The sovereign does not reveal his desires; If he does, the minister will carve and decorate them. He does not reveal his point of view; If he does, the Minister will use it to express his other [opinion]. The way of the enlightened ruler is to let the connoisseurs completely exhaust their contemplations – then the ruler relies on them to decide things and is not exhausted by knowledge; To let the worthy use their talents – then the leader relies on them, assigns tasks and is not exhausted by abilities. If there is success, the leader has a worthy [name]; If it fails, the minister takes responsibility. (Han Feizi 5:27) Poems, documents, rites, music, goodness, self-cultivation, benevolence, righteousness, quarrels, prudence: if the state has these ten, the superiors [the people] cannot defend themselves and fight. If the state is governed according to these ten, then when the state arrives, it will certainly be dismembered, and if the enemy does not arrive, the state will certainly be impoverished. If the state annihilates these ten, then the enemy will not dare to arrive, and even if he does, he will certainly be repulsed; If an army is raised and sent into a campaign, it will surely conquer [the enemy`s land]; If the army is restrained and does not attack, the state will certainly be rich. (Shang jun shu 3:23; Book of Lord Shang 3:5) The Yellow Emperor said, “One hundred battles a day are fought between the superior and his subordinates.” Subordinates hide their private [interests] and try to test their superior; The supervisor applies standards and measures to restrict subordinates. Therefore, when norms and standards are established, they are the treasure of the leader; When cliques and cabals are formed, they are the minister`s treasure. If the minister does not assassinate his leader, it is because the cliques and the cabal are not formed. (Han Feizi 8:51) Decisions on promotion and downgrading issues should never be based on the heart of the leader; not only because he can be misled and manipulated by unscrupulous helpers, but also because any decision – even correct – that is not based on impersonal standards will cause dissatisfaction among his subordinates (see more in Harris 2016: 31-34). An alternative will be a set of clear and impersonal rules governing the recruitment and promotion of civil servants.
For Shang Yang, recruitment will be based on merit ranks. Han Fei doubts it: Why should the brave soldiers who have reached the ranks become good officials? Han Fei himself does not solve the problem of initial recruitment, but develops ways to supervise the subsequent promotion of a civil servant: Han Fei`s immediate response is that the leader must protect himself by carefully applying the government techniques described above. It should review the reports of its ministers, review their performance, promote them or demote them according to the correspondence between “performance” and “name”; He must remain calm and mysterious, and let them be exposed; He should encourage mutual spying and whistleblowing between his ministers. But this supposedly clean solution is problematic. First, it sometimes requires superhuman intellectual abilities on the part of the ruler, in direct contradiction to Han Fei`s insistence that his system be transformed into an “average” (i.e. mediocre) Sovereign fits (Han Feizi 40:392). Second, it is still unclear how the ruler has access to reliable information if each of his close associates – as Han Fei reminds him – is a potential fraudster (Han Feizi 6:36-37). And third, a system that requires constant surveillance of all can easily fall into the trap of totalitarian regimes in which “each agent in charge of inspection and control must logically be inspected and controlled himself” (Graziani 2015: 175). Han Fei`s foresight regarding ministerial machinations is remarkable, but it ultimately involves the ruler in the nightmarish situation of widespread distrust and distrust.
However, Lord Shang`s book sometimes speaks of “teaching” or “indoctrination” (jiao 教). Normally, however, this term does not refer to the imposition of a new value system, but to the internalization of state regulations that would allow the people to meet the demands of government without coercion (cf. Sanft 2014). In a great discussion about Jiao, the text says: The reason why a ruler builds high interior walls and outer walls, carefully looking at the locking of doors and gates, is to prepare [against] the coming of invaders and bandits. But whoever assassinates the ruler and takes his state does not necessarily climb difficult walls and slams doors and doors with bars. [He can be one of the ministers who] by restricting what the ruler sees and restricts what the ruler hears, takes his government and monopolizes his orders, owns his people and takes his state. (Creel 1974:344, modified translation) The Confucian argument is that history has certain moral patterns that come from heaven and human nature. If only the king would attach the political order to these eternal patterns, the natural order of man and nature would flourish. The legalists scoffed at this idea. The story of Shang Yang and Han Fei was an endless evolution of changing circumstances that kings had to react to properly in order to survive.