| The Legalism used to be a loose collection of diverse academic thoughts with a complexity of internal properties and academic school origins. The whole system thought of Legalism had not been established until Han Fei, a Legalist, set up and consummated it. One of Han Fei's sayings is"No morality; Turn to law". Dose it mean the Legalism is a non-moralistic ideology? On the basis of analyzing Han Fei and the book Han Feizi, the author of this article has clarified the context of Han Fei's ethic thoughts. The attempts of this article are re-explaining Han Fei's construction of Legalist ethic thought, refining the core categories of Legalism and the cornerstone of those categories and the category system in this area, and analyzing the theoretical basis of Legalist ethic system thoughts within a modern context background. Meanwhile, by repeating the construct logic of Han Fei's ethical ideology, a response on the major issues for academia about Han Fei's thoughts to answer some questions like, is Legalism a non-moralistic school? Dose Legalism insists the evil nature of human-beings? Dose Legalism has its own unique ethics thought? If it does have some kind of ethic thought, what is the specific content like? Is the ethic thought of Legalism a utilitarian one? What's the difference between Legalist utilitarian theory and the British classical utilitarian? How the Legalism could have its own ethic thought but advocate strict laws and harsh punishment in heavy doctrine? And finally, the questions need to be answered are whether Legalism ethical thought out of date and should be eliminated by history comparing with the Confucian ethics? Dose the Legalism ethical thought contains a theoretical potential for modernization and the possibility to surpass other kind of ethical thoughts? Around with these issues, this article will lay out Han Fei's construction of the Legalist ethical ideology system by giving a kind of historical and logical answers to these questions.The full-text has been divided into seven chapters.Chapter I: Introduction. This chapter describes the origin of this research, the main purpose of the research, the research status, the premise of the problem limited to, the core ideas and the innovation of this paper. The prerequisite concludes the limitation of connotation and denotation about the thought of Han Fei and a distinguishing on the authenticity of the key chapters of Explaining Lao and Illustrating Lao in Han Feizi, which will be a basis of the empirical research on the historical text study, to guarantee its certainty.Chapter II:the Internal Logic of Ethical Ideology. With an introduction of modern ethical theory of ideology as a framework, the ethical thought system is divided into three aspects like the Meta-ethic thought, the Moral ethic thought and the Applied ethic thought which provides a frame of reference for the later construction of Legalism ethical thought system as well as a modern logic path to the analysis. By introducing the concept of meta-ethics category, the general meaning of such areas like Morality, Good, Should be, Right, Fact, and Moral Nature, etc. will be discussed for a further research on the semantic analysis in a clear content in order to prevent ambiguous understandings and biases. Moral or ethical morality is a social product. Habits or customs, which guide human life in the society, always become some kind of ethical constraints via inner channels. However, the first encounter of morality is always a single"individual"within ethical and moral standards into one's inner way, playing a role. Morality is a code of conducts which are mad by human-beings or through the agreements, while moral value is not agreed upon by the people. Good is the desire to meet, and then any desire to find a way to meet are good, and any suppressing ways to the desire are all evil. The good in the area of purpose and sense is named as should be. Should do something is only a kind of good in the area of purpose and sense and the good within an area with no purpose or unconsciousness can not be called as Should be. To divide should be into should do in morality and in non-morality brings the right category. Right, which means should do something in the area of morality, is a conduct effect that consistent with subject's moral awareness and moral purpose. Only in the right area are there true morals. The fact, in logic, is a narrowly conceptual term which means a kind of independence neither relying on ideology nor on the desire, needs, or purpose of subjects. The point of this article is that the desire, needs and purpose of subjects are an intermediary for deduction"from a truth to should be", and these are also conditions and evaluation criteria for the existence of something should do. The introduction of the basic areas of normative ethics is to analyze the origin of morality, moral purpose, and the ultimate standard of morality, moral principles and rules. The introduction of the basic areas of practical ethics is to construct the political and legal morality via the conjunction between social morality and the application activities. The philosophy of traditional Chinese culture, including political thought or even all of the traditional Chinese culture, are ethical orientation. The model of thinking about practical ethics has a profound heritage in China, which has a wide range of cultural awareness and identity.Chapter III: An Overview of Legalism Ethics. There are three outlined parts including an overview of Legalist meta-ethic thought, Legalist normative ethic thought and Legalist applied ethic thought. The meta-ethic thought of Legalism argues that morality is good, which means that all things are shown on the utility."Tao"and"De"are the abstract of morals, and"Ren"(humanity) and"Yi"(Appropriate) are morals' further concrete objects."Ren"(humanity) is the nature of human-being, which has not been influenced and changed by the outside."Li"(utility) is the institutionalized form of"Yi"(Appropriate) and also the outward manifestation of"Ren"(humanity). The criterion of good and evil is the function result of a behavior, which is also a utilitarian rule. The individual moral thought of Legalism argues that the core of individual morality is every person's own interests and happiness. Human nature's self-serving part is the experienced nature of human-being. The Legalist social ethic thought argues that the core social ethic is to pursue the common interests of the whole society and the whole country. The internal contradictions between Legalist individual morality and the social ethic thought of Legalism exists when the reorganization of moral origins has been departed from the reorganization of moral purpose, in which the Legalist ethic thought has followed and consisted from the beginning to end, and at last, the contradictions has become the unique characteristics of Legalist ethics. The applied ethic thought of Legalism includes political ethics, which concludes the legitimacy of a King as well as the legitimacy argument of the combination of law, tools and momentum, and legal ethics including the justification argument of legal functions and forms.Chapter IV: the Structure of Legalist Ethic Thought System. The internal structure includes the differences between the Legalism of country Qin and the Legalism of country Jin, and the differences between the original legalist thoughts and the properties of Confucianism, Mohism and Taoism. On the basis of Taoism, Han Fei sifted and re-organized the political views and moral values of the three schools in Legalist thought, with the ultimate legalist standards of utilitarian morality. The external structure includes the time and age background when Han Fei lived in and the mainstream studies during in that period, summarizing three kinds of ethic thoughts in Confucianism, Mohism and Taoism, as well as the analysis on Han Fei's criticism and inheritance achievements of his view points like utilitarianism, human-being's nature and the philosophy about history to other different kinds of ethic thoughts in Pre-Qin time.Chapter V: the Core Areas of Legalist Ethic Thought System. Refine the scope of Legalist ethic thoughts in order to clarify Han Fei's thought system of ethics. In the category of Legalist meta-ethic thought,"Dao"is the essential nature of things, which is no identity of good or evil but will achieve a good or evil result through Dao's running; while"De", from the power by Dao, also meaning as a kind of achievement, is the carrier, form and function of the Dao."Dao"is the factual basis of objective behaviors for"De", while"De"is the function of"Dao"for conforming human-being's purpose. Therefore, the nature of morality is the function produced through conforming purpose behavior. Morality, which is also known as merits and virtues, means the acquisition of the utility. The core area of Legalist normative ethic includes the"Ren"(humanity) and"Li"(utility),"Public"and"Private". Benevolent pleased to love is the nature of human-beings. Everyone pursuing profit in mind is the experienced self-interested nature of human-beings. The public and private are corresponding to each other, while the public justice is to profit the world, the country and the King, and the private justice is to profit oneself, the body and the family. The differentiation standard of the opposition between the public and private is the difference among actors, though with the same self-interest behavior of nature in them. Private actors are individuals and public actors are the country, the monarch and so on collective concepts. The core area of applied ethic thought of Legalism includes the"Country","King","Law"and"Penalty".Chapter VI: Legalism Ethics Category System. Analyzing how the meta-ethic system, normative ethics system and the applied ethics system contribute to Legalist ethic thought system and it's sub-category system, and the cornerstone of ethical ideological system scope and internal logic are also introduced. Han Fei's meta-ethic thought entirely rooted in the philosophy of Lao Tzu, in particular by the impact of the ontology and epistemology of Lao Tzu's philosophy, forming the moral relativism knowledge of meta-ethic system. The ultimate standard of Han Fei's morality thought is impacted by the political purposes of utilitarian thought, which takes the greatest political utility-rich and powerful-as the goal to everything, and the pursuit of moral absolutism in meta-ethic thought system has been established. Normative ethics system is divided into individual moral ideology and social ethic ideology. A huge thought system of individual category of morality has been set up through the deduction of"Ren"(humanity) and"Li"(utility). The origin nature of Ren and benevolence is deduced to some categories like"Yi","Propriety","Loyalty","Filial piety","Faithfulness","Wisdom","Square","Incorrupt","Straight","Beauty"and so on. The experienced nature of Profits is deduced to categories like"Honor and Disgrace","Joy and Pains","Reward and Punishment","Public and Private", "Competition and Harmony","Love and Resentment". Through the deduction of Public and Private Category, there is a large area of social ethics system summarizing as three principles of Openness, Justice and Fairness. In the applied ethics system, the Legalist sub-category of political ethics is divided into the Virtue of Law, Method and Momentum, and the Virtue of Momentum is the core of political ethics and the basis of right. The sub-categories of Legalist ethics are the Functional Right of Law and the form right of Law. The Functional Right of Law means the subsidiary character of Law to the King's power which contains the safeguard for the interest of country and monarch. The form right of Law which is also called as the inner moral right of the Law means the characteristic of Natural Good and Behavior Good of the Law to its own. The cornerstone category of Legalist ethic thought system is utility merit. A diagram with the central of utility merit will introduce the whole ethic categories' inner logic of the inserting dualities structure.Chapter VII: the Theoretical Basis of Legalism Ethic Thought System. The methodology of Han Fei's thought includes the form-name method and hermeneutic method. Han Fei's utilitarian theory includes Legalist utilitarian human nature thought, utilitarian political thought and utilitarian cultural thought. The surpassing of Han Fei's theory means trying to find out a modern approach to improve Han Fei's ethic thought system. This kind of modernization is on the basis of Han Fei's ethics thought and the surpassing motive force is from the theory's inner part but the imposing facts from the outside. Made beyond this theory include the beyond of Legalism history theory, surpassing on the utilitarian evaluation criteria beyond legalism, surpassing on the subject of moral behavior beyond legalism.The conclusion of this article is that Han Fei, who had constructed a demonstration of the right of Legalism and set up a complete ethic thought system, his ethic thought is a culmination of Legalism and a great consummation from various schools in China. The systematical structure is a latent state calling for a meticulous refining through Han Fei's thoughts. Meanwhile, the Legalist ideology is also not a non-ethic one but containing a distinct moral point of view. The final Legalist ethic system by Han Fei is an open system and furthermore a real thought system containing truth idea, which has eliminated the impact of historical factors to the morality purpose. Therefore, in short, the ethic thought system of Legalism possessing theoretical characteristic of modernization is an important treasure of theoretical resources in Chinese traditional ethic thoughts.
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