VOLUME IV, CHAPTER 1
Enfeoffment Is the Political Institution
This chapter starts from a name given to a three-year-old child, and it tells the story of something insulted for a long time but in truth neutral: enfeoffment. Three sections do one job. They take those frightening words, political institution, all the way down to the plainest ground, and set up one sentence: political institutions are institutions of enfeoffment. The first section starts from that name and shows what enfeoffment is, and that it runs from below. The second walks into a pride of lions and shows that a position is lifted up, second by second, by the group, setting down five life-level laws. The third comes back to the human world and lays out the two oldest kinds, enfeoffing land and enfeoffing office. Along the way Han Feizi and Guanzi drive in the first stakes of the floor: a position is set by people, not handed down by Heaven, and a politics rises when it moves with the will of the people and falls when it moves against it.
Chapter contents
Section One. Starting from a name
Section Two. The lion king and the pride, a position the group lifts up
Section Three. Enfeoffing land and enfeoffing office
Credit to the ancestors; the mistakes are mine: Tiger Lyon.