Other Laozi Parallels in the Hanfeizi - Sino-Platonic Papers

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Tae Hyun KIM, “Other Laozi Parallels in the Hanfeizi” Sino-Platonic Papers, 199 (March 2010) 2. Two chapters of the Hanfeizi, JL and YL, and newly excavated Laozi parallels 2-1. The question of the authorship of two chapters The extant Hanfeizi consists of 55 chapters. Even though Sima Qian gave testimony that the writings of Han Fei amount to about 100,000 words, it is hard to take his statement at face value and to believe that the text was entirely from Han Fei’s hand. Modern scholarship on the authenticity of the Hanfeizi provides some concrete and plausible evidence to refute Sima Qian’s assertion of the single author and to make it clear that there are a great many chapters written by others, not by Han Fei, even though it fails to arrive at one settled conviction about the authorship of the Hanfeizi. 12 On the question of the authors of the two Hanfeizi chapters, Jie Lao and Yu Lao, which have in them quotations parallel to the extant Laozi, there are two conflicting opinions: one claims that the thought of the Laozi that is presented in the chapters provides philosophical foundation for the whole text, the Hanfeizi. Feng Youlan, Chen Qiyou, Wu Xiuying, Li Dingsheng, Ohama Akira, and Yoon Chanwon hold this position, pointing out that several statements in different chapters of the Hanfeizi philosophically coincide with the thought of the Laozi. The other separates these chapters from the other chapters of the Hanfeizi, since the philosophical concerns presented in the two chapters are obviously distinct from those in other chapters. Hu Shi, Rong Zhaozhu, and Kimura Eiichi defend this position. The significance of their authorship has been explained not only by the fact that the 12 There are two typical examples of this: (1) research by Rong Zhaozhu, which basically relies on Hu Shi’s skeptical viewpoint of the extant Hanfeizi (see Rong Zhaozhu 容肇祖, “Han Fei de zhezuo kao” 韓非的著作考, in Gushibian 古史辨, edited by Luo Genze 羅根澤 [Taipei: Minglun, 1971], 4:653–679, and (2) a representative Japanese work by Kimura Eiichi: Kimura Eiichi 木村英一, Hōka shisō no kenkyū 法家思想の硏究 (Tokyo: Daikūsha, 2006). Arguing the contrary, there are several views that support the theory of historical authorship by Han Fei. For this, see Jean Levi, “Han fei tzu,” in Early Chinese Texts: A Bibliographical Guide, edited by Michael Loewe (Berkeley, Calif: Society for the Study of Early China and the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley 1994), 115–124. 12
Tae Hyun KIM, “Other Laozi Parallels in the Hanfeizi” Sino-Platonic Papers, 199 (March 2010) chapters have been believed to be the first commentaries on the Laozi in history, but also by their distinct and unique philosophical concerns, the so-called legalistic interpretation of the Laozi, which naturally has been assumed to be a philosophical corruption and distortion of its thought, such as are naturalism or primitivism. 13 The scholars, who distinguish the chapters from others of the Hanfeizi, emphasize that the topics of the chapters are not related to Han Fei’s primary concerns, epitomized as the realistic political theory and the art of individual survival in the time of political pandemonium. Furthermore, they point out that his realistic concerns, which dominate most of the contents of the Hanfeizi, may seriously conflict with the arcane, cosmological, and mystical teaching of the Laozi, since Han Fei actually condemned that kind of philosophy, which can be utilized to weaken the efficacy of law. 14 Was Han Fei interested only in political realism? Does his concern necessarily conflict with cosmology or metaphysics? The answer to these questions seems to be “no.” One thing to be considered more seriously in Han Fei’s philosophy is the time at which he lived, the end of the Warring States period, when he could have observed all the possible kinds of philosophy of 13 For example, Benjamin Schwartz says: “The book of Han Fei-tzu contains two chapters which are presented as Legalist commentaries on certain passages in the Lao-tzu. … In stunning contrast to Lao-tzu’s primitivism, however, man’s true nature will be realized precisely through the sophisticated machinery of a developed Legalist sociopolitical order.” (Benjamin Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China [Cambridge, Mass., and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985], 343–344.) This statement is based on his own assumption that the Laozi consistently succeeds in reflecting the thought of a historical thinker, Master Lao, who, he believes, lived before Master Zhuang and Huang-Lao scholars of the Jixia 稷下 Academy (see his book, 187). In contrast to Schwartz, Angus Graham notes that the two chapters of the Hanfeizi have “little to mark them as Legalist.” See Angus Graham, Disputers of the Tao (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1991), 285. Also, as I discuss later, Graham is skeptical of the historicity of Master Lao and situates the creation date of the Laozi after that of the Inner Chapters of the Zhuangzi. I do not agree with Graham’s own assumption that the Inner Chapters were basically from Master Zhuang’s hand. In any case, his standpoint on the textual establishment of the Laozi and historicity of Master Lao contrasts with Schwartz’s assumption. 14 This attempt to distinguish the Hanfeizi from the Laozi by employing hermeneutical criteria has not satisfactorily succeeded in providing an acceptably objective plausibility, and, more importantly, this approach still may depend on the assumption of the philosophical substantiality of such texts as the Laozi (cosmology, mysticism, anarchism) and the Hanfeizi (political realism, absolutism, anti-cosmology). 13
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