Abstract
This paper examines the interplay between ideology and social reforms under Qin governance. It demonstrates that although the Qin rulers honored the social values of the preceding Zhou tradition (e.g., benevolence, uprightness, filial piety), the way in which they instilled them into the populace was through the quintessential twin Legalist instruments — punishment and reward. The present argument goes another step further: it takes note of new Qin evidence that reveals state coercive power as the primary means to materialize the Qin regime’s social engineering program that sought to rectify its subjects’ behavior and reconfigure family relations, hopefully thus eliminating unsanctioned learning, institutionalizing certain social values, and disarming the empire’s new territories in the east and south. The ultimate implication of the interplay as suggested, is that the ideal social order that the Qin rulers envisioned might have been conceived as extending to the farthest ends of the known world though aggressive military campaigns. The paper’s conclusion summarizes the foregoing as “moral-legalist supremacism.”
Keywords
Qin empire, social order, social engineering, burning of books, moral-legalist supremacism
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