[Reading the World through Han Feizi] New Year’s Wish: Escaping Korea Disease

Archetypes, Han Feizi’s Way of Explaining

This happened during the Warring States period. The state of Zhao drilled holes into turtle shells and practiced divination with yarrow stalks. When the omen came out as “great fortune,” they trusted the oracle alone and attacked Yan. But instead, Zhao lost territory, its army was humiliated, and its ruler died without achieving his aim. Qin also received the very same omen of “great fortune.” Unlike Zhao, however, Qin expanded its territory through war and reaped great benefits.

Was one turtle shell spiritually efficacious while the other deceived people? Of course not. The problem lay with people—what fault was there in the turtle shell? This story appears in the “Shi Xie” chapter of Han Feizi, where Han Feizi vehemently denounces magical and superstitious thinking. To Han Feizi, magical and superstitious thinking was something that absolutely had to be abandoned. Nothing can be gained through irrational thought. No problem can be solved by it either.

Han Feizi believed one must pursue only useful knowledge, and if you look at his text, you find a mode of explanation that may be called an archetype. It is a rhetoric distinctive to Han Feizi: he explains things through typological frames. This reflects his fearsome realism.

- “Ten Faults” (十過): explains in ten types the reasons a ruler ruins himself and loses his state

- “Five Vermin” (五蠹): explains in five types the behavior of parasitic elements within the state who foment disorder

- “Three Guardians” (三守): explains the three essential duties a ruler must uphold in governing the state

- “Eight Canons” (八經): explains the eight governing principles that anyone who rules All-under-Heaven must bear firmly in mind

- “Six Subtleties” (六微): explains the six signs a ruler must clearly discern

This is Han Feizi’s typical way of developing an argument: seven major items, six categories. He liked to classify and explain things in this way, and this is what may be called archetype. Why did Han Feizi favor this typological method of explanation? Precisely in order to narrow the blind spots of perception. If one looks vaguely, things can only appear vague, and the parts one misses—the areas one fails to see—inevitably grow wider. When approaching a situation, one needs frameworks and tools that help one analyze the problem. Only then can one reduce one’s perceptual blind spots. A typological approach and typological organization help minimize those blind spots. And behind this typological approach was another purpose as well: the pursuit of practical knowledge.

Knowledge, data, and information that have not been categorized are not truly one’s own. They become one’s own only when they are categorized—then they become assets, something one can put to use immediately at any time. In particular, they become useful knowledge that can be applied on the ground, in real-world practice. By contrast, things that remain merely abstract and unclassified, however erudite they may sound and however vast the quantity one boasts of, all too easily become useless knowledge. As I said in my previous Op-Ed, can one survive in the troubled land of the Central Plains with useless knowledge? Can one pursue survival, national prosperity, and military strength without narrowing the blind spots of perception? If a statesman, a leader in particular, has broad perceptual blind spots in reading reality and does not know how to pursue useful knowledge, he will not survive in harsh terrain. Han Feizi stressed these things all the more not only for geopolitical reasons, but also because of the setting of court society.

In the Warring States period in which Han Feizi lived, court society was truly a terrifying place. A ruler’s power was always liable to be encroached upon, and he was surrounded by rivals for power. Even his sons, wife, and concubines could not help but become competitors for power. If the blind spots of perception increase, power begins to leak away and is violated. In that age, the king was the sole sovereign. In such a time, if the king’s power were seized by other ministers and power brokers within court society, that would itself be a subversion of state affairs, and national strength could only decline.

That is why Han Feizi rejected superstitious thinking, emphasized that one should pursue only facts and possess only knowledge that can actually be used, and sought to present analytical frameworks and explain matters typologically. But surely this practical, evidence-based posture of perception was not necessary only for rulers of that age. Is it not a posture needed by all of us today, especially as we struggle amid competition in real life and especially in this era of information overload and big data? The problem, however, is that it is not nearly as easy as it sounds.

The Root of Korea’s Ailment

To face reality as it is, and to keep trying to analyze reality, is always difficult for us, because we are especially accustomed to viewing the world through ideational righteousness. Looking at the world only through the window of ideational righteousness is a remnant of Confucianism. Confucianism is not merely a set of everyday customs, morality, and ethics. Even now, Confucianism still strongly governs the very framework through which we perceive reality, and we remain deeply accustomed to thinking and reaching conclusions in binary terms: good and evil, the gentleman and the petty man, the orthodox and the heterodox. Is that not obvious even from our political world today?

If one looks at the ruling 386 activist elites, they are steeped in a rigid “defend orthodoxy and reject heterodoxy” mentality. Do they regard other political forces as objects of compromise, negotiation, and persuasion, or as objects to be annihilated and eradicated? In them I sense the specter of Joseon-era scholar-officials, especially the late Joseon defenders of orthodoxy and rejecters of heterodoxy. But in truth, they are not alone. All of us are still not free from Confucian binary thinking, and because we have not cast off Confucianism, we often find ourselves floundering in a world of ideational righteousness.

And the problem is not only that disease of living immersed in a world of ideational righteousness. There is also the problem of favoring things simply because they are “our own,” pursuing absolute values, being drawn to loyalty and moral constancy, and trying to define friend and foe through historical grievances. Such problems of thought are not free of Confucian thinking either. A binary perception of the world, an inflexible framework of perception, the inertia of such thought and perception—these still remain far too strong within us. That is why telling Koreans to move toward a world of practical, evidence-based inquiry and multidimensional analysis is in fact difficult. But we must go there nonetheless. Our existing ways of thinking and frameworks of perception do us no good. The rigidity of our existing worldview and habits of thought brings us only losses, not the slightest benefit.

Ideational righteousness, to put it another way, is an intellectual tradition mired in moral justification. Along with an isolationist worldview, it may be called the root of Korea’s ailment. It would not be an exaggeration to say it is Korea’s ailment itself. But now, how about viewing the world through the eyes of Han Feizi? How about arming ourselves with Legalist thought? We should always try to stand on the foundation of facts and maintain an attitude of multidimensional analysis.

In truth, Confucianism and Legalism are spiritually incompatible worlds. For a very long time they waged intense ideological struggle against each other. But to tell Koreans—who have lived for so long within a Confucian worldview and have still not escaped it—to arm themselves with Legalist thinking? That will be difficult. Even so, why not now at least break out of the world of ideational righteousness and its rigid framework of thought? The reason is simple: tomorrow, we must live better than we do today. It may still be early, but I hope the coming new year will be one in which we escape Korea’s ailment.

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Original title: [한비자로 세상읽기]새해 소망, 한국병 탈출

Author: Geon-sun Im

Date: 2020-01-14

Source: https://www.cfe.org/bbs/bbsDetail.php?cid=column&pn=10&idx=22289