated by Shang Yang and

others, and first implemented in the state of Qin, of making punishments exceptionally severe but predictable. With what would nowadays appear breathtaking honesty, they advocated rule by fear as the most efficient way of securing the greatest good of the greatest number (Han Feizi, Basic Writ- ings, 104). Only when light offences are ‘regarded as serious’ do ‘serious ones have no chance of coming’.75 The psychological argument was that ‘punish- ment produces force, force produces strength, strength produces awe, awe produces kindness. Kindness and virtue have their origin in force’.76 ‘Rely on punishments in order to abolish punishment’.77

War and killing are permissible so long as the aim is to abolish them. This means achieving what people want by means they do not want (Book of Lord Shang, 230, 285). It is only by going against the wishes of the people that you make them happy. ‘What I call punishment is the basis of righteousness, but what the world calls righteousness is the way of violence’ (Han Feizi, in Wang and Chang 1986: 46). In other words, they were implying that the outcome desired by Confucius could only be achieved by means he refused to contem- plate. It simply could not be achieved by persuasion and example (Book of Lord Shang, 325). The true lesson of history was that a great king ‘seized the world by force, but held it by righteousness’78—an almost prophetic statement when one looks at the first two dynasties of the Chinese empire. The Legalists were speaking a language some of which has become familiar

to us in totalitarian thought. The underlying psychology, nonetheless, was one which Adam Smith and Jeremy Benthammight recognize. There are some real parallels between this school of thought and Machiavelli. Machiavelli shared their view on the constancy of human nature over time, and the need to adapt one’s behaviour and morality to changing historical circumstances. He shared their view—which in Europe appeared original—that physical coercion is the

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only effective method for governments to employ; traditional values and abstract moral principles are ineffective. He also shared their view of what a despotic ruler can achieve for a people: strong government and ruthless force can bring long-term benefits, and, by providing security, lay the basis for moral behaviour. Moral purity, on the other hand, can bring untold suffering to the people. But Machiavelli never advocated control of the family, nor of thought.

Striking similarities have been observed between some aspects of Legalism and the theory and practice of twentieth-century Chinese Communism. Indeed, Mao Zedong held that the People’s Republic of China could trace its ‘intellectual roots’ to Legalism, and in 1973 he ‘launched a nationwide cam- paign to popularize Legalist teachings’ (Zhengyuan Fu 1996: 8, 123). The Chinese Communists shared the Legalist belief in the primacy of force in politics, in the centralization of power and the need to remould society from the top, and in historical relativity. Mao’s assault on the professional classes had a precedent in the Legalists’ condemnation of pursuits other than agri- culture and military service. His destruction of books, and his attack on any independent thought, also had a precedent in policies advocated by the Book of Lord Shang and Han Feizi, and implemented by the First Emperor (below, pp. 113–14). The Cultural Revolution was based on the same view of the past as that of the Legalists. Chinese Communism also advocated mutual denun- ciation within the family, and attempted to control what people thought.

Marxism was another text-based system for the authorization of power. Perhaps in China today we are seeing a division, not dissimilar from that envisaged by Confucians, between a ‘Marxist’ ruling group (no longer very text-based) and a populace bent on economic self-improvement. Once again, the elite do not have to be too concerned about what the people believe, provided they know their place.

A NEW KIND OF MONARCHY: THE LAOZI AND HAN FEIZI

A new concept of monarchy developed from the fourth to the second centuries BCE, before and after the unification of China. It was a combination of, on the one hand, traditional and Confucian ideas, especially as developed by Xunzi, and, on the other hand, a remarkable fusion of ideas from Legalist and proto- Daoist sources. This had been initiated by Shen Bu-Hai (Creel 1974), and was continued by Han Feizi, who wrote a commentary on the Laozi (Wang and Chang 1986: 13–33).

All thinkers, from the end of Zhou hegemony in 771 BCE until the unifica- tion of 221, regarded the fragmentation of the cultural unit bequeathed by the

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Zhou as a temporary and, as time went by, increasingly disastrous aberration. ‘The Great Unity paradigm was not an outcome of, but rather a precondition’ for, unification.79 China was becoming more and more integrated economic- ally. The development of military technology was making internal boundaries less sustainable. The upper classes had a shared cultural legacy in the Zhou Classics. Already by the late sixth century, statesmen were imbued ‘with the feeling of belonging to a common economic, political and cultural realm’, which they called ‘All under Heaven (tianxia)’ (Pines 2002: 134). This was reinforced by the migrations of advisers and intellectuals from state to state. Their primary loyalty was to All under Heaven and to the Zhou tradition, rather than to any particular state. Thus unification under a single ruler existed in theory long before it actually came about. The view gained ground among all schools of thought that to the oneness of

being must correspond a single political ruler. The Zhou Classics spoke exuberantly and longingly about the Son of Heaven, with never a hint that there could be more than one. Confucius may have been the first to suggest that the only way to end disorder and conflict was to concentrate political power once again in the hands of a Son of Heaven, whom he saw as ‘the pinnacle of the ritual order’.80 Mozi held that ‘the disorder under Heaven derived from the absence of the ruler’ (Pines 2000b: 303–4), and that strife could only be overcome by establishing a single Son of Heaven as the head of a uniform hierarchy, of whose morality he was to be the ultimate guardian. Mozi’s principle of universal love was related to the cosmic unity of humanity. Mengzi looked forward to the day when a ‘true king’ would replace ‘tyrannical government’ and unify China.81 For the Laozi, ‘the unifying principle of Oneness on the cosmic level had to be matched by political unity below’ (Pines 2000b: 305). During the Warring States period, the Zhou guan gave ‘a list of offices with

descriptions of their tasks that offers a model of a world-state based on principles of cosmology’ (Lewis 1999: 42). Encapsulating the general view on the eve of unification, the Lüshi Chunqiu synthesized the thought of the preceding centuries in such a way as to demonstrate the need for a new, unified monarchy (Sellmann 1999). ‘There is no greater turmoil than the absence of the Son of Heaven; without the Son of Heaven, the strong overcome the weak, the many lord it over the few, they use arms to harm each other, having no rest’ (in Pines 2009: 19). As Lewis says, ‘the dream of writing the world in a single text prefigured . . . the enterprise of uniting the world in a single state’.82

Legalists advocated a single ruler on more practical grounds: ‘authority should never reside in two places’.83 Both the realist Book of Lord Shang and the Confucian Xunzi insisted that social and political order could only be achieved by the sovereignty of a single individual,84 an argument also expressed in Europe during the rise of absolute monarchy (Black 1970). Furthermore, Legalists thought that this did not depend upon his moral

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qualities, though it did require an individual of exceptional capacities: ‘he who can make decisions alone is able to become the sovereign of the world’ (Han Feizi).85 Xunzi also observed that laws cannot bind a ruler since he is the source of their coercive power. If the ruler violates the laws too much, however, the state will disintegrate. It is part of his moral perfection that he ‘does not dare to violate [laws] nor to abrogate them once they have been established’ (Huang-Lao text, in Peerenboom 1993: 78).

Meanwhile the Laozi and other proto-Daoist works proposed a return to primitive simplicity, withdrawal from the world, spontaneity (Robinet 1997: 27). They thought that society has become overdeveloped, overheated. ‘The more prohibitions and rules, the poorer the people become . . . The more elaborate the laws, the more they commit crimes’ (Laozi, ch. 57). What we need is ‘small country, few people’ (ibid., ch. 80). Graham suggests that such an approach may ‘overlap Western ideas of liberty’ (1989: 302). According to the work ascribed to Zhuangzi (d. c. 286 BCE), corruption and oppression were the inevitable results of civilization and were brought about precisely by those whom others idealized—rulers and sages (Pines and Shelach 2004: 140–2). In this view, the state is part of the problem, part of humanity’s misguided attempt to control the world. Solutions to human problems are to be sought only in the individual mind.86 This was the counter-culture.

Yet some ‘Daoists’ thought that the sage-ruler is himself ‘the unmoving director of the world’ (Robinet 1997: 28): his beneficence consists in going with the flow of events, like water flowing downhill. The Laozi spoke of a sage- ruler perfectly in tune with Heaven and Earth, and with ‘the hearts and minds of the people’ (Laozi, ch. 49; Ames 1983). ‘When he acts, he takes no credit’, for ‘the people say “we did it ourselves” ’ (Laozi, chs. 2, 17).

The intentions of the author of the Laozi appear unfathomable. We can probably never be sure whether he was expressing mystical insights—it ranks alongside The Cloud of Unknowing as one of the most extraordinary products of the human spirit—and then applied this to rulership; or whether the mystical notions were all along intended—bizarrely and perhaps horrifyingly to a Western reader—to lead to a political conclusion.

The view that only a sage can be the ‘true monarch’ was in fact shared by thinkers of several persuasions,87 though not, to begin with, by the Legalists. It was the genius of Han Feizi to pull the threads of realism and Daoism together, and so to create a new conception of monarchy and the state, out of the dialectic between Shang Yang’s Legalism and the inaction (wu-wei) theory of the Laozi. The monarch is sole and absolute ruler, but at the same time a sage. As such, he is ‘in a position of virtual equality with Dao, Heaven and Earth’ (Pines 2000b: 306). This line of thought was developed by the Huang-Lao school in the third and second centuries BCE (Peerenboom 1993). It was already generally acknowledged that the true monarch was the counterpart in human society of Heaven and Earth. It is, therefore, Han Feizi emphasized,

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appropriate for him to live in a state of creative inaction. He does so by allowing others—his ministers—to rule on his behalf; and by leaving every- thing to be regulated by laws. For the wise man (as the Laozi had taught) allows things to take their course, in human society as they do in nature; by not acting, he is in control. Such a person has to be the supreme ruler, because to be sage-like is the pinnacle of human achievement. Whatever the intentions of the Laozi, then, this idea of the sage was constructed in such a way that he and he alone could be the ruler of the world. However one interprets the Laozi, this was the outcome. When we read Han

Feizi, it is as if the inaction of the sage had been established as the summit of human excellence, and the obvious conclusion had then been drawn: this is how the true ruler must be. The Laozi contains a mixture of mystical and political thought found nowhere else in the world. And indeed, the ideal Han emperor was to be conceived as one who ‘reigned with his arms folded, in a posture of ease, while his ministers and officials carried out the irksome tasks of administering the empire’ (Loewe, in CHC 744–5, 694). Xunzi put the same idea in Confucian language. Only ‘the Heavenly Mon-

arch’ will be able to ‘preserve the Way and virtue complete . . . to enhance the principles of refined culture, to unify All under Heaven’ (in Pines 2009: 84). Only the ‘True (“Heavenly” or “sage”) Monarch’ will be able to ‘achieve the truly universal tranquillity’ (Pines 2000b: 310). Legalist writings, on the other hand, used the military idea of a ‘power-base

(shih)’88 to mean something similar to the Daoist notion of force through inaction: ‘the power that the ruler has by virtue of sitting on his throne’. Shih referred to the power inherent in the potentials of a strategic situation. This was conceived as ‘something that one cultivates and then releases at the right moment’.89

The result, in any case, was a theory of government by non-intervention. And it was also, as Pines observes, the ultimate Chinese solution to the problem of the bad or inept ruler. The monarch ‘reigns but does not rule’ (Pines 2009: ch. 4). ‘The Son of Heaven’s life appears as a purely ritual enterprise’ (ibid. 96, on Xunzi). The Chinese had invented a special form of constitutional monarchy, one without a constitution. (In terms of its religious and ceremonial functions, one might compare the British monarchy.) By being ‘empty and still’, the emperor is supposed to be able to identify the

‘regulatory principles’ of the Dao which operate in both the natural and the human worlds.90 The Guanzi insisted that ‘statutes, regulations and measures be modeled on the Tao [Dao]’.91 These make up (in Pines’s words) ‘the perfect legal and administrative mechanisms’. Han Feizi actually referred to laws and administrative regulations as ‘the Way’ (Pines 2009: 101). Once the right laws, in harmony with the cosmic principles, are in place,

then the ruler just has to leave everyone to follow them. The actual business of government is in the hands of the chief minister and bureaucracy. This may be

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compared to Max Weber’s notion of a rule-bound bureaucracy (which he saw as characteristic of a modern state) under a charismatic head.92 It is bureau- crats who govern while the monarch maintains a ‘mystical link to the cosmic flow’: ‘administration is not his business’ (Lüshi Chunqiu, in ST 237). The ruler does not need to make personal decisions as such. As Shen Bu-Hai first put it, ‘he does not act, yet as a result of his non-action the world brings itself to a state of complete order’ (in Creel 1974: 64).

Han Feizi, however, sometimes speaks as if, in certain cases at least, the ruler’s inactivity is only for show. He advises the ruler ‘to take hold of the handles of government carefully and grip them tightly’ (Basic Writings, 18), meaning that he should not let ministers and civil servants get a grip on them. The ruler, not his ministers, must control finance, appointments, and other important powers (Zhengyuan Fu 1996: 81).

On the appointment and conduct of ministers, the views of a Confucian such as Xunzi and of Han Feizi were totally opposed. According to Xunzi’s Confucian philosophy, only morally upright individuals should be chosen. In Han Feizi’s view, the law lays down clearly the criteria by which appointments are to be made, so that here too the principle of the ruler’s ‘inactivity’ can and should be maintained. ‘The enlightened ruler lets the Law choose men; he does not find them for himself. He lets the Law weigh achievement; he does not measure them himself ’.93 Both Shen Bu-Hai and Han Feizi wanted the whole relationship between ruler and ministers to be governed by managerial tech- niques of manipulation; once again, the ruler did not need to depend on ‘his sagacity. He employs technique, not theory’.94

Han Feizi’s view was partly Machiavellian. Ruler and minister have oppos- ing interests; the ruler must trust no one close to him. He must check and double-check ministers’ actions to ensure they are really doing their job. He should feign inactivity, not revealing his mind, but letting the minister speak, ‘for if he reveals his desires, his ministers will put on the mask that pleases him’ (Basic Writings, 16–18). He should take credit for his ministers’ achievements but let them be responsible for their failings. Here Han Feizi expressed the monarch’s inactivity in an altogether ambiguous way, implying that the ruler still does something, albeit in the background: ‘[he] who knows how to govern the people thinks and worries in repose . . . After one becomes able to scheme well, one becomes able to control everything’.95 Think of Stalin.

Shen Bu-Hai had said that the ruler is ‘like a scale, which merely establishes equilibrium, itself doing nothing’. And in Han Feizi’s view, the law is an objective standard for measuring human acts, like the ‘inked string’ or ‘com- passes’ of the craftsman (Wang and Chang 1986: 50, 8). Han Feizi wanted to emphasize that human intervention is not required: one applies the measuring instrument, and the results automatically follow; they indicate what you should do. This may be seen as a development of the traditional principle of impartiality (Graham 1989: 274–5). It implies a kind of rule of law: the ruler

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simply allows the laws to take their course. But, just as the ruler needs the laws, so the law cannot function without the ruler (see Pines 2009: 46).

THE FIRST EMPEROR

In 221 BCE the king of Qin finally accomplished, in the words of the Han historian Sima Qian (whose Records of the Grand Historian were completed c.100 BCE), ‘the unification of the world’ (ST 208). This, as we have seen, had long been the goal of political thinkers. Belief in the necessity of a Son of Heaven with a Mandate to rule All under Heaven was a legacy of the Zhou, enshrined in the Classics, and advocated by political thinkers of all hues. Qin accomplished this thanks to his predecessors’ centralization and militarization of Qin and his own ruthless warfare; in other words, by means approved only by the Legalist way of thinking. It was unification in more than name. Under the First Emperor, govern-

ment in China was centralized as never before. Feudal lords and vassal states were abolished, and the whole country was divided up into new administrative prefectures under central government (CHC i. 90). Qin ‘deliberately broke the power of the indigenous aristocracies by removing the peasants from their communities and setting them up as individual farmers who owed taxes and military service to the state’ (Elvin 1973: 24). This accorded with the Legalist agenda. In public inscriptions he boasted that he had—once again following Legalist principles—‘elevated agriculture and proscribed what is secondary’. He justified his harsh policies by pointing out that they benefited the majority: ‘the powerful and overbearing he boiled and exterminated; the ordinary folk he lifted and saved’.96 His prime minister Li Ssu (280–208 BCE), an admirer of Shang Yang and also a pupil of the Confucian Xunzi, banned ‘private learning’ on the ground that it led to disorder. Independent scholars and teachers were persecuted and executed, their books burned. All this accorded with the Book of Lord Shang. Realists of the fourth and third centuries had provided the theoretical basis for a massive monopolization of the means of coercion. Qin’s supporters justified his policies by arguments drawn from cosmology

and nature. According to a prevalent theory of ‘correlative cosmology’ (Aihe Wang 2000), phases in the heavens, nature, and human society correspond to one another. The Lüshi Chunqiu (perhaps ‘prepared as a handbook for the young king’: see above, p. 89) argued that a new ‘phase’ was imminent, and that it would be characterized by forceful action.97 The emperor Qin himself ‘advanced the theory of the cyclical revolution of the Five Powers’: under the Zhou, fire had been dominant, but now it was the turn of the ‘power of water’, of the colour black, and of winter (Sima Qian, in CHC i. 77). The appropriate policy for this period (Qin declared) was ‘harsh, firm, perverse and occult, with

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all affairs determined by law’: ‘be severe and strict rather than benevolent, kind, harmonic and righteous’ (in Aihe Wang 2000: 141). But he also claimed to be ‘humane and righteous’, to embody the Way and its power; he pro- claimed himself a sage and a god, the representative and enforcer of this new correlation of heavenly and earthly forces, due at this time.98 He could boast that he had brought ‘peace to All under Heaven’, and stability to families and ranks (Pines 2009: 108).

For more than two millennia this imperial government seemed to have a staying-power and a power of self-renewal which one finds in religions—but less often in states—in other parts of the world. In ancient China, what I have been calling ‘political thought’ had a somewhat different function from the equivalent genre elsewhere. It brought together what we in the West divide into the sacred and the secular. Religions such as Hinduism, Judaism, Chris- tianity, and Islam were similarly based on sacred texts. But these supported a system of belief and practice rather than a system of government. China was the only text-based state.

China’s experience provides a striking contrast with what happened in Europe after the collapse of the Roman empire (Elvin 1973). Throughout the European Middle Ages and Renaissance, many longed, like the Chinese had done after the decline of the Zhou, for a ‘revival’ of universal empire. But it remained a dream.99 It was overridden by nationalism, at least until the later twentieth century. Republicanism, democracy, and human rights were indeed advanced by theorists and only subsequently implemented. Ancient China was different in that political idealism was closely linked to a specific polity, namely a single empire for all China. This doubtless contributed to its longevity.

HAN CONFUCIANISM

After the emperor Qin’s death, the first successful peasant rebellion in Chinese imperial history overturned the Qin dynasty, and set up the Han in its place. This dynasty lasted until 220 CE. The Han, while building on the unification and centralization achieved by the Qin, adopted very different methods of government. Forced labour, taxation, and state controls were reduced. Free expression of opinions was once more permitted. The Han dynasty was the model for later imperial dynasties. ‘The unity and order of the Han were remembered as a reality and the name of Han came to stand for a perfection that had been lost and a unity that was desired’ (CHC i. 369).

This sequence of events approximated to the views of Han Feizi and others, that coercion could achieve the harmonious society which most people desired, but only by means they would never have chosen for themselves.

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The ruthless conquests, together with the reforms already imposed on the state of Qin and now, under the First Emperor, extended to the whole of China, had the effect of providing a milieu in which the gentlemanly culture of Confucianism could flourish. There now took place a fusion of political ideas deriving from the Confucian

tradition, correlative cosmology, Daoism, and some (unacknowledged) Legalist sources. ‘Han Confucianism’ (as it has been called) was thus a conflation of earlier Confucianism, mystical cosmology, and authoritarian statism (CHC i. 107, 652). The Zhou notion of monarchy had been transformed, but the nature and extent of the change was not apparent in the language used. The ‘institu- tional framework’ was and remained a ‘legalist autocracy’ (Wang and Chang 1986: 12). But the state could now afford to be benevolent. Chinese historians have called it ‘outside Confucian, inside legalist’ (Zhengyuan Fu 1996: 8). As Bodde put it, ‘it is the Legalist/Confucian symbiosis evolved during the Han, with administrative controls at the top merging into self-administered behav- ioural standards below, that gave to the Chinese state the necessary combin- ation of firmness and flexibility that enabled it to survive’ (CHC i. 90). The Lüshi Chunqiu, summarizing previous thinkers, had portrayed the state

as an organic development of the natural world, and at the same time as created by men in order to achieve order and stability. Under the Han, the emperor’s sacrifices to Heaven were expanded ‘to demonstrate the transcendent bases of the emperor’s might’ (Lewis 1990: 162). The theory of the Mandate of Heaven was fully stated in a work of the early first century CE,On theMandate [Destiny] of Kings, by Ban Biao (Loewe 1994: 109). It was becoming the norm that actual government should be done by professional civil servants, a significant pro- portion of whom came from humble backgrounds.100 This was in accordance with Confucian and Mohist thought. This rule-following bureaucracy contrib- uted to the relative stability of sacred monarchy in China. During the first century of this unified empire, Confucian teachings were

combined with correlative cosmology to become the dominant political ideol- ogy of the state, the bureaucracy, and the landed classes. Confucian thinkers adopted metaphysical notions which rooted polity and power in the very structure of the universe and nature. Thus the Confucian Dong Zhongshu (fl. 152–119 BCE) reflected on how ‘Heaven, Earth and humankind are the foundation of all living things: Heaven engenders them, Earth nourishes them, humanity completes them with music and the Rites’. They interact like the parts of the body (ST 299). Class distinctions and family structures were believed to reflect the order of nature and Heaven. In fact, ‘everything, from the grand movements of history to the minute workings of the human body, was the outward expression of one of five metaphysical powers: earth, water, fire, wood or metal’ (CHC i. 360). The heavenly, natural, and human worlds were thought to go through interrelated cycles of creation, decay, and rebirth (CHC i. 107). Each cycle was identified by specific phenomena in Heaven,

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Earth, and the state. And each phase has its own abuses: in the phase of fire, these would be ‘disregarding the laws, expelling meritorious ministers’; in the phase of metal, ‘ignoring the well-being of the people’.101

Under the emperor Wu-di (r. 141–87 BCE), Confucianism gained the upper hand among the various ‘schools’ of earlier political thought. Within the Confucian school, the star of Mengzi, with his greater optimism about human nature, rose, while that of the more pessimistic Xunzi declined (Goldin 2007). An imperial academy was established for the education of officials; the examination system was based on the Confucian Classics, subject now to official interpretation. The political culture of Confucianism steadily gained ground among the elite; the emperor Wang Mang (r. 9–23 CE) tried to present himself as a Confucian sage.102

The Confucian Classics were transmitted by an elite of landowners who had a vested interest in ensuring the perpetuity of this text-based state, because they alone, in virtue of their literary learning, were authorized to run it (Lewis 1999: 10, 361). These men and their families in turn depended on state service to maintain their status and wealth. Local elites adopted the Confucian ideal of the cultured gentleman who fulfils his aspirations by leading an exemplary life in his family and local community, while still ‘participating, even if very indirectly, in national . . . political affairs’ (Patricia Ebry, in CHC 643). The Chinese empire enjoyed much greater cultural unity than the Roman (see below, p. 220). There was a genuine cultural oikoumenē among the educated elite, who went to school together, were posted to every corner of the empire, but kept in touch with each other. The country was intersected by recognized landmarks of past exploits. The landscape was viewed through the eyes of those who had gone before, and had celebrated it in poetry.103

Among the masses there was greater diversity. They looked to shamanism, Daoism—‘the indigenous religion of China’104—and Buddhism. One should not assume that China would have remained unified, and so relatively peace- ful, if it had not been for the gentle way of Confucianism and the predomin- antly non-violent orientation of Daoism and Buddhism. One key to explaining the stability of the Chinese state may be the kind of accommodation arrived at between refined culture and popular thought.

The Confucian idea of leading by example and teaching meant that gov- ernment had philosophical reasons for leaving well alone. Similarly, Daoist inaction theory suggested that ‘the court should refrain from excessive inter- ference in the operation of government at lower levels and in the life of local communities’ (CHC 767). These ideas favoured the clan and the small com- munity, together with a tradition of government through ‘kinship organisa- tions, village communities or trade corporations well adapted, not to replace but to evade . . . power at the centre’ (Graham 1989: 300).

Nevertheless, both the Mandate and the notion of successive and contrast- ing phases in human and natural affairs could justify occasional changes of

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dynasty. Pines argues that the significant, albeit passive, role assigned to the people in classical Chinese political thought was partly responsible for the fact that, throughout imperial times, ‘the most massive and steady collective actions by commoners in human history’ recurred. Members of the elite might see rebellion as ‘ipso facto proof of the dynasty’s failure’ (Pines 2009: 217), legitimizing a change of dynasty that had already happened, though not actually bringing one about. Indeed, no human action was thought necessary to effect a change, since moral failure would automatically entail loss of cosmic status. ‘When the ruler fails in all the Five Duties . . . he loses his presidency over the Center’.105

CONCLUSION

In ancient China one encounters ways of thinking which one finds nowhere else. In other cultures the state was often held in high regard as an institution with a cosmic function. In China, however, unlike everywhere else, reforming thinkers, rather than questioning this state tradition, reaffirmed it. They made the Son of Heaven a focus of their ethical and mystical aspirations. Confucius, even more than Plato, saw a particular kind of polity as essential to the solution of human problems. The peculiarly Chinese solution to the problems of socio-political organ-

ization would never have happened without the Legalists. In several parts of the world today, a dose of Legalism would probably reduce the sum of human suffering, by achieving what people want by means they would never choose. But this would require the cultural back-up of something equivalent to Confucianism. This combination was surely the most successful of ancient political outcomes in matching results to aspirations. Confucianism and Legalism offer two alternative approaches to the organ-

ization of large communities: the affective and the calculating. Confucians based their idea of the state on the family. This gains strength from the evolutionary origins of human societies (see above, p. 7). The Legalists saw the state as clockwork. In both ancient and modern times, an attempt has to be made to combine these two approaches.

NOTES

1. Named after the annals describing it. 2. Confucianism is a Western construct. 3. Mo Tzu, Basic Writings, 2; Graham 1989: 44. 4. Keightley 1983; and 2000: 98–9, 557; CHAC 289–90.

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5. Referring to ‘political, symbolic and moral potency’ (Aihe Wang 2000: 60). 6. CHAC 566, 597; Lewis 1990: 243. 7. Pines 2000a: 19; 2009: 86, 119, 126, 140. 8. ‘Not a single known text challenges the concept of the ruler’s monopolization of

the ultimate administrative authority’; Pines 2009: 16, 52–3. 9. Sometimes translated ‘gentleman’. 10. B&B 201–56. The Sayings, and also the texts ascribed to Mozi, Mengzi, Xunzi, and

others, were compilations based on the teaching of the master, but considerably edited and added to after his death.

11. The Zuozhuan also contains records of political ideas expressed in speeches of this period (Pines 2002: 7).

12. The Classic of Changes, Record of Rites, and Classic of Music. 13. ST 27, 170; Aihe Wang 2000: 101. 14. Pines 2009: 43. The Lüshi Chunqiu was ostensibly a history of the period from 771

to 453 BCE. 15. Pines 2002: 58; CHAC 314, 332–4. 16. ‘If it is virtue that the king uses, he may pray Heaven for an enduring Mandate’

(Classic of Documents, in ST 37). 17. ST 27, 35; Loewe 1994: 88–9; Shahar and Weller 1996: 39. 18. Jia Yi, writing in the early second century BCE (ST 291–2). 19. In Pines 2002: 71–2; 2009: 22. 20. ‘The people (min)’ are mentioned fifty-two times in the Sayings: de Bary 1991: 19;

Roetz 1993: 124–5. 21. There is praise for someone who ‘relieves the needy, but does not enrich the

wealthy’ (6.4, according to B&B written c. 460); ‘the gentleman esteems the good but pities the incapable’ (19.3; de Bary 1991: 19–21). When someone declined a gift of grain, Confucius replied: ‘was there no way you could give it to the neighbouring households or the county associations?’ (6.5, written perhaps c. 460).

22. In Paul Wheatley, The Pivot of the Four Quarters (Chicago: Aldine, 1971), 446; Creel 1970: 99.

23. The people look upon them as ‘dealing with deities’, whereas ‘[noble] persons regard these as refined culture’ (in Pines 2002: 55).

24. In Aihe Wang 2000: 178–9. ‘Success or failure are determined not by the natural order of the universe but by the moral conduct of the ruler’ (ibid. 178).

25. They ‘turned omens from amantic practice into a symbolic system used in construct- ing emperorship and a discourse for political persuasion’ (Aihe Wang 2000: 177).

26. In Graham 1989: 117; Pines 2002: 212; and 2009: 22, 75–6. The Zuozhuan said one could ‘expel’ a really bad ruler (ST 185).

27. In Graham 1989: 294–5. On this work, see Lewis 1999: 27. 28. Yuri Pines, ‘Subversion Unearthed: Criticism of Hereditary Succession in the

Newly Discovered Manuscripts’, Oriens Extremus, 24 (2005), 159–78; Pines 2009: 57–8, 63–7.

29. The Classic of Documents said that the emperor should appoint as minister ‘someone who is already illustrious, or raise up someone who is humble and of low status’ (ST 30). Patronage and what the Romans called ‘friendship’—acquaint- ance and contacts—do not seem to have featured in these discussions.

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30. ST 168; Roetz 1993: 72. 31. Basic Writings, 48–9; ST 67; Schwartz 1985: 157. 32. Book of Shang Yang, 235, 239–41, 315; Han Feizi, Basic Writings, 20. According to

Shen Bu-Hai (d. 337), prime minister in the state of Han, one should appoint only for ability and reward only for achievement (Creel 1974: 33).

33. Pines 2009: 155–61. On the Zhuangzi, see Lewis 1999: 60. 34. Bodde 1981: 180; Roetz 1993: 86; Waley n.d.: 115, 64. 35. Herrlee G. Creel, Confucius and the Chinese Way (New York: Harper and Row,

1949), 84; Roetz 1993: 46–7. 36. This is satisfactorily explained only by Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cam-

bridge University Press, 1975), 376. 37. CA 15.18, trans. Graham 1989: 11. 38. Pines 2002: 184–7. It is the concept most often mentioned in the Sayings ‘by a large

margin’ (de Bary 1991: 30). Moreover, ‘by the time of Confucius ren was widening to the ordinary word for human being’ (Graham 1989: 19).

39. See also 1.16; 15.24; 6.30; de Bary 1991: 32; B&B 159; Graham 1989: 20–1. 40. CA 5.12; 12.2; Roetz 1993: 138, 145. 41. ST 119, 123, 151; Graham 1989: 115. 42. B&B 89; Bodde 1981: 179. This is again reminiscent of Hegel. 43. ‘Emotion underlies ceremony’, as B&B say (p. 81); see also de Bary 1991: 34. 44. ST 147, 149, 154. Pines translates this passage thus: ‘every man possesses the mind

of pity . . . [and] shame . . . every man possesses the mind that distinguishes right from wrong . . . Benevolence, propriety, ritual and wisdom are not infused in us from outside; we definitely possess them [within ourselves]’ (2000a: 28). This ‘view of human nature would ultimately become dominant, not only in China but also in the rest of Confucianized East Asia’, both among intellectuals and ‘in the value system of an entire culture’; ST 116.

45. Below, p. 199. See Lloyd 2004: 159–60. 46. In Pines 2000a: 39. See ibid. 27–8; Sato 2003: 425. 47. ‘If one day [the ruler] can overcome himself and turn to ren, the world will turn to

ren along with him’ (CA 12.1; 13.12). 48. CA 6.11; 15.2; 4.9; 7.16. 49. Under a humane ruler, even if he receives ‘the revenues of the whole empire’, the

lowliest in society ‘will not feel themselves to be deprived’ (Xunzi, in HCPT 186). 50. ST 127–8. Xunzi similarly argued for the unimpeded circulation of goods, no

customs barriers, and no taxes on forests, marshes, or weirs (ST 169; HCPT 187). 51. ST 157; Graham 1989: 115. 52. He consciously avoided the term (Pines 2000a: 22). 53. ST 70; Graham 1989: 41, 49; Schwartz 1985: 146, 149. 54. In HCPT 243. And it is ‘the ultimate source of morality and the politically active

deity in charge of maintaining the sociopolitical order’ (Pines 2009: 33). 55. ST 68; Graham 1989: 46. Democritus and Protagoras would have run him close:

see below, p. 141. 56. Or possibly the people (Pines and Shelach 2004: 133). 57. I am grateful to Yuri Pines for guidance on this point. 58. ST 68–9; Graham 1989: 46–7.

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59. A ninth-century Muslim thinker; Black 2001: 27–9. 60. For comparable statements in Muslim philosophers and Marsilius of Padua (early

fourteenth century CE), see Black 2008: 44–53. 61. ST 168, 175; in Pines and Shelach 2004: 143; Pines 2000a: 35; Roetz 1993: 112. 62. ‘The law cannot stand alone . . .Without the right man, they are lost . . . The noble

man is the source of the law’, as Xunzi put it (in Schwartz 1985: 296). 63. Lewis 1990: 96; CHAC 605, 611–15; Yates 2001: 363. 64. ST 194; Zhengyuan Fu 1996: 39. 65. The Huainanzi (c. 139 BCE), in Ames 1994: 163. 66. Book of Lord Shang, 41, 45, 203, 219, 237, 282; ST 195; Han Feizi, Basic Writings,

110; CHC i. 38. 67. Book of Lord Shang, 49, 177, 220, 282; Han Feizi, Basic Writings, 116; Zhengyuan

Fu 1996: 90; Pines 2009: 176. Xunzi thought likewise (Pines 2009: 177). 68. Bodde 1991: 181–2; Book of Lord Shang, 243. 69. Book of Lord Shang, 212–13; ST 196; repeated by Han Feizi: HCPT 405. 70. Most rulers cannot ‘rise to the level of Confucius’, nor can ‘ordinary people be like

Confucius’ disciples’ (Han Feizi, Basic Writings, 102–3). 71. Pines 2000b: 138; Graham 1989: 273; Hsu 1965: 155. 72. Compare classical Islamic thought, especially al-Jahiz (Black 2008: 44–51). 73. Book of Lord Shang, 228; Bodde 1981: 181; HPT 408; Han Feizi, in Wang and

Chang 1986: 51. Compare Li Ssu (above, p. 113), in CHC i. 69. 74. In Graham 1989: 291, Han Feizi also said that ‘you cannot rely on the wisdom of

the people (because) they have the minds of little children’ (Basic Writings, 128). 75. Book of Lord Shang, 231, 239; ST 196. Punishment of guilty officials ‘should be

extended to their family for three generations’ (ST 197). 76. Book of Lord Shang, 204, 120; ‘impose rule upon them and they will become

upright; when they have gained a sense of security, they will become upright’: the Guanzi, in HCPT 330.

77. Sunzi, in Zhengyuan Fu 1996: 66; Book of Lord Shang, 233, 285. 78. Book of Lord Shang, in Pines 2000b: 313. 79. Pines 2000b: 282. See also Yuri Pines, ‘Serving All-Under-Heaven: Cosmopolitan

Intellectuals of the Warring States as Creators of the Chinese Empire (fifth–third centuries BCE)’ (2009).

80. Pines 2000b: 301–2; and 2009: 27. 81. Schwartz 1985: 285; HCPT 167. 82. 1999: 287; Graham 1989: 5. 83. Han Feizi, Basic Writings, 27; the Guanzi, in Zhengyuan Fu 1996: 81; HCPT 333. 84. Pines 2009: 44–6, 50–1, 83–5. 85. In Zhengyuan Fu 1996: 85. 86. The Guanzi, in Graham 1989: 172; Schwartz 1985: 231–3. 87. Lewis 1999: 39; Pines 2009: 42–3. 88. ‘Position of strength’; shih was a military term for ‘the power inherent in a particular

arrangement of elements and its developmental tendency’ (Kidder-Smith, in ST 215, on Sunzi); see also Graham 1989: 268, 278; Zhengyuan Fu 1996: 36.

89. Kidder Smith, in ST 219; Graham 1989: 280. Some see this as implying a theory of sovereignty; Moody 1997: 318–20.

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90. Wang and Chang 1986: 9. This, they add, ‘has become a characteristically Chinese philosophical outlook’. Xunzi speaks of ‘guiding principles’.

91. Karen Turner, ‘The Theory of Law in the Ching-Fa’, Early China, 14 (1989), 55–76, at 68, 60; Peerenboom 1993: 80.

92. Schwartz 1985: 336; Creel 1974: 100–1, 293. 93. Han Feizi, in Waley n.d.: 178; the Guanzi, in HCPT 363; Pines 2009: 139. 94. Shen Bu-Hai, in Creel 1974: 65; Graham 1989: 268; CHC i. 74. 95. In Wang and Chang 1986: 33; Pines 2009: 100–1. 96. In CHC i. 38; see ibid. 76, 104–6, 187–9, 198–9. 97. Sellmann 1999: 195; Yates 2001. 98. Pines 2009: 109; CHC i. 78. 99. For a comparison between the Warring States period and early modern Europe,

see Victoria Tin-bor Hui, War and State Formation in Ancient China and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005).

100. CHC i. 753. ‘Of the men who held the highest office . . . during the second and first centuries BC, at least 22% came from poor or humble families’ (Creel 1970: 7).

101. Fu Sheng (early second century BCE), in Aihe Wang 2000: 158. 102. CHC i. 464–5, 753, 756, 768–9, 773. But see Michael Nylan, ‘A Problematic

Model: The “Han Orthodox Synthesis”, Then and Now’, in Kai-wing Chow et al. (eds.), Imagining Boundaries: Changing Confucian Doctrines, Texts and Hermen- eutics (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1999), 17–56.

103. Grand Canal, Great River: The Travel Diary of a Twelfth-century Chinese Poet, trans. Philip Watson (London: Frances Lincoln, 2007).

104. Its continuous organization dates from the second century CE (Graham 1989: 171).

105. Fu Sheng (fl. c. 221–170 BCE), in Aihe Wang 2000: 166.

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