Talk:Herrlee G. Creel

Creel article

Philosophy East and West: 1953-04: vol 3.1 FourLights (talk) 06:19, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

a brief pause

I am pausing to allow comment or objection to an increase of details.FourLights (talk) 09:32, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

Keep up the good work! Maybe add something from the reviews, not just "the best" or other vague praise, but comments on the argument or controversy. Maybe mention some colleagues? Up to you.ch (talk) 19:14, 22 February 2025 (UTC)

Hello. I probably could dig up some reviews if people think such commentary would fit somewhere here. Creel's Shen Buhai is unsurpassed because it is the only major study and translation of Shen Buhai. But I could draw up a critique.FourLights (talk) 19:35, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

FourLights, That would be very helpful! As you probably know, but just to be safe and for anyone else, Wikipedia offers frequent editors free access to Wikipedia Library. I imagine that searching for "Creel Herrlee" there would lead to reviews, probably full text. Likewise, Google Scholar, though probably not full texts unless you have access to a university library. Good hunting -- Creel was a controversial scholar who played an important role in the development of the field, so it will be a service to have a solid Wikipedia article.

The hard part is boiling the important points down to a sentence or two. Too many Wikipedia articles go on and on.

I have done and will continue parallell work on such articles, most recently Wilma Fairbank. ch (talk) 23:00, 26 February 2025 (UTC)

Shen Buhai blather

Modern scholarship in the west generally vindicates Creel's argument that Shen Buhai was not a Legalist, while considering Fajia a Han dynasty category. But Creel's argument was not as accepted in his own time. Professor Tao Jiang modernly argues that Fajia can still accurately describe these figures, but follows Creel in distinguishing the category from it's English term Legalism. Creel accepted Shang Yang as a Legalist.

• Michael Lowe criticized Creel's Shen Buhai for too much comparison to modern bureaucracy rather than ancient China. One positive reviewer considered such comparisons "sometimes forced or far-fetched".

• Creel argued that Shen Buhai was not compatible with Shang Yang and Han Fei. As with his rejection of Legalism, this was not accepted by contemporaries like Loewe or Benjamin I. Schwartz (1985), proffering their own counter arguments. However, Loewe still believed that Shen Buhai would have been a positive influence on the Qin dynasty compared with Shang Yang.

• Apart from Tao Jiang modernly, Creel's acceptance of Shang Yang as a Legalist was not accepted by Schwartz and subsequent scholarship. The category then went into academic decline.

• Some Chinese scholars still view Shen Buhai as based more in tactics and trickery, like the Han Feizi, than in administrative management. However, as someone who has reviewed his fragments, Korean scholar Soon-ja Yang still considered him more cooperative than Han Fei. (Tao Jiang)

• Because the term for the Confucian rectification of names only appears once in the Analects of Confucius, Creel argued that Shen Buhai should be credited with originating the idea, which was not accepted by scholarship. The Analects still reflect the idea more broadly, even if they don't make much use of the term.

• Loewe and Soon-Ja Yang more modernly argued that Shen Buhai was probably a more Confucian figure than Creel presents.

Hayford, Charles W. LJ: Library Journal. 4/15/1975, Vol. 100 Issue 8, p766. 2p Wallace Johnson. The American Political Science Review, Vol. 72, No. 1 (Mar., 1978), p. 216 FourLights (talk) 03:40, 27 February 2025 (UTC)

Creel disagreement

I have thought of a disagreement surrounding Creel, which you requested. But it surrounds translation of one or two passages of Shen Buhai. It took me awhile to understand the scholarship, and I'll have to collect the sources.FourLights (talk) 05:58, 11 February 2026 (UTC)