The Histoircal Mateirals And Historiography Value Of Neiwaichushuo In Hanfeizi

The six chapters of Neiwaichushuo in Han Fei Zi offers a plentiful of historicalmaterials. Every chapter is divided into two parts,“Jing” and “Shuo”.“Jing” presentsthe main idea of the chapter and “Shuo” proves “Jing” with historical stories. Thereare231articles of stories which including fields of politics, economics, criminaljurisprudence, military, diplomacy, customs, and academic. The pre-Qin philosopherslike to use historical stories as arguments. Generally speaking, if what they quote arefalse or faked, they would be condemned or satirized. It will has a bad impact on thereliability of their theory. Therefore the philosophers would take it seriously. Han Fe,who quotes historical stories to give recommendations to princes, would certainly dealwith it seriously. Hence, the reliability of the historical stories in Neiwaichushuo ashistorical materials is high.On one hand, the historical materials in Neiwaichushuo can make up for thedeficiency of official history. For example, the record of Marquis Zhao of Han givesus more specific information about the prince. On the other hand, these materials cancorrect the error in other books. For instance, the incident that Zihan, the minister ofengineer of Song, usurps the throne can point out the mistake of Song Family inHistorical Records. Finally, the historical stories are of different versions comparedwith other books. This would be significant for us to analyze the truth of history.With broad and profound historical knowledge and an unique angle of historicalcognition, in Neiwaichushuo, Han Fei offers us a novel opinion of the philosophicalhistoriography in terms of history writing, history review, historical material selection,style and structure. Han Fei is a pragmatist, so he depicts history in accordance withpractical aim. He holds that human is the decisive factor of history. It is this kind ofreasonable historical thought that makes different in the study on the relationshipbetween pre-Qin philosophers and historiography. Neiwaichushuo provides a reference for the organization and compilation ofhistorical works. The coexistence of different versions of the same historical stories isthe character of dealing with historical materials in this Neiwaichushuo. In the232articles, there are nearly one fifth---44articles which use this technique. It reflectsthe prudent attitude of Han Fei and also strengthens the persuasion of the article. Thetechnique of putting similar stories together gives an example to the combinedbiography. In the aspect of history review, Han Fei uses all kinds of review ways toreveal his opinion. In essence, Neiwaichushuo is the work of using historical stories tostate opinions. Sometimes, neglecting the fact that he makes use of historical storiesexcellently, Han Fei is prejudice. What we need to pay attention to is that he issomewhat exaggerated when analyzing the cause and effect. He attaches too muchimportance on “Fa”,“Shu” and “Shi”(law, conspiracy and power). And he is lack ofcomprehensive thought over the complex cause and effect of historical events.