The Loss Of Autonomy

The late Harvard professor Benjamin Schwartz is a great master of Sinology. He is one of the few western scholars who did not fall into "West Centralism’" or "Sinocentrism" but focused on exploring Chinese ideology. Respectively, his major works of "China Communism and the Rise of Mao", "Search of Wealth and Power: Yan Fu and the West" and "The World of Thought in Ancient China" represent his outstanding achievements in the three research areas of thought in contemporary, modern and ancient China. Among them, "The World of Thought in Ancient China" is the pinnacle of his intellectual history study. In this book, there is no lack of original views on different schools of Pre-Qin. Via study throughout the thought of different schools and comparison between other civilizations, Benjamin Schwartz expressed his strong realistic care and deep insight into humanity. His views of "problematique" and "vision" have some enlightening significance to domestic research on thought of Pre-Qin. Since the advent of the Chinese version of this book, many domestic scholars paid considerable attention to it and also produced related research after it.This paper studied the theory of Legalists in Pre-Qin in this work. Unlike Chinese scholars, Benjamin Schwartz read the theory of Legalists in Pre-Qin from the angle of behaviorism and compared it with research from foreign scholars such as Max Weber, Hobbes, Machiavelli etc. Benjamin Schwartz discussed Legalists in Pre-Qin neither by scrutinizing the development process of the whole school nor by digging the theory systems of domestic scholars recognized representative figures of Legalists such as Li Kui, Wu Qi, Shang Yang, Shen Buhai, Shen Dao. even Han Fei. What he studied was not so much Legalists in Pre-Qin as Legalists in the world civilization. To make comparative civilization research on Legalists in Pre-Qin was due to Benjamin Schwartz’s life experience and academic background, but in his study, comparative civilization research was only a method, while the strong care about humanism was the core. He called the theory of Legalists behavioral science. He pointed out that it was an impersonalized and objective behavioral mechanism that this behavioral science built, and this mechanism attempted to eliminate any personal autonomy. Benjamin Schwartz thought that the behavioral mechanism of Legalists was exactly the same with "Social Engineering Orientation" in western civilization. Both of them attempted to make the society stylized and paid no attention to personal autonomy, which was criticized by Benjamin Schwartz.So this paper studied Benjamin Schwartz’s research on Legalists in Pre-Qin from following four aspects:Benjamin Schwartz’s view on Legalists infancy-the weakening of autonomy; Benjamin Schwartz’s view on Shang Yang. Shen Buhai and Shen Dao-eliminators of autonomy; Benjamin Schwartz’s view on Han Fei-user of autonomy; Benjamin Schwartz’s view on the founding emperors of Qin and Han Dynasties-test subjects of autonomy. This paper was expected to reveal the implied sympathy and criticism of Benjamin Schwartz on the theory of Legalists in Pre-Qin. Because no previous scholars specifically studied Benjamin Schwartz’s research on the theory of Legalists, this paper has some groundbreaking. However, compared with other researches based on existing achievements, this paper is inevitably immature and insufficient. So this attempt to meet the difficulties is only expected to provide a new perspective of the research on theory of Pre-Qin Legalists in China.