Talk:Legalism (Chinese philosophy)/Archive 1

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It much easier to read now...I am currently studying Chinese philosphies. As for this is Hobbesian in nature, nothing wrong with saying or implying that. There is no anti-chinese sentiment, but the philosphy is harsh and must be presented as so. There are much nicer schools of though out there (Daoism anyone). I have removed the POV tags. The few sections that there are problems with, edit the langugage so it not as offensive. POV tagging the entire article and every section is not a good idea. This has not been followed up on and is a distraction. Most of the offensive language is gone anyway. Ed-it 23:52, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Hmm... Of course I like Ruja/Confucianism (if there is such a thing), Mohism and Daoism better, but isn't "totalitarian" a tad anachronistic? I mean, the Qin state was certainly a far cry from Oceania and its real-world counterparts- however mean it was, and not that it was a pleasant place. I find it worrisome if even scholars like Minford use words such as proto-"fascist" etc. Is totalitarianism not a modern phenomenon? If this is the case, should it be applied to a philosophy of premodern origins? Not that I am apologetic towards the whole thing (and if you would put Lord Shangs and Han Feis words into practice nowadays, we all know how the result would look like...). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.213.47 (talk) 20:42, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Origins Section
I've edited the first few sentences in this section as I felt some of the information was extraneous and possibly incorrect. To be honest, I feel the whole section needs a rework but I've started particularly this section: "It emerged in a critical point in ancient Chinese history as the region was on the brink of civil war during the Warring States Period. Many new religions were made to solve these problems including, Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism."

As far as I'm concerned the region was in continuous "civil war" although each state concerned in the Warring States period was it's own independent kingdom (think pre-imperial Germany, before Bismarck). I changed religions to philosophies, as these days Confucian and Taoist thought is considered more of a philosophy than religion. Also mention of Buddhism is removed, it's accepted that Buddhism was not "made" in China, it was introduced by Indian missionaries most likely during 2nd century BCE; very much after the Warring States Period. I've made additional minor cleanups to the section in question. Selfexiled (talk) 23:56, 11 March 2009 (UTC)

Read Me!
I just edited the first paragraph to make some kind of grammatical sense. It had read "It is actually rather a pragmatic political philosophy, with maxims like "when the epoch changed, the ways changed" as its essential principle, than a jurisprudence."

It now reads: It is actually rather a pragmatic political philosophy, with maxims like "when the epoch changed, the ways changed," and its essential principle is one of jurisprudence.

I hope this was the original intent. It seems to make sense from the three other sources I'm currently reading about the subject, but I've never heard of this philosophy before today. Once someone can confirm this is OK, please delete these paragraphs.


 * This philosophy is pretty famous because the civilization that made the Terracotta Army actually follows this philosophy closely. If this philosophy doesn't exist, I doubt China would even exist.

Everything else
For some reason, 8th grade social studies left me with the impression that Legalism was based on the assumption that humanity was basically evil, and could be manipulated by the "two handles", greed and fear (think Skinner).


 * OK, so this is verified by S.E Finer, pg 467 "In bold terms, the Legalists viewed the mass of humanity as irrevocably stupid and base, and suceptible only to the carrot and the stick." - Finer, S.E. "The History of Government from the Earliest Times I: Ancient Monarchies and Empires" Pg 442-72. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999 David Manheim 07:40, 4 Oct 2006 (EST)

Current Status
This was done.

Past discussion
the idea of open public laws and equality under the law, is that not similar to the united states principles?


 * Well, yes and no. The United States operates under common law, so many of the laws are not specifically written down, or at least they do not need to be.  Equality under the law is a principle in US law, but it does not appear to be a principle in legalism, which places the king above and outside the law. - Nat Krause 07:04, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

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It makes little sense, I think, to put the Western legal philosophy on the same page as the Chinese political one. If however this is done, one should at least make two equal paragraphs. Certainly it is nonesense to treat Chinese legalism as one form of Western legalism.

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I'd agree there should be a separation, because these are unrelated philosophies that happen to use the same name. There should be a 'disambiguation page', as there is for 'Republican'. --GwydionM 15:57, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

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The article does not fully clarify the difference between the eastern and western versions of Legalism. To me, legalism, the rule of  law, seems like a strong judicial-like government, not unlike our own (e.g. western government).

--Enerjen 3 February 2006 (UTC)

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I am new to this -- but the article on "legalism" is confusing, as is the article on "rule of law" which brought me here. "Chinese legalism" ought to be a separate page, linked from this. At a minimum, if hierarchy must be avoided, the page could link to "chinese" and "western" legalism separately. "Legalism" in the western tradition needs a page to itself. The key text is Judith Shklar's 1964 "Legalism" (Harvard University Press) -- a classic of political thought.

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I agree with the suggestion for a split. I'd suggest that 'legalism' in the Western sense should have its own small article, and so should Korean Legalism. Both would be open to expansion in future.

I'd also say that the Chinese school called 'Legalists' should really have been translated as 'Regulators'. They were concerned with power, not about harmony with any overall principle beyond strenght. This would be worth explaining, though clearly we are stuck with the familiar term.

--GwydionM 09:18, 17 June 2006 (UTC)
 * While Western legalism would seem to be an unrelated subject that happens to share the same English term, the text of the article implies that Korean Legalism is an intellectual descendant of the Chinese school. Should Korean Legalism be retained as a subsection of this article? --XL7-Z 14:14, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Capitalization
I am currently under the impression that Legalism in the Chinese context should be capitalized as a proper noun, and have revised the article accordingly. --XL7-Z 14:28, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Conflicting statements in the introductory paragraph
This sort of sprung out at me: the first paragraph states that legalism was a one of four leading political ideologies of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States period. Although I cannot personally confirm this, it seems to be correct since I'm pretty sure 商鞅 (Shang Yang, high-ranking official of the kingdom of Qin under Xiaogong before the unification of China, I believe) is classified as a legalist. But then the next paragraph states that 韩非 (Han Fei, political thinker the kingdom of Han, pupil of Xunzi and Li Si's old schoolmate) was the founder of the school of thought. Since Han Fei was died in jail during the Qin dynasty, these two statement are in direct contradiction unless Mr. Han founded the school of thought, did nothing for four hundred years and then suddenly began his ultimately frustrated political career.

Does this sound right to anyone? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mrmyway (talk • contribs)


 * It sounds fine to me. Han Fei started the whole ball of wax before the Warring States period, and it grew in prominence until it was one of the big ones, big enough to be singled out from the "Hundred Schools" disputing philosophic matters at that time. --maru  (talk)  contribs 13:43, 19 August 2006 (UTC)

NPOV
This article includes a lot of POV arguments like "legalism was meant to keep people poor and uneducated. Obviously written by someone biased against communism and Chinese government. One of many examples: "...sought to devalue the importance of the charismatic ruler. Thus, subjects were compelled to obey even the most vile, ruthless, and/or incompetent rulers."

Indeed, this is FAR from neutral; nevertheless I cannot see a certain anti-communist bias in such a statement, but strong anti-Chinese sentiment. This form of sentiment has existed due to the cr*p Hegel has written about the "East" (so-called Oriental despotism). The language is truely too harsh, emotional and far from encyclopedic (especially for someone who admires Qin Shi Huang, Machiavelli and Bismarck).

Who and when was legalism founded exactly ?
Liu Kui, who was appointed chief minister in Wei in 445 B.C., was credited with the writing of the Fa jing 法经 (Classic of law). "Liu Kui's writings were later classified as Legalist, and he is recognized as the inspriation for the agricultural theories of Shang Yang..."

The introductory paragraph states that legalism dates "from about the sixth century B.C."

However, the article at one point also states that "Legalism was first created by Shang Yang." However, Shang Yang was born in the fourth century B.C., and as such this second statement contradicts the one in the introductory paragraph !

Can anyone look into this contradiction please ?

Please read carefully, "Legalism (Chinese: 法家; pinyin: Fǎjiā; Wade-Giles: Fa-chia; literally              "School of law") was one of the four main philosophic schools in the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period (Near the end of the Zhou dynasty from about the sixth century B.C. to about the third century B.C.)." It means legalism was created during this period not on the sixth century B.C., so both are correct.

edit 15 April 07 

(by MaltaCross, 4th April 2007) —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 217.30.96.127 (talk) 13:53, 4 April 2007 (UTC).

Pronoun Usage
Where frequent references have been made to the legalist sovereign as "he or she" I have taken the liberty of replacing them with the more appropriate "he," Legalist philosophy, being the product of the profoundly patriarchal society of the Warring States period always presupposed a male sovereign. Furthermore, there were not, in fact, any female rulers at that time. To refer to the legalist sovereign as "he or she" is as anachronistic as referring to a member of the Athenian electorate or the Spartan phalanx as "he or she," Gender inclusively is strictly an element of editorial style and should not be imposed onto the attitudes and ideologies documented on Wikipedia where it did not exist; to do so is false representation. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.70.109.32 (talk) 02:37, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Clarify
One could read this sentence in two ways: "[T]he system of law ran the state, not the ruler." I assume the first is correct, in which case this could be re-written as "..the system of law, not the ruler, ran the state." -- Gyrofrog (talk) 16:29, 13 October 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) The law, and not the ruler, runs the state
 * 2) The law ran the state but the ruler was exempt from the law

I'm curious about Legalism in practice and Legalism in theory. In practice the rule of law was used to justify the ruler's actions; this is not in total accordance to what the article states. During the time of Legalism's greatest height (Qin dynasty) the ruler was the rule of law, shouldn't the article reflect this? Selfexiled (talk) 18:59, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Incoherent sentence

 * To aid the ruler and help prevent misgovernance, for fifteen years – formalized the concept of shu, or the bureaucratic model of administration that served to advance the ideal Legalist ruler’s program.

...Some word or phrase is missing that might make that sentence coherent. --Jim Henry (talk) 15:10, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

Vandalism Watch
The trends that were later called Legalism balh blah blsh blsh blahhave in common a focus on strengthening...

Not sure how long this has been here, but seeing that is the summary of the article I believe Wikipedia users would appreciate if this were to be replaced with the original text. Thanks

--66.51.254.186 (talk) 03:46, 3 February 2010 (UTC)


 * Heracles has fixed it. It's really strange how much vandalism this article gets.

Upper or lower case
If this is a branch of philosophy then it should be lower case L, right? Anna Frodesiak (talk) 15:23, 4 September 2010 (UTC)


 * I missed the thread above entitled "Capitalization". I hope someone can check the basis for that decision. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 15:25, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi Anna, This is a tricky one. Political schools of thought based on individual names (Marxism, Confucianism) etc are clearly based on personal pronouns so should be capitalized according to standard English grammar usage. My take on this is that Legalism as a proper noun should be capitalized but legalist shouldn't. I think that in the US the media would always say "...leading Republican X" and "...noted Democrat Y" but there has never been a "Legalist Party" in China per se so this argument does not apply here. Best Philg88 (talk) 23:06, 4 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Lower case seems appropriate. CRGreathouse (t | c) 14:43, 7 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, but I can't agree. Branches of philosophy, like religions, are proper nouns, and need to be capitalized according to the rules of standard English grammar.  The fact that many philosophies are named after their originators is coincidental (more common examples like Islamic and Hindu illustrate this rule).  The direct answer to your question is that the word "Legalist" must be capitalized when referring to the Chinese school of philosophy, but not when using the word to mean "strict adherence to the law, esp the stressing of the letter of the law rather than its spirit." Ferox Seneca (talk) 02:16, 5 January 2011 (UTC)