| Shen Buhai |
Article Index for Shen |
Information AboutShen Buhai |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT SHEN BUHAI | |
| year of birth unknown | |
| 337 bc deaths | |
| chinese philosophers | |
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PHILOSOPHY Shen was chiefly concerned with government administration through the use of Bureaucracy . His system required a strong ruler at the center. Shen Buhai believed that the ideal ruler should remain distant from his officials, keeping his innermost thoughts secret and maintaining an independence of thought. According to Shen, the ruler needed to be the loneliest person in the world. To Shen Buhai, the greatest threat to a ruler's power came from within. He believed that threats from powerful, independent ministers to usurp power were more dangerous than threats from external forces. Shen championed the concept of ''Shu'' (術 administrative methods/techniques). Shen advocated for maintaining checks against the power of officials, and in equality among the officials. He touted the primacy of finding the right person for the job (''xingming'' 刑名). He evaluated officials based on skill, achievement and seniority. He also encouraged routine assessments of officials. Shen Buhai promulgated his own concept of Wu Wei , which caused some scholars to link him with Taoism . In Shen's case, he believed that rulers maximized power by exercising power as little as possible. He also encouraged rulers to limit their scope, leaving the details of administration to capable ministers. Some modern scholars argued that Shen's legalism was more a blend of Taoism and Legalism than just purely the conceptual ''Shu'' school of Legalism. HISTORIOGRAPHY Shen Buhai was criticized by both Confucians and Legalists. Unlike the Confucians, he never mentioned virtue; unlike the Shang Yang wing of the Legalists, he never mentioned Fa (Law). The Confucian Xun Zi strongly criticized Shen Buhai's emphasis on secrecy and lack of trust in ministers. The legalist Han Fei criticized Shen for paying too much attention to methodology at the expense of laws. Although Shen Buhai was later linked inseparably with the Legalists, it was Hanfei who merged the ideas of Shen Buhai with those of Shang Yang . In 141 BC , under the reign of Emperor Wu Of Han , Shen Buhai's name was listed with other legalist thinkers whose ideas were officially banned from the government; from that point on, scholarship on the ideas of Shen Buhai went into a steep decline. SHENZI Shen Buhai was known for his cryptic writing style. He was credited with writing a now extinct two chapter text, the ''Shenzi''. During the Han Dynasty, the compilation was organized into three chapters, and later six chapters. The last mention of this work occurred in 1616; this work has been lost since the seventeenth century. During the Qing Dynasty , three major attempts were made to reconstruct the contents of this work. The only traces of this work remain in surviving texts which quote from the ''Shenzi''. REFERENCES
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