2 pieces from Han Feizi — each retold in modern English and traced to its source.
History does not stand still, so why govern by the dead kings? Han Fei's coldest, most famous chapter watches a farmer wait at a tree-stump for a second hare — then names the five parasites quietly eating the state from the inside.
Han Fei strips rulership down to two levers: the power to punish and the power to reward. Lend either one out, he warns, and the man who wields it owns the state. A cold, surgical manual on why a throne survives — and exactly how it falls.