Why was Legalism against Confucianism?
I’m going to make an attempt at this, because I think it’s an obscure enough question that you may not get a lot of answers. The two were competing schools of thought, and many influential confucianist scholars were also legalists. In fact, Confucianism has many elements of legalism built into it. The conflict was that the Qin ruling dynasty was ruthlessly totalitarian and suppressed early Confucianists, favoring beurocrats that had been trained in Legalist schools. The Confucianists believed more of a merit based approach to filling positions of authority and after the Qin were deposed, instituted a series of tests for government offices (which in some form remain until today). However, the strife was mostly political manuvering.
