Book description

This book about the ancient school of Chinese philosophy which flourished during the Period of the Hundred Contending Schools (6th-3rd century B.C.E.) and which perfected the science of government and art of statecraft to a level that would have made Machiavelli proud is long overdue. Joining other long-in-print popular books on early Chinese philosophers -- Confucius, Laozi, Zhuangzi, just to mention a few -- this study for the first time makes this fascinating and important school of philosophy and its personalities, as well as a taste of the style and spirit of the Legalists' discourse, accessible to the student and the general reader. By so doing, it brings into sharp focus a new sense of the roots of the great Chinese philosophy-as-statecraft tradition. The Legalists -- most famously Li Kui, Shang Yang, Shen Buhai, Shen Dao, and Han Fei -- had a great impact not only on the institutions and practices of Chinese imperial tradition but also on the Maoist totalitarianism of the People's Republic of China.

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