QuestionsAre humans good by nature?People follow their interest: love is not enough to govern
Are humans good by nature?Prone to evil

People follow their interest: love is not enough to govern

Han Fei; Legalism; the cartwright and the coffin-maker; "parental love is not enough"

Han Fei c. 280 BC · c. 233 BCPeople follow their interest, not their goodness: a sound state rests on law, reward and punishment.
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What it claims

People follow their interest rather than their goodness, and a sound state is founded on law, sure rewards and sure punishments, not on trust in their virtue.

Why

People move toward profit and flee danger, even within families; love does not correct, the law does.

The same idea through history
Xunzi250 BCHis teacher Xunzi held that nature is bad and must be straightened by ritual. Han Fei keeps the realism about motives, but replaces ritual with law, reward and punishment.
Han Fei233 BCHan Fei (c. 280-233 BC), a prince of the state of Han, writes for a ruler. His book is the major text of "Legalism". He does not always say that man is "bad": he says that he follows his interest, and that government must take this into account.
Niccolò Machiavelli1513In Renaissance Italy, Machiavelli formulates a similar realism about human motives and government.Thomas Hobbes1651Hobbes draws a similar conclusion from self-concern: without a common power, the war of all against all.
In short

"People follow their interest: love is not enough to govern" is an argument by Han Fei (Han Feizi, ch. 49 ("The Five Vermin") and 17 (c. 233 BC), 233 BC) on the question "Are humans good by nature?" (answer: prone to evil). Its claim: People follow their interest rather than their goodness, and a sound state is founded on law, sure rewards and sure punishments, not on trust in their virtue. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5). AskPhilosophy presents 5 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Han Feizi, ch. 49 ("The Five Vermin") and 17 (c. 233 BC)
Valid with an implicit premise

Han Fei writes for a king, at the end of the Warring States period. He knows the Confucians' speeches, for whom a good ruler must love his people as a father loves his children. His answer comes in two observations: people act out of interest, and love, even parental love, is not enough to make them docile. He draws a politics from this: law, clear and applied to all, with sure rewards and sure punishments. It should be noted that he does not say that people are wicked: the cartwright who wishes people to be rich and the coffin-maker who wishes them to die are not, he says, a good man and a bad man; each follows his interest. This argument is therefore a particular version of the "prone to evil" camp: evil comes from interest, and virtue is rare. The P1 to P5 form is our reconstruction of chapters 49 and 17; the translations are ours.

P1In their calculations, people move towards safety and profit and flee danger and hardship.
P2Even those closest to a king, his wife and his heir, may have an interest in his death. Likewise, the cartwright wishes people to be rich, the coffin-maker wishes them to die: not because one is good and the other bad, but because their interest lies there.
P3Virtue is rare: even the greatest sage, Confucius, had only seventy followers, while the people yield to force.
P4Love is not enough to correct: an unworthy son changes neither under his parents' anger, nor the village's reproaches, nor the teacher's lessons, but he changes when the officials of the state arrive with the law.
P5 · implicit premiseIf interest is what moves nearly everyone, including in the closest ties, and if love and virtue are not enough, then man's real practical nature is to follow his interest, and government must rest on reward and punishment rather than on goodness.
Therefore people follow their interest rather than their goodness, and a sound state is founded on law, sure rewards and sure punishments, not on trust in their virtue.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a case where people calculate their interest, love is not enough to correct and virtue is rare, but where this says nothing about human nature and one could govern by example: the conclusion no longer follows.
With its five premises, the conclusion follows. Two weaknesses. First, P2 and P3 are examples: the cartwright, the number of Confucius' followers. They illustrate interest without proving it universal. Second, P5 passes from a political fact (love is not enough to govern) to a thesis about nature (man follows his interest), which Han Fei does not always put so sharply. He himself explains elsewhere (ch. 49) that quarrels come from scarcity of goods, which is not a thesis about nature.
Analogy. A school bus driver. He loves the children, but he does not count on their goodness to keep them seated: he fits seat belts and sets rules. Han Fei would say: it is not that they are wicked, it is that one does not govern on what one hopes of them.

Objections

5

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

The Confucians, who rely on Confucius 250 BC · attacks premise 4

The Confucians whom Han Fei opposes rely on a saying of Confucius (Analects 2.3): if the people are led by laws and uniformity is sought by punishments, they will try to avoid the punishment but have no sense of shame. If they are led by virtue and uniformity is sought by the rules of propriety, they will have the sense of shame, and moreover will become good.

Fei replies
Fei Han Fei (chapter 49)
Summary: Han Fei gives the example of an unworthy son whom neither his parents, nor the villagers, nor his teacher change, and whom only the coming of the state officials armed with the law changes. He concludes that parental love is not enough to teach a son, and that the people are spoiled by affection but obey authority.
The debate goes on (our summary) Han Fei, who knows the Confucian position, answers with an example; Confucius, two centuries earlier, had set out a principle: an example does not prove that shame can never be awakened, and a principle does not prove that it is in practice. The two do not speak of the same people, moreover: Confucius thinks of well-governed states, Han Fei of states at war.
Where the debate stands (our summary)A basic disagreement that runs through all Chinese thought: governing by virtue and example, or by law and sanction. Each camp grants the other part of the truth, and Chinese states later combined the two.
Mencius 320 BC · attacks premise 1

Summary: Mencius says that if people suddenly see a child about to fall into a well, all feel alarm and distress, without calculation: not to win the favour of the child's parents, nor praise from neighbours, nor to avoid a bad reputation. Interest is therefore not what first moves people.

Fei replies
see the argument
Fei What Han Fei says of rulers' compassion (chapter 49)
Summary: Han Fei admits that compassion exists. He cites the example of the ruler who weeps when condemning a criminal and has no music played. But, he says, this compassion shows his goodness and does not serve to govern: one must punish all the same, because the law requires it. He concludes that goodness cannot found government.
The debate goes on (our summary) Han Fei and Mencius both admit that compassion exists. They differ on what it proves: for Mencius it reveals the nature of all people; for Han Fei it does not weigh on the conduct of the many. Mencius writes before Han Fei, who does not cite the example of the well: this is not a direct reply.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Both camps agree on an observable fact (compassion exists). They differ on its weight: a core of all people (Mencius), or a rare disposition not enough to govern (Han Fei).
David Hume 1751 · attacks premise 5

Hume writes that tenderness to their offspring, in all sensible beings, is commonly able alone to counter-balance the strongest motives of self-love, and has no manner of dependence on that affection. He asks what interest a fond mother can have in view, who loses her health by assiduous attendance on her sick child, and afterwards languishes and dies of grief when freed from that slavery by its death.

Fei replies
Fei What Han Fei himself says of the rarity of virtue (chapter 49)
Summary: Han Fei does not claim that no one loves virtue. He notes that even Confucius, the greatest sage, had only seventy followers, and he concludes that those who value benevolence are few and those who practise righteousness rare. The people, he adds, hardly yield to anything but force.
The debate goes on (our summary) Hume attacks a stronger thesis than Han Fei's: that every act is selfish. Han Fei says only that interest moves the many and that virtue is rare. The mother example therefore touches him little, but it does not tell how many mothers must be counted.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Han Fei and Hume can both be right if they speak of different things: one of what suffices to govern a large number, the other of what the human heart can feel. The disagreement is about the proportion between the two motives.
A
A tension within Han Fei's own text attacks premise 5

At the beginning of the same chapter, Han Fei explains that in antiquity people were few and goods abundant, so they did not quarrel, and reward and punishment were unnecessary. Today people are many and goods scarce, so they quarrel. Quarrels would therefore come from scarcity, not from nature.

no reply
We have not yet found a direct reply by Fei in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Han Fei does not draw this consequence himself. A reader can see in it a thesis about nature (interest, constant, produces quarrels only when goods are lacking) or a thesis about circumstances (people would have remained peaceful in abundance). Both readings are compatible with the text, and the second brings Han Fei closer to the "shaped" camp.
Where the debate stands (our summary)A question of interpretation: is Han Fei's interest a constant trait of man or an effect of scarcity? The text allows both readings.
E
Ernst Fehr and Simon Gächter 2002 · attacks premise 1

Summary: in experiments where groups of strangers contribute to a common good, many participants pay out of their own pocket to punish those who do not contribute, although they gain nothing from it. Cooperation holds when punishment is possible, and collapses when it is not. The authors speak of "altruistic punishment".

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 2002, after the author's death (-233).
The debate goes on (our summary) The experiment partly supports both camps. For Han Fei, it shows that cooperation collapses without sanctions. Against him, it shows that many people sanction without gaining, which is not reducible to personal interest.
Where the debate stands (our summary)An open and active point in behavioural economics: is a concern for fairness and reciprocity a motive besides interest, or a long-term interest that is not recognised? The results have often been reproduced in the lab, but their interpretation and what they say about life outside the lab are debated.