Beyond the Rule of Rules: The Foundations of Sovereign Power in the Han Feizi

Abstract

The main theoretical projects that have been historically undertaken to resolve the conflicts inherent in political organization tend to identify the passions, the intrinsically impetuous side of human beings, as the main pitfall. In my contribution, I shall demonstrate that, unlike all these efforts to reduce or tame people’s impulses, the Han Feizi claims that the instinctive dimension driving men to pursue what gives them pleasure and to avoid what displeases them not only does not pose a problem for achieving an effective political order, but also constitutes, in itself, the true foundation of the social order, the only possibility for fashioning a lasting peace. The inclinations and aversions inherent in human beings are what make possible the application of punishments and rewards, that is, the true cement of law (fa) and, by extension, life in society. But if human beings are essentially defined by their impulsive quest for profit and the avoidance of damage, what happens then with those who do not fit in this scheme, with those who place themselves beyond the reach of the organs of administration and the logic that governs them, rejecting rewards and disdaining punishments? And, more important, is the sovereign also included in this human dimension driven by passions and impulses? My paper will try to elucidate the exceptional nature of the ruler as it is conceived in the Han Feizi by focusing in the apparent paradox of the sovereign power according to the this text, where the sovereign is defined as being simultaneously within and without the realm of the law.

This article was made possible by a fellowship from the International Consortium for Research in the Humanities, “Fate, Freedom and Prognostication: Strategies of Coping with the Future in East Asia and Europe” (supported by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research) at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg and a Postdoctoral Fellowship awarded by the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation at the University of Cambridge. I would also like to thank Paul R. Goldin, Jean Levi, and the two anonymous reviewers for providing insightful and constructive comments on earlier versions of this chapter.