Shen Bu-hai was a Legalist who served at the court of Hanfei’s
native state. Han Fei also critiqued him in that although he taught
the ruler how to manipulate subordinates withshu, he was careless
about the consistency of the law. Eventually there were many con-
tradictions between newly issued rules and old laws, and many
people took advantage of the confusion and used it to defend their
own misconduct. Hanfei therefore advocated the necessity of both
faandshu.
From Shen Dao, a Daoist-Legalist philosopher, Hanfei recognized
the importance ofshih(power). He agreed with Shen’s viewpoint that
for a ruler, power is like claws and teeth for a tiger. If a tiger has no
claws or teeth, it cannot catch other animals. By the same token, a
ruler without position and power cannot control his subjects.
In addition to these Legalists, Hanfei followed his teacher Xunzi,
an eminent Confucian scholar who served as magistrate of Lan-Ling,
in adopting the idea that human beings are born evil, in direct opposi-
tion to Mencius’ theory that men are born good.^5 However, unlike his
teacher, he made no attempt to preserve or restore the moral values
and ceremonies of the past, and looked upon the fondness for such
ceremonies as an indicator of a doomed state.
Hanfei’s theory of leadership
Hanfei argued that all human behaviors are motivated by a ruthless
pursuit of self-interest, not by moral values:
A physician will often suck men’s wounds clean and hold the bad blood in
his mouth, not because he is bound to them by any tie of kinship but because
he knows there is profit in it. The carriage maker making carriages hopes
that men will grow rich and eminent; the carpenter fashioning coffins
hopes that men will die prematurely. It is not that the carriage maker is
kindhearted and the carpenter a knave. It is only that if men do not become
rich and eminent, the carriages will never sell, and if men do not die, there
will be no market for coffins. The carpenter has no feeling of hatred toward
others; he merely stands to profit by their death. (Guarding against the
interior)^6
Farming requires a lot of hard work but people will do it because they say,
‘‘This way we can get rich.’’ War is a dangerous undertaking but people
will take part in it because they say, ‘‘This way we can become eminent.’’
(The five vermin)^7
112 Kwang-kuo Hwang