believed Shen Dao intends to benefit the people indirectly, by preventing favoritism and abuse. Harris takes Shen Dao's reasoning as based more simply in the consequences of actions for the state than a 'normative morality', as found in Confucian and later Daoist texts. One of Shen Dao's fragments says that the ruler's position was established to benefit the state, rather than the state to benefit the ruler.

Shen Dao does still seem to have some moral grounding, and does claim that an orderly state will benefit the people, assuming that