ABSTRACT
The Master Hanfei is the last and philosophically most sophisticated member of the important school of ancient Chinese philosophy known as Legalism. Legalism, like a number of the other major schools of Chinese thought considered in this book, is a product of the violent and unstable but philosophically inventive period in Chinese history known as the Time of the Warring States, 403–222 BCE. During this period, China as a unified state did not exist. The territory which was eventually to become China was divided into seven powerful and fifteen less powerful states, all vying with each other for political advantage. The history of the period is one of constant alliance, counter-alliance, of treaties made and broken, and above all of warfare. What was chronically absent was political stability. The central question on the minds of rulers and philosophers alike was that of how to gain and then retain real political power. Legalism, developed for somewhat over a century, was formulated as an answer to this question: it is an example of a philosophy that is the exact reverse of armchair speculation. It is an attempt to answer an urgent, practical problem of real seriousness.
