Talk:Legalism (Chinese philosophy)/Archive 5

About section
1. "All encyclopedic content on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view (NPOV), which means representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic."FourLights (talk) 14:59, 4 December 2016 (UTC)

2. Anti-generalization.

Although I hope to expand the sources after making a review of the article, the ideas of Creel and Chad Hansen contributed greatly it's current state of development. Creel divides the Legalists into two founders, as Han Fei does. Chad Hansen connects the Fa of the "Legalists" with that of the Mohists. This seems well founded and I have no material against it. Xing-Ming is also derived from the School of the Logicians - another group which emerged from the Mohists.

I consider much in the way of Legalism, or Fa, to simply be an evolution of the "rectification of names" of the Mohists, which I put at the beginning under Fa. Even Shang Yang may be said to be an early example of this. Shang Yang's doctrine is not "laws", but "standards" (names), and includes a system of ranks and titles (names). In this he may be connected to the other more administrative Fa thinkers.

In future development I could take more note of the work of those who present the Fajia as "totalitarian" or "Machiavellian". I don't view such lense as particularly scholarly, but I could still present it stomewhere.FourLights (talk) 04:44, 29 January 2017 (UTC)

3. "Wikipedia strives to be a serious reference resource, and highly technical subject matter still belongs in some Wikipedia articles. Increasing the understandability of technical content is intended to be an improvement to the article for the benefit of the less knowledgeable readers, but this should be done without reducing the value to readers with more technical background."FourLights (talk) 22:24, 10 January 2020 (UTC)

Terminological anachronism
The subject of the "Fajia" or "Legalism" may be taken in part as an evolution of it's interpretation, which includes it's Sinology. As noted, the Fajia was not a school properly speaking, and to make generalizations either becomes increasingly abstracted, or in reality only applies to a portion of it. To speak on Fajia rather than it's individual proponents, we are not a speaking of a proper school, we are speaking of historical lenses, beginning with the glossing of those individuals into the Fajia. To discuss the Fajia in whole means, then, to address these flawed lenses, with the Sinologists considering the term Legalism even more flawed.

Creel uses "administrators, technocrats, or methodists" for the Shen Buhai group; this was also accepted sometimes, even if it wasn't actually much used. We also have examples absurd of language uses in the scholarship, "Fa (method/standard)" accompanying every use in some cases. I personally considered it more sensible to explain the term and leave it at that.

Regarding this evolution, Creel made a great contribution, but his distinguishing of the meaning of Fa to mean method for Shen Buhai, vs the less developed sinological interpretation of Fa as just law, may be considered outdated vs Chad Hansen's proposal that they all simply used it in the manner of the Mohists, with Shen Buhai, as known even in Creel's time, to have derived his Fa from the Mohist-derived School of Names. To argue otherwise, you'd have to try to demonstrate, with more scholarship than Hansen, and not merely past glosses and usages, that Shang Yang uses Fa differently; despite Han Fei and the Han dynasty's interpretation, Chad Hansen doesn't appear to be aware of anything to suggests this.

Graham's articulation of Chinese thought as evolving in pairs to form law is of course delightful, but for what I've read so far, it's a fancificul interpretation. I present it, and have to read more of the book, it's not so far a full blown evidentiary argument. Chad Hansen wrote his book shortly after.

Of course, there is still a bit more reading out there that I need to do on the Fajia.FourLights (talk) 00:07, 15 April 2023 (UTC)

Regarding the supposed influence of Daoism
Creel attempts to discredit the influence of Taoism on Legalism. Shen Buhai appears to predate Taoist texts, and apart from Mohist derivation appears otherwise directly influenced by the Analects. Although Han Fei engages in a Daoist discussion, the Daoism in the Han Feizi or Shen Dao in their elaboration of government seems a fluorish to me (and Creel) where it can actually be called an influence (as opposed to their own innovation preceding Daoism), empty of any content except the methods themselves. Having done a little translation myself, the chapter "Tao of the Sovereign" might be translated differently such that, leaving affairs to Fa, the ruler not only doesn't express himself, but does not hold interviews - the doctrine of Shen Buhai and Shen Dao, not Laozi (which is thought to have been written after them).

This view is not necessarily universal, but honestly, I currently have not located or otherwise compiled sufficient scholarly example of direct Daoist influence on the "Legalist" mode of government. re: Mingjun Lu 2016. p.344. Implications of Han Fei’s Philosophy. Journal of Chinese Political Science. But Mingjun doesn't provide much in the way of examples except that Han Fei's ruler "discerning the Tao". I could discuss his work, but it's argument makes little sense to me in the way of a substantial evidence. I have Chad Hansen's research on the Mohists, I currently have nothing articulating the influence of "Taoism". I'll have to look up Peter Moody's text (2011).

However, Mingjun more persuasively argues that Han Fei does not oppose virtue - which often he does not..FourLights (talk) 02:41, 17 November 2016 (UTC)FourLights (talk) 19:02, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Regarding reference format
The current reference format I am tending towards is grouping them into individual boxes for the individual sections, and annotating them. I need this to keep track of everything. If it is desired to do it differently, then I either request a separate references section be made to do it the other way, or you want me to shove my way of doing it back here into the talk page.FourLights (talk) 12:30, 3 June 2023 (UTC)

As I review the sources and organize the material, notes on individual pages will be made in Archive 4 together with their locations in the article. The two can then be compared. I think it would be great to have such a body for reference that other people can look at if they like. Wikipedia doesn't have what amounts to a public user worskpace, so I don't know what else to do with it except store it in an archive.FourLights (talk) 07:26, 17 June 2023 (UTC)


 * A subpage, maybe Legalism (Chinese philosophy)/sources might be a better option than a talk page archive. Or a projectspace subpage like WikiProject China/Legalism? It's true we don't have a standard process for this. Folly Mox (talk) 18:50, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Lack of spiritual dimension
This content was started by another user; I thought it was a good angle, made a section, and added content, and a little more was added by another. But it isn't currently formatted as a formal section, it's basically just some notes at this point - like the realist section. Point is, it's something worth talking about. If I compile enough content, I can probably present it more formally at some point, but I have other work to do in fixing the article.FourLights (talk) 15:08, 2 June 2023 (UTC)

Request for comment
The current state of organization of material, and some of it's content, preceding the sections of the individual personas is new. I've put in a request for review, but mostly I just got some people editing typos and things, and a request to not to maintain a current status section here, otherwise making and deleting comments to myself.

Basically, I'm just asking for comment on my choice of content preceding the sections of the individual personas. Although I've put in a lot of review work, I'm not actually done reviewing and organizing the sources (E.G. Creel 1974 and Chad Hansen), let alone incorporating the material of some other sources I've made little use of yet (e.g. Graham disputers of the Dao).FourLights (talk) 16:53, 17 June 2023 (UTC)


 * I understand this is specifically not what you're asking, but I've always found it helpful to get all the material together before attempting to organise it all. Graham's Disputers of the Tao is really good, and presents a more recent understanding of early Chinese thought than Creel does, who feels outdated these days.Recent scholarship on 法家 is kinda sparse, as lamented in Vogelsang 2016, but there have been a lot of unearthed texts and paleographic efforts that complement the direct topical approach. Qin has always been considered the locus of practice for Legalism, and the Shuihudi Qin bamboo texts and Liye Qin Slips have done wonders in clarifying what this looked like in practice. Hulsewé's Remnants of Ch'in Law (1985) is an outstanding treatment of the Shuihudi texts, and I only see his earlier work in your sources. Kern's  The Stele Inscriptions of Ch'in Shih-huang (2000) also goes into Qin legal practice and is very highly regarded, but I haven't read it myself.I see you've cited Pines over twenty times – which I'm not complaining about; he's one of my favourite scholars in the field – but he's published three papers on the 商君書 (Book of Lord Shang), all of which you have access to through the Wikipedia Library: , Alienating Rhetoric in the Book of Lord Shang and its Moderation, 2012; , Social Engineering in Early China, 2016; and , Dating a pre-Imperial text: a case study of the Book of Lord Shang, 2016.Even though the Guanzi is not traditionally considered a "Legalist" text, it would be good to give it a little more treatment than just two paragraphs, because it does anticipate a lot of developments in the field, and looking at how political philosophy evolved alongside political reality during the Eastern Zhou gives some insight into how Legalism came to take shape, and the Guanzi is a good starting point for that.You've clearly put a huge amount of work into this article, which I really appreciate, and if you're asking specifically for help organising citations, I'm open to helping you with that, and if you want to preserve the research notes present in the references there are ways to do that that will retain them in the source and also hide them from the reader.Big picture, I feel like the challenges now are overrepresentation of Creel, getting the references all organised, and – maybe ironically – the big picture. Your treatment of the main bois – Han Fei, Shang Yang, Shen Buhai, and Shen Dao – is super thorough, to the point where once all your sources are incorporated it's going to make way more sense to spin them off into child articles so that this article can offer a comparative view without getting lost in the details. Your treatment of the antecedents is good, but like I mentioned it would be instructive to tie in more of the political history to shine light through a different lens on the history of thought, which feels very isolated as a framework at present. Lastly, once you're able to split the individual philosopher sections out into child articles, it will be possible to take a complementary approach to their interpretations of various concepts: without really needing much more work, you could incorporate their views into the articles on 勢、述、無為 etc, and have an overview of the main ideas and an overview of the main thinkers in this article. You've got the workings of a whole Featured Topic here. Folly Mox (talk) 18:46, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I've got some general historical works right here, CHAC and Lewis's Writing and Authority. I'll see if there's anything I can pull out that would be helpful for article development, as well as the Vogelsang and Pines papers I've mentioned above. I don't have access to Graham or Hulsewé anymore: that hard drive died a decade ago, but I don't feel comfortable just dumping sources on you like "good luck!".On the technicalities, I suggest four child articles along the lines of Philosophy of Han Feizi, and using list-defined references in combination with shortened footnotes bundled together to organise the references. Then for the overall article organisation, I'd have:
 * (lead)
 * Overview if the lead feels too pared down
 * Origins (antecedents, political landscape)
 * Major thinkers (comparative overview and specific texts, chronological)
 * Major concepts
 * Qin practice
 * Reception / reactions / criticisms from other schools of thought
 * Legacy / modern understanding (including Creel, Graham, etc) / comparisons
 * This is just very high level, but hopefully everything can be organised into those sections pretty cleanly Folly Mox (talk) 19:15, 17 June 2023 (UTC)

Would it be desirable to hide reference notes from the reader? Part of what's going on with the references right now is that I am reviewing them again the in the first place. They may still be misplaced in some parts. As I review them, I also edit the material.FourLights (talk) 19:24, 17 June 2023 (UTC)


 * I was just thinking the things like "Creel quote (66), must do little, ignored as an idea in the Shangjunshu (69)". I think facilitating your process is a higher priority than making the article look like it's not in active development even though it definitely is. I'm going to start by creating for you a full list-defined references section, which shouldn't get in your way, move anything around, or edit conflict with you at all. Folly Mox (talk) 19:48, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
 * It's not specifically necessary to include the year numbers. The idea behind the year numbers was giving the reader a sense of the chronology of work on the subject, which is part of presenting Creel, whereas work interpreting the subject through the lense on the Mohists comes after. Guiding the reader through the subject as an evolving lense. I think it would be good note the year some places, but if nothing else I can do it less and otherwise be mindful of the practice.FourLights (talk) 20:29, 17 June 2023 (UTC)
 * OK well I created a (I think comprehensive) set of list-defined references using r, but since they were a full complement of either a. a duplicate anchor name or b. a no-target anchor, all 122 created visible error messages. So they're there in the ==References== subheading, all commented out. Maybe I'll add spaces between the author and year so they don't conflict with the current ones, or something. I didn't realise this was going to create 122 errors when I started the task. Folly Mox (talk) 00:17, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I've now alphabetised the references and added isbns, dois, publishers etc as appropriate. I'm going to begin converting the current referencing style to a shorter one so that the text is easier to read in the editor and all the cites to the same sources point appropriately.I'm also intending to bundle consecutive citations as possible, to reduce the refbomb appearance of certain areas. I also intend to do very minor copyediting for formatting as I go. I'll be putting under construction at the top of the page, but there's going to be loads of template errors until I'm done. I'll try to figure out a way to get the ==Sources== section to remain as it is, so the higher-importance sources can still be surfaced amongst the 122 total.I don't intend to do any resructuring during this series of edits. Folly Mox (talk) 03:58, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Alright, I'll leave you to whatever you are doing, if I need my own method I suppose it's in the backlog and I can make an archive. My method was aimed at enabling me to write the article, correlating sources and content with notes.FourLights (talk) 05:01, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
 * I've reverted my changes. I realize I was making your research notes too confusing, and kept getting tripped up with the automatically named references. Maybe I'll figure something else out and try again at a time it won't interrupt your work. Folly Mox (talk) 07:47, 18 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Thanks. I can take a break some time if you have any ideas.FourLights (talk) 08:10, 18 June 2023 (UTC)

Use of term "fajia" throughout
The title of this article is "Legalism (Chinese philosophy)", which reflects the most common English term for this intellectual tendency in Chinese thought. Throughout the body of the article, however, the term "Fajia" is used extensively. Unless justification for changing the name of the article is put forward, I would suggest changing Fajia to Legalism in the body for the purposes of clarity and consistency. Retinalsummer (talk) 15:51, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I don't think I agree. 19th and 20th century Sinology have burdened us with a number of infelicitous terms that must have seemed like good translations at the time but lend themselves to naive understandings. Modern scholarship has corrected course and become more precise, but laden terms remain in the popular literature. Unrelatedly, a common practice when giving a concept a full treatment is to describe it without translating it. I think it's fine to leave the title as is, reflecting an incomplete understanding inherited from outdated scholarship but still well known outside the subject matter, and use a more precise term employed by modern scholarship throughout the body of the article. Just one opinion, of course. Folly Mox (talk) 17:03, 21 April 2023 (UTC)
 * On wikipedia, we're supposed to use the most common term for something. Retinalsummer (talk) 00:15, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I understand that to be the case for article titles, but I guess I'm under the impression that we're afforded the leeway in body text to cleave more closely to modern scholarship. Then again I'm not super familiar with all the finer points of the MOS. Folly Mox (talk) 02:50, 23 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I just had cause to address this topic in another article: Ancient Chinese states, fyi. Folly Mox (talk) 02:35, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
 * What you wrote there nicely illustrates that there isn't scholarly consensus on what term to use. For that reason alone, we should use "legalism" in this article. To be clear, I am sympathetic about terminological issues, but I don't see why using the Han dynasty term fajia solves the problem, especially when we haven't reached scholarly consensus on a new term to replace "legalism". Retinalsummer (talk) 04:27, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, now that I've had a deeper look into it I've come round to agree with your position for the present use case. Folly Mox (talk) 04:36, 27 April 2023 (UTC)

Statement
My later sources essentially dismantle the term "Legalism" even more than the term Fajia, as I discuss in the article itself, but I admit I may have been overzealous in trying to "solve" the terminology problem by simply going back in time. What I think I need to do is review the page and it's sources, and bring back and make use of the term "Legalism" where contextually appropriate - that is, if and where my sources do. I think that doing so would constitute a fair and most importantly scholarly review.FourLights (talk) 06:09, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

Anti-Legalist interpretation
Prior to visiting a university, this editor is simply not aware of modern pro-law interpretations for Fa as to present a comparison. Winston makes general comparisons with the modern concept of law without treating Fa as a subject. A presentation of pro-law arguments would simply overlay the more primary subject of Fa, which more or less negate Legalist interpretation. Formally presenting Fa, as will be necessary even if we refrain from anti-legalist presentations, without a pro-law treatment of Fa, a subsequest presentation of pro-law arguments would amount to saying - "your use of Administrative Measurement Standards (Fa) look like they have some aspects of rule of law to me."

Elaboration of examples of Fa as law are supposed to become available with the release of the Dao Companion to the Fa Tradition. Otherwise there are probably more comparisons with Republicanism than law.FourLights (talk) 16:34, 25 October 2023 (UTC)