Abstract

Han Fei (d. 233 BCE) is for this paper called the author of the many essays that have been collected in the Hanfeizi. Despite their diversity, these essays share investigative direction and also methods of research and argumentation. Problems of political organisation are central to their contents and are with hardly any exception viewed from the perspective of human interaction. Lessons for political ordering are for this reason drawn from the observation of social intercourse with a particular focus on the different parties' attempts at persuasion. Therefore the actors are depicted as if forever reasoning, either in direct speech or helped on by the author reading their minds. Although Han Fei's aim lies in propagating certain concepts of political organisation, some of the text is for reasons of example or analogy filled with the private realms of individual judgement and action, where vocabulary, images and the situations that are depicted vary widely. Roughly one-fifth of the text consists of chapters in which isolated cases are introduced in defence or explanation of a dense set of propositions. Here the agents are mainly historical figures. The choice of cases is dominated by the author's attitude to history which he sees as teaching lessons on appropriate and inappropriate conduct but not as a source of models whose direct imitation would allow someone to avoid an analysis of his or her actual situation. Many agents remain nameless. They come from different regions, are occupied with different trades, and some of them are female.