The legalist school of thought represents the essence of sage kingcraft (外王), which, coupled with inward sageness cultivation (内圣), characterizes the Chinese civilization.
Since the opening of the Chinese section of our website five years ago and that of the English section two years ago, The New Legalist has come through an arduous but successful pathbreaking period. We have been received with favorable understanding and support and with censure and sabotage as well. While short of human and other resources, which situation could be lasting for a considerable period of time to come, we are growing day by day, in strength and in influence.
Our strength comes from the rich treasures accumulated through thousands of years from our nation’s cultural tradition now being re-discovered， and also comes from the urgent call by the present-day world. On the one hand, we have been re-discovering, sorting through and publicizing the treasure house of ideas in our nation’s traditional culture, which have been obscured, censured, or distorted for long; this is a heavy task calling for long-time and dedicated work from more devotees. On the other hand, we have been trying, against the broader background of world history and in light of the Chinese and the world’s peoples’ experiences and lessons learned from history, especially from modern history, to achieve a deeper understanding and recognition of the importance of the Chinese cultural heritage to mankind, trying to carry on, spread and further develop what is good in that heritage and answer the major theoretical and practical questions being urgently put forward to us by the situations facing present-day China and the world; this is also a heavy task calling for long-time and dedicated work from more devotees.
The above two tasks are complementary and supportive to each other. As the present is a continuation of the past, it is for the present and the future that we need to look back on the past and without advancing the useful and discarding the harmful from the past, there would be no better present and future.
The Legalists, both of ancient times and of today, believed or believe in the Daoist-Legalist (Huang-Lao) worldview, social outlook and view on life, in the “Way of Heaven” to “diminish superabundance and to supplement deficiency” (Dao De Jing, Chap 77), and in holistic dynamic balance.
By applying the above philosophy and methodology to social economic-political management, the ancient Legalists put forward the principles of “harmony with nature”, “balance of interests” and “storage by the state”, with a view to curb the power expansion of monopolistic interest groups, to regulate capital, to assist the disadvantaged, and to “weigh and balance economic factors”, thus leading social economy through dynamic adjustments from constantly occurring imbalances to relative balances; they established the rule of law in line with the Dao, the “all-society mutual supervision system” and the “social merit system”, with a view to deprive the aristocracy of their hereditary privileges, and to punish or reward people as they deserve, thus mobilizing and bringing into full play the initiative and creativeness of all. They did not evade social conflicts but, facing squarely up to them, adopted a more or less holistic, dynamic-balance approach in dealing with them, instead of aggravating such conflicts in the interests of certain privileged groups. All in all, ancient Chinese Legalists managed to break through again and again the interferences, sabotages, or total usurping of power by those special interest groups through their political and/or ideological agents, and bring about many a world-admired golden age in history. History has proved that the Daoist-Legalist worldview most closely approximates the actual reality and can benefit the mankind.
By applying this same worldview and methodology to the study of world affairs today, we, present-day Chinese New Legalists, have revealed the lameness and deceptiveness of the “globalization” manipulated by world monopoly financial capital; revealed the truth about how the values of social products from three sources (i.e., that endowed by Nature and hidden in raw materials, that of collective human wisdom hidden in tools and skills, and that added by individual labor, labor in the broadest sense) – how the product values from all these sources have been exploited by capital, especially by big capital; and revealed the limitation and deceptiveness of Western democracy rooted in capitalistic economic relations. (All the above has carried forward and further broadened and deepened Marx’s criticism of the true nature of capitalistic social economic-political relations.) We New Legalists stand for the principle of dynamic balance in handling ecology issues, international relations issues, issues of relationship between different social interest groups, and those of relations between different social realms (economy, politics, culture), issues involving relations between the government and the governed, who at the same time should also act as the ultimate authority of state power, and the relation between satisfaction of reasonable individual wants and restraint of excessive desires through conscientious self-cultivation of moral character by all individuals. All this points to the importance of traditional Chinese wisdom to the resolution of current crises confronting the whole mankind.
Our position has attracted increasing attention and is winning increasing understanding and support. Though some people, having been subjected to certain specific social influences, are still suspicious of Chinese Legalism, old and new, or have misunderstandings about us, we think this is only natural as another instance of the Daoist Yin-Yang antithesis. We are confident that, as time goes on, more and more people will learn from mankind’s new practices as well as from past history how to tell truth from falsity and to recognize true wisdom that will benefit the whole human community. The hope for human salvation lies in the prospect when a considerable number of people have come to recognize the Dao, or the true Way of all things. It is just for a sooner arrival of this day that we New Legalists are working industriously. For this purpose, we welcome all friendly criticisms and sincere exchanges of views.
New Legalism is a messenger boat from the East sailing through the dense fog of ideological confusion on the vast ocean of human history in this 21st century and leading us towards the eternal future…
TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. The Daoist Way of Life: Inward Tranquility and Outward Deference
II. Propriety: Follow Natural Human Disposition and Restrain from Excessive
Desires
III. Towards a Human Spiritual Revolution in the Twenty-First Century
Traditional Chinese Culture is an Organic Whole
I. Projection of Western Dualistic Fragmentization onto Holistic Chinese Culture
II. Legalism, Confucianism and Western Liberalism: A Love-Hate Threesome
III. Legalism vs. Confucianism in Daoist Tai Ji Perspective
IV, Call for Partnership between Daoists, Legalists and Confucianists
I. The Dynamic Whole: Three Aspects
II. Dynamic-Whole Worldview and Chinese Legalist Practice
III. Lessons from History: Legalists vs. Confucianists
IV. Atomistic-Monolithic Worldview and Current World Crises
