Against Virtue Politics: Han Fei Zi’s Critique of Confucian Meritocracy

During the Warring States period of Chinese history, both Confucian and Legalist (as well as Mohist) thinkers proposed meritocracy as an ideal way of governance. Despite this apparent agreement, they differed from each other on what should be counted as merits. In this paper, I will reconstruct Han Fei Zi (a so-called Legalist thinker)’s critique of Confucian virtue-based meritocracy. In this reconstruction, we can imagine a dialogue between Han Fei Zi and a Confucian, and there are actually a few rounds of ever-deepening debates in which Han Fei Zi eventually won. Although, as it will be revealed, the Confucian that is under serious attack is of a Mencian kind (whose ideas are akin to Mencius’s), Han Fei Zi’s critique can be applied to virtue-based meritocracy in general. An adequate defence of this kind of meritocracy, then, will need to address challenges from Han Fei Zi.