The only problem I had with this book is that the title is too modest. Although ostensibly it is a study of the eponymous Chapter Nine of the Huainanzi, a text of syncretic origins dating from around 200 - 100 BCE, it's actual scope is much broader than that. In treating his topic, Ames covers a lot of territory, from metaphysics to textual analysis to comparative philosophy. This discussion is situated within a relatively seamless flow, so that an organismic Gestalt is formed, not unlike the kind that Ames attributes to the authors of the Huainanzi themselves in particular, and of traditional Chinese philosophy as a whole in general. In that sense, this is a work which demonstrates its point structurally as well as didactically.
The title of the book, "The Art of Rulership," refers to the ninth essay in the 2nd century BCE collection of syncretic writings called the Huainanzi. Though the collection is often overlooked and dismissed as derivative or redundant, Ames argues:
"…the originality and depth of the Huai Nan Tzu lie in its capacity for reconciling selected elements of conflicting ideologies and, out of this activity, constructing new philosophical theory. While the individual treatises certainly vary a great deal in orientation, there is a general spirit of eclecticism which pervades the text and gives it its unmistakable Han signature."
Though the text has long been regarded as a Legalist document, Ames argues that only its terminology creates that impression, even though this terminology is manipulated in ways quite unlike other Legalist materials. In fact, one of Ames's primary goals is to demonstrate and articulate Daoist and Confucian influences which inform the viewpoint expressed in the Art of Rulership.
Ames's approach is enthusiastically comparative, while remaining rigorously sensitive to socio-historical contexts. This is a difficult balance to maintain, but Ames does in fact seem to do so, and the result is an extremely rational, literate, and clear exploration of the subject text and its source tradition. It is balanced in the sense that it does not "de-historicize" or romanticize the text, but neither does it reduce the text to its historical component. The approach is clearly philosophical, and yet Ames is the rare philosopher who acknowledges the impact of social, cultural, linguistic, and historical contexts on even the most basic modes of philosophical response. Text and context are understood to go hand in hand, and Ames avoids emphasizing one at the expense of the other.
The book is rational in the sense that most of Ames's positions and claims are thoroughly and convincingly argued. He is, at least partially, targeting Western-trained philosophers, and is attempting to offer common vocabularies and paradigms to aid them in their approach to this alien material.
As already pointed out, a crucial concern of the book is to distinguish Confucian, Daoist, and Legalist strands in the syncretic philosophical discourses of the early Han period. Ames spends a great deal of time systematically analyzing five central and relatively ubiquitous philosophical terms, tracing their development in each of these three traditional modes. The five terms are: a) wuwei ("nonaction/doing nothing/acting naturally"); shi ("strategic advantage/political purchase"); fa ("penal law"); yongzhong ("utilizing the people"); and limin ("benefiting the people"). For instance, Ames discusses traditional Confucian and Daoist interpretations of the idea of weiwuwei or "action without action." He rightfully points out that, historically, the phrase occurs in the Analects (Lunyu) before it shows up in the Dao De Jing. This fact is often overlooked, and underscores the fact that the various Chinese philosophical traditions mostly worked with a common core of ancient notions, like dao ("the way"), wuwei, de ("virtuosity"), and so on. What distinguishes one tradition from another is not the terms they use, but rather their interpretation and manipulation of the terms. For this reason, Ames describes his book as an "exercise in conceptual reconstruction."
Some minor criticisms can be raised. There are places where Ames makes controversial claims without acknowledging the controversy. For instance, in his discussion of the notion of dao, Ames says:
"The constant tao is the Taoist epithet for the sum total of reality. It can be described as the ultimate metaphysical reality, the absolute, the unconditioned, the undifferentiated and holistic, the uncreated, the all-pervading, the ineffable. It is the process of becoming. It is the 'source' of the phenomenal world in an immanent rather than transcendent sense and in an ontological rather than a chronological sense."
This kind of claim sidesteps the ongoing discussion of the meaning of the term dao as it appears in the Daoist materials, particularly the Laozi. Chad Hansen, for instance, argues that the term should be understood linguistically, as a mode or realm or discourse. In fact, it is not clear that early Daoist thinking was metaphysical at all in the ways that Western trained philosophers are prone to seek.
Also, Ames sometimes seems to overgeneralize the distinctions between Chinese and Western thought, as he does when he argues that the development of Western thought takes place through abrupt, discontinuous bursts of innovation, while Chinese thinking evolves more gradually and therefore involves more reliance on tradition. But these very distinctions are found within Western thought itself, and within Chinese thought as well. For instance, according to the Christian scriptures, Jesus went out of his way not to appear to break completely from the existing Jewish law, and the early Greeks who composed the Christian scriptures wrote eponymously, attaching traditional names to treatises and doctrines. And there are those in the Chinese tradition, such as Wang Yangming or Xunzi, whose response to tradition is somewhat discontinuous. It is interesting that for both the Chinese and Greeks this apparent discontinuity is explained as reform, as returning to the original intention of the basic insight. In general, it isn't very easy or helpful to draw neat lines between traditions as complex and diverse as the ones under discussion here, though it is tempting, and though one could, admittedly, find examples of the distinctions if one looks hard enough.
Overall, the book is much more useful and interesting than the title might suggest. It is a thorough and provocative treatment of a broad range of ideas, with a comparative, evocative structure throughout. As Ames says, he wants to emulate his source material in inviting the reader to think, and to take the thought off in his or her own directions. This book is eminently successful in that regard.