Legalism: An Absolute Monarchy

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LEGALISM In this essay, I will be talking about legalism. Legalism is a political philosophy, in other words, an absolute monarchy. I chose this philosophy because it has a different logic, and it is harder to understand than the other beliefs. I have come up with three main points to explain Legalism the best way possible. Legalism was created in 250 BCE by the famous Chinese philosopher Han Feizi. Legalism promoted recruitment, so rulers had to be strict, which would cause all people to "accept" each other, because the ruler was the ruler, nothing could change from what he said. The advantage to this, is that it would cause little conflict between the people. It also supported war society, because in this belief, the warriors had to be dedicated, for the people to feel more safe and thought about. The old rules of chivalry which Chinese armies had always considered were ignored by the Qin as they crushed one state after another. This would affect the ruling of …show more content…

This was the time of the burning of many famous ancient Chinese books. In simpler words, intellectualism didn't have a success in society in those times. The many factious ancient Chinese books all came after this development of the philosophy. The developer of the Legalistic school was Hsun-Tsu. He had the same opinion as Han Feizi; humans were evil by nature. He believed humans could only behave morally however through habituation. His point was to let anyone from any age join this Legalistic school, so they could all follow his and Han Feizi's beliefs. Legalism had a social impact on society in those times, because all the various soldiers were trained for the upcoming wars, people started believing that they were bad by nature, and burning books. I think this philosophy has had one of the most changing impacts of the philosophies I ever knew. For further research, I discovered Legalists weren't allowed to hit or hurt

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