A Study Of Shangjunshu

Shangjunshu is an important document of Legalist School, reflected the main ideas of Shang Yang and his school. It had played a decisive role in the formation and development of the absolute monarchy system which had been lasting for more than 2,000 years, so, it is of a higher literature value and ideological value. This thesis carried out research just from two aspects of literature and ideology mainly.The part of literature research focused on the finished time and authenticity of the book, and the author and written time of each piece and other issues. Shangjunshu was finished in the late period of the Warring States Period, the upper limit of written time was not as early as 260 BC and the lower limit was when the Qin State had united China or so; the compiler might be the one from Shang Yang School. Later the book was collated by Liu Xiang personally to be a collection of 29 articles, named Shangjun, and was changed to be Shangjunshu in the Three Kingdoms, and Shangzi in Song Dynasty. Today 24 articles existed. Of Shangjunshu, the most was not written by Shang Yang himself, but was not counterfeited by the people after Qin Dynasty either. It was memories and creation written down by the subsequent people of Shang Yang School, which could be regarded as the collective one of Shang Yang School, has reflected the thought of this School faithfully, and also confirmed from related records of literature handed down for generations and unearthed documents, therefore should not come to a verdict of pseudo-book. According to clues such as time, events, figures, system, names, style of writing, viewpoints, and the relationship with other schools emerging in every piece, a preliminary conclusion could be made, that is: two articles of Kenling and Jingnei were most likely written by Shang Yang himself, but there are still some doubts, so I am afraid these two were not original articles; Zhanfa, Liben and Bingshou, these three military articles and other three of Kaisai, Nongzhan and Jinling, which have no obvious traces of forgery, are considered as the property of Shang Yang tentatively. These eight articles have reflected ideology of Shang Yang. Other pieces were written by the Legalists in the late Warring States Period, which inherited and developed Shang Yang's ideology, the written time is difficult to be ascertained, but sequence of written time approximately was like this: Suandi, Yiyan, Cuofa, Quqiang, Shuomin, Ruomin, Xiuquan, Shangxing, Shenfa, Huafce, Junchen, Laimin, Jinshi, Gengfa, and Dingfen. Among these articles, Gengfa and Dingfen were memories of Shang Yang School. But articles like Xiuquan, Quqiang, Ruomin, Huace, Jin shi, were mixed with ideological perspective different from Shang Yang's; perspective of others were not out of the scope of Shang Yang School.The part of ideological research mainly discriminated and criticized the view of history, law and social value of Shang Yang School. The historical view provided a basis for political reform, was of a very important position. But it did not make a positive value judgment which was "present should be better than past" for the changes of society, thus it was only a very common change view in the Warring States Period, rather than that view of advancement or evolutionism considered generally, it could be summarized as " legislating to the situation of the time". The view of law, which was opposite to the western concept of the rule of law, was the monarch-based authoritarian theory which regarded as a tool of ruling the people; Its "punishment off grade" view was very commendable, but not really the allegation of equality before the law; Its opinions such as open law, easy to understand, making officials and common people self-governing, were uncommon creation, but far from the nature of judicial independence; As for its "to be guilty of light crimes but heavy sentence for the purpose of canceling a certain criminal law", which have violated the principle of "crime matches punishment" completely, were the performance of ruler's cruel nature, without positive significance at all. The view of social value, which centered on farming war and aimed at making China annexation, was of historical legitimacy. But it did not respect people's will, did not care about people's happiness, struck industry and commerce and knowledge activities such as wisdom advocacy of the Book of Songs, Collection of Ancient Texts; it excluded moral, took the sense of kindness, justice, courtesy, happiness, loyalism, integrity, honesty, faith, shame, etc. for "country harm" and banned. It destroyed humanity, fooled people and made people enjoy war and killing by controlling all social resources and by means of reward and punishment, and turned people into the tool of war. Therefore, the social value was anti-human and anti-value one. The implementation of ideology of Shangjunshu laid foundation for Qin State's unification of China, but took no real progress to the society, on the contrary, brought grave disaster to the people.