/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.19362513]

/lit/ told me Legalism was ebil. After reading it, it's perhaps the most based political philosophy ever conceived. It's so practical, it co-ops Taoism to justify totalitarianism.

[Anonymous No.19362651]

>>19362513
I don’t think it’s ‘ebil’ I just think that it’s impractical to try to exercise so much control with their technology.

[Anonymous No.19362709]

>>19362513
t. Xi Jingping

[Anonymous No.19362799]

>>19362709
Get over it incel, PRC is Confucian

>>19362651
>Tao is the beginning of the myriad things, the standard of right and wrong. That being so, the intelligent ruler, by holding to the beginning, knows the source of everything, and, by keeping to the standard, knows the origin of good and evil. Therefore, by virtue of resting empty and reposed, he waits for the course of nature to enforce itself so that all names will be defined of themselves and all affairs will be settled of themselves. Empty, he knows the essence of fullness: reposed, he becomes the corrector of motion. Who utters a word creates himself a name; who has an affair creates himself a form. Compare forms and names and see if they are identical. Then the ruler will find nothing to worry about as everything is reduced to its reality..
Legalism is really just crypto Taoism.

[Anonymous No.19363424]

simping for legalism when you're the subject not the ruler is cucked

[Anonymous No.19363508]

>>19362799
Refuted by the fact that the only constant of the Tao is that it is ever changing. Legalism is far too rigid to adapt to the evolving world by itself and can only work in the correct contexts as it competes with other systems in an ever lasting dialectic.

[Anonymous No.19363772]

>>19362799
>PRC is Confucian

>He buried 460 Confucians alive - we have buried 46,000 Confucians alive," he [Mao] said in a speech to party cadres. "You [intellectuals] revile us for being Qin Shi Huangs. You are wrong. We have surpassed Qin Shi Huang a hundredfold

[Anonymous No.19363920]

[Anonymous No.19363932]

>>19362799
It already violates the Tao; Lao Tzu admonishes social vanities such as intelligence. He says the fool can understand the Tao just as much as the intelligent one. Lao Tzu also blames crime on laws being too restricted on freedom; people being too obsessed with short term gain.

[Anonymous No.19364347]

What i find most interesting about Legalism is how modern a theory of human nature and organisation it has, while completely inverting how we interpret it in modern day. It is striking when reading the Legalists that they essentially view people as Homo Economicus, driven by a rational utility-maximising urge to enrich themselves.
>A physician will often suck men’s wounds clean and hold the bad blood in his mouth, not because he is bound to them by any tie of kinship but because he knows there is profit in it. The carriage maker making carriages hopes that men will grow rich and eminent; the carpenter fashioning coffins hopes that men will die prematurely. It is not that the carriage maker is kind-hearted and the carpenter a knave. It is only that if men do not become rich and eminent, the carriages will never sell, and if men do not die, there will be no market for coffins. The carpenter has no feeling of hatred toward others; he merely stands to profit by their death.
Which sounds like it could be straight out of The Wealth of Nations. But while the contemporary advocates of this vision of human nature see this a reason to 'let be' and allow the passions and interests to flourish and unleash the motor of industry, considering the wealth of nations synonymous with the wealth of the people, the legalists thought it the perfect mechanism of political control and state empowerment.
>Human beings have likes and dislikes; hence, the people can be ruled.
Termed by Han Fei as the 'two levers' by which people's actions can be controlled. Rather than letting people be free to 'truck, barter, and exchange', the legalists instead tried to channel that desire for gain by only making certain professions profitable (in Shang Yang's time, Agriculture and War). The genius of the Legalists was how they realised that the power of pure coercion is, while perhaps not wrong, at least inefficient. A much more efficient and sure way of controlling people is to get them to toil towards their enslavement of their own volition: Stoke people's greed, fan people's fear, then build them a golden path to the prison yard. Thus law can extend far beyond the sovereigns actual ability to enforce it, a necessity for such a large population as China. What Confucians wanted to bridge by ideology, the Legalists wanted to bridge by interests. Not harmonised by the invisible hand, but a very visible fist.

[Anonymous No.19364350]

>>19364347
Law and Power are synonymous, because it is through the careful application of law in accordance with the two levers that state power arises (hence 'Legalists'). The height of this philosophy of rule is when the Emperor can control the whole population simply through the manipulation of these wants a desires through an extensive table of laws without ever having to exercise executive discretion (what Han Fei (also borrowing from Daoism) calls 'wuwei').
Han Fei (a quote i particularly like)
>[The ruler] does not try to tell others what to do, but leaves them to do things by themselves. Tightly he bars his inner door, and from his room looks out into the courtyard; he has provided the rules and yardsticks, so that all things know their place. Those who merit reward are rewarded; those who deserve punishment are punished. Reward and punishment follow the deed; each man brings them upon himself. Therefore, whether the result is pleasant or hateful, who dares to question it?
Shang Yang
>when governance is large, the state is small; when governance is small, the state is large
(So humourously Libertarians and Legalists share a vision of human nature and desire for a small state, but for completely different reasons.) But paradoxically, the Legalist state requires an immense surveillance apparatus. Obviously something difficult to achieve in Qin-era china, even by rewarding civilian informants and threatening group punishments. But with the rise of surveillance technology and specific AI to bridge the epistemic gap, the Legalist dream is probably more attainable than it ever has been. The social credit system basically already has the core Legalist governing philosophy embedded in it, so if it ever actually manifests into a comprehensive nation-wide system, well... that i'm not Chinese in the 21st century, i still praise God and thank him for it. You can appreciate the genius and audacity of Legalism, but i don't see any reason why you would want to live under it. But isn't it fascinating how an identical view of human nature can produce such divergent philosophies. And that, whatever you want to say about the longevity of the Qin Dynasty, they are both extremely successful forms of political organisation.