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legalists and Confucianists
Ryotaro Shiba’s “On the Road to Taiwan” compares the classical Chinese philosophies of the Dharma School and Confucianism.
He begins by describing the unevenness of Taiwan’s roads, and says that the reason why the sidewalks are uneven is because the stores facing the road are dominant, and they either raise the sidewalks in front of their own stores or leave them as they are, which stems from the Mainland Chinese concept of “everyone is selfish.
He quotes Sun Yat-sen, who played an important role in the establishment of modern Taiwan, as saying, “Foreign observers say that China is sand in pieces.
Ryotaro Shiba says that Sun Yat-sen said that the Chinese do not have nationalism like other countries, but only familism and tribalism.
This nationalism (“nationalism” in Sun Yat-sen’s words) is different in nuance from the word “patriotism,” and is a position of destroying the private against the public, which is the meaning expressed in the four-character phrase “Tianxia yi gong” (“to be good under the sun”).
In China, too, it was the “legalists” represented by Han Hee-ji who spoke loudly of publicness, and Confucianists represented by Confucius also had the idea of publicness, but their main idea was that virtues such as benevolence and righteousness, which are necessary for private citizens, are the most important. In China, the idea of the legal system was abandoned and Confucianism continued as a dogma, and the system was based on the principle of human rule, with emperors basically being private and never public, and the bureaucrats who served as their minions also being private.
In this article, I would like to discuss the difference between Han Feizi and Confucius.
Han Hee Tzu and the Dharma School
Han Feizi, like Zhuangzi in “The Idea of Zhuangzi: How the Mind Can Be Free,” Sun Tzu in “The Roots of Problem Solving: On Sun Tzu,” and Lao Tzu in “Living Like Water: The Path at the Foundation of Lao Tzu’s Thought,” was born during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Period (5th century BC – 2nd century AD: the chaotic period before the Qin Dynasty unified China). He was born during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Period (5th-2nd century B.C.: a period of chaos and rivalry before the Qin Dynasty united China), the heyday of Chinese ideological history known as the Hundred Families’ War.
He is said to have learned from the Confucian philosopher Geng Zi, who taught that wrongdoing could be corrected by moralizing through courtesy, whereas Geng Zi insisted that wrongdoing should be restrained by law.
Han Feizi was born in the early third century B.C. as a prince of Han and studied under He Zi, who later became a colleague of Qin Premier Li Si.
At the time, Han’s national power was in decline, and Han He Zi often wrote to the king of Han, urging him to strengthen the country’s military power and legal system, but his proposals were not adopted, so he retired and devoted himself to writing, composing over 100,000 words. His writings reached the Qin Dynasty and caught the attention of the Qin King (later to become the First Emperor).
When the Qin King read “Kofun” and “Bito,” he exclaimed, “Oh, I wouldn’t mind dying if I could meet the man who wrote this.
Fearing that their position would be threatened if Han Non was promoted, Li Si said to the King of Qin, “That man is a prince of Han, and I do not think he will serve the Qin Dynasty. If we return him to the country, it would be like telling him about our internal affairs. We should deal with him while we still can. Han He was then imprisoned, and Li Si sent poison to him, forcing him to commit suicide. Han Hei tried to meet King Qin to explain himself in person, but he was not allowed to do so, and finally asked for the poison himself.
He opposed the Confucian doctrine of restoration and advocated the centralization of power in the hands of the monarch, and he was a great believer in the “art of law” and merit. According to him, “law” was the sole and absolute standard, and “in a country ruled by a Mingun, there is no need for books. The law itself is the teaching. The sovereign, at the top of the state structure, only needs to administer the “law,” and the “art” is how it is administered.
According to the sexual vice theory of Jung Tzu, human beings are naturally inclined to pursue profit and to seek pleasure. The subjects are no exception, and they tend to try to deceive their masters by flattery, humiliation, and coercion. Han Feizi also said that “art” is nothing more than a method of manipulating one’s subjects to see through such tricks.
Based on Han Feizi’s ideas, the Qin Dynasty became a wealthy nation with a strong military and succeeded in unifying the country. In this sense, Han He Zi can be said to have played the role of the “Shingari” of the Hundred Families of the Zhu Zi, who were born during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Periods.
Books on Han Feizi include “Han Feizi
Confucianism
Various theories have been offered as to the origin of the Confucian (jiu) in Confucianism since Hu Chui described them as “a group of survivors of the Shang who taught etiquette. Among them, it has become more common in recent years that they were a group that specialized in ceremonial ceremonies, especially funerary rites.
Shizuka Shirakawa, an orientalist, considers shamanism and “shamans” (shaman), who were in contact with the afterlife, to be the mother of Confucianism, which was prevalent throughout Asia in BC. Confucius, as mentioned in “Confucius’ Analects: A Comprehensive Treatise on Anthropology,” attempted to reorganize ancient society morally and religiously, which had been dismantled due to the social turmoil caused by the collapse of the class order at that time.
Like Han Feizi, Confucius wrote the Analects during the Spring and Autumn and Warring States Period, when meritocracy was rampant and the status system was being dismantled, with the ideal of restoring the status order and benevolent politics to the early Zhou Dynasty.
In addition to the aforementioned Analects, Confucian scriptures include the Yi (the first of the Five Classics, which systematizes and organizes the ancient wisdom of divination and sublimates it into a profound view of the universe), the Book (an ancient Chinese history book that describes the political attitudes and precepts of the heavenly sons and lords from the legendary saints Gao and Sun to the Xia, Shang, and Zhou dynasties, as well as their proclamations before battle), the Poems (the oldest Chinese poetry, consisting of 305 poems), and the Rites (a set of rituals and ceremonies). The Chinese Poems (the oldest Chinese poetry, consisting of 305 poems), the Rites (describing the prescribed actions, speech, clothing, tools, etc. in various events), the Musics (the Musings were lost early due to the burning of books by Qin Shi Huang), and the Spring and Autumn period (the first half of the Eastern Zhou period in ancient China (= Spring and Autumn)). The six arts (Six Ching) consist of what are generally referred to as the Five Classics, with the exception of the Le Ching.
In these texts, Confucianism teaches the maintenance of the five virtues (benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and faith) and the maintenance of the five virtues (father-son, sovereign-subject, husband and wife, elders and sons, and friends) by expanding the moral principles of the five virtues.
The Five Precepts are the most important “virtues” in Confucianism. Virtue refers to the state of being able to follow the rules that one should follow, and a person with virtue is said to be able to build relationships and manage organizations while earning the trust and respect of other people. It is also said that virtue consists of the diverse spiritual elements that make up humanity, and that grace, will, warmth, reason, loyalty, courage, honor, integrity, confidence, humility, health, and optimism can be positioned as individual virtues. Among such virtues, the five essentials that are considered especially important are as follows
- Jin : Jin refers to “humanity,” “benevolence,” and “humanitarianism,” and emphasizes compassion, love, and ethical behavior toward others. Confucius considers 仁 to be the highest virtue.
- Righteousness : Yi refers to “justice,” “duty,” and “moral behavior,” emphasizing fairness and righteousness, and doing what needs to be done without getting caught up in greed.
- Rei : Rei is a concrete expression of 仁 (仁), and originally meant taboos in religious rituals and traditional customs and institutions. Later, it came to mean that which should be observed in human hierarchical relationships, and regulates individual behavior and maintains social order through social norms and rituals.
- Wisdom : Wisdom refers to “wisdom” and “reason,” and emphasizes the importance of knowledge and learning. In the Analects of Confucius, the word “wisdom” is rendered as “knowledge” and can also mean “intelligence” or “clear-sightedness.
- Trust : Trust refers to “reliability” and “sincerity,” and is the importance of being truthful and honest in order to gain people’s trust, and represents not making mistakes in one’s words, telling the truth, keeping one’s word, and being sincere.
The five ethics describe the relationships that are necessary to create an orderly society, and are as follows
- Father-child: The relationship between parent and child, in which the child should respect the parent and the parent should treat the child with love.
- Siblings: In sibling relationships, siblings are supposed to cooperate and get along with each other.
- Husband and wife: In the husband-wife relationship, the husband should respect the wife and the wife should be obedient to the husband.
- Chang and Younger: In the relationship between the elder and the younger, the elder should lead the younger and the younger should obey the elder.
- Monarch and vassal: the relationship between monarch and vassal, in which the vassal should be loyal and the monarch should serve the people.
This way of thinking provides one order to a confused world and one’s own condition, from the perspective of virtue.
The power of the Analects to reorganize order has been used in Japan to support the Edo shogunate’s consecration system, and in recent years it has become the ideological basis for supporting communism in China, and has been used politically in the past, so it is often not seen in a good light.
However, as described in “Confucius’ Analects: A Book of Comprehensive Anthropology” by Eiichi Shibusawa, Confucianism is not only about the non-political use of Confucianism, but also about finding in the Analects an indicator for life.
This is the idea that by ordering oneself through virtue, one can properly regulate one’s own behavior, put others before oneself, and live with morality, thereby regulating one’s interactions with others, More recently, Hideki Kuriyama, manager of the WBC-winning Samurai Japan team, has incorporated the philosophy into his baseball coaching.
In today’s society, where social structures are becoming more complex and values are diversifying, it is difficult to maintain oneself, and one’s physical condition or mood may be such as “I’m having a hard time today…” or “I’m not feeling well. When you feel negative and lost, or when you wonder “Why am I like this…,” referring to the Confucian way of maintaining order can change the way you perceive and think about things a little, or it can become a guideline for your own actions and thinking. It can also be a guideline for our own actions and thoughts.
Order and Freedom
It is useful to bring order to a chaotic world, and the Confucian idea that the basis for order is the good things that have happened in the past, and that each individual should abide by them, has a point.
However, even if there have been successful cases in the past, the preconditions of those cases do not apply to all subsequent cases, and it is unreasonable to think that everything should be based on a fixed pattern.
As Dogen Zenji noted, Zen places great importance on kata, and in Soto Zen Buddhism, the kata is the way of life, from the way one holds chopsticks to the way one walks. Kata also appear in the tea ceremony, as described in “The Art of Meiji: Fenollosa, Okakura Tenshin, and the Book of Tea.
In Zen, he says, “It is of course possible to enter the spirit through form, and to a certain extent one must do so, but what one does through form is easily caught up in form, and there is a danger of losing touch with what makes the form what it is. He also states the importance of learning the kata and the negative effects of being bound by the kata. He also states the importance of the unity of form and spirit: “When one fully understands the form and is able to move according to the spirit of the form, the form becomes not only a form, but also a living thing that approaches the viewer.
The world is changing, and the kata or order applied to that world should not be operated without thought, but should be changed in accordance with the changing world. In order to do so, it is necessary to consider the meaning of order and type in the first place, and furthermore, in considering the meaning, it is important to consider the purpose, as described in “Life as Information – Purpose and Meaning. Order to organize a chaotic world and freedom to change it are both important elements.
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