PAPER ABSTRACT: Even among those working in the field of early Chinese philosophy, the name Shen Dao (c. 360 – c. 285 BCE) rarely calls to mind much of philosophical interest, and the longstanding lack of a detailed examination of Shen Dao’s philosophy is quite understandable given both our lack of knowledge about Shen Dao the person and the fragmentary nature of the received texts and sayings attributed to him. However, in light of recent textual work aimed at assessing and organizing these fragments, a close reading of this material rewards us with a picture of a political philosophy that is remarkably consistent, full of insight, and aids our understanding of a wide range of early Chinese philosophers who followed him.

In this talk, I will lay out some of the overarching themes to be found in the Shen Dao corpus. I show how Shen Dao begins with a conception of the natural world as objective, as following a set of regular, observable, and predictable patterns, and how and why he wishes to model the social and political realm on the objectivity of the natural world. In closing, I briefly sketch out ways in which his ideas can be brought to bear on a range of contemporary issues on political philosophy, from debates between situationalists and virtue theorists to discussions of the role of morality itself in political organization.