Legalism

Legalism was the political philosophy that built China's first unified empire — and one of the most controversial ideas in Chinese intellectual history. Developed by thinkers like Shang Yang, Han Feizi, and Li Si during the Warring States period (475–221 BCE), Legalism held that human nature was fundamentally selfish and that social order could only be maintained through strict laws, severe punishments, and absolute state authority.

Where Confucianism appealed to moral cultivation and social harmony, and Daoism valued naturalness and non-action, Legalism was coldly pragmatic. It cared nothing for virtue, tradition, or individual rights. The state existed to be powerful, and power required control. Laws should be clear, punishments should be certain and harsh, and rewards should be used to incentivize behaviors useful to the state — particularly farming and fighting.

Legalism's greatest triumph was also its gravest indictment. Qin Shi Huang used Legalist principles to conquer the other warring states and unify China in 221 BCE. But the same system that built the Great Wall and standardized Chinese writing also burned books, executed scholars, and worked hundreds of thousands of conscripts to death. The Qin Dynasty collapsed just fifteen years after its founding, and subsequent Chinese thinkers held up Legalism as a cautionary tale. Yet Legalist ideas about centralized authority, bureaucratic efficiency, and the supremacy of law over custom quietly persisted beneath the Confucian surface of Chinese governance for centuries.