Shen Buhai (ca.400 BC – ca. 337 BC) was the chief minister of the small state of Han. The legalist philosopher Hanfeizi (280 BC- 233 BC), a member of the Han ruling family, regarded Shen Buhai and his approximate contemporaries Shang Yang and Shen Dao to be the three main sources of legalist philosophy. Biographical data from that era is scanty and unreliable, but I think that we may conclude that Shen Buhai was two or three generations older than Hanfeizi and that he left writings that Hanfeizi regarded as significant. Shen Buhai’s doctrines were important in the early Han dynasty and probably also earlier during the Qin dynasty, but after Han Wudi established Confucianism as the state religion, followers of Shen Buhai were barred from public office. Partly as a result, few of his writings survive.
At the time when the Daodejing was thought to have been written by Laozi around 500 BC, it was assumed that Shen Buhai and Shen Dao had borrowed Laozi’s ideas, but now that we think that the Daodejing was written and edited in stages between about 350 BC and about 250 BC, mutual influence or influence in the other direction seems more likely, and that is my assumption here. My sources is H.G. Creel’s 1974 edition of fragments by and about Shen Buhai, but many of these are doubtful and in the end I used only passages from the chapter 大體 “Major Principles”, ascribed to Shen Buhai in Wei Zheng’s 羣書治要 Qunshi Zhiyao of 631 AD, plus two others from Tang dynasty works.
Shen Buhai is almost always classified as a legalist. But these classifications, which were made a century or more after the fact and describe tendencies rather than real achools, do much more harm than good. The best known legalists, Shang Yang, Hanfeizi, and Li Si, were notorious for murderous cruelty, and since the works of Shen Dao and Shen Buhai were unknown for a long period, they came to share the others’ bad reputation. There’s no evidence of this ruthlessness in the works either of Shen Dao or Shen Buhai, and if their works in some way contributed to the development of the mild and benign Daodejing, there’s no real problem in that respect.
Shen Buhai and the Daodejing
I will begin with Creel’s texts and translations, highlighting key words and phrases and listing their appearances in the Daodejing.
Creel, SBH 1 (5), pp. 348-9:
大體:
故善為主者，倚於愚，立於不盈，設於不敢，藏於無事，竄端匿跡，示天下無為。
Therefore the skilled ruler avails himself of an appearance of stupidity 愚, establishes himself with insufficiency 不盈, places himself in a posture of timidity 不敢, and conceals himself in inaction 無事. He hides his motives and conceals his tracks. He shows the world that he does not act 無為…..
In the Daodejing:
無為: Chapters 2, 3, 38, 43, 47, 48, 57, 63, and 64.
無事: Chapters 48, 57, and 63, always paired with無為.
盈: Chapters 2, 4, 9, 15, 22, 39, 45.
愚: Chapters 20, 38, and 65.
不敢: Chapters 64, 67, 69.
Creel, SBH I(6) , p. 349:
大體:
名自正也，事自定也。是以有道者自名而正之，隨事而定之也。
Names rectify themselves 自正; affairs settle themselves 自定. Therefore, one who has the right method starts from names in order to rectify things, and acquiesces in affairs in order to settle them.
In the Daodejing:
正: Chapters 22, 37, 39, 45, and 57.
自正,自定, etc.: Chapters 32, 37, 57, and 73.
.
Hanfeizi, Chapter 5, 主道:
故虛靜以待令，令名自命也，令事自定也。
He waits, empty and still, letting names define themselves and letting affairs settle themselves.
NOTE: The word 自 is seen 33 times in the Daodejing, usually with a reflexive meaning (“See himself”, “display himself”, etc.) The instances I cite here specifically express the idea that rather than intervening directly, a wise ruler lets things settle themselves, an idea closely related to 無為 wuwei. In Hanfeizi and Shen Buhai wuwei merely means that the ruler lets the machinery of government do its work without personally taking a hand, whereas in the Daodejing the idea takes on a mystical aspect.
Creel, SBH I(9), pp. 351-2:
大體
鏡設精，無為而美惡自備；衡設平，無為而輕重自得. 凡因之道，身與公無事，無事而天下自極也。
The ruler is like a mirror, which merely reflects the light that comes to it, itself doing nothing 無為, and yet, because of its mere presence, beauty and ugliness present themselves to view. He is like a scale, which which merely establishes equilibrium, itself doing nothing; yet the mere fact that it remains in balance causes lightness and heaviness to discover themselves 自得. The ruler’s method is that of complete acquiescence. He merges his personal concerns with the public good, so that as an individual, he does not act 無事. He does not act, and yet as a result of his non-action the world brings itself to a state of complete order.
Creel, SBH 8-9, pp. 358-9:
天道無私, 是以恒正, 天道常正, 是以清明. 地道不作，是以常靜。常靜是以正方。舉事為之，乃有恒常之靜者，符信受令必行也
Heaven’s way has no private concern 無私; therefore it is always correct. Heaven’s way 天道 is constantly correct; therefore it is pure and bright 清明. Earth’s way is to refrain from taking the initiative; therefore it is always acquiescent 靜. Being always acquiescent, it is therefore correctly foursquare. The reason why a minister who practices it may set affairs in motion, while yet maintaining his condition of constant acquiescence, is that, before he acts, he receives the ruler’s order, authenticated by the matching of official tallies, which he necessarily carries out.
In the Daodejing:
私: Chapters 7 and 19.
清: Chapters 15, 39, and 45.
靜: Chapters 15, 16, 20, 37, 45, and 57.
.
Daodejing, Chapter 79:
天道無親 常與善人
The Way of Heaven has no kin; it’s always with the good man.
NOTE: 無親 and 無私 are both opposites of 公, impartiality and adherence to objective public standards. Nepotism and favoritism to relatives were at least as big a problem as individual selfishness in ancient China. Every Chinese philosopher had to deal with this problem, though the Confucian response depended so much on impossible individual purity of mind on the part of government ministers that for two millennia it was more an enabling factor than a solution.
Conclusions
In the 675 or so words of these passages from Shen Buhai, phrases of the 自定 form are seen four times (自名,自定,自備,自得), the word 正 is seen three times, phrase 無為 is seen three times, 靜 is seen three times, and 無事 three times. All of these are themes in Daodejing, and in the Daodejing they are usually found together, with most of their appearances clustered in nine chapters: chapters 2, 15, 22, 37, 39, 45, 48, 57, and 63. These chapters include every appearance in the Daodejing of the word 正, every appearance of the phrase 無事, and the majority (12 of 19 altogether) of the appearances of 靜, 無為, and the 自-X phrase I have described.
Before I looked at Shen Buhai I had already concluded that the cluster of themes 靜-清-盈-自正 (自定, etc.) was a subgroup within the Daodejing and that it was associated with the 無為 / 無事 group, as shown in the previous paragraph. Here I have shown that many of these themes are also present in these three rather short passages attributed to Shen Buhai. It’s also possible to show (using the http://ctext.org/ database) that the two major themes here, 無為 and 靜, are not age-old, but came into Chinese philosophy rather late. The word 靜 is seen more often in Zhuangzi or in Hanfeizi than in the Shi Jing, Shang Shu, Yi Jing, Confucius, Mozi, and Mencius all put together. The phrase 無為 is seen ten times in these older classics, but only once with the philosophical meaning seen in Shen Buhai and Daoism (in Book XV, 衛靈公 5, in a passage that is sometimes thought to be spurious). Elsewhere it is either a simple indicative — “I do nothing” — or an imperative — “Do not do….”
| Shi Jing, Shang Shu, Chou Yi, Lun Yu, Mozi, Mengzi | Zhuang Zi / Hanfeizi (Shang Yang none) | Nei Ye | Shen Buhai | Laozi | ||||
| 靜 | 28 all put together | 38 /34 | 12 | 4 / 3* | 6 | |||
| 無為 | 11, 10 with a different meaning | 70 / 21 | 0 | 5 / 3* | 9 |
* The former number is the number in the database, the latter is the number in the passages I used.
There is a twist, however. “Stillness” 靜 is also seen 12 times in the contemplative, non-political “Nei Ye” chapter of Guanzi (often rhymed with 清, 盈 and other words seen in the Daodejing and in Shen Buhai), and phrases of the type 自-X also appear 13 times in the “Nei Ye”. On the other hand, wuwei 無為 is not seen in the Nei Ye at all. What conclusions can we draw from all this?
The first is that 靜 (etc.) and 無為 are relatively late themes from the Hundred Schools period (approximately 350 BC-250 BC). Second, it is likely, though hardly certain, that the former theme came from contemplative groups, while the latter came from “legalists” involved in government affairs. Third, it seems probable that, as time passed, themes from each of the schools or tendencies were picked up, adapted, and developed by other schools and tendencies in a back-and-forth conversation, so that instead of isolated, independent discourses connected by a few causal “influence” relationships the complex network was developed, and within it was produced the Daodejing.
And last of all, there’s one more rather unfortunate possibility. A big part of my argument here depends on the assumption that the 675 words I’ve been working with really can be attributed (in some sense) to Shen Buhai, and especially the assumption that that they are prior, or at least contemporary to the Daodejing. If this is not the case, then the supposed Shen Buhai fragments are merely a few of the hundreds of later political appropriations of the Daodejing that we already knew about. I do not think that this is the case, but that possibility cannot be denied.
