The Shenzi Fragments: A Philosophical Analysis and Translation by Eirik Lang Harris (review)

The catalogue of the Former Han (206/202 BCE-9 CE) imperial library classified ten texts as belonging to the “Legalist” (fajia 法家) category in the Masters (zi 子) section. The second largest of these was the 42-chapters-long Shenzi 慎子, attributed to Shen Dao 慎到 (fl. ca. 300 BCE). The text and the author to whom the text is ascribed were relatively well known from the third century BCE on, prompting criticisms or endorsements by eminent thinkers such as Xunzi (荀子, ca. 310–230 BCE) and Han Fei 韓非 (d. 233 BCE). However, history was not kind to Shenzi: most of the book was lost between the Tang (618–907 CE) and Song (960–1279 CE) dynasties. In the nineteenth century, scholars started reconstructing the text from multiple fragments scattered through imperial compendia and encyclopedia from the pre-Song period. Nonetheless, ongoing debates over the authenticity of some of the Shenzi fragments, most notably over those forged by Shen Maoshang 慎懋賞 in 1579, discouraged in-depth engagement with this text in China and elsewhere.

In 1970, Paul M. Thompson completed his dissertation on the authenticity of Shenzi fragments. This dissertation and the subsequent monograph published by Oxford University Press (1979) became a milestone in Shenzi studies worldwide.¹ Yet Thompson was less interested in the text’s philosophical content, and his monograph even omitted the translation prepared back in 1970. As a result, his book remained of limited appeal to students and broader audience. In the almost forty years that have passed since Thompson’s study, Shenzi prompted just two articles in English (both by Soon-ja Yang),² in addition to a few scattered comments in broader publications. It has remained one of the least studied of the major texts of the so-called Hundred Schools of Thought.

This sad state of neglect has fortunately ended now with the publication of Eirik Harris’s study. Harris provides the reader exactly with what was missing from Thompson’s magnum opus, namely a careful translation of all the fragments deemed authentic by Thompson, coupled with in-depth study of the text’s philosophy and its impact. A lucid and generally accurate translation combined with a systematic, engaging, and highly original analysis of Shenzi’s thought and of its intellectual context ensure that Harris’s study will become a standard textbook for all those interested in this long neglected but highly significant early Chinese text.

Harris excels in analyzing Shenzi’s political philosophy. He laudably abandons the habitual reduction of Shenzi’s thought to a single overarching notion of “positional power” (shi 勢) and explores the text’s ideas in their full complexity. Of particular value for the current reviewer is Harris’s observation that Shenzi’s political theory is grounded in the authors’ sober understanding of human nature as intrinsically selfish and unchangeable. Rather than bettering humans, the ruler should build “a structure that provides incentives to these [self-interested YP] people to exercise their talents and abilities in the way that benefits the state” (p. 27). This observation permits very interesting parallels between ideas of Shenzi and those expressed in the Book of Lord Shang associated with Shang Yang 商鞅 (d. 338 BCE).³ It is also closely related to Han Fei’s view of society as driven purely by the forces of self-interest.⁴ The idea that the political system should be based on “the people as they actually are rather than … on how they ought to be” (p. 24) is arguably the major dividing line between the so-called Legalists and their Confucian opponents. In this respect, Harris’s analysis of Shen Dao’s views is a major contribution to the general research of Chinese political philosophy.

At times, Harris’s analysis, incisive as it is, misses certain important points in Shenzi’s thought. For instance, when discussing the notion of rulership, Harris fails to apprehend the critical importance of the ruler in...