Li Si
Also known as Li Si 李斯
- Dates
- c. 280–208 BC
- Era
- Warring States Chu, then Qin unification
- Role
- Chancellor of Qin who standardised the script and proposed the book burning
The chancellor who standardised an empire's script also proposed which books to burn, and the Shiji says he sent poison to his old classmate.
Who was Li Si?
Li Si was a man of Shangcai in Chu who, according to the Shiji, studied with Xunzi alongside Han Fei and then went west to Qin. He served under Lü Buwei and rose with the king who became the First Emperor. About 237 BC, a court faction moved to expel foreign advisers. Li Si, himself a foreigner, answered with the Memorial against the Expulsion of Guest Officers 谏逐客书. The expulsion was dropped. He stayed. After Qin took the other states in 221 BC he became chancellor. He argued for commanderies instead of a new feudal map, and for one script, one set of weights and measures, and one axle length, so orders and carts could move.
In 213 BC, the Shiji says, he proposed that private copies of the Songs, the Documents, and the discourses of the hundred schools be surrendered and burned. Medicine, divination, agriculture, and the Qin annals were exempt, and the court erudites could keep their books. This is not the same event as the killing of scholars the following year. In 210 BC the First Emperor died at Shaqiu. The Shiji says Li Si joined Zhao Gao in hiding the death and forging an edict that forced the heir Fusu to suicide and put Huhai on the throne. Zhao Gao then destroyed Li Si. He was executed in 208 BC. The empire he had standardised outlived him by three years.
Key works
Memorial against the Expulsion of Guest Officers 谏逐客书
A prose memorial preserved in the Shiji. Li Si argues that Qin has always grown by using outsiders, and that expelling foreign officers would hand talent to enemy states, and the king revoked the order.
Key ideas
谏逐客
Do not expel the guests
The memorial treats talent as a strategic import. Qin's rise, he says, came from men who were not born in Qin, and driving them out would arm the states Qin still had to beat.
书同文
One script for the commands
After 221 BC the chancellor's programme included a standard script, the small seal 小篆, plus standard weights, measures, and axle widths. The aim was administrative reach. Li Si sponsored the standard, and he did not invent writing.
焚书
Burn the private canons
The 213 BC proposal targeted private copies of the classical canons and of non-Qin political teaching, so officials could not cite antiquity against the new empire. Practical and Qin books stayed, and the slogan that pairs this with a massacre is later shorthand.
Famous episodes
The memorial that saved the outsiders
Historyc. 237 BC
Qin ordered foreign advisers out. Li Si would have been among them. His memorial lists the imported men, horses, and music Qin already depends on, and asks why officers should be the one import to reject. The order was withdrawn, and the piece is both a career rescue and a theory of where capable people come from.
The burning proposal
History213 BC
At a banquet, scholars criticised the abolition of fiefs and praised antiquity. Li Si answered that private canons were being used to slander the present. The Shiji records his proposal to burn the offending private books, to punish talk of the past against the present, and to spare medicine, divination, agriculture, and Qin's own records. That is the decree, and it is not yet the pit.
The forged succession and the fall
History210–208 BC
The First Emperor died on progress in 210 BC. According to the Shiji, Li Si and the eunuch Zhao Gao suppressed the news and forged an edict destroying Fusu and elevating Huhai, the Second Emperor. Zhao Gao then turned on Li Si. Li Si was executed in 208 BC, and his clan with him, and the Shiji's scene is the standard account of the end.
Myths vs facts
Li Si burned every book in China and buried every Confucian alive, as one act.
The Shiji separates a 213 BC burning of specified private books from a 212 BC execution of scholars and fangshi, traditionally numbered at more than four hundred. The later slogan 焚书坑儒 ties the two to Confucians alone. The burning list had exemptions, and the pit episode's target and scale are narrower in the text, and are still debated.
He remained Han Fei's friend and patron at the Qin court.
The Shiji has them as fellow students of Xunzi, then has Li Si argue for Han Fei's imprisonment and send the poison in 233 BC. That is the historian's charge, not a portrait of a lasting alliance.
Li Si personally designed the Chinese writing system.
He is credited with enforcing the Qin small-seal standard across the new commanderies. Clerks already had graphs. Standardisation is a political act, and it is not the invention of the script.
Takeaways
- Keep the outsider if the outsider is the skill you lack.
- Standardise script and measure before you trust a wide administration.
- A forged succession solves the week and eats the state.
Rivals and connections
Sources
- Sima Qian, Shiji 史记, ch. 87
- Sima Qian, Shiji 史记, Qin annals (burning and the succession)