Dao Companion to China’s fa Tradition

Yuri Pines 尤銳 is Professor of Chinese History at Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research focuses on early Chinese political thought, Chinese political culture, early Chinese history and historiography, and comparative imperiology. His monographs include The Book of Lord Shang: Apologetics of State Power in Early China (2017); The Everlasting Empire: The Political Culture of Ancient China and Its Imperial Legacy (2012); and Envisioning Eternal Empire: Chinese Political Thought of the Warring States Era (2009). He co-edited six books on Chinese history and thought, and on comparative imperiology.

• Introduction.- The fa Tradition in Chinese Philosophy.- Part I: Major texts and thinkers.- 1. The Book of Lord Shang: The Ideology of the Total State.- 2. Shen Buhai’s Theory of fa.- 3. Morality in the Shenzi 慎子 Fragments.- 4. Han Feizi: The World Driven by Self-Interest.- 5. The Concept of fa in Guanzi and its Evolution.- 6. The Ideology of Chao Cuo.- Part II: Major Ideas of the fa Traditions.- 7. Rule by Impersonal Standards in the Early Empire: Ideas and Realities.- 8. Fa and the Early Legal System.- 9. Two Perspectives on the Fa Tradition: Politics versus the Rule of Impartial Standards.- 10. Human Motivation in the fa Tradition.- 11. The ruler in fa-based Government.- 12. The Historiography of Political Realism.- 13. The Ruler’s New Tools: Fa 法 and the Political Paradigm of Measure in Early China.- 14. Philosophy of Language in the fa Tradition.- 15. The fa Tradition and Morality.- Part III: Fa Traditions in history.- 16. The Historical Reputation of the fa Tradition in Imperial China.- 17. The fa Tradition and Its Modern Fate: The Case of the Book of Lord Shang.- Part IV: Comparative Perspectives.- 18. The fa Tradition versus Confucianism: Intellectuals, the State, and Meritocracy.- 19. Fajia and the Mohists.- 20. Laozi, Huang-Lao and the fa Tradition: Thinking through the Term xingming 刑名.-21. Machiavelli and the fa Tradition.- 22. The Book of Lord Shang and Totalitarianism’s Intellectual Precursors Compared.- Epilogue.- 23. The Han Feizi and its Contemporary Relevance.