Can institutions work without virtuous rulers?

Good intentions at the grain store

Imagine a town’s grain store with a respected supervisor. He urges his staff to be fair, yet favored families receive their shares first and missing sacks go unexplained. When he leaves, no one knows which of his promises his successor will keep. Could the grain store serve people reliably even under an ordinary, imperfect supervisor?

That is a question about institutions: the rules, offices and practices through which people act together. The previous lesson asked what a person’s perspective might miss. Here we must also ask what a person stands to gain, since an official may see a problem perfectly well and profit by concealing it.

Han Fei and the Legalist label

Han Fei belonged to the ruling family of the state of Han in the third century BCE, during the Warring States period. The book called the Han Feizi develops proposals for governing in that age of conflict. Its authorship is disputed, so we will examine selected chapters without assuming that every passage states one person’s settled view. [1] [2]

“Legalism” is a later classification, not the name of an organized school to which these thinkers declared allegiance, and it can make their concerns seem confined to law. Fa has a wider range: standards, models, methods and laws. Yuri Pines therefore speaks of “the fa tradition,” while keeping the differences among its thinkers in view. [2]

Standards that resist favoritism

Chapter 6 of the Han Feizi compares standards to measuring tools: even a skilled carpenter uses a compass and square. Just as a straight line does not bend to accommodate crooked wood, law should neither spare a powerful official nor deny a common person’s reward. The chapter is proposing a check on personal influence. [1]

At our grain store, written duties and consistent rules could make a missing delivery harder to excuse just because the clerk has powerful friends. That is the proposal’s attraction: reliable conduct need not wait for everyone to become good.

In lesson 14, Mohist standards helped assess benefit and harm across communities; here, standards help organize and strengthen the state. A dependable procedure does not by itself show that its purpose is good, so we still need to ask what the rules require.

Checking what officials actually do

Rules also need people to carry them out. Chapter 43 joins law with administrative techniques, ways of assigning offices, assessing ability and checking results. Chapter 7 compares an official’s proposal with the assigned task and the achievement, a practice it calls matching name and form: what is said must correspond to what is done. [1]

The ruler directs conduct through the two handles, rewards and punishments, which change what an official gains or loses by acting in a certain way. Eirik L. Harris’s introduction contrasts this with moral cultivation, the work of changing a person’s habits and judgment: the system seeks obedience without first developing concern for others. Its punishments include execution, and the force behind these rules is part of both the proposal and its cost. [1]

Nor will just any measure of achievement do. Chapter 43 objects that success at beheading enemies does not qualify someone to practice medicine or build a house: the test must fit the responsibility. The point tells against using a convenient score in place of the ability an office needs. [1]

Power attached to an office

Positional power, or shi, is the authority someone has by holding an office. An order can carry force simply because it comes from the ruler, whatever the ruler’s personal excellence. Chapter 7 insists that the ruler keep control of rewards and punishments, since handing that control to ministers risks making them the real masters. [1]

Chapter 40 stages an objection: power can magnify a tyrant’s capacity to do harm. The reply narrows its ambition to ordinary rulers, those who fall between exemplary sages and monstrous tyrants. Such rulers should follow laws and use the resources of their position instead of waiting for an exceptional person to arrive. It is an argument for governing under imperfect conditions, not a guarantee that institutions can withstand any ruler. [1]

What strict control can cost

Chapter 7 tells of a ruler who falls asleep and grows cold, so the Keeper of Caps covers him with clothing. On waking, the ruler punishes both that official, for exceeding his duties, and the Keeper of Clothing, for neglecting his. In the chapter’s reasoning, protecting the boundaries of office matters more than a helpful act. [1]

Clear duties can stop officials from taking power for themselves, but they can also make initiative dangerous. The text is not simply telling everyone to keep quiet, since chapter 43 criticizes officials who know of faults and fail to report them. Still, reporting a fault is not the same as having the authority to act on it. [1]

Who, then, can correct a harmful standard, or a ruler who abandons it? Consistent enforcement may curb favoritism while making an unjust demand more effective. Understanding why the proposal appeals to a ruler still leaves us to weigh what it costs everyone else.

Living and governing well: an optional checkpoint

How can people learn to live together, and what makes government good? Two concepts from this module bring those questions into focus. Li, the ritual practice of lesson 13, can cultivate attentive relationships. Fa, the standards of this lesson, can make conduct less dependent on personal virtue. Both organize action, yet learning to care and having a reason to obey are different achievements.

The other lessons complicate the comparison, each in its own way. Mohist inclusive concern asks whose welfare counts. Mengzi and Xunzi both require education but disagree about its moral starting point. The Daodejing asks when direction becomes interference, and the Zhuangzi unsettles confidence while exploring responsive skill.

At least one question remains open: how can power be held to account when the people judging it have interests of their own? Our evidence has limits too. We have read selected translations of texts with disputed histories, and they neither give us every voice in these traditions nor settle who wrote each passage.

For an optional case, return to the grain store. New rules now reward clerks for the number of sacks dispatched. Deliveries rise, but isolated households still go hungry, and when one clerk leaves her assigned desk to help them, she is punished. Use li and fa to identify something each approach could address. What remains unresolved, and what limits our comparison of the sources?

Read a checkpoint response

Each approach addresses something the other misses. Fa could make duties and rewards predictable, but counting dispatched sacks cannot tell whether food reaches the people who need it. Cultivation through li could help clerks attend to those they serve, though that hope guarantees neither fair conduct nor an end to favoritism. The clerk’s punishment exposes a conflict between responsiveness and control of office, and Mohist inclusive concern would also challenge a measure that ignores isolated households. Who may revise the rule remains unresolved. As for the sources, this is our own comparison of selected passages, not an ancient debate in which all these thinkers answered the same case, and their texts and translations have different histories. Better administration does not settle every question about good government.

Carry this forward

Institutions can reduce their reliance on individual virtue, but someone must still judge which rules to adopt and how to apply them, so keep both the attraction and the cost in view. With that, the module closes. The next lesson opens a different inquiry, turning from institutions to nature and to early Greek arguments about change itself. When something changes, what allows us to say that it continues?

Sources and limits

[1] “Han Feizi,” introduction and translation by Eirik L. Harris, chapter 10 in Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy, edited by Philip J. Ivanhoe and Bryan W. Van Norden, third edition, Hackett, 2023; ebook ISBN 9781647921101, for the accounts of standards, administrative technique and positional power. The complete introduction, pp. 323–324, was read, with the supplied translations of these chapters of the Han Feizi:

• Chapter 6, “Having Standards,” pp. 328–333.
• Chapter 7, “The Two Handles,” pp. 333–336; the Keeper of Caps story is on p. 335.
• Chapter 40, “A Critique of the Doctrine of Positional Power,” pp. 348–353; the argument about ordinary rulers is on p. 352.
• Chapter 43, “Establishing Methods of Government,” pp. 353–356; the objection to appointing officials by military achievement is on p. 356.

The ancient chapter numbers differ from the anthology’s chapter 10, and its ebook page markers correspond to the print edition. Notes 1–27 and 47–59 were also read. Harris’s note 52 distinguishes the power people establish from circumstances beyond their control; shi has no single English equivalent that fits every context. Chapter 40 presents an objection and a reply, and neither should be mistaken for the whole exchange. The stories about past rulers illustrate the text’s arguments and have not been independently verified as events. No complete ancient work, anthology or second primary translation was read, and no independent Chinese-language collation was undertaken.

[2] Yuri Pines, “Legalism in Chinese Philosophy”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, revised 7 April 2023, for the cautions about the category and about authorship, and for further context on administrative power. Read the opening, §1 including §§1.1–1.2, §4.2 and §5 including §§5.1–5.2. This is a specialist’s interpretation, not an independent review of the lesson; the complete entry and the works cited in it were not read.

The grain store and the checkpoint response are original teaching material. The recap compares the selected arguments of lessons 13–17, and each lesson’s own source limits still apply. These chapters make proposals for a particular historical setting; they are not a timeless account of Chinese politics, and to examine their case for coercion is not to endorse it. No independent specialist or learner has reviewed this lesson.