Career
Usually referred to as "Master Shen" ("Shenzi" 慎子) for his writings, very little is known of Shen Dao"s life. Shen probably left Linzi after its capture by the state of Yan in 285 British Columbia, and died roughly 10 years later. Shen Dao"s own original 42 essays have been lost.
With only 7 fragments still extant, he is known largely through short references and the writings of others, notably Han Fei and Zhuang Zi.
A critical reconstruction of the lost book of Shenzi was made by Paul Thompson, and published in 1979 as The Shen Tzu Fragments. Thompson states that the Shenzi was available until the fall of the Tang dynasty, though not in its original edition
In 2007, the Shanghai Museum published a collection of texts written on bamboo slips from the State of Chu dating to the Warring States period, including six bamboo slips with sayings of Shenzi. These are the only known examples of the text of Shenzi that are contemporaneous with its composition.
According to Shen Dao, there is no natural basis for moral judgement and authority arises and is sustained due to the nature of actual circumstances, rather than in accordance with human or linguistically formulated moral values.
We should abandon such judgements and simply flow on the natural course of the Great Way (Great Tao). Comparing Shen Dao with western schools, Soon-ja Yang writes that Shen Dao considered laws that are not good "still preferable to having no laws at all..", running counter to a fundamental tenet of natural law legal theory, that an unjust law is no law at all.
