Was there a bigger edgelord than this guy, Shang Yang?
"The six parasites are: rites and music, odes and history, moral culture and virtue, filial piety and brotherly love, sincerity and faith, chastity and integrity, benevolence and righteousness, criticism of the army and being ashamed of fighting."
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gotta be edgy if you want to win a total war against more powerful states
*Collapse*
the chink machiavelli
good thing confucius is more relevant
Well, he got pwnt in the end so he couldn't have been all that bright
*orders 9 familial exterminations*
nothing personnel, kid
>Mozi views aesthetics as nearly useless. Unlike Confucius, he holds a distinctive repulsion to any development in ritual music and the fine arts. Mozi takes some whole chapters named "Against Music" (非樂) to discuss this. Though he mentions that he does enjoy and recognize what is pleasant, he sees them of no utilization in terms of governing, or of the benefit of common people. Instead, since development of music involves man's power, it reduces production of food; furthermore, appreciation of music results in less time for administrative works. This overdevelopment eventually results in shortage of food, as well as anarchy. This is because manpower will be diverted from agriculture and other fundamental works towards ostentations. Civilians will eventually imitate the ruler's lusts, making the situation worse.
Were the ancient Chinese just totally autistic?
GUILTY BY ASSOCIATION!
Sounds like he was right. How many morons do you know who are wasting their lives away trying to party like rockstars? They end up empty husks. Old, unhealthy, drug-addicted, and stupid. Drains on society.
YOU POINT THE FINGER AT ME AGAIN
I read his book. It's positively the most inhuman ruthless thing imaginable, and brilliant for it
First time I've heard Veeky Forums talk about Shang Yang. I was considering making a thread about him and his philosophy because I find the character very interesting.
Back to your question, I don't think Shang Yang was an edgelord.
There obviously ain't many philosophers talking about the ways of "Weakening the people". I still like him because he talks about many subjects that would almost be considered taboo in western philosophy, like the opposition between the people and the state. According to Yang, a strong people meant a weak state and a weak people meant a strong state. His dismissal of morals would make him a complete edgelord, but the warring states were so brutal, he was just being realistic and I it would be unfair to blame him for that.
On the brightside, he did abolish birth privileges and rewarded workers based on their merits.
Wouldn't this guy be more comparable to Diogenes
The collapse of the Qin dinasty was the fault of Shang Yang's policies. As soon as Qin Shi Huang died, chancellor Zhao Gao believed it would be a better idea to assassinate every single person who dared critisize him instead of properly managing the state.
Of course, Shang Yang's policies were wartime policies and did not necessarily apply to peacetime, but it was Zhao Gao's fault for not adapting the laws after the unification of China.
*was not the fault of Shang Yang's policies
Got a link to the book? Any particular translation you recommend?
OP here, I got the source from:
ctext.org
It has a lot of translations (though from where I can't tell) that seem pretty legitimate. It's best to know some Classical Chinese as a lot of texts aren't translated.
Well, there is a tendency on Veeky Forums to spam the term "edgelord" for whatever reason. As a Confucian sympathizer, I do consider that Shang was too focused on law/bureaucratic mechanisms rather than morality in ordering society.
If anyone's interested here's the original text:
六蝨:曰禮樂,曰詩書,曰修善,曰孝弟,曰誠信,曰貞廉,曰仁義,曰非兵,曰羞戰。
*teleports behind you*
Duyvendak's translation is the first and most popular english translation of the Book of Lord Shang. It has a great preface which will tell you everything you need to know about Shang Yang. The only problem with it is that he used Giles to romanize chinese characters instead of Pinyin (which did not exist yet), so some names might have a different spelling than what you'd usually find. ex. Ch'in = Qin.
classiques.uqac.ca
>Burys 200000 POWs alive
Did ancient Chink emperors think they were playing competitive rts IRL?
>Fuck my villagers are idling again, go collect food asap I need to age up before the Persian player does
>Buries alive 400000 POWs in 4 days
The only parallel I can think of is that both weren't popular because they were being hardcore in pursuing their ideas.
Otherwise, no. For one, Diogenes lived to die naturally.
no
Hold on, let me fix that image.
Wasn't the loss of land and privilege by lords a major reason for the rapid spread of the revolt against the Qin.
>six parasites
>lists sixteen things
>Mozi
>Emperor