Shen Buhai

Shen Buhai (Chinese: 申不害; c. 400 BC – c. 337 BC) was a Chinese bureaucrat who was the Chancellor of Han under Marquis Zhao of Han from 351 BC to 337 BC. Born in the State of Zheng, he was likely a minor official there. After Han conquered Zheng in 375 BC, he rose up in the ranks of the Han officialdom, diving up its territories and successfully reforming it. Not dealing in penal law, his administrative innovations would be taken into Chinese Legalistm by Han Fei, his most famous successor, and Shen Buhai's book most resembles the Han Feizi. Shen Buhai died of natural causes while in office.
Because the writings attributed to him appear to be pre-Han, Shen Buhai is credited with writing the Shenzi, which is concerned almost exclusively with the philosophy of governmental administration. Shen believed that the greatest threat to a ruler's power came from within, and unlike Han Fei, never preaches to his ministers about duty or loyalty, championing Shu (術 administrative methods/techniques). His "principle tenant" was (Xing-Ming 刑名). Representing equally applied checks against the power of officials, Xing-Ming seeks the right person for the job through the examination of skill, achievement and (more rarely) seniority.
Widely read in Han times, in comparison to the still-complete Han Feizi the Shenzi was listed as lost by the Liang dynasty (502-556), but reappears in the bibliographies of both Tang histories and in a library catalogue from 1700. It's fragments were re-assembled by Sinologist Herrlee G. Creel in Shen Pu-Hai: A Chinese Political Philosopher of the Fourth Century B. C.

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.

Earlier modern scholars suggested that Shen's legalism blended with Taoism. He used the term wu-wei to mean that the ruler, though vigilant, should not interfere with the duties of his ministers. But since the bul of the Tao Te Ching appears to have been composed later, it might therefore be assumed that Shen influenced the Tao Te Ching. Shen makes no reference to metaphysics. In Shen's usage, he believed that rulers maximized power by exercising it as little as possible, and encouraged rulers to limit their scope, leaving the details of administration to capable ministers.

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, despite continued use of his foundational ideas in administration (much of which, consisting of skill and report checking, would be unavoidable).

Shen Buhai was known for his cryptic writing style. He was credited with writing a now extinct two chapter text, the Shenzi (申子). During the Han Dynasty, the compilation was organized into two outer chapters, and six inner chapters, but the admeasurement might be different as time goes by. The last mention of this work occurred in 1616, some scholars believe his work did not survived. 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 in Qunshu Zhiyao, compiled in 631, and Yilin, compiled around 786.