Lord Shang Revisited 7

9. Human Nature in Statecraft Theory

My specific example, within this general picture, is the question of human nature. The human nature issue is often discussed in our own times, but always with Mencius in the foreground, and with liberal Confucian notions of political populism in the background. That, I venture to say, may distort and oversimplify the ancient reality. The question of human nature arises in Chinese thought just as it did for the European demographers of the 19th century, among them the Belgian statistician Adolphe Quetelet with his pioneering concept of l'homme moyen - the average man. It arises in both cases from the need to deal with mankind in the mass, where statistical regularities govern, and where the strength of nations, one against the other, is ultimately decided. It arises with the issue of social control. The issue in Legalist theory as seen in SJS is the nature and responses of the mass human material on which the laws are to be imposed.

What is interesting about the specific word sying, which of course is not the whole extent of the human nature question, is that in the early layers of the SJS text, it is used in reference to the people's nature, the basic problem being the Pavlovian problem of social conditioning of the masses from above. Later on, sying comes to be used to analyze the nature and character of the elite. This, by the way, is exactly the progress which we see in the thought of the posthumous Mencian school, down to the mid 03c. There is nothing untoward or surprising about it, in the ancient Chinese context.

The people were seen in different ways in the Legalist theory of the SJS, as that theory developed. First, there was a certain optimism about the admittedly stringent use of laws. Laws were seen as temporary devices, needed to establish a new way of doing things, a new culture, a su (pattern of customary behavior); a habit that becomes in the end a sying , an inherent propensity. Eventually, as the stimuli produced their intended behavioristic results, the desired behavior (it was thought) would continue under its own momentum, without need for the deterrent force of punishments. It was felt that human nature would hold a set once that set had been behavioristically imprinted. In the early SJS, it is often said that the goal of punishments is to abolish punishments, meaning that once the new society is achieved, it will be stable thereafter, in its own terms.

Now we encounter a moment of high and ironic drama. The mid 04c Confucians, very similarly, had believed in the political educability of the masses. They had been disappointed, as LY 13:29-30 record. The timetable for abolishing punishments was found to be too long. The state would have to operate on a different basis in the meantime, meaning, forever. Later on, in the mid 03rd century, the posthumous Mencians grew discouraged over their failure to convert rulers to their theories, and were forced to concede some ground to Sywndz on the human nature question. The last layers of the Mencius are notably despondent. What is ironic is that the tough Legalists experience a parallel disappointment, but for the opposite reason: humans cannot be as thoroughly imprinted with behavior contrary to their own intrinsic wishes and interests as had originally been thought. The Legalists were frustrated by discovering what we can only call a Mencian type of intrinsic tendency in its human material.

This occurs between two almost contemporary chapters. In SJS 5 we read:

"If light offenses are punished heavily, punishments will disappear." (Duyvendak p212)

The idea here was that punishments would presently eliminate the need for punishments, so that a stable and not a coercive state would be achieved. In 20A, on the other hand, we read:

"An army easily becomes weak, but it is hard to keep it strong. The people enjoy life and take pleasure in leisure; they find it hard to risk death in perilous circumstances." (p304)

That is, it was found that the fully militarized society was not being achieved. People didn't want to fight, they wanted to do what the earliest Mician ethical tracts say they want to do: abolish war, be friends with everybody, and make a decent living for themselves, in high-yield farming or in trade. This failure of the primary Legalist social assumption deserves to rank with the diaries of Joseph Goebbels as required reading in applied ethics. More than any sentimental Confucian argument could do, they add strong support to the Confucian view of the matter.

The Confucian view of the matter did have its effect on the SJS group. They eventually adopted the flattering term jywndz as referring to themselves. They cited the ancient kings. They acknowledged family loyalty as a popular force that must be reckoned with (we see it institutionalized, as a requirement, in the Shweihudi laws). They dealt with it in part, to be sure, by establishing the system of mutual denunciation, and when personal death had proved to be an insufficient deterrent, they increased the terror of executions by extending them to the third generation. They were increasingly committed to internal terror as a central policy. But by adopting that policy, they were acknowledging that their kind of society couldn't function without a constant application of terror. The Legalist state was effective, but it was unnatural. In the long historical view, both sides in the human nature controversy gave up something. The Mencians lost the responsive ruler on which they had counted, and could only wait in hope for an enlightened one to turn up. The Legalists lost the stable and spontaneously military society which they had first envisioned, and settled for permanent mechanisms of compulsion plus a rhetoric of compassion.

Somewhere in the middle, the eventual Empire may be glimpsed, looming up on the horizon.

Against the hard-nosed SJS, we may consider the group around Lw Buwei. It may seem strange to describe these people as Mencian, but to a certain extent that label can be defended. In the first group of their writings (the twelve Ji essays), they did go along with the current war policy of Chin. Going along with it was doubtless mandatory for all factions after 0250. But they also saw a natural rhythm in human affairs, and acknowledged the value of the individual. They quoted, explicitly, no texts but the standard repositories of Confucian moral examples: the Shr, Shu, and Chun/Chyou. They did what they could to argue for that rather liberal viewpoint against other competing Chin political theories.

Here, then, is the general Confucian/Legalist confrontation, not as a long-distance opposition of East and West, but as played out wholly within Chin political theories, in the middle of the 03rd century.

It will be seen, from the handout diagram, that SJS doesn't do much, textually, during the Lw Bu-wei period, except to react to his presence and to add Confucianizing endings to some of their earlier, tougher-nosed chapters. During the first phase of the Empire, as far as we can now see, they did nothing at all. What is missing on the chart is of course Li Sz. It seems that the SJS group and Li Sz operated in complementation. While he lived, they had nothing to say. When he was executed, under the Second Emperor, they did become active again, but largely, as earlier noted, to put their doctrinal house in order, and to add some spurious material claiming that Lord Shang was the true visionary of the Chin way of doing things. Within a very few years, the value of that claim was lowered by the collapse of Chin itself.

 

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