Christa
Knell 1/30/12
Belief
Systems in the Qin Dynasty
During the Qin Dynasty,
people had to follow the legalism. Legalism is a belief system that has very
strict rules and involves extremely harsh punishments. Legalists also believe that
all people are evil. Han Fei Zi was one of the men who contributed in the idea
of legalism. The Qin dynasty was first to use the idea of legalism. The big
purpose for legalism was so that the dynasty could use strict and specific
rules to create well rounded and behaved citizens. Emperor Qin like the idea of
having full control of the government using legalism. Legalism in every day
life affected the people living in Qin during this time because thousands of
people were killed while legalism was in use. The punishments were very strict and very specific, which
made it awfully hard for people to follow. With legalism people were not
allowed to critisize the government and if they did they might cut your hands
off, boil you alive or burry you alive.
In Han Fei’s book “ Basic Writings” he
quotes “ remote fountains are
little help to nearby fires.” Many of the quotes from the book represent the
evil in people’s lives and how they must face the consequences that they will
have to face. Thankfully once the Qin dynasty collapsed the Yuan dynasty no
longer used legalism, and I’m sure people would be very happy about that.
No comments:
Post a Comment