Chao Cuo And New Legalists Of Western Han Dynasty

Legalism is an important branch among the exponents of the various schools of thought duringpre-Qin period. Its main political goal is to deny the feudal system of noble’s inheritance hereditary andestablish a new monarchy centralized political system. Legalism was originally set by Li Kui, boosted byShang Yang developed and epitomize by Han Fei. Under the guidance his theory, Qin Shihuang “mergedtwo Zhou Dynasties and perished all the dukes; was crowned and governed the whole world”, created theglory of the Qin dynasty and led the influence of Legalism to its heyday. But severe punishment burdenedthe people so much, and the perishing of the Qin Dynasty led to the reputation loss and decline ofLegalism.In the sixty to seventy years from the perishing of the Qin Dynasty to Emperor Han Wu’sConfucianism-only ideology, there appeared a “Post-Warring States Period”. All schools of thought beganto boost again. They rebuilt and packaged themselves aiming to the new historical situation, and then thereemerged "new Confucianism""new Taoism", which formed “three pillar” situation with “Lew Legalism”represented by Chao Cuo.Chao Cuo was an excellent politician and ideologist during Emperor Han Wen and Emperor HanJing in the Western Han Dynasty. Then the society took on a stable and peace look, but Chao Cuo saw theundercurrent and the serious crisis in the relative steady social life. Facing the worsening issues in the earlyHan Dynasty, Chao Cuo put forward a series of solutions with regard to these crises, in politics, economy,society, and military. These policy proposals had shortcomings in execution, but on the whole, adapted tothe need of social development. Many policies had universal significance on the later dynasties, such ashoarding farmland regime. Chao Cuo’s most influential political action was to advocate "cutting Francisco", thus promoting the demise of feudalism and leading China to a unique historical developmentpath.In ideology adjustment, New Legalism represented by Chao Cuo was influenced by Yin-yangand five elements theory. It renovated Shang Yang and Han Fei’s historical view of “retigradation” andchanged it into a periodic historical view close to spiral development. Based on this theory it opposed"laissez-faire government" but demanded the emperor to "take some action personally". Besides, makinguse of the human nature of “drawing on advantages and avoiding disadvantages”, Shang and Hanemphasized on award and penalty and violence with the target of “control the whole world”. NewLegalism changed the political target as “settling the world", then removed the “human feelings” in thetraditional Legalism but took Confucian "popular support"(people’s mind to "live long life","get rich" and"desire peace"), forming a moderate and natural government style. Furthermore, on the base of criticizingQin’s government, Chao Cuo abandoned Shen and Han, especially Li Si’s extreme "monarch" theory. Onthe one hand, it returned back to “State oriented” theory of Shang Yang and Shen Dao, and on the otherhand, it absorbed the thought of the Confucian "benevolent love" theory, making Legalism take a moregentle look.After Emperor Han Wu,"New Legalism" was finally abandoned. It was not because the monarchdoubted its loyalty and effect, but because it realized a splendid change. It not only contained the legalists’reasonable ingredients, but also can provide the deep cultural tradition legalists didn’t have, which wasmore advantageous to maintain the permanent stability of the regime. The rise and fall of the Legalism wasthe elaborate selection of the royalty bureaucracy from their own benefits, and also because of its owndefects difficult to overcome. First of all, in theory and practice, Legalism lacked of a goal for all themonarch and people to fight for, which weakened people’s enthusiasm to consciously abide by social constraints in some degree. Secondly, the Legalism’s defects in organization were gradually exposed,eventually hindering its way of expanding influence. Thirdly, despite the efficiency and power, the policiesderived from Legalism were usually simple and violent and not deceivable to the people. With the stabilityof the ruling class, social harmony and stability became the primary target. Though Chao Cuo’s NewLegalism absorbed the theories of all schools and paid attention to peace and ruling, its intrinsic defecttheory had not been fundamentally changed.Although the legalist school withdrew from the historical stage with the implementation ofEmperor Han Wu’s Confucianism-only ideology, the legalists’ theory did not really disappeared in thehistory of the later two thousand years. Although after the “Confucianism-only ideology," there was norepresentative thinkers and works in Legalism, its thought had been influencing the political process ofancient society in the form of "undercurrent".