The Nature of the Legalism and Its Significance :: essays research papers

In contrary to its contemporary antagonist philosophical schools, who encourage the practices of humanness and the rightness and set ideal of the past, the Legalists, in their complete rejection of the traditional ethics, embraces the efficacy of political office staff and uph onetime(a) a society of laws and punishments. As the old feudal states decayed and the smoke of endemic warfare suffused, the need for a more rational government that can afford greater centralized power so as to strengthen a state against its rival increased substantiall(a)y among the Warring States. Such a rising urge necessitated the emergence of the Legalists and promote predetermined the Legalists inherent nature realistic, totalitarian and problem-solving which, with the realization of its significance and duty in the stream of history, finds its hegemonic character as well. In function, the Legalist is more of a regent(postnominal) and influential government consultative committee than a philosoph ical school. In practice, they openly advocate war as a means of state expansion and transforming race into more submissive and loyal or inversely, a way for its people to server the state they conceive a political structure where all government apparatus and social institutions reside under an absolute monarch, who has the ultimate power and set his foundation in an elaborately self-contained, austerely impartial and disadvantageously coercive legal machinery the state would also find no existence of the earlier schools of thoughts if not their total annihilation loyalty to their emperor and weakened minds among people would prevail, bringing about social stability enabling intensive and efficient farming. It is thus rational for us to question the validity of preconditions upon which these ideas were acquired and the legitimacy of the ideas and later moreover more importantly, how did the Legalists become the only classical thoughts had its teaching adopted as the sole officia l doctrine of a regime ruling all mainland China and bring about the unification of China and lastly, the association of the all-too-soon collapse of the ephemeral Qin Dynasty and the Legalists thoughts.As for the precondition of the Legalists thoughts, there are a few fundamental exposit or judgments that we can find from the texts. As an independent school of thoughts in order to distinguish itself among all Hundreds of Schools and set aside all past ideals and standards, the Legalists, commencement ceremony of all, believed in the inevitability of a constant change in society. As noted by Han Fei (d.