Ren Jiantao, "Han Fei and the Theoretical Gestalt of Operationalized Politics"

Ren Jiantao, “Han Fei and the Theoretical Gestalt of Operationalized Politics”[1]
 
Introduction and Translation by David Ownby
 
Introduction
 
Ren Jiantao (b. 1962) is a Professor of Political Science at Tsinghua University and an impressively productive scholar with a broad range of interests.  Earlier in his career, Ren was a classical liberal who believed in markets and limited governments and expressed a certain affinity for Confucianism without belonging to the Mainland New Confucians (who are too overtly political for Ren’s taste).  He was – and probably still is – good friends with Gao Quanxi, the constitutional scholar now at Jiaotong University in Shanghai, and Xu Zhangrun, the political scientist/jurist who lost his position and most of his livelihood in recent years because he dared to criticize Xi Jinping openly, and the three published at least one book together (see here - my impression is that there are more).
 
Ren has been on my radar for a few years.  In the 2000s, many of his writings were stunning examples of what could be said openly at the time:  notably that the Chinese Communist Party had made its contribution in putting the ancient régime to rest but was now destined for the dustbin of history, following the example of the Soviet Union (see here for details).  Ren said such things not as a near-dissident attempting to mobilize the masses via social media but instead in what I find to be quite stilted social science language in some of China’s most prominent academic journals.
 
Giving that Ren had been pushing the envelope in the 2000s, I decided to revisit the work he was producing after Xi Jinping had been in power for a few years, comparing ten or so texts published in 2012 with a similar number of texts published in 2020 (see here).  I found that he had indeed moved away from the most controversial points that had marked his earlier work, but continued to speak with the voice of an independent scholar, addressing what he thought to be the central issues of the moment (at the time, artificial intelligence and its impacts on governance and democracy) in ways that implicitly challenged China’s Party-State, if in ways less obvious than in his earlier work.
 
A couple of weeks ago when I was looking for something new to translate, I happened across this text by Ren on Han Fei (c. 280-233 BCE), the well-known Legalist thinker who had a considerable impact on the founding of the Qin state, which launched China’s dynastic history.  I decided to translate it as a way of updating my project on Ren and his work as Xi Jinping’s third mandate drags on, and also because I wanted to know what people were saying about Han Fei in China now.   At least at first glance, Xi Jinping and Han Fei hold very similar rules on the “rule of law,” meaning that the state imposes law and order on its subjects, who follow along obediently for their own good and that of the state, the two being neatly aligned.  This is not how most of the democratic world understands the idea of the “rule of law,” and Ren Jiantao, at least in his early incarnation, was very much in favor of this second understanding of the rule of law.
 
Frustratingly, and despite the many hours I spent on this translation, I cannot tell you exactly what Ren Jiantao thinks about Han Fei.  His main arguments are:  that Han Fei made important intellectual and political contributions in his time, and should be affirmed for those even if his values (monarchical) do not accord with ours (democratic); in other words, it is ahistorical to condemn Han Fei for not standing with “the people”; and that instead of judging Han Fei according to the “fact-value dichotomy,” which produces the anomaly just mentioned, we should judge him according to a “norms and operations” approach, which allows us to see Han Fei more on his own terms.
 
I find both of these claims convincing if uncontroversial and confess to not understanding the larger purpose of Ren’s text.  He seems to be saying that Han Fei was in favor of the centralization of power in the hands of the monarch, but not of abuse of this power (norms and operations at work here), but as far as I can tell, he does not make clear either who he is arguing with or the stakes of that argument.  The title of the piece says it all, by which I mean that I don’t know what it means.
 
At first glance, it is hard to believe that the text is not about contemporary politics.  Xi Jinping and the ongoing purges in China are very much on the minds of Chinese intellectuals, as well as parallels between Xi and Han Fei (see here for one example), and at times I felt like I might be reading a parody gone wrong, or something that started out as a parody but wandered back toward something more serious – even if I am not sure what.  The piece originally appeared as part of a two-article set devoted to the topic of Han Fei in Wenshizhe/文史哲 (Journal of Chinese Humanities), a leading intellectual venue in China (I did not take the trouble to read the other article, to which Ren refers in passing in his piecde).  I suppose it is equally possible that Ren was commissioned to write the piece and perhaps did not have time to give it his best.  It happens.  I kept thinking that the penny would finally drop, and the reason that Ren devoted 16,000+ characters to the topic would emerge from under the repetitions and the quotations, but it never did.  If it drops for you, let me know.
 
English-language translations of Han Fei include:  Burton Watson, translator, Han Feizi:  Basic Writings (New York:  Columbia University Press, 2003); and W. K. Liao, translator The Complete Works of Han Fei Tzu (London:  Arthur Probsthian, 1939).  The link to the Liao text is to volume one, the only one I found online.  Watson’s online text is unpaginated, so in footnotes I simply indicated “Watson.”  For the Liao text I indicate the page number.  There were some quotations that were not in the two volumes – although perhaps in Liao’s second volume – so I just omitted them, including the Chinese text in the footnotes.
 
If you are more interested in Han Fei than in Ren Jiantao, I highly recommend spending time with the Burton Watson translation.  Han Fei was a lively thinker with a deft touch of the brush, and Watson is a master translator.
 
Translation
 
In research on Chinese intellectual history, the judgement of Han Fei 韓非 and Legalism has been almost entirely negative. The two are consistently regarded as direct opponents of modern democracy and thus forcefully condemned. From a modern perspective, this is surely accurate, but from a historical perspective, things are more complex.  
 
Here, it is worth reflecting on our methodological presuppositions. People have long been accustomed to thinking about politics within the dichotomous framework of facts and values, while “norms and operations,” an analytical framework that is more conducive to looking at how politics actually works, has been relatively ignored. The misplaced criticism of Han Fei's lack of democratic ideas, as well as the misplaced defense of Han Fei's advocacy of virtue, both rely on the same fact-value distinction. We need to break away from this distinction and analyze Han Fei's thought from the perspective of norms and operations so as to arrive at a better understanding of his thought and its modern utility.
 
Beyond Values
 
The importance of Han Fei as a thinker who integrated the intellectual heritage of other philosophers who came before him during the unification process in the late Warring States period cannot be overstated. That said, people have interpreted Han Fei’s importance in quite different ways, one reading based on historical facts and another based on a judgement of Han himself.  In terms of historical facts, Han Fei's role in facilitating China's transition to the imperial era is affirmed from the perspective of the evolution of Chinese politics at the end of the Warring States period.
 
There are two versions of this factual account.  The first is from the perspective of history of thought, in which Han Fei is seen as having synthesized the ideas of the thinkers who preceded him, thus creating the idea of the imperial system, the most important intellectual construct of the era.  The second is from the perspective of political history, in which Han Fei's overarching vision of the imperial system became the ideological construction of central power that the promoters of this new system employed at the moment when the Qin emerged victorious. Because both of these assertions about Han Fei are based on established historical facts, they are almost universally accepted as definitive.
 
Liang Qichao 梁啓超 (1873-1929) can be said to be a representative of the former view. In his words:  "Han Fei was the last and best [殿, lit. the “rearguard”] of the pre-Qin scholars.  He personally studied with Xunzi 荀子[2], and deeply grasped the true meaning of Confucianism, arguing that its roots went back to Huanglao 黄老,[3] thus respecting the essence of Daoism.  He traveled with Tian Qiu 田鸠,[4] and thus understood the teachings of Mozi 墨子,[5] as well as those of the School of Names.[6] He drew on all of these to construct his own ideas.  Being born after these masters, he applied his dense and penetrating mind to their ideas and made them his own.  The fact that he could surpass others was also a product of the era in which he lived.  As a result his books, like the Laozi, the Zhuangzi, the Mengzi, and the Xunzi, became books that everyone should read, and not just scholars.”  
 
What Liang says is exactly right. Han Fei’s rise coincided with the end of the Warring States period, which indeed means that he had the advantage of absorbing the teachings of the former masters and developing them. Such conditions did not exist for pre-Qin thinkers.  Moreover, Han Fei's keen perception of the political and ideological needs of his time and his ability to adapt the concepts of all schools of thought to those political and ideological needs explains why he was the one to offer a synthesis of earlier intellectual efforts at the moment when China once again approached unity.
 
It is generally agreed that the ideological impetus behind the Qin unification came from Han Fei. This is, of course, closely related to the fact that Emperor Qin Shi Huang read Han Fei's writings (lit. “spoken parts in an opera” 道白). As recorded in Sima Qian’s 司马迁Records of the Historian, "Someone brought Han Fei’s books into the state of Qin. Qin Shi Huang read Solitary Indignation 孤愤 and The Five Vermin 五蠹 and exclaimed with a sigh, ‘I would be willing to die to see this man and spend some time with him.’"
 
This remark truly reflects the emperor’s high estimation of Han Fei.  As the writer and poet Guo Moruo (1892-1978) noted:  "Although Han Fei died under the Qin, his theories were those applied by the state;  Li Si 李斯, Yao Jia 姚贾, [two of the emperor’s close advisors] Qin Shi Huang and his successor were all his senior disciples. Qin Shi Huang's governing style – outside of his superstitious faith in the fangshi 方士 [often translated as “magicians”] and his crazy quest for immortality – was completely in accord with Han Fei’s ideas, and the ‘virtuous acts’ of burning of the books and the burial of the scholars are ironclad proofs of this assertion.”
 
Guo exaggerates a bit here, and Han Fei's influence on Qin politics was at the level of ideas, and not political models or concrete policies.  Nonetheless, his assertion that Han Fei's ideological influence on the rise of Qin politics was unparalleled is perfectly valid. This is corroborated in two senses: without Han Fei's ideas, the Qin would have been much less self-conscious about the kind of governance they were establishing; and without Han Fei's guidance, the Qin model of governance could not have emerged out of the blue in the way that it did.
 
The latter view, i.e. the evaluation of Han Fei's thought, can also be divided into two basic approaches. One is that Han Fei's ideas should be given a positive evaluation in the sense that they were adapted to the needs of the time.  Han Fei's thought, which emerged at the moment of the rise of the imperial system, has a historical legitimacy in that it interacted with and promoted that system.  The second is the assertion, grounded in a basic embrace of democratic politics, which condemns Han Fei's authoritarianism and the damage he did to China’s modern transition to democracy. 
 
The positive evaluation is a value-based historicist conclusion. According to the historian K. C. Hsiao 萧公权 (1897-1981):
 
"Han Fei came after the creation of Legalism, but he in fact brought together the great achievements of his predecessors.  The three principal concepts found in his thought – law fa/法, technique shu/术, and power shi/势 – were all products of the historical environment and were nourished by it, and in Han Fei’s hands achieved their final, mature form. The historical environment that nurtured these ideas was, in a nutshell, the socio-political fallout of the collapse of Chinese feudalism. In political terms, a direct result of the collapse of feudalism was the weakness of the Son of Heaven and the corresponding strength of the vassals. These strong vassals, however, were not the old feudal families who formerly governed the states; they were instead usurped by their powerful ministers. Those vassals fortunate enough to keep the throne were often governed in name only, becoming a situation in which  became a situation in which 'the Ning family handles the government while I take care of the sacrifices,'[7] At first, the government ministers took the ruler’s place, after which the retainers attacked him.  As a result the rules and conventions that once kept society together ceased to function.  Moreover, the power of the vassals and the atmosphere of war were mutually reinforcing. Those who were powerful tried to annex the others, and the more they succeeded, the more powerful they became. To become rich and strong required both the capacity to attack as well as the ability to defend. As a result, the expansion of the power of the monarch became the goal of politics, and political thought also tended to focus on the ruler and the country and seek to establish the laws and methods necessary to their maintenance."
 
Hsiao’s comments are not quite praise, but to the extent that he notes that Han’s ideas fit the spirit of the era, it can at least be taken as an appreciation of the historical value of his thought.
 
But for a true evaluation of the value of Han Fei’s thought, one need look no further than that the affirmation and condemnation of him from a modern perspective. Those who appreciate Han Fei insist that he, like Machiavelli, the founder of modern political thought, revealed the true face of politics by showing how it differs from moral values.  
 
In his comparison of the common points of Machiavelli's and Han Fei's ways of thinking, the historian Wang Dezhao 王德昭(1914-1982) highlighted their cold and frank political judgments, and their understanding of the hugely decisive effect of monarchical dictatorship on the politics of the day. In terms of their outstanding contributions, Wang noted that:
 
"Han Fei's and Machiavelli's eras were separated by thousands of centuries in history, yet Machiavelli's thought, which is known in the West as a pioneering set of ideas and an important part of a new politics, was prefigured by Han Fei thousands of years earlier, something which is quite meaningful in both Chinese and Western thought. Moreover, Han Fei lived at the end of the Warring States period in China, while Machiavelli lived at the end of the Renaissance in Europe. Because of the similarity of the main features of these two historical eras, we can also see that in similar environments, despite differences in time and space, the human mind will still follow similar paths.”
 
This argument stressing the similarity of the two thinkers has its insights, but at the same time it ignores the many differences between the two men in terms of historical background, the direction of their thinking, certain basic ideas, the focus of their attention, the political situation, and the concrete results when their ideas were put into practice. At the same time, this view has the value of helping people to understand the political value of thinkers in both modern and traditional eras. 
 
If highlighting the timeless significance of Han Fei's focus on the unique importance of politics is not enough to suggest the significance of his thought, then modern criticisms like those of the writer Wang Yuanhua’s 王元化 (1920-2008), which take him to task for promoting authoritarianism and working against democracy, and which look back critically at political ideas like his, prove his significance in a different way. To quote Wang: 
 
"The ‘law’ that Han Fei promoted was the ‘law’ of the ruler 君主本位主义 [lit. something like “the ruler for the ruler’s sake-ism]. This ‘law’ was in opposition to the people…To argue that Han Fei promoted the 'rule of law' and that this 'rule of law' served 'to facilitate the struggle for freedom of the people who were still enslaved and helped to free them from the oppression of their slave masters' is an illegitimate disguise and glorification of Han Fei…Han Fei's law had to do with the monarch’s techniques of governance 君人南面之术, and Han Fei himself was well aware that the rule of the monarch was in complete opposition to the people."
 
This assessment, which situates Han Fei in opposition to modern democracy, cannot be said to be wrong in its basic judgment, but it is a bit much to ask that Han Fei understand popular sovereignty as it exists in modern democracies.
 
Following Wang Yuanhua, the historian Yu Ying-shih's 余英時 (1930-2021) characterization of Han Fei's thought as anti-intellectual is logical:
 
"The anti-intellectualism of the Legalists was never metaphysical or emotional; it developed gradually and matured out of the political experience of the Warring States (especially in the middle and late periods).  Han Fei thus called on his capacities of dispassionate reason to sum up these past experiences, systematizing them so that they came to be among the guiding principles of authoritarian politics. On this basis, Qin Shi Huang and his principal advisor Li Si deployed a new anti-intellectual political tradition throughout China. 'Burning the books' and the 'burying the Confucians' were the logical conclusions of Legalist anti-intellectualism in political practice. There is much to be said about ‘burying the scholars’ and it was a random event, so I won’t discuss it here. But 'burning the books' was a basic policy of the Qin dynasty."
 
Yu's judgment properly positions Han Fei and the Legalists as part of an anti-intellectual authoritarianism, i.e., in the sense of "destroying the intellect or suppressing intellectuals." If this assessment accurately reflects the political facts of the Qin system, I still feel that is unconvincing to explain this entire system by reference to Han Fei.
 
But this is the way Han Fei has come to be judged. This judgement is a thus reversal of the positive value attributed to Han Fei's intellectual contribution to the reunification of China in the late Warring States period, as previously discussed. One fact is overridden by another value. In the context of traditional Chinese history as a whole, such a judgment actually conceals another deeper assertion: that in the modern urgency to construct a democratic politics for China, traditional Chinese authoritarian politics needs to be thoroughly rejected, which means that Han Fei and Legalism should be part of the bath water to be thrown out.
 
The history of research on Han Fei makes clear that there is a high degree of agreement among many researchers as to the historical importance of Han Fei's thought. This is a statement of fact. However, in terms of the scholarly view of Han Fei, another surprising commonality has also emerged – that with the exception of a few Han Fei defenders who have emerged in recent years, almost all scholars focus on the fact that Han Fei advocated monarchical absolutism. This has led to a sharp dichotomy in how scholars view Han Fei: most have concluded that Han Fei was an advocate of monarchical absolutism in ancient China, and therefore responsible for our country's thousands of years of authoritarianism, and for China's difficulty in shifting to modern democracy.
 
By contrast, a minority argues that Han Fei's promotion of the "rule of law" was based more on the notion of government by strict laws and less on the cruel measures that have been more often emphasized, and that the Qin's combination of Han Fei's idea of strict rules with the historical philosophy of the Yin-Yang School[8] produced Qin's government policy, based on killing and execution, and this gave people reason to criticize Han Fei's authoritarianism.
 
Analytically speaking, Han Fei's thought cannot simply be viewed as "authoritarian;" his focus was not on whether the monarch was authoritarian, but on whether the state was ruled in such a way as to favor a particular set of laws, or instead to promote virtue in the human realm.  Han Fei's choice was naturally the former. Such a choice does not mean setting virtue aside, however, and Han instead embarks on a different path to virtue from that of Confucianism, centered on following the heart, following the rites and following the law.[9] This insight possesses a certain creative significance in correcting certain stereotypes about Han Fei, but it also seems to aim at a complete makeover of how we see him. This attempt is a controversial addition to how we view Han Fei, and it is almost certain that the Mainland Neo-Confucians would not agree with it.[10]
 
Generally speaking, the study of Han Fei's thought has been carried out on the basis of fact-value distinctions: there is not much difference in the factual acknowledgement of Han Fei's importance in the political development and political thought of China in the late Warring States period; however, differences as to whether Han Fei deserves to be recognized in value terms and whether he should be positively evaluated are somewhat irreconcilable. Understanding Han Fei in a dichotomous fact-value framework will surely produce a research perspective which is largely pejorative, meaning that he will be rejected more than affirmed.
 
The reason for this is simple. From the global perspective of modern democracy, people no longer accept Han Fei's value preference in favor of the importance of monarchical power, which produces a kind of Han Fei research stereotype predetermined by the natural preference of modern values. In the numerous works on Han Fei, scholars who criticize or critique him mainly base their arguments in value terms, i.e., because he opposed democracy and advocated authoritarianism; even scholars who try to affirm Han Fei are committed to defending him because he was attempting to build morality, which is something modern scholars can value. The latter approach is in fact an unconscious recognition of the research approach of Han Fei's critics.
 
Judging Han Fei according to the fact-value dichotomy constitutes a Humean approach. Hume argued that people must distinguish between facts and values. In short, we cannot readily extrapolate the “ought” of some conceptual issue from the “is” that the facts give us.  Facts and values must be separated, as should “is” and “ought” propositions. What is Humean in research on Han Fei is the distance between the factual judgement that Han Fei’s thought played a positive role in unifying the political order in the late Warring States period and the negative or defensive assessment of Han Fei based on values.
 
It is true that Han Fei's "factual" contribution to political thought does not lead to the conclusion that he deserves to be recognized in terms of “values.” But thinking like this creates two Han Feis, or perhaps multiple Han Feis, which in turn reflects the dilemma of the fact-value dichotomy: even if a strict distinction can be made between factual cognition and value judgment of the political claims of one particular subject, how do we reconcile this with that subject’s unified view of the world?
 
We know that in true human cognition, fact and value are intertwined.  There has never been a factual judgment without value connotations, and from the other perspective, there has never been a value judgment without factual support. "Science itself presupposes values, because epistemological values (coherence, simplicity, etc.) are values too, and are in the same boat with ethical values, all of which are equally ‘objective’.”[11]
 
The entanglement of fact and value is one of the contributing factors to the difficulty of reaching consensus when faced with value decisions. Because value beliefs are plural, the identification of facts with value tendencies is inconclusive. The "divine controversy" over values has become an insoluble dilemma in the way people think and act, and can be a fatal blow to political life, which requires the establishment of a minimum of consensus before action can be undertaken. It might well be that if we stick to the dichotomy between facts and values, we will remain trapped in the quagmire of reality and judgment. This is a methodological issue that we must bear in mind when studying Han Fei.
 
We need a new Han Fei studies, grounded in a framework based on norms and operations now that the fact-value dichotomy has fallen into apparent disarray.  Norms, in the practical sense, can be understood as universal rules that regulate and evaluate human activities. In terms of behavior, norms regulate action by guiding or constraining it before it occurs; after it occurs, they constitute rules for evaluating that action. In an existential sense, norms take on various forms:
 
"As a matter of course, norms connote 'ought' or 'should,' implicating expectations about 'what to do' and 'how to do it.' These ‘oughts’ and ‘shoulds’ serve above all to guide us: 'what to do' guides us mainly in terms of goals,  while 'how to do it' guides us more in terms of the manner of our behavior. The opposite of guidance is constraint: guidance tells people positively what they should do or how they should do it in a positive sense, while constraint identifies what should not be done in a negative sense.”[12] 
 
The concrete forms of norms are also diverse and can be divided into three primary forms, namely rules, regulations, and instructions or guidance, as well as three secondary forms, including customs, moral principles, and ideas about ideals. When dealing with norms, the conflict over values is no longer the focus of attention, and instead the orientation of the action in question comes sharply into focus.
 
Following normative considerations, when people engage in action, they actually focus on operations rather than on factual identification or value disputes. By operation, we mean how the specific actions aimed at achieving a certain purpose are described, and how to plan the action steps, behavioral pathways, technical aspects of behavior and easy-to-master protocols. It is a completely empirical concept.
 
There are two approaches to understanding the notion of operations: the first is the sociological approach, which emphasizes the "process of developing indicators, indices, or scales" for a concept or term, as well as the "process of developing methods and procedures for measurement."  In other words, if a concept or term cannot be quantified, it is not an operational concept. The second is the technical approach, in which people are guided by specifications, essentials and procedures to perform actual technical work. Both operational definitions and operationalized protocols are the work of concretizing concepts or actions within the context of established norms.
 
The relationship between norms and operations is that norms provide guiding concepts, while operations are norm-guided, behavioral procedures to achieve someone’s goal. The correlation and mutual applicability of norms and operations relieves the tension and mutual exclusivity between facts and values and can become a more widely applicable analytical framework. In the study of Han Fei's thought, it is necessary to introduce this analytical framework in addition to fact recognition and value disputes.
 
Norms as a Bridge
 
A description and assessment of Han Fei's thought using the analytical framework of norms and operations can dispense with the sharp antagonism triggered by the dichotomy between fact recognition and value preference. As a pair of analytical concepts, political norms and political operations do not place one thinker's thought in a framework of fact-value dichotomy, which results in the awkwardness of factually acknowledging Han Fei's historical importance as a thinker, while at the same time failing to acknowledge his value or having scramble to find reasons to affirm that value.
 
According to previous analysis, political norms refer to the rules, regulations, and instructions, as well as customs, morals, and ideals that need to be followed within a specific political form.; political operations refer to the essentials, protocols, and requirements that people follow in the direct practice of politics on the basis of their understanding of political norms. Any political thinker, unless they strictly limit themselves to expressing value preferences or engages in metaphysical thinking, will express their own views on the two related issues of norms and operations. This is because political thought cannot be an operational program without norms, nor can it be empty thinking or a metaphysics of political preferences without an operational component.
 
We do find normative statements in Han Fei’s political thought. This normative content includes a definition of human nature in politics, a historical-philosophical examination of politics, assumptions concerning the self-maintenance of power, and a discussion of the principals involved in assessing a country's safety and security.
 
But the outstanding contribution of Han Fei's political thought, and the focus of his thought's positive interaction with the political trends of late Warring States China, is not the elaboration of political norms, but rather the sophisticated conceptualization and systematic formulation of political operations. This is so because the spiritual and political atmosphere of Han Fei's time predisposed his thought to lean significantly toward the operational end of the political spectrum: on the one hand, if Han Fei had wanted to put forward a politics in which norms overrode operations, he would have had to establish political norms in two dimensions at once.
 
One was the normative validity of the Zhou patriarchal system that had basically been eclipsed during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, and the other was the political norms demanded by the nascent political order or state formation. These were two normative systems in conflict, with the latter replacing the former, and the former in a precarious state; reconciling the two was impossible.
 
But even if Han Fei had attempted to validate the political norms of the newborn state, which was in the process of coming into power, this discussion of norms would have been relegated to a secondary position because operational principles were more important than norms at the time. The times did not demand such a discussion, nor did Han Fei consider it particularly important.  Thus, the breakthrough significance of Han Fei's political thought is located in its ability to address the need for operational procedures for the reunification of the state in the late Warring States period.
 
However, if we wish to understand Han Fei's political thought in its entirety, it is still necessary to focus first on his articulation of political norms. If not, we will run into two awkward situations.  First, there is a risk that we will see the political operations envisioned by Han Fei as mere power moves designed to centralize monarchical power, which is the main reason people attack Han Fei. Second, we risk falling into the logical paradox of operations without norms or norms without operations, or norms set against operations and operations negating norms. It thus follows that there is indeed a need to restate Han Fei's thought within the framework of analyzing the correlation between norms and operations.
 
Han Fei's thought was certainly not solely the result of a focused effort to centralize the power of the monarch or the dictatorship. He did, however, develop his political imagination around the centralization of monarchical power, a line of thought determined by the empirical character of his political thought.
 
These two statements seem somewhat contradictory:  since Han Fei provided the normative idea of monarchical centralization, then centralization should have its norms, so how do we get to despotism? Let us leave the answer aside for the moment and draw our conclusions after describing the overall context of Han Fei's political thought.
 
Han Fei's notion of why a monarch needs to centralize power focuses on several different aspects.  First, Han Fei believes that human nature is evil, and therefore, given that everyone is playing his own game, the monarch cannot be so childish as to share power with those close to him or with powerful ministers. In Han Fei's eyes, the evil of human nature stems from the fact that each person pursues his own interests. Even the ties between fathers and sons, husbands and wives fall away in the face of our selfish interests, a trait we all share.  [Quote omitted].[13] Thus, the relationship between ruler and minister is the sum of calculated personal interests.  [Quote omitted].[14]   
 
In Han Fei's view, since interpersonal relationships are not trustworthy, the political relationship between the ruler and his subjects must be based on the monarch’s high degree of vigilance against his subjects, so as to effectively eliminate the danger of losing power and losing lives: 
 
“It is hazardous for the ruler of men to trust others, for he who trusts others will be controlled by others. Ministers have no bonds of flesh and blood which tie them to their ruler; it is only the force of circumstance which compels them to serve him. Hence those who act as ministers never for a moment cease trying to spy into their sovereign’s mind, and yet the ruler of men sits above them in indolence and pride. That is why there are rulers in the world who face intimidation and sovereigns who are murdered.”[15]  
 
It has always been the case that the pursuit of private interest is part of the way people comport themselves in the real world, but because Han Fei elevated the concept to a high level in his interpretation of interpersonal relations, it took on a normative meaning.
 
Second, Han Fei uses a normative generalization drawn from his philosophy of history to consolidate the historical foundation of his political operating rules. He argues that the essential features of history are quite different in different stages of evolution: 
 
“Men of high antiquity strove for moral virtue; men of middle times sought out wise schemes; men of today vie to be known for strength and spirit.”[16]  
 
This is why political strategies of political control have to adhere to the times: 
 
“Past and present have different customs; new and old adopt different measures. To try to use the ways of a generous and lenient government to rule the people of a critical age is like trying to drive a runaway horse without using reins or whip. This is the misfortune that ignorance invites.”[17]  
 
It is Han Fei's historical-philosophical principle that the monarch should be aware of the stage of historical development and choose the corresponding mode of rule. All of Han Fei's ruling techniques are similarly based on such historical-philosophical normative statements.
 
Next, Han Fei established the principle of the monarch’s self-maintenance of power. Because of the unkindness in the hearts of men and their competition with each other, the king must make it clear that attempts to achieve effective rule require that power be kept firmly in his own hands, a fundamental principle of politics that is not to be shaken by any external factor. Of the two important principles that must be honored here, the first is the need to delineate the boundaries between the king, his ministers, and the people in a way that distinguishes between public and private: 
 
“In our present age he who can put an end to private scheming and make men uphold the public law will see his people secure and his state well ordered; he who can block selfish pursuits and enforce the public law will see his armies growing stronger and his enemies weakening. Find men who have a clear understanding of what is beneficial to the nation and a feeling for the system of laws and regulations and place them in charge of the lesser officials; then the ruler can never be deceived by lies and falsehoods. Find men who have a clear understanding of what is beneficial to the nation and the judgment to weigh issues properly and put them in charge of foreign affairs; then the ruler can never be deceived in his relations with the other powers of the world.”[18] 
 
The ministers and the people are required to abandon their own selfishness in the service of the monarchical and national “public,” which is the only way that that the fundamental law of governance can be established. Second,  the power of the ruler as the primary means of controlling the state and solidifying power must be exalted:  “Government reaches to the four quarters, but its source is in the center. The sage holds to the source and the four quarters come to serve him.”[19]  If he firmly holds central power and its essential aspects, the monarch can fully realize the goal of ruling the country forcefully.
 
Furthermore, Han Fei established the principles by which to determine if the state is secure or in danger. When a monarch rules a state, he will of course pursue a course in his he can exercise power in peace,  while doing his best to avoid putting the state in danger. As for exercising power in peace, Han Fei pointed out that there are seven essentials that must be mastered:
 
“Of the means of safety:  The first is said to be ‘reward and punishment in accordance with right and wrong.’ The second is said to be ‘fortune and misfortune in accordance with good and evil.’  The third is said to be ‘life and death in accordance with laws and institutions.’ The fourth is said to be ‘discrimination between the worthy and unworthy but not between the loved and the hated.’ The fifth is said to be ‘discrimination between the stupid and the wise but not between the blamed and the praised.’ The sixth is to ‘have feet and inches but let nobody guess the ruler's mind.’ The seventh is to ‘have good faith but no falsehood.’”[20] 
 
Similarly, there are six practices that jeopardize the state and the power of the monarch, and which must be avoided: 
 
“Of the ways to danger : The first is to ‘to make cuts within the string.’ The second is to ‘make breaks beyond the string.’ [“string” here refers to “the inked string of the carpenter, i.e., the line to cut].  The third is to ‘profit by people's danger.’ The fourth is to ‘rejoice in people's disaster.’ The fifth is to ‘endanger people's safety.’ The sixth is ‘not to keep intimate with the loved nor to keep the hated at a distance.’”[21] 
 
Only when he can distinguish between peace and danger will the monarch understand the principles of ruling the country and keeping his power. 
 
As can be seen from Han Fei's regard for political norms, he is well aware of the strict requirements for political rule. Operating politics that accord with the basic rules of politics is not simply a matter of affirming and worshipping power, but of revealing and following the structure and function of power. This is a mode of political thinking and behavior that appears to be worshipping power, but in fact, looking past appearances, we understand that the unique thing about politics is its engagement with power.  Attempts to understand politics through virtue, religion, and art often leave people in a cloud of confusion, with no understanding of politics and no hope for power.
 
The relation between power and politics is precisely why Han Fei highly valued the philosophical wisdom of ruling drawn from Daoism:  
 
“Indeed, those who administer affairs by following reason and principle never fail to accomplish tasks. Those who never fail to accomplish tasks, can attain the honour and influence of the Son of Heaven for their best or at least easily secure the rewards and bounties of ministers and generals. Indeed, those who discard reason and principle and make arbitrary motions, though they have the honour and influence of the Son of Heaven and the feudal lords on the one hand and possess ten times 1 the wealth of I Tun and T'ao Chu, will eventually lose their subjects and ruin their financial resources. The masses of the people who discard reason imprudently and make arbitrary motions easily, do not know that the cycle of misery and happiness is so great and profound and the way is so wide and long. Hence Lao Tzu taught men by saying: ‘Who foresees the catastrophe?’”[22]
 
From a highly contrasting perspective, Han Fei lays out the consequences when governments do not follow norms, making people realize the extreme importance of such behavior for maintaining political rule. This is precisely why Han Fei places a high value on the idea of ruling via a combination of law, technique, and power. The combination of law, technique, and power is a manifestation of Han Fei's emphasis on political norms. The rule of law, as "a constitution enshrined in the government," rests on the principle of relying on hearts of the people and punishing the wicked. It is combined with political skills and psychological skills, as well as position and power. On the surface, it appears to form a relationship where one eliminates the other, but in fact it becomes a mutually supportive political relationship, a system built up of norms and hidden rules.
 
Han Fei's above discussions on political norms are often embedded in thinking and strategies about political operations, and thus are often misinterpreted as mere methods. In fact, this amounts to putting Han Fei's different concerns with political norms and political operations on a par with each other. In Han Fei's thought, the discussion of political norms focuses on general rules and regulations that stand above political operations, while political operations focus on the specific methods for handling actual political affairs.
 
In research on Han Fei's thought, people often tend to emphasize Han Fei's rules and elevate them to the point of making them the main point of Han Fei's thought. This in fact obscures Han Fei's more important intellectual contributions. In the late Warring States period, the reason why Han Fei's thought was highly valued by the Qin ruler was not because of his normative discourse, but because of his counsels on political operations. If Han Fei's normative discourse is mainly focused on guiding the direction of political thinking, his operational conception of politics is a very practical program to strengthen emerging state power, i.e., the power of the ruler, and to show the effectiveness of state governance in strengthening the power of the ruler.
 
In this sense, more weight should be given to his political counsels in reading Han Fei's thought. If we say that - solely in terms of actual impact - Han Fei's discussion of political norms is not as important as his assumptions concerning political operations, this not only undersells the value of his normative discussion, but also fails to highlight its value in other times and places.  At the same time, given that political operations themselves can confirm or subvert the validity of norms, then thoughts about these political operations, if not more important than discussions of norms, are nonetheless of equal value. 
 
Many pre-Qin thinkers were adept in thinking about norms, and with the exception of the School of Diplomacy and Han Fei and the Legalists, the others basically focus on normative discourse. Therefore, it was difficult for them to have much influence on, let alone dictate, the state of the political situation in the late Warring States period because they lacked Han Fei's kind of operational ideas that spoke to the political leaders whose goal it was to unify China. It might be argued that Han Fei's theory of political norms paved the way for his view of how politics works. In this regard, the importance of the latter is even more obvious.
 
It should be noted, however, that as an edifice, Han Fei's argument about political norms is neither lofty nor strong.   By saying that it is not lofty, I mean that his political norms are meant to be close to the level of political operations, the result being that alongside the convenience of norms linking up with politics, there is also the shortcoming that the relative importance of norms and operations ebbs and flows, and norms never rule.   By saying that the argument is not strong, I mean that his political norms do not include his political means,  and thus cannot serve, as in the case of Confucianism, to produce benevolent government through benevolent personal behavior.[23]  
 
Han Fei’s normative arguments, as discussed above, cannot directly legitimize the monarch’s abuse of power. Furthermore, since Han Fei’s chief preoccupation is with operational questions surrounding the rise and fall of the state, his concern with political norms is neither systematic nor thorough. Being unsystematic leads him to make arguments about norms that are inconsistent, as if he were treating things on a case-by-case basis; his lack of thoroughness means that the rules derived from his norms do not apply to every issue, so that the Machiavellian content of his arguments about how to use law and techniques to rule inevitably overshadow attempts in the normative discourse to constrain the monarch who seeks overweening power.
 
This is a decisive factor in my statement that Han Fei's normative discourse can only serve as a bridge to his operational discourse. In light of this, the fact that most scholars tend to identify Han Fei as someone offering primarily imperial power tactics is not really a distortion. Of course, one could also point out that because Han Fei stipulated the norms for the monarch seeking to manipulate power, he could not have been a political thinker bent on encouraging imperial despotism.
 
After all, in his thinking about the political means to be employed by the monarch of a centralized regime, Han Fei also spent time worrying about the concerns of the people and the considerations of the moment,  as well as grappling with the question of how the servants of the monarch might fare given the monarch’s use of rewards and punishments. Here we see that the monarch’s monopoly of power is not an end in itself, because he must spend part of his time responding to the demands of his ministers and the people. As a result, even if the monarch is extremely reluctant to share power, there are limits on how far his monopoly of power will go.
 
Operational Politics
 
Han Fei's conception of operational politics is a breakthrough idea that uses the bridge of political norms to reach the actual process of politics. As discussed above, among the pre-Qin philosophers, normative arguments dominated both ends of the spectrum, although both of these ends achieved a certain “balance.” Confucianism, Mohism, Daoism, and the Yin-Yang School stand out on the normative end; on the operational end, the arguments of the Diplomacy School, the agricultural school and the military school all have their own characteristics. At the operational end, however, Han Fei and the Legalists were the only ones who used normative discourses as a bridge to provide a set of political operational concepts that were useful to rulers attempting to unify China.
 
Han Fei's highly regarded treatise on operational politics focuses on the mechanisms that led to the centralization of monarchical power. He highlights this theme because the power of the Zhou regime was waning, and the vassals were using whatever power remained with the Zhou ruler to legitimize their own offensive and destructive behavior. In the political chaos of the era, the vassals hid behind the name of the Zhou ruler in their political manipulations, despite the fact that they had themselves amassed considerable power, because the idea of central authority was still symbolically important. That said, over the course of the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods, the appeal of the Zhou ruler, already waning, declined significantly.
 
Accordingly, it was necessary to reconstruct a symbol of power and give it the authority to rule the world, and the construction of monarchical authority sounded the gong to clear the way.  Han Fei appeared precisely at this time, and his ideas about the operation of politics not only responded to the needs of the time but allowed him to build his theory on this basis.
 
Han Fei's theory of political operation is based on discourse of political norms, but instead of falling into the trap of using moral values to control the process of politics, Han Fei instead tries to develop a theory of politics that will maintain state with a new type of rules. As already discussed, Han Fei understood that the politics of the day was based on force, and thus he ignored all moral and normative considerations as irrelevant, and devoted himself to the sort of politics that would preserve the state.
 
Consequently, Han Fei's explanation of politics is a penetrating exposition of the essence of how politics can effectively realize its operational purpose. In the late Warring States period, the destruction of the state was something that the ruler tried his best to avoid, but how could he successfully go about this? Han Fei gives a straightforward account. He listed forty-seven signs of the state's demise, which were summarized as the failure to repair internal affairs and to revitalize diplomacy: 
 
“Thus, portents of ruin do not imply certainty of ruin but liability to ruin. Indeed, two Yaos 尧cannot rule side by side, nor can two Chiehs 桀[24] ruin each other. The secrets of rule or ruin lie in the inclination towards order or chaos, strength or weakness. It is true, the tree breaks down because of vermin, the fence gives way on account of cracks. Yet, despite the vermin, if no sudden gale blows, the tree will not break down; despite the cracks, if no heavy rain falls, the fence does not give way.”[25]   
 
Han Fei's list of forty-seven specific signs of the country's demise is representative of his thinking about the operation of politics. The signs of the demise of the state are only indications that the state might perish, not the result of the inevitable demise of the state. If a king chooses the right way to rule a country, not only can he successfully avoid the crisis of the country's demise, but he can also unify China.
 
In Han Fei's view, a ruler’s understanding of how to defend the state is a prerequisite for the survival of that state and the preservation of that ruler's power. The basic rules for what the king should know about how to defend the state have already been discussed. In terms of operational methods, the king must follow the prescriptions of those who advocate law and technique, and thus first rule the country according to the law: 
 
“No state is forever strong or forever weak. If those who uphold the law are strong, the state will be strong; if they are weak, the state will be weak.”[26]   
 
It can be seen that a country that abides by the rule of law is expected to win in a competitive situation where the strength or weakness of the competing countries varies. The countries that grew weak and perished did so because they did not understand how to use the law to make a country strong: 
 
“But now all of them have become doomed countries, because their ministers and officials pursue only what brings chaos and never what brings order. Their states have already fallen into disorder and weakness, and yet the ministers and officials disregard the laws and seek private gain in dealings with foreign powers. One might as well carry bundles of kindling to put out a fire with—the chaos and weakness can only increase.”[27] 
 
Based on this judgment, Han Fei particularly emphasized the extreme importance of a wise ruler governing the country according to law, arguing that this required the rejection of governance not based on law and technique [quote omitted].[28]
 
Once a king has established the state policy of the rule of law, he needs to further implement the important steps of the rule of law. This aspect of Han Fei's thought is the most significant and systematic manifestation of his understanding of how power operates, as demonstrated in three ways. First, Han Fei understood the absolute importance of the power of the ruler and tried to find ways to effectively safeguard that power. In a political environment involving both rulers and ministers, maintaining the power of the ruler requires that he understand two operational principles.  First, he needs to bear in mind the principle of using power:
 
“The way of the ruler of men is to treasure stillness and reserve. Without handling affairs himself, he can recognize clumsiness or skill in others; without laying plans of his own, he knows what will bring fortune or misfortune. Hence he need speak no word, but good answers will be given him; he need exact no promises, but good works will increase. When proposals have been brought before him, he takes careful note of their content; when undertakings are well on their way, he takes careful note of the result; and from the degree to which proposals and results tally, rewards and punishments are born. Thus the ruler assigns undertakings to his various ministers on the basis of the words they speak, and assesses their accomplishments according to the way they have carried out the undertaking. When accomplishments match the undertaking, and the undertaking matches what was said about it, then he rewards the man; when these things do not match, he punishes the man. It is the way of the enlightened ruler never to allow his ministers to speak words that cannot be matched by results.”[29]
 
The idea here is to persuade the ruler to use power to maintain power, drawing on Daoist ideas of how a ruler should behave. This corresponds to the practicality of the king's exercise of power and fully reflects the characteristics of Han Fei's operational thinking in dealing with the relationship between rulers and ministers.
 
Second, the monarch must be clear minded about the strategy of exercising power, avoid being too close to his ministers, and grasp power firmly in his own hands: [quote omitted].[30]  Consequently, Han Fei cites examples to illustrate to the ruler how to effectively avoid the manipulation of power by close relatives and officials for personal gain. Such methods are not only fully discussed in his direct statements on the relationship between ruler and subject, but also in his efforts to persuade the ruler to practice the rule of law so as to prevent close relatives and subjects from exercising power for personal gain.
 
We will not enumerate these specific practices, as long as we know that they were carefully guided by the valuable experience and painful lessons of the ruler’s exercise of power. This kind of painful presentation of actual experience and lessons for the king is also very typical of Han Fei's operational political thinking.
 
The second was to employ ministers who understand laws and methods, with a view to distancing those close to the ruler who would mislead him, and to focus on ruling the country according to the law. Han Fei was well aware of the difficulty of persuading a ruler to abandon the counsel of the sages and to practice the rule of law. This is reflected on the one hand in the fact that he was well aware of the tragic situation of those preaching the rule of law, and therefore attached great importance to the strategy of remonstrating to the ruler, but also in the fact that he devoted careful attention to formulating realistic strategies by which to persuade the ruler.
 
This is an inevitable manifestation of Han Fei’s operationalized political thinking: since the ruler is to be led to abandon familiar ways of governing the country, and to adopt the approach to governing the country advocated by legalists such as Han Fei himself, then its feasibility and reliability must be impeccable in the eyes of the ruler, otherwise it will lack the persuasiveness to make people obey. In the effort to successfully persuade the ruler to decide between how he now rules and a Legalist strategy, it is operationally important to understand the either/or decision-making role of lobbying the ruler: 
 
“Men able to uphold the law, being straightforward, if listened to and taken into service by the ruler, will correct the crooked deeds of the heavy-handed men. In short, if these types of men are taken into service, noble and powerful ministers will infallibly fall off the inked string. This is the reason why they and the authorities in charge of the state affairs are bad enemies and unable to coexist.”[31] 
 
Arguing that the ruler had to make a choice, Han Fei further counseled the ruler that only a Legalist strategy could produce a strong country with a powerful army:  [quote omitted].[32]  The reason why the ruler must choose the Legalist strategy is because it is conducive to the ruler’s governing the country and benefiting the people. Although “benefiting the people” here cannot be understood as democracy, it is at least conducive to the people's livelihood, and is therefore conducive to the king's earning the hearts of the people and gaining their approval. Han Fei even confessed that he was willing to take great risks in order to carry out this Legalist strategy.
 
Furthermore, Han Fei also used the difference in the performance various states to prove that the implementation of the Legalist strategy can receive unexpectedly good results:  [quote omitted].[33]  Arguments like this are why people categorize Han Fei's ideas of proper government as strict punishment and harsh laws. At the same time, Han Fei's argument, in terms of political operation, is consistent with the actual effects of the strategy of harsh rule. Moreover, logic suggests that if severe punishment and harsh laws are not sufficient, how could leniency provide order? This was a long-standing ruling tactic in classical politics, the idea that the key to proper government was “winning the people’s feelings.” 
 
Han Fei proved that harsh governance was better than lenient rule by showing how well or badly the state was governed:  [quote omitted].[34]  But the tactics of mutual informing and guilt-by-association he devised on this basis have been criticized.  In terms of implementation, a Legalist government is better than a lenient government, but its legitimacy is truly limited.
 
Third, Han Fei knew how to use power effectively, and used practical and effective methods of governance to realize the ruler’s dual purpose of governing the country and maintaining his own position. This is an important aspect and prominent feature of Han Fei's notion of political operation. He emphasized that the realization of the power of the ruler required that he have a strong fighting spirit: 
 
“The Yellow Emperor used to say, ‘Superior and inferior fight a hundred battles a day.’ The subordinates hide their private desires and see what they can get from the ruler; the ruler employs his standards and measures to weigh what they are up to. Thus the standards and measures that are set up are the ruler’s treasures; and the parties and cliques that are formed are the ministers’ treasures. The only reason the ministers do not assassinate their sovereign is that their parties and cliques are not strong enough. Hence, if the ruler loses an inch, his subordinates gain a yard. The ruler who knows how to govern his state does not let his cities grow too large; the ruler who understands the Way does not enrich the powerful families nor ennoble his ministers. Were he to enrich and ennoble them, they would turn about and try to overthrow him. Guard against danger, fear peril, make haste to designate your heir, and misfortune will have no means to arise.”
 
This is a pure behavioral guideline for the operation of the ruler’s power.  The ruler must maintain the power in his hands as the sole purpose of his administration. Only in this way can he effectively force his ministers to be loyal to him, effectively prevent them from forming cliques for personal gain, eliminate all dangers inside and outside the palace, and personally control the law and the power of rewards and punishments. In avoiding being manipulated, the unchallenged power of the monarch is truly guaranteed.
 
Han Fei imagined various operating methods that were conducive to the king's exercise of power, with convenient and feasible guarantees of operability. For example, the monarch must avoid the ten faults:
 
“These are the ten faults: 1. To practice petty loyalty and thereby betray a larger loyalty. 2. To fix your eye on a petty gain and thereby lose a larger one. 3. To behave in a base and willful manner and show no courtesy to the other feudal lords, thereby bringing about your own downfall. 4. To give no ear to government affairs but long only for the sound of music, thereby plunging yourself into distress. 5. To be greedy, perverse, and too fond of profit, thereby opening the way to the destruction of the state and your own demise. 6. To become infatuated with women musicians and disregard state affairs, thereby inviting the disaster of national destruction. 7. To leave the palace for distant travels, despising the remonstrances of your ministers, which leads to grave peril for yourself. 8. To fail to heed your loyal ministers when you are at fault, insisting upon having your own way, which will in time destroy your good reputation and make you a laughingstock of others. 9. To take no account of internal strength but rely solely upon your allies abroad, which places the state in grave danger of dismemberment. 10. To ignore the demands of courtesy, though your state is small, and fail to learn from the remonstrances of your ministers, acts which lead to the downfall of your line.”
 
This can be said to be an operational explanation of keeping the ruler in power from the perspective of avoidance. For another example, there are the three precautions the ruler must respect and the three disasters he must guard against:   
 
“The lord of men has three precautions to take. If the three precautions are complete, the state will be safe and he will be prosperous ; if the three precautions are not complete, the state will fall into danger and his life will become precarious.”[35] 
 
The three precautions are to make sure that the ministers do not reveal secrets, to maintain sole power over rewards and punishments, and to care of state affairs oneself; the three disasters are the three ways to usurp the throne, including open usurpation, usurpation through the taking over the handling of political affairs, and usurpation of the monopoly of rewards and punishments.
 
This is a statement of how the ruler has a firm grip on power in terms of the contrast between encouragement and precaution. Another example is Han Fei's list of thirteen essentials for a ruler to govern a country, providing a clear idea of how to manipulate power: 
 
“There are seven tacts which the sovereign ought to employ, and six minutiae which he ought to penetrate. Of the seven tacts, the first is said to be ‘comparing and inspecting all available different theories;’ the second, ‘making punishment definite and authority clear;’ the third, ‘bestowing rewards faithfully and everybody exert his ability;’ the fourth, ‘listening to all sides of every story and holding every speaker responsible for it;’ the fifth, ‘issuing spurious edicts and making pretentious appointments;’ the sixth, ‘inquiring into cases by manipulating different information;’ and the seventh, ‘inverting words and reversing tasks.’ These seven are what the sovereign ought to employ.”[36]
 
This is a positive guide on the basic procedures of how to exercise state power: this covers the epistemology, behavior, and the skillfulness of the ruler’s exercise of power, and nothing is missing.   Only a master of operationalized political thought like Han Fei could have envisioned this in such a thorough and detailed manner.
 
Han Fei's discussion of the ruler’s centralization of power, his rejection of interference by close relatives and ministers, and his maintenance of a strong grip on power, including the power of life and death, is of course not solely a defense of the ruler’s power for the sake of the ruler’s power. The intention behind these arguments was to provide a new and effective political order under the complete domination of the ruler. This is a manifestation of the pragmatic character of operationalized political thinking. What we call the "emperor’s government " thus reveals its basic outline:  [quote omitted].[37]
 
This argument also reflects the specific behavioral pattern of the ruler from the perspective of Han Fei's legalism:  clearly, the ruler poured his efforts into ruling the country Legalist principles in order to bring the chaotic vassal states back to a state of order. In such an operationalized vision, the efficacy of the Legalist principle of severe punishment is an indisputable result:  [quote omitted].[38] In a situation in which "chaos requires heavy punishments," it would be strange indeed if Han Fei's operationalized political vision did not dictate the use of the harsh laws to restore order and allow the ruler to employ talent properly. 
 
Han Fei's thinking on operational politics is often interpreted as a guide for the ruler to maintain his absolute power, but this does not mean that the ruler could act according to his whims.   On the contrary, since operational politics sets the rules by which government should operate, it must be governed by the normative concepts behind the technical rules that the monarch must follow.  
 
In his “Eight Principles,” Han Fei sums the operating principles by which a ruler governs a state, and emphasizes:  the need to formulate the rules of reward and punishment according to people’s "human feelings," i.e., their likes and dislikes;  the need to master the ability to mobilize the country as a whole to compensate for the inadequacy of one's own talents, and at the same time to be good at decision-making to avoid mistakes; the need to be aware of the differences between the interests of the king and his ministers and be highly vigilant and prudent in dealing with close family members; to be highly vigilant against their relatives and close ministers, and to be careful to prevent internal traitors and external thieves from infringing on the king's power; in keeping tabs on his ministers, the need to do carry out verification to ensure efficacy and avoid errors; in exercising power, the need to perform properly and without defects, acting secretly and not revealing intentions, and avoiding sexual temptation to guarantee the ruler’s wisdom and reputation, as well as his power of reward and punishment; in listening to the opinions of others, the need to carefully discern between truth and falsehood so as to avoid useless remonstrances and cleave to the proper orientation of government;  the need to employ Legalist principles to limit the officials' manipulation of power, to vigorously appoint those who are loyal and competent, and to shape a public culture of honoring through rewards and shaming through punishment; to make sure that the people are careful to obey the law and do not know to commit crimes, and that the officials can follow the rules and do not use their power for personal gain, and ensure the concordance of post, reward, punishment and decree, in order to make the country a "country of the Way." 
 
These eight principles can be said to be an insightful summary of Han Fei’s operational politics for the “enlightened ruler.”[39] The "enlightened ruler" is the capable emperor who Han Fei earnestly expected to rule by Legalist principles; and his operational politics is a guide for that ruler. 
 
From Operation to Norms
 
Han Fei's use of norms as a bridge to highlight his operational political thinking is quite self-conscious. This self-consciousness is reflected not only in his borrowing of Daoist metaphysics, but also in his harsh rejection of other political ideas that are alien to the Legalist "rule of law." In general, Han Fei attempted to break away from the stereotype of shrouding politics under the cloak virtue and to bring out the operational character of politics as politics. To this end, he defined a new type of political norm, the "rule of law," but focused more on the essentials of operational politics, both of which allowed Han Fei to demonstrate a unique way of thinking about politics that differed from that of his contemporaries.
 
In the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, the relationship between political norms and political operations was that ancient moralistic norms, in existence for centuries, took precedence over the actual operations of politics. Such moral norms were based on the concepts of the “unity of ruler and minister” and the idea that “the world is for all,” which dated back to the legendary era of Yao, Shun, and Yu, despised the operation of political power from a high level of moral philosophy, and functioned as the rules that guided political behavior. This is of course consistent with the generally recognized relationship between moral philosophy and political philosophy: moral philosophy provides a source of norms for political philosophy, and political philosophy provides practical arguments for moral philosophy.
 
A political theory that is not guided by moral philosophy risks the dire consequence of missing the higher normative foundation of politics. Analytically, however, ethical and moral norms and political operational rules are clearly rules of two different natures. When ethical and moral norms dominate political operational rules, the character of politics will surely be obscured. In the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods, especially in the Confucianism of this period, a politics of virtue was the choice of Confucius, Mencius, and Xunzi.
 
At the time, the success of virtue in regulating politics was determined by two important factors: first, the successful construction of the Zhou dynasty's model of politics, which allowed people to that the ruler had truly achieved the ideal that “the world is for all;” and second, as an important school of political thought, Confucianism strongly advocated the politics of virtue, so that people were accustomed to thinking in terms of morality, virtue, and personal cultivation instead of the nuts and bolts of real politics.  
 
During the chaos of the Spring and Autumn and the Warring States periods, the Confucian-led model of a politics of virtue and ethics became the political hope for returning the Way to a world that had lost it.  From a Confucian perspective there is nothing wrong with this, and it should indeed by affirmed, because from the perspective of values or norms, these should indeed be the force that guides politics and restrains power. Generally speaking, practical politics requires the guidance or regulation of lofty values; a political world without such will be a world of all against all.
 
However, it must be pointed out that which politics requires values to guide it and norms to constrain it, this definitely does not mean that ethical and moral values can allow people to ignore the nature of politics – which is the pursuit of power and interests - and to regard the operation of political power as a virtuous activity in and of itself. Politics and ethics are by definition two different social forces; Confucian ethics and morality are grounded in individual cultivation of virtue, while politics lives on the friction between various sources of power. Even if morality is higher than politics, morality cannot directly replace politics; similarly, even if we need morality to constrain politics, politics must nonetheless build its own constraints based on its own operating logic. In this regard, Han Fei's rejection of the Confucian approach and his strong advocacy of a politics based on operational rules also has its own logic.
 
In Han Fei's view, it was difficult for Confucian governance to achieve its expectations, because a new social order was taking shape, turning its back on the old Zhou patriarchal rule, while Confucianism was still rooted in the Zhou order, and hence opposed to the new society. The Confucian way of filial piety, fraternal duty, loyalty, and obedience in fact stood in stark contrast with the new political order, even if people in general had not yet understood this:  [quote omitted].[40] 
 
In Han Fei's view, Yao and Shun, regarded by Confucian as "sage kings," were in fact the products of the disorder between ruler and subject, and could not be regarded as an ideal source of political order and norms. In his view, Confucianism supports the subversion of order rather than the maintenance of order [i.e., in the sense that we are not naturally virtuous and never will be, so basing politics on that principle is self-defeating]. As long as there is an intention to maintain political order, the relationship between ruler and minister must be precisely regulated to prevent the displacement of ruler and minister. Clearly, from the standpoint of political order, the Confucian reverence for “ceding power to the worthy” is to be rejected.
 
Han Fei further pointed out that the political norms of the Confucian family-state could no longer be reconciled with the need to rebuild the political order, which meant that Confucianism had to give way to Legalism:  [quote omitted].[41] Letting politics leave the sages behind and return to normal, and allowing politics to set aside wisdom and establish Legalist rule, is what Han Fei saw to be the only way to achieve this.
 
Han Fei not only denigrated the ancient political norms promoted by Confucianism, but also criticized all concepts of governance that were not based on law:  [quote omitted].[42]  He also enumerated one by one the political dangers of granting private favors and weakening the power of the ruler, including promoting old friends, cleaving to benevolence, swearing to be a gentleman, valuing character, speaking only of chivalry and righteousness, being noble and arrogant, being strong and untamed, and appealing to public opinion, suggesting that the way the ruler should use his power was the precise opposite.
 
In Han Fei's view, Confucian-Mohist government aimed to used ancient political norms to run roughshod over contemporary political changes, to replace governance with emotion and benevolence, which constituted a misreading of the era, perversely treating the political norms as being detached from the political reality:
 
“Past and present have different customs; new and old adopt different measures. To try to use the ways of a generous and lenient government to rule the people of a critical age is like trying to drive a runaway horse without using reins or whip. This is the misfortune that ignorance invites. Now the Confucians and Mohists all praise the ancient kings for their universal love of the world, saying that they looked after the people as parents look after a beloved child. And how do they prove this contention? They say, ‘Whenever the minister of justice administered some punishment, the ruler would purposely cancel all musical performances; and whenever the ruler learned that the death sentence had been passed on someone, he would shed tears.’ For this reason they praise the ancient kings.”[43] 
 
Here we see Han Fei's chronological division to ancient times, medieval times, and modern times, and his assertion that political ideas and techniques of rule must change with the times. In other words, Han Fei did not believe there were eternal political norms that stood the test of time. When times change, political rules or concepts of governance must change accordingly. What Han Fei tried to do was to make the political norms accord with the changing times, so as to prevent the ancient political norms from being completely alienated from the political reality of the day, and completely unable to play a role in the reconstruction of the political order.
 
Han Fei depicts the basic arguments of Confucianism and Mohism, the eminent schools of his day, as basically ahistorical:
 
“In the present age, the Confucians and Mohists are well known for their learning. The Confucians pay the highest honor to Confucius, the Mohists to Mozi. Since the death of…its founder, the Confucian school has split into eight factions, and the Mohist school into three. Their doctrines and practices are different or even contradictory, and yet each claims to represent the true teaching of Confucius and Mozi. But since we cannot call Confucius and Mozi back to life, who is to decide which of the present versions of the doctrine is the right one? Confucius and Mozi both followed the ways of Yao and Shun, and though their practices differed, each claimed to be following the real Yao and Shun But since we cannot call Yao and Shun back to life, who is to decide whether it is the Confucians or the Mohists who are telling the truth?"[44]
 
Han Fei showed the people the paradoxical nature of the Confucian-Mohist theories, the grotesqueness of their living in the present and yet honoring the sage kings of the past;  these former kings did not know the affairs of the later generations, so how could they make political decisions for them across a distance of hundreds or thousands of years in time and space? How could a wise ruler accept such a stupid and contradictory argument?
 
Han Fei’s rejection of contemporary scholarship is obviously a reflection of his view that norms and operations vary according to political circumstances.  What he emphasizes is that there are no eternal norms and operational procedures that transcend time, nor is it possible for the previous generation to establish norms for a future generation, nor for the ruler to accept the ahistorical norms of the previous generation to deal with contemporary affairs. This is a way of placing political norms and operations in the society of the present day, thus generating appropriate norms and operational mechanisms.
 
Here we clearly see the empirical nature of Han Fei's theory of politics, helping us to understand why Han Fei no longer takes Confucian moralism as the basis for political operation, but instead focuses on the relationship between the ruler and people and the ruler and his ministers.  Since the sage kings of the past cannot set the example for future generations, how can an unchanging moral stance be used to regulate people's political behavior?
 
Han Fei's contemporary reconstruction of norms and operations changed the popular pre-Qin stereotype concerning politics. We might say that he transformed the internal-external focus of the pre-Qin thinkers, and especially Confucian thinkers, into a superior-inferior focus or even a focus on the relationship between ruler and minister.  This was a very important and dramatic change: in the internal-external framework, people cultivated their internal virtue as the basic support for their dealings with external political affairs.   In this context, the connection between personal benevolence and benevolent government seemed natural.  
 
Hence we can understand Confucius when he said “Is benevolence really far away? No sooner do I desire it than it is here,”[45] and “the practice of benevolence depends on oneself alone, and not on others.”[46] We can also understand Mencius when he said "The former kings had such a moral sense and thus they devised means of government that would not allow people to suffer."[47]  We can also can understand the reason why Xunzi talked about the “kingly way,” “kingly people,” and “kingly laws.”
 
As the logic of force spread during the late Warring States period, however, this idea of cultivating inner virtue in order to transform the outer world lost the power to attract, persuade, and guide people. Consequently, by the time Xunzi composed his philosophy, he was already looking to external and not internal cultivation.  
 
After Xunzi, this logic extended further, and a new way of understanding the relationship between morality and politics and handling moral and political affairs gradually become a fixed trend. Thus, Han Fei's replacement of internal and external relations with superior and inferior relations, that is, the replacement of ethical and moral relations with political relations, became an inevitable transformation to adapt to the changing times. The relationship between the monarch and the people and the monarch and his ministers, which is determined based on political relationships, could no longer focus on the theme of human nature and its cultivation, but must focus on the issue of how to effectively control and effectively use political power once it is in hand. Therefore, the relationship between norms and operations will be presented as norms directing the application of the principles in practice, and the operation of the procedures will directly affect the implementation of state norms. The central nature of the operation itself, therefore, will be clearly highlighted.
 
In Han Fei's thought, the norms are merely a bridge or an intermediary for the emergence of operations. Therefore, as mentioned earlier, Han Fei's thought is characterized by operational politics. Even in the context of a pre-Qin thought focused on virtue, his thought, as accurately noted by professor Song Hongbing,  can also achieve virtue by following the mind, by following ritual, or by following the law.   The "virtue" we are discussing here is not simply virtue as understood traditionally, nor are the moral norms those we know in modernity. Virtue “can be learned from others externally or can be sought internally.”[48] 
 
“If it is obtained internally, then it is a case of body and mind have obtained it on their own; if it is received externally it is said to be a favor dispensed by others.”
 
The point of internal realization is the individual's inner emotions; only the external realization can be seen as being the effect of the ruler’s use of power of his governance of the state.   From Mencius to Xunzi to Han Fei, the trajectory of the transformation of virtue from internal to external is a very clear and recognizable. The meaning of Han Fei's virtue of "following the law to become virtue" is that it is the insight of the king who has understood the rule of law; and the meaning of Han Fei's virtue of "following the law to become virtue" is that it is the result of the monarch's power, obedience to the people's heart, and mastery of his subordinates.
 
As already discussed, Han Fei's operationalized political thought has a normative cornerstone. Such norms, however, develop in a downward direction. All normative ideas are interpreted along two general lines: the first is the upward line, which presents itself as a highly charged interpretation of value, moving towards metaphysical or abstract philosophical argumentation, characterized by a subtle discernment of the cosmology of value, the theory of life, the theory of human nature and cultivation, as well as the semantics of value, the theory of semantic correlation. The evolution from Confucius to Mencius illustrates this evolutionary trajectory of normative ideas. Ultimately, with the Song Neo-Confucians,  having borrowed Daoism’s theory of cosmogenesis and Buddhism's theory of human nature, it became a subtle philosophical system based on heavenly principles and human desires. 
 
The downward trajectory might be seen as a smooth developmental thread of political norms and political operations ending in the nuts and bolts of a political process. In this second characterization, the general rules extracted from political experience constitute the theoretical basis of its norms; while the concepts describing political operation summarized from the performance of the actual operation of power constitute the technical essentials of its rule. The two complement each other and combine to form a system of operationalized political thought that met the needs of the times.
 
As noted above, Han Fei's normative statement of operationalized political thinking, which focuses primarily on human nature, political experience, and philosophy of history, is a normative statement with obvious theoretical flaws. As we have shown earlier, value beliefs remain at the core of this normative statement. While the expression of value beliefs can be highly personalized and therefore arbitrary, norms are general statements that are, as far as possible, acceptable to people with different value beliefs. Thus, the likelihood of agreement on norms is much easier than consensus on values.
 
But normative statements cannot be so obvious in their value preferences that they cannot express a general statement that will universally acceptable. This is precisely why Hilary Putnam criticizes Jürgen Habermas for pitting values against norms: Habermas focuses too much on the construction of ideal dialogical situations, and therefore values norms more than fluctuating values; but if one admits that "a world in which human beings have many ideas is better than a world in which everyone agrees on only one," then while the various different values cannot be understood as a "normative" system that can be accepted by people from different standpoints, the self-existing significance of various values is undeniable.
 
Nevertheless, in order to form the norms necessary for common action, it is necessary to restrain value differences and disputes. In this regard, Han Fei's political norms, based on the political situation of the late Warring States period, did lay the cornerstone of his operationalized political vision: free from the normative constraints of the ancient sages, he used the normative benchmarks of good manners, power, success, and failure to provide operational guidelines for the operation of a strong monarchy.
 
But because Han Fei placed too much emphasis on the operationalization of political power, his neat and tidy operational requirements, whether obvious or subtle, risked suspending the norms that governed these operations, and the norms were in danger of becoming invisible. This turns norms into pure rules of behavior and action with little or no value guidance. In the event that the operational program takes a prominent place, it will backfire on the norms and even break away from the constraints and guidance of these established norms. This is why Han Fei's treatise on political maneuvering has often been dismissed as a compendium of mere power tactics.
 
Han Fei's insight that the essence of politics lies in power and interests gives him a strong case for being one of the great political scientists. Based on this, he realized the theoretical completion of an operationalized politics: he not only constructed the corresponding political norms and operational procedures, but also effectively integrated the ideas of his ideological forerunners, such as Shang Yang 商鞅, Shen Buhai 申不害, and Shen Dao 慎到, as well as passing judgment on the relevant ideas of pre-Qin thinkers in general, and thus reached the highest theoretical position possible of his era - and even in the whole of antiquity - in terms of the ideological construction of political operations.

However, Han Fei's revelation of the nature of politics unfolded mainly in this dimension of operationalization, and he did not accord the same attention to normative politics. Or rather, Han Fei did not directly derive political operating procedures from political norms. To put it yet another way, Han Fei did not really highlight high-level political norms, such as the norms that need to be followed whether power and interests are held alone or shared. Instead, he followed what could be called low-level norms, i.e., political norms that were merely sufficient to guide the actual operations of politics, to devise a political program for the ruler’s manipulation of power, his use of people, and his governance of the state.
 
This leaves Han Fei’s political project with an obvious gap in terms of a normative base: First, his political norms are not sufficient to integrate political operating procedures at a high level, and his political rules are in danger of functioning independently of political norms; second, his political regulations are not rules of conduct that everyone who enters the political world needs to follow, but are rules for the ruler alone; third, although political operations are meant to follow the people's will and make the people’s lives better, they mainly revolve around the purpose of enhancing the ruler’s control of the ministers and the people, so the larger public purpose of political operations remains hidden.
 
If Han Fei's design for political operation were to move towards the rule of law in the modern sense, the normative basis of his political operation would have to be thoroughly reconstructed. In short, only the affirmation of modern political norms is sufficient to keep actual political operations from falling into the trap of the ruler’s personal power and to ensure that power operates with recognized authority and serves to safeguard the rights and interests of the state leaders, the people in public power, and the public at large. This requires the construction of modern political norms and operational procedures that go beyond Han Fei's theory of operationalized politics and the low-level norms that are appropriate to it. But that is a discussion for another article.
 
Notes

[1]任剑涛, “韩非与操作化政治的理论完型,” originally published in the 2023/5 issue of Wenshizhe/文史哲 (Chinese Journal of Humanities), and republished on the Aisixiang platform on October 7, 2023.
 
[2]Translator’s note:  Xunzi was a “legalist Confucian” who taught that man was born evil but could be “corrected” through ritual and music.  He was a key figure in the evolution of pre-Qin thought away from strictly ethical thinking and toward politics, law, and something like sociology.

​[3]Translator’s note:  Huanglao is a portmanteau word in which “huang” refers to the Yellow Emperor and “lao” refers to Laozi.  The Yellow Emperor was a mythical sovereign and culture hero who, during the Warring States period, came to be identified with the idea of a centralized Chinese state, among other things.  Laozi was of course the putative author of The Classic of the Way and the Power who would become a savior figure in many of the cults of “religious” Daoism.  In the Warring States period, Huanglao ideas were associated with thinkers trying to find political solutions to the decline of the Zhou dynasty, people who, like Han Fei, went beyond ethical and philosophical reflections and sought to save or create a political order.  There was, of course, much more to Huanglao thinking, such as “superstitious” ideas of immortality.

[4]Translator’s note:  A disciple of Mozi.  See here for more information (in Chinese). 

[5]Translator’s note:  Mozi, the founder of Mohism (the h is added simply to avoid the confusion that might be created by talking about “Moist” ideas; Mohism is not to be confused with cupcakes), taught “universal love” as opposed to the particular/familial/feudal loyalties at the heart of Confucianism, as well as practical statecraft, which Confucius largely ignored.

[6]Translator’s notes:  The “School of Names” were an offshoot of Mohism emerging the Warring States period.  Although most of their writings have been lost, they are understood as having focused on purely logical statements and disputes, thus playing with language and meaning in ways that were new in the Chinese context. 

[7]Translator’s note:  This is a phrase from the Zuo Zhuan and is often used to describe rulers who have lost their power to clever courtiers, becoming mere figureheads.

[8]Translator’s note:  The Yin-Yang School, also known as the naturalist, is identified with figures like Zou Yan, who attempted to explain the universe in terms of basic forces of nature, such as yin and yang and the five elements.  Such ideas came to be part of political strategizing during the Warring States period.

[9]Translator’s note:  In the text, 循心、循礼与循法三种成德.  I suspect that this language is drawn from Song Hongbing’s work on Han Fei, which is discussed briefly below.

[10]Translator’s note:  I have no idea how China’s Mainland New Confucians view Han Fei.  I have not seen him mentioned in the texts I have read and translated, but I do not read everything, so there may have been important debates and discussions I missed.  In any event, Ren’s nuance is lost on me. 

[11]Ren does not identify the author of this quote; or, more likely, the footnotes were removed when his text was republished on the Aisixiang platform.

[12]Translator’s note:  Again, Ren does not identify the author of the quote, or the footnotes were omitted when the text was republished on the Aisixiang platform.

[13]“子、父，至亲也，而或谯或怨者，皆携相为而不周于为己者。”“父母之于子也，犹用计算之心以相待也，而况无父子之泽乎？”夫妻关系亦复如此。“夫妻者，非有骨肉之恩也，爱则亲，不爱则疏.”

[14]“故君臣异心，君以计蓄臣，臣以计事君，君臣之交，计也。害身而利国，臣弗为也；害国而利臣，君不为也。臣之情，害身无利；君之情，害国无亲。君臣也者，以计合者也.”

[15]Watson.

[16]Watson.

[17]Watson.

[18]Watson.

[19]Watson.

[20]Liao, pp. 260-261.

[21]Liao, p. 261.

[22]Liao, p. 177.

[23]Translator’s note:  Ren’s reference here is to Mencius’s discussion of people’s innate inability to bear the suffering of others 不忍人之心, and the form of government this should produce 不忍人之政:  “All people possess within them a moral sense that cannot bear the suffering of others. The former kings had such a moral sense and thus they devised means of government that would not allow people to suffer. If a ruler were to employ the moral sense that makes human suffering unendurable in order to implement such humane government, he would find bringing the entire world into order to be simple, as though he were turning the world in his hand.”  Robert Eno, Mencius:  An Online Teaching Translation, p. 46.

[24]Translator’s note:  Yao was a sage-king, a paragon of virtue; Jie (or Chieh) was the model of a treacherous king, thus a paragon of evil.

[25]Liao, p. 141.

[26]Watson.

[27]Watson.

[28]“明主之国，令者，言最贵者也；法者，事最适者也。言无二贵，法不两适，故言行而不轨于法令者必禁.”

[29]Watson.

[30]“人主之所以身危国亡者，大臣太贵，左右太威也。所谓贵者，无法而擅行，操国柄而便私者也。所谓威者，擅权势而轻重者也。此二者，不可不察也.”

[31]Liao, p. 98.

[32]“夫治天下之柄，齐民萌之度，甚未易处也。然所以废先王之教，而行贱臣之所取者，窃以为立法术，设度数，所以利民萌便众庶之道也。故不惮乱主暗上之患祸，而必思以齐民萌之资利者，仁智之行也。惮乱主暗上之患祸，而避乎死亡之害，知明夫身而不见民萌之资利者，贪鄙之为也。臣不忍向贪鄙之为，不敢伤仁智之行.”

[33]“夫凡国博君尊者，未尝非法重而可以至乎令行禁止于天下者也。是以君人者分爵制禄，则法必严以重之。夫国治则民安，事乱则邦危。法重者得人情，禁轻者失事实。且夫死力者，民之所有者也，情莫不出其死力以致其所欲；而好恶者，上之所制也，民者好利禄而恶刑罚。上掌好恶以御民力，事实不宜失矣，然而禁轻事失者，刑赏失也。其治民不秉法为善也，如是，则是无法也.”

[34]“是故夫至治之国，善以止奸为务。是何也？其法通乎人情，关乎治理也.”

[35]Liao, p. 142.

[36]Liao, p. 281.
 
[37]“故明主之治国也，适其时事以致财物，论其税赋以均贫富，厚其爵禄以尽贤能，重其刑罚以禁奸邪，使民以力得富，以事致贵，以过受罪，以功致赏，而不念慈惠之赐，此帝王之政也。”

[38]“夫凡国博君尊者，未尝非法重而可以至乎令行禁止于天下者也。是以君人者分爵制禄，则法必严以重之。夫国治则民安，事乱则邦危。法重者得人情，禁轻者失事实。”

[39]Translator’s note:  A good summary of the Eight Points, in Chinese, is available here.

[40]“天下皆以孝悌忠顺之道为是也，而莫知察孝悌忠顺之道而审行之，是以天下乱。皆以尧舜之道为是而法之，是以有弑君，有曲于父。尧、舜、汤、武或反群臣之义，乱后世之教者也。尧为人君而君其臣，舜为人臣而臣其君，汤、武为人臣而弑其主、刑其尸，而天下誉之，此天下所以至今不治者也。夫所谓明君者，能畜其臣者也；所谓贤臣者，能明法辟、治官职以戴其君者也。今尧自以为明而不能以畜舜，舜自以为贤而不能以戴尧，汤、武自以为义而弑其君长，此明君且常与而贤臣且常取也。故至今为人子者有取其父之家，为人臣者有取其君之国者矣。父而让子，君而让臣，此非所以定位一教之道也.”

[41]“臣之所闻曰：‘臣事君，子事父，妻事夫。三者顺则天下治，三者逆则天下乱，此天下之常道也。’明王贤臣而弗易也，则人主虽不肖，臣不敢侵也。今夫上贤任智无常，逆道也，而天下常以为治。是故田氏夺吕氏于齐，戴氏夺子氏于宋。此皆贤且智也，岂愚且不肖乎？是废常上贤则乱，舍法任智则危。故曰：上法而不上贤.”

[42]“为故人行私谓之‘不弃’，以公财分施谓之‘仁人’，轻禄重身谓之‘君子’，枉法曲亲谓之‘有行’，弃官宠交谓之‘有侠’，离世遁上谓之‘高傲’，交争逆令谓之‘刚材’，行惠取众谓之‘得民’。不弃者，吏有奸也；仁人者，公财损也；君子者，民难使也；有行者，法制毁也；有侠者，官职旷也；高傲者，民不事也；刚材者，令不行也；得民者，君上孤也。此八者，匹夫之私誉，人主之大败也。反此八者，匹夫之私毁，人主之公利也。人主不察社稷之利害，而用匹夫之私毁，索国之无危乱，不可得矣.”

[43]Watson.

[44]Watson.

[45]D. C. Lao, translator, The Analects:  Saying of Confucius, 7.30.

[46]D. C. Lao, translator, The Analects:  Saying of Confucius, 12.1. 

[47]Robert Eno, Mencius, An Online Teaching Translation, p. 46.

[48]Translator’s note:  Ren does not indicate the source of the quote, but I suspect that it is from something from Song Hongbing, since Ren mentions him just above.