| The Confucianism and the Legalism, although both of they came from the world of kingship, originated from different social cultures:Confucius inherited the cultural spirits and ethical humanism such as ritual propriety (li), consummate character (de), family reverence (xiao) and golden mean (zhong), which came into being from the Yin Dynasty and Zhou Dynasty, and developed these traditional ideas into a humanism school-the Confucian School; Shang yang absorbed the experience of social changes during the disintegration of the blood regime of the Western Zhou Dynasty, inherited the brutal-punishment politics, constructed a complete and brand-new system of political methodology and put it into effect in Qin, therefore, a school of thoughts was born with the benefit of kingship at its core:the Legalist School. In the middle and late period of the Warring States, the Confucian’s ethical ideals could not be realized, however, the Qin turned into a strong kingdom under the help of the Legalist. When Xunzi, the Confucian thinker, visited Qin, he was amazed by the kingdom’s order and power ruled under the Legalist thoughts, which maybe only the rule of the emperor Yao and Shun could compete. That provided Xunzi a way out for the achievement of his ideals:it was possible that the political ideals of the Confucianism could come true by the political methodology of the Legalism. Then the Confucianism and the Legalism first mixed in Xunzi’s thoughts.Inferred from the special attitude towards the emperor Yao and Shun of Confucius and Mencius, their highest political thoughts were to deny the kingship, which were however obviously under the natural ideas that a country should be ruled by a king, and which could not be outstanding. Especially, although the people-first idea of Mencius was quite intense, it did not transfer into the democratic thought. What is the difference between the people-first thought and the democratic thought? By the people-first thought, the people’s rights and interests are decided by the upper class. While, by the democratic thought, the people’s rights and interests can be decided by the people. So the democratic rights pursued by the Confucian had to be realized by the kingship. Confucius’s way was to pursue order, and Mencius’s method was to pursue benevolent politics, by either of which, the initiative was controlled by the upper class. The absence of the methodology in Confucianism leaded to the convergence of the Confucianism and the Legalism.The political methodology of the Legalist was to deny the ethical tradition and cultural tradition of humanism, to implement the war and agriculture politics, to singularize the social value system, and maintain the highly autocratic monarchy by the severe punishments and harsh laws of the Shang Dynasty. So, if the kingdom was ruled by the Legalist, the social classes would collapse, and the conflict of the forces and interests between the monarch and people would be much more severe.From the political and social roots, the confluence of the Confucianism and the Legalism depended on several factors:first, the Confucian belonged to the social level, and the Legalist was part of the superstructure-they were mutually complementary on the structure; second, without the methodology the political ideal of the Confucian could not be realized, while the Legalist had a strong system of kingship methodology-they were mutually complementary on the technical level. Therefore, the confluence of the Confucianism and the Legalism is essentially the compromise of the Confucianism and a structural annexation of the Confucianism by the Legalism. Xunzi’s accidental fortune through his free will formed a mode of confluence of the Confucianism and the Legalism with the Confucianism as the body and the Legalism as the method. However, the so-called Confucianism-overwhelming confluence of the Confucianism and the Legalism since the reign of the Han Emperor Wudi was essentially a different mode with the Legalism as the body and the Confucianism and the Legalism both as the methods. So within this mode of confluence, the Confucianism was restricted by the Legalism and the humanism thoughts were constrained by the kingship thoughts.To summarize the changes of the Confucianism and the Legalism thoughts influenced by the hereditary monarchy, it is not difficult to find out that the kingship politics can produce good human relations such as consummate character (de), also produce the brutal punishments; the kingship produced ritual propriety (li) and also the punishment (xing); the golden mean (zhong) was to ask the kingship to self-restrained to protect the benefit of itself. The benevolence (ren) developed by Confucius was originally purely the connotation of personality, then explained by Mencius, and turned into the political appeal of benevolent politics (renzheng). Although the humanist integrated the thoughts of the excellence such as the consummate character (de), ritual propriety (li) and the golden mean (zhong), and modified these thoughts by humanism, the political factors that these thoughts naturally carried restricted the initiative of the Confucian political ideal. This is the most concise schema that shows the contradiction of the politics and the ethics within the relationships between the kingship, the Confucian and the Legalist in the Pre-Qin period. |
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