The Legalist School Thought of Ethical Management of Science and Technology

Abstract

As an important school of political and ethical thought in ancient China, legalism, with its core concepts of “legal code”, “statecraft”and “authority”, not only had a profound impact on the governance of ancient society, but also provided a unique perspective and theoretical resources for the ethical governance of modern science and technology.
The ethical thought of the Legalist school is based on the human nature of “profit and avoid loss”, and it has constructed a unique ethical system. The main viewpoints of the Legalist thought hold that legal code is the guarantee of social order and also the embodiment of ethics and morality. It emphasizes “Separation of public and private affairs” and advocates “uphold the public interest and eliminate self-interest”, taking the interests of the monarch as the greatest “public”, while the interests of the people are regarded as “private”. This thought can be transformed into giving priority to public interests in modern technological governance, that is, technological development should serve the overall interests of society rather than the private interests of a few.
Legalists emphasized the universality and stability of legal code, believing that legal code should be transparent and made known to the public so that they could abide by them. In modern technological governance, this inspires us to formulate clear and public technological ethics regulations to ensure that technological activities are conducted within the legal framework. Han Feizi proposed the governance concept of combining “legal code, statecraft, and authority”, where “legal code” is the foundation, “statecraft” is the means, and “authority” is the guarantee. In technological governance, we can draw on this model and achieve effective supervision of technological activities through a combination of legal norms (legal code), technical means (statecraft), and policy support (authority).