 Han Fei’s repeated anti-ministerial philippics perplex the reader. It is somewhat ironic that a thinker who actively sought employment in the rulers’ courts presented his own stratum as intrinsically malicious. As many traditional and modern scholars noticed, Han Fei’s personal tragedy—he was slandered at the court of Qin, imprisoned and reportedly forced to commit suicide before being able to present his views to the King of Qin—was a by-product of the very atmosphere of the ruler-minister mistrust that the thinker himself generated. But going beyond this personal tragedy there is a more general question: how can the ruler maintain his functions in the situation of permanent danger and absolute mistrust between him and his aides?