Shared questions
- What institutions and standards can reliably coordinate officials, subjects, incentives, and military power?
Internal disagreements
- Whether law, administrative technique, and the ruler's authority can secure order without moral cultivation.
Key texts
- The Book of Lord Shang — The earliest surviving fa text is a composite attributed to Shang Yang rather than written by him.
- Han Feizi — Chapter 43 presents its author as a synthesiser of Shang Yang and Shen Buhai; the collection is of mixed authorship.
Scholarly notes
The fajia label · resolved
Legalism translates a classification imposed by Han dynasty bibliographers, not a movement its members joined; the thinkers grouped under it never claimed a common school, and the label implies an organised current of adherents comparable to the followers of Confucius or Mozi that the sources do not support.