Abstract
Confucianism and Legalism are the two most influential political traditions in Chinese history. They are diverse and complex traditions with different interpretations in different times (especially in the case of Confucianism), but there are continuities and commonalities and ongoing themes in each tradition. Although the two traditions contrast with each other at the level of philosophy, they were combined in different ways in Chinese imperial history and some form of Legalist Confucianism continues to be influential in the twenty-first century. In this essay, I will identify the main traits of the Confucian and Legalist traditions and show how they were combined in Chinese history. I hope the reader will forgive the broad brushstrokes that simplify a complex history. My aim here is to set the stage for the normative question: Which aspects of Legalist Confucianism should be promoted in the future and which parts should be consigned to the dustbin of history? I will illustrate my response with examples from contemporary China to suggest it is both possible and desirable to promote a form of Legalist Confucianism today and in the foreseeable future.
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Notes
- 1.
Zhao Dingxin, The Confucian-Legalist State: A New Theory of Chinese History (Oxford: Oxford University Press), p. 13.
- 2.
Yuri Pines, “Between Merit and Pedigree: Evolution of the Concept of ‘Elevating the Worthy’ in Pre-imperial China,” in The East Asian Challenge for Democracy: Political Meritocracy in a Comparative Context, ed. Daniel A. Bell and Chenyang Li (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), pp. 161–202.
- 3.
Contrary to popular legend, however, Qin Shi Huang did not bury Confucian scholars alive. Recent research suggests that the First Emperor ordered the killing of alchemists after having found out they had fooled him (http://ulrichneininger.de/?p=461).
- 4.
To be fair to Legalist thinking, Qin Shi Huang went beyond the dictates of Legalism by constructing tombs of mock soldiers known today as the terracotta warriors in an effort to secure his own immortality. Legalists would regard such expenditures (not to mention the brutal means employed) as a waste of state expenditure.
- 5.
Wang Pei, “Debates on Political Meritocracy in China: A Historical Perspective,” Philosophy and Public Issues (new series) 7, no. 1 (2007), pp. 63–71.
- 6.
Zhao, The Confucian-Legalist State, p. 14.
- 7.
Mao’s invocation of Legalism was invoked to criticize Confucianism, but a genuine commitment to Legalism would have translated into a commitment to political meritocracy based on ability rather than virtue (yet, the opposite was true in the Cultural Revolution that valued “red over expert”).
- 8.
The Maoist ideal was to select and promote officials almost exclusively according to virtue, as measured by revolutionary energy and commitment to Mao himself. If one defines political meritocracy solely as the ideal that the political system should aim to select virtuous public officials, the Maoist ideal can be seen as a form of political meritocracy. In most of Chinese history, however, political meritocracy meant that public officials need to be selected according to both ability and virtue along with the institutional implication that a complex bureaucratic system should be put in place that increases the likelihood such officials make it through the system. Given that the Maoist ideal lacked two out of these three elements of political meritocracy, I do not think the Maoist ideal should be regarded as a species of the ideal of political meritocracy. Another key difference is that traditional Confucians emphasized that public officials should be committed to the moral Way rather than the status quo or the preferences of rulers, hence, virtuous public officials should express and exercise their own moral judgment when it comes to how best to serve the people. So even if we limit the definition of political meritocracy to rule by virtuous public officials, the Maoist ideal should be seen as a perversion of the ideal.
- 9.
In my book The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), chapter 3, I discuss in detail what political merit means in China’s post-reform era: Ability refers to both IQ and EQ and virtue refers to the motivation to serve the political community (the opposite of virtue is corruption, i.e., using public resources for one’s own private interests). I discuss and evaluate various ways of assessing these three standards of political merit designed to minimize the gap between the ideal and the reality. I also argue that EQ, IQ, and virtue are all important, but they should be valued differently in different times in a large, relatively undeveloped country like China that seeks to modernize: Ability in the sense of EQ should matter more in the early days of reform when the emphasis is mainly on poverty alleviation and public officials need lots of good connections to get things done, virtue should be prioritized when corruption poses an existential threat to the political system, and ability in the sense of IQ should matter more once the country confronts many problems that require scientifically-informed solutions.
- 10.
See my book China’s New Confucianism: Politics and Everyday Life in a Changing Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).
- 11.
For evidence from neuroscience in favor of Mencius’s view of human nature, see Edward Slingerland, Trying Not To Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity (New York: Crown, 2004), p. 117.
- 12.
See Kenneth Winston, “The Internal Morality of Chinese Legalism,” Singapore Journal of Legal Studies (December 2005), pp. 313–347.
- 13.
This discussion draws on Daniel A. Bell and Wang Pei, Just Hierarchy: Why Social Hierarchies Matter in China and the Rest of the World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020), pp. 80–81.
- 14.
See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0033350616304139 and Wang Qian and Zhang Yan, “Drunken Driving Crashes, Injuries Declining,” China Daily, October 10, 2014.
- 15.
A similar story of “先礼后兵 xian li hou bing” can be told of those who ignored speed limits. The educational efforts in driving schools and elsewhere to make drivers obey rules of the road had little effect. The government then decided to use traffic cameras that fined drivers, with little room for discretion. That eventually worked to change driving practices. Today, the cameras have less effect because almost every car has a GPS (导航) that warns drivers of the presence of cameras, but still, most drivers have internalized the need to obey speed limits without being forced to do so. The point here is not that harsh laws per se can transform attitudes and actions. The fear of harsh punishment in the short term can help to transform inner morality in the long term only if the initial fear of punishment builds on a commonly held social value that is already internalized by means of education and informal rituals (people knew that drunk driving and speeding was bad, but such norms only affected behavior and became viewed as truly bad after they were backed up by harsh punishments for violations). Regarding other rules of the road, there is still need for progress. The government carries out public campaigns to promote civility by means of signs on major roads with the characters “礼让 li rang,” which can be translated as “ritual and deference.” It’s still quite rare, however, for drivers to show civility by letting pedestrians proceed first in cases of conflict: The powerful cars usually prevail and pedestrian crossways have little effect. Once the government issues strict fines for incivility, it might help to improve things, and once civility will become second nature, the government will no longer need to rigorously enforce the law.
- 16.
This section draws on the new preface to the paperback edition of Bell and Wang, Just Hierarchy.
- 17.
In the case of Hong Kong, the COVID-19 calamity in early 2022 can be explained at least partly because the city did not have the resources to mount a Legalist-style attack on COVID-19 and the people lacked Confucian-style trust in the government.
- 18.
This section draws on Bell and Wang, Just Hierarchy, pp. 81–84.
- 19.
For an empirically informed argument that the anti-corruption drive has a deterrence effect that lowers the average ability of newly recruited bureaucrats, see https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/price-of-probity-anticorruption-and-adverse-selection-in-the-chinese-bureaucracy/5CF35E3428FEE88814270F861360D3B8.
- 20.
See Hahm Chaibong and Paik Wooyeal, “Legalistic Confucianism and Economic Development in East Asia,” Journal of East Asian Studies 3, no. 3 (Sept–Dec 2003), pp. 461–492.
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Bell, D.A. (2023). Legalist Confucianism: What’s Living and What’s Dead. In: Wang, Z. (eds) The Long East Asia. Governing China in the 21st Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-8784-7_9
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