Quiz: Han Feizi

When was Han Feizi born?

• About 280 BC, of the royal house of Han, China.
• About 404 BC, Sinope, on the Black Sea coast of what is now Turkey.
• About 4 BC, Cordoba, Spain.
• About 50, Hierapolis, in what is now Turkey, enslaved in Rome.

When did Han Feizi die?

• 233 BC, in prison in the state of Qin.
• About 289 BC.
• 323 BC, Corinth, Greece, in the same year as Alexander the Great.
• 43 BC, murdered on the orders of Mark Antony after being proscribed.

What is Han Feizi known for?

• The book Han Feizi: rule by published law, secret method, and the sheer position of power, with no trust in virtue.
• The division of things into what is up to us and what is not, the core of his handbook Enchiridion.
• The poem On Nature, which reasons that what is cannot come from what is not, so change and plurality are illusion.
• The measure doctrine: man is the measure of all things. Plato made him the target of the dialogue Theaetetus.

Which school of thought was Han Feizi part of?

• Legalism, the doctrine of the strong state.
• Eleatic school, the strict logic of being.
• Atomism, developed from his teacher Leucippus.
• Stoicism, practiced from the throne.

True or false: Chinese thinker of the Han royal house who wrote the classic of Legalism, teaching that the ruler holds power by law, method, and position.

• True
• False