Re-study Of Han Feizi's Humanity Thought

Humanity and its good and evil problem is one of the core issues in the history of Chinese and western philosophy, and is also an important philosophical theme that concerns the thinkers. As early as the 400 or 500 years BC, Confucius firstly proposed the idea of"By nature, men are nearly alike; by practice, they are widely apart", initiating the research on humanity. After that, Plato, a famous western philosopher, put forward issues of humanity from the perspective of law and philosophy with the thinkers in all fields following behind. As the logical start, living environment, concept and the observation perspectives are different, humanity issues present the situation with different schools holding their own ideas. Moreover, because of the history and the vagueness of the theory itself, there are lots of vague and unclear views in each theory of humanity. If these views were put aside without rethinking,lots of misunderstanding and disputes will necessarily be produced.This paper selects the humanity theory of Han Feizi, a last thinker who assembled the characteristics of the legalism ideology in pre-Qin Dynasty, aiming to clarify the history and restore the true color of Han Feizi himself and his theory. The author believes that the purpose of Han Feizi was to realize the great order more effectively in that ear with an objective view to observe the humanity. It's very valuable that he can dare to face the cruelty of reality and the good and evil of humans, and tell the truth that common people can't speak or tried to avoid. For a long time, Han Feizi's thought, including the law thought, were not welcomed, and people were reluctant to research on it. Even if someone did the research, their search was restricted to the bias of schools and can't treat him very equally. However; throughout the history, the role of his thought that played in the process of unification of China and that played in the over 2000 years of China's feudal society require us to reconsider and judge him with a rational attitude.This paper attempts to do a further research on the controversial theory of Han Feizi in the academic circles, aims to subvert the evil humanity theory that most scholars comment on Han Feizi, and further illustrates that the humanity theory of Han Feizi. were neither the evil humanity theory of Xunzi nor the simple repetition of selfishness theory. Inheriting from the experience that Xunzi observed humanity from the reality, Han Feizi combined and inherited the humanity theories from the previous legalists, and further observed the selfish humanity performance; however, his insight into humanity from the reality was not for the judgment of good and evil, and he judged from the facts and made empirical description without any moral and value judgment. He thought that the Confucian theory was not able to save the era where people contend for the power and profit with excessive selfishness, and where the human nature of"the characteristics of selfishness of everyone""like the advantages and dislike the disadvantages"and"promote the favorable and avoid the unfavorable"exposed completely. Han Feizi believed that this selfish nature isthe nature of humanity and the real existence status of humans, so he used the human feelings to distinguish from the Confucian, and used this idea as the logical start and psychological foundation of his thought of"governing the country and salvation". Generally speaking, the research on this paper is based on the humanity theory of Han Feizi.