In 770 BC, King Ping of Zhou moved the capital to Luoyi, the history of the Zhou Dynasty entered the second half, the royal family declined, the ceremonies collapsed, and the rising princes gradually did not pay attention to Zhou Tianzi, and the king of Chu Zhuang even directly won the crown. During this period, China's historical trend was toward feudalization, and the production relations of the former slavery were doomed to be eliminated. However, none of the new princes could complete the unification in a short period of time, and they urgently needed talents to provide theoretical guidance for the new social order, so a hundred schools of thought appeared.
According to the Hanshu Yiwenzhi's record of that period, there were 189 of the hundreds of Zhuzi at that time, and the later Sui Shu and Siku Quanshu sources said that the number of Zhuzi hundreds of families was thousands. Regardless of the overall number, only a dozen influential schools were formed in the end (Confucianism, Taoism, Mojia, Fajia, Bingjia, Peasants, Famous Scholars, Yin and Yang Scholars, Zonghengjia, Miscellaneous Scholars, Novelists, Fang Jijia, etc.), of which Confucianism and Fajia had a profound influence on later generations.
In the Qin Dynasty, there was a "book burning pit Confucianism", and the Han Dynasty appeared "deposing the Hundred Schools of Confucianism", which did not mean that the ideas of schools outside Confucianism had completely disappeared, but that Confucianism was chosen as the orthodoxy of the ideological culture of the feudal dynasty. For example, the idea of the Legalists is still used, so that the Han Xuan Emperor of the Western Han Dynasty opposed the Confucian family as the dominant, and he believed that the governance of the country should be "hegemonic" and "kingly" miscellaneous, and this hegemony includes the legal criminal law ideology, "originally based on the hegemonic way of miscellaneous.".
However, in the history of the feudal dynasty for more than two thousand years, the Legalists have always stood behind the Confucians, who control public opinion and demarcate ideological boundaries, and the Legalists exist as a "technique" to maintain stability, such as the Criminal Department of the Six Ministries of the Three Provinces, which is in charge of the judicial criminal law, and "the government decrees that control the punishment of the world... Shang Shu Shilang led his subordinates to make decisions, and in big things, small things were done, and the state was punished", the practicality of the Fa was more than the need to educate the people, and it was a Confucian matter to educate the people.
Since the establishment of the imperial examination system, Confucian classics are the teaching materials for readers, even if they serve in the Ministry of Punishment, officials are still reading Confucian doctrines, Confucian sage Kong Meng is even more canonized, and the sacrifices and reverences for thousands of years are incomparable, it can be said that in the feudal era, the legalists could not fight the Confucians who seemed to be gentle and harmless, which was very interesting, because as early as the Warring States period, the legalists were very unaccustomed to Confucianism.
There were many representative figures of the Fa, and through the development of Guan Zhong, Shi Zhao, Zi Chan, Li Wu, Wu Qi, Shang Martin, Shen Zhi, Shen Zhi, Shen Bu Harm, Le Yi, Ju Xin, and others, they tended to mature during the Warring States period, and a key figure who gathered the ideas of the Fa scholars appeared: Han Fei. Han Fei sorted out the doctrines and viewpoints of his predecessors, and after synthesizing them, put forward more intense legal propositions, which were incompatible with the Confucians who emphasized "benevolence, righteousness, filial piety," and almost brought out the ancestors of Confucian disciples and scolded them.
Han Feizi proposed in the "Five Beetles": "Therefore, the kingdom of the Lord of the Ming Dynasty has no simple texts and takes the law as the teaching; there is no language of the previous king, and the officials are the teachers." "What do you mean?" Confucianism advocates self-denial and restoration, Confucius thought of restoring the Zhou Dynasty's Lile Patriarchal Law, emphasizing benevolence, Han Fei scoffed at this view, he believed that those moral teachings in Confucianism are stale and tattered, and the "Lile Poetry Books" that Confucians attach importance to are ancient garbage that should be eliminated long ago, and to maintain the stability of a country, it is necessary to "teach the law".
We can understand that the Dharma scholars represented by Han Fei are competing with Confucianism for the status of "religion". Whoever can become the dominant ideology of society and be more favored by the monarch will be able to penetrate more deeply into the hearts of the people, spread its doctrine from the temple down to the rivers and lakes, and then pass it on for a long time. To this end, Han Fei sharply pointed out a large number of shortcomings of Confucianism, saying that "Confucianism uses literature to mess with the law" and that Confucian private learning hinders the rule of law and is not conducive to the stability of the monarch.
In addition, Han Feizi also scolded Confucianism as "the study of foolishness", "the religion of poor countries", and "the words of subjugation of the country", which is similar to the views of scholars who advocate new culture and advocate the abolition of traditional Confucian etiquette in modern times. Han Feizi advocated that the law-fixers be a figure, and his predecessor Shang Martin also despised Confucianism, and Shang Martin said that Confucianism was nothing more than some "high-level rhetoric and false opinions", and its theories were floating on the surface and could not play the practical role of rich countries and strong soldiers, so he also emphasized that "those who decree the law, the fate of the people, are also the basis for governance."
Facts have proved that Shang Martin assisted Qin Xiaogong, attached importance to agricultural warfare, and light moral and cultural education really made the Qin state move from poor to strong, ranking among the powerful countries of the Warring States. However, the unification of the six kingdoms of Qin, which was dominated by the idea of the Fa, was destroyed after only 14 years of the second dynasty, and it also ended up with the reputation of "violent Qin", but the Confucianism, which was despised by the Fa, became increasingly prosperous, and on the basis of the two saints of Confucius and Meng, there were successors such as Dong Zhongshu, who expanded the Confucian standard into the five permanents of "benevolence, righteousness, and wisdom", which were used by future generations.
Confucianism has played a leading role in ideological and cultural levels for a long time, until now, the ancient sayings that reflect Confucian values are still that everyone will recite two sentences, what "people are inherently good at the beginning", what "do not do to others what they do not want", and what "get more help and lose the way and lack help", I personally think that many people in modern society like to seize the moral high ground, through the name of the three views to criticize the victims in some rule of law cases at will, and even derive absurd victim guilt theory, which is probably the reason for the brainwashing of Confucianism for thousands of years.
From this point of view, the Fa family has always been inferior in the struggle with Confucianism in Chinese history, and to explore the reasons, we must return to some characteristics of the pre-Han Dynasty Legalist thought itself. Still taking Han Fei as an example, Han Fei's proposition is to forbid other doctrines, to respect the Dharma, and in his view, if the king allows the people to be influenced by these various doctrines, the people will be right and wrong; if the king himself listens to these doctrines, it will also cause chaos in governance. In short, Han Fei, like Shang Martin, wants to be simple and rude and engage in strict and single ideological dictatorship.
However, the legalist ideology is different from Confucianism, for example, the Legalist is a hard knife, the Confucian is a soft knife, the harsh punishment is to directly cut people's flesh and blood, the pervasive etiquette is to slowly penetrate into the flesh, if you want to maintain stability and alleviate social contradictions, the latter is undoubtedly better than the former, which is a point that the Fajia lost to Confucianism.
In terms of the way of kings and subjects, the Dharma advocates are also more fierce than those of Confucianism. Han Fei proposed to honor the monarch and subordinates, and put the monarch and the courtiers on the opposite side of the contradiction, "strong public office, Du private door", the king must have absolute authority, the king decrees the law, all the power of life and death is in the hands of the monarch, and the courtiers cannot have their own power, so as not to become the wrong country's power. But this is obviously not in line with the needs of the feudal dynasty, the king can only balance the power, if the courtiers have no interests to speak of, why foolishly loyal to the king?
Han Fei advocated that "the punishment does not avoid the minister, and the reward is not left behind", emphasizing that everyone is equal before the law; while the Confucian advocates that "the courtesy is not inferior to the common man, the punishment cannot be the doctor", affirming the privileges of the nobility, and regarding etiquette as more important than the law, which is in line with the interests of the aristocratic group in the feudal era, the feudal dynasty is private property, if the true prince violates the law and the common people, will the emperor still have cronies around him?
Therefore, the rule of law of the Legalists has long existed as an auxiliary rather than a mainstream ideology, while Confucianism has developed over thousands of years into a weapon of enlightenment that is more suitable for the needs of imperial power. In Taoist parlance, this is probably a kind of "Ezhu Kegang".