Following

the Dao
Week 4: The Mohists

Overview
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Housekeeping
Recap
Background to the Mohists
Jian ai (inclusive care)
Against fatalism
Back to the Analects

Housekeeping
First short paper due Friday, Oct 9
Submit on Moodle, using the link for your tutor

Overview
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Housekeeping
Recap
Background to the Mohists
Jian ai (inclusive care)
Against fatalism
Back to the Analects

Recap

Learning
Tradition
Self-cultivation
Weakness
Fate and fatalism
o Ming things that are out of our control
o Luck?
o Sometimes: just explaining why bad things happen to good people
(e.g., the death of Yan Hui)
o Sometime: dont worry about success, just worry about what kind of
person you are

Overview
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Housekeeping
Recap
Background to the Mohists
Jian ai (inclusive care)
Against fatalism
Back to the Analects

The Mohists
Associated with, presumably founded by, Mo Di ,
or Mozi
Seem to come from outside the elite culture that
Confucians valued and identified with
Portrayed in early texts as social and political
movement dedicated to changing things to benefit all
the worlds people
Argued against the values, practices, and privileges of
the officials and gentlemen of the world
In fact were the first in China to develop sustained
philosophical argument
o And later Mohists started developing theories about argumentation, even
logic

The core Mohist doctrines

Politics
o Promoting the worthy ( )
o Conforming upwards ( )

Caring for others

o Inclusive care ( )
o Against attack ( )

Moderation
o Moderation in use ( )
o Moderation in burial ( )
o Against music ( )

Religion
o The will of heaven ( )
o Illuminating ghosts ( )
o Against fate ( )

Mohist arguments
Most often the Mohists defend their doctrines by
appealing to what benefits the world
o Benefit (li ) included material well-being (food, clothes), peace,
and social (including family) virtue

This makes the Mohists similar to western

utilitarians
o In fact, the Mohists were probably the first in the world to develop a
utilitarian moral philosophy

Its essential to the Mohists that everyones

benefit counts
o Often they argue that the practices and privileges of the powerful
waste resources that would be better used feeding and clothing the
people

The Mohists reputation

The Mohists have quite a bad reputation in
traditional studies of Chinese philosophylargely
because that tradition is dominated by
Confucians
In their time, they were as important as the
Confucians, and in fact had a tremendous
influence on Confucian philosophy (including both
Mencius and Xunzi )

Overview
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Housekeeping
Recap
Background to the Mohists
Jian ai (inclusive care)
Against fatalism
Back to the Analects

Jian ai
Literally: caring for everybody
Very often misinterpreted to mean caring for
everybody equallyso that we feel about them
and treat them all the same
o In English, this misinterpretation is often signaled by the translation
universal love
o I use the translation inclusive care

This is obviously not what the Mohists meant

In particular, they obviously didnt mean that we
shouldnt care more for people in our families
than for strangersnotice all the things they say
about family

Family
For example: one of their arguments in favour of
caring more for other people is that it will
promote filial piety
In fact the Mohists consistently assume that
traditional family structures are fundamental to
social order
o E.g., notice in Book 37 (on fatalism) where they describe the
achievements of ancient sagesone of the things those sages did was
promote family virtues such as filial piety

Sowhatever jian ai meant for them, it didnt

mean we should care about or treat all other
people equally

Jian ai
So what did they mean? Mostly the following
o Do not harm others in order to benefit yourself or those close to you
(your family, friends, country)
o Perform your various social roles virtuouslyas a daughter or son,
husband or wife, subject or ruler
o Do your part to make sure that even the worst off have what they need

So: it does involve caring for everybody, but

doesnt really seem to involve caring for
everybody equally
What they oppose is people who entirely discount
the well-being of otherswho hate ( ) them or
exclude ( ) them from their care

Overview
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Housekeeping
Recap
Background to the Mohists
Jian ai (inclusive care)
Against fatalism
Back to the Analects

Gong Meng
From Mozi, Book 48:

Gongmengzi said, Poverty or wealth, a long or short life

these are arranged by tian, they cannot be reduced or
increased. He also said, The gentleman must learn. Master
Mozi said, To teach people to learn while holding that there is
fate is like telling them to cover up while throwing away their
hat.
Zixia says something very much like what Gong Meng says
here, in Analects 12.5 (which weve seen and will see again)
The argument that if you believe in fate youll have no
reason to work hard is very important for the Mohists

Confucians
From Mozi, Book 39 (Against Confucians):

They [Confucions] also insist that there is fate, arguing, A long or

short life, poverty or wealth, safety or danger, order or disorder--these inherently have tian ming, they cannot be reduced or increased.
Failure or success, reward or punishment, good or bad fortunethese
are fixed, people's wisdom and strength can do nothing about them.''
If the various officials trust this then they will be lazy with their
responsibilities. If the common people trust this, then they will be lazy
with their work. If [the officials] do not govern, there will be disorder. If
farmwork is lax, there will be poverty. This is the root of a poor and
disorderly government. And the Confucians take it to be the teaching
of dao. This is to rob the worlds people.

Against fate
The Mohists most extensive arguments about
fate are in Books 35 to 37 of the Mozi
These are like three different revisions of the
same basic line of argument
Well only look at Book 37, in which the argument
is set out quite clearly
You should certainly notice how much more
sophisticated the argumentation is here than it is
in the Analects!

The three standards

The books against fatalism are actually where the
Mohists go to the most trouble to make it explicit
how their argument is supposed to work
To begin with: before making a claim, you must
establish standards to assess what you say
o Their word is fa (standards, models)

The Mohists present three fa:

o Examination (in the other books, this is called finding the basis)
o Finding the source
o Application

The actions of the sages

The first standard (investigation): examine the actions of former
sages and great kings ( )
Contrast what happened when sages such as Yu, Tang, Wen, and Wu
ruled with what happened under wicked kings such as Jie and Zhou
o Under the sages, order prevailed
o Under the wicked kings, there was disorder

Why the difference? At those times, a generation had not passed

and the people had not been replaced, above they changed how
they governed and the people reformed their customs (
)
In other words: The world was ordered because of the efforts of
Tang and Wu. The world was disordered because of the crimes of Jie
and Zhou ( )
In other words: it wasnt fate, the outcomes depended on what the
rulers did

The actions of the sages

This is a fairly straightforward factual argument: if
you want to know whether fatalism is true, check
whether peoples efforts really do affect
outcomes
The Mohists focus on ancient rulersmaybe in
part because those rulers had so much power
For most of us, the success of our efforts depends
on getting other people to cooperate; if
everybody obeys the ruler, the ruler doesnt have
that problem

The eyes and ears

of the people
Nothing in the text explicitly appeals to the eyes
and ears of the people, the way the Mohists said
to find the source of a doctrine
One of the other books (Book 36) does do thisit
argues that no one has ever seen a thing of fate
or heard the sound of fate ( )
This sounds like its supposed to be another
factual argument. But who ever thought that fate
was the sort of thing you could see or hear?
This is actually kind of a tricky problem of
interpretation

Eyes and ears

The first part of Book 37 is about the actions of
the sage kings (examination); the last part is
about what happens when you make policy on
the basis of fatalism (application)
Maybe the part in the middle is supposed to be
somehow about the eyes and ears of the people
(finding the source)
This part of the text starts like this:

But now the fatalists, were they the sages and good people of the former
Three Dynasties, or were they the brutal and unworthy people of the
former Three Dynasties?
o That does sound like its about the source of the doctrine!

Eyes and ears

The subsequent argument comes in two parts:
1. It was the brutal and unworthy people who were
fatalists
o Wicked rulers blamed fate when they lost their states
o Greedy and lazy people blamed fate for their failures

What they said was not: I am weary and unworthy, I do not undertake my
work diligently. They also said: It is certainly my fate to be impoverished.

2. The sage kings criticised people who believed in

fate
o

The Mohists defend this view by quoting a series of texts which they
claim record the words of the sage kings

Eyes and ears

How does this appeal to what people see and hear?
Maybe the idea is that we all know from everyday
experience that people mostly appeal to fate in
order to find excuses for their own failings
How does this contribute to the argument against
fatalism?
One possibility: we dont want people to think we
are greedy or lazy, so we wont advocate fate
But does this really show that fatalism is false? Is
it really relevant who advocates a doctrine?

Application
The rest of the argument focuses on the question
of what happens if rulers make fatalism the basis
of their policy
They start by emphasising the hard work that is
required for good government, for farming, and
for weaving
They think being diligent must bring wealth and
not being diligent must bring poverty (
)
So: you wont do your work effectively if youre a
fatalist

Application
Why wont you work hard if you believe in fate?
Basic idea: if you dont think working hard will improve
the outcome, you wont have the motivation to work hard
Example: youre in a class where the grading seems
completely arbitrary, to the point where you dont think
working hard will get you a better grade
Example: you have a job where bonuses and promotions
depend on favouritism, not on how well you do your job
Example: you are born poor in a society in which it is
very hard for poor people to get ahead
In cases such as these, are you likely to do your best?

Application
Suppose the Mohists are right about this: people
who believe in fatalism are unlikely to do their
best
That does not really give us a reason to think that
fatalism is false
In fact the argument presupposes that fatalism is
false, since it assumes that hard work really will
lead to better outcomes
So what does the argument establish? That
fatalism is not only false, it is also dangerous; if
people are fatalists, that is not a small or
unimportant error

Overview
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.

Housekeeping
Recap
Background to the Mohists
Jian ai (inclusive care)
Against fatalism
Back to the Analects

Back to the Analects

The Mohists argue against all fatalists, but as
weve seen they identify Confucians in particular
as fatalists
They are often criticised for this, on the grounds
that Confucians were not really fatalists
Weve seen that there are some fatalist passages
in the Analectsbut very few

What to worry about

Howevereven though there is not much explicit
fatalism, we do find the attitude that you should
not worry how things work out for you, you should
just concentrate on your own character
We even saw one passage (2.21) in which
Confucius says that just by being a good person
you will exert an influence on government, even if
you have no official position
Does it follow that you can be totally satisfied with
yourself even if you are completely ineffective? If
you believe this, how motivated will you be to try
to be effective?

Perkins reading (again)

In the assigned secondary reading, Frank Perkins ends with an
interesting suggestion
A lot of what the Analects has to say about success and
failure and fate makes a lot of sense on a personal levela
lot of things really are out of our control, and often were
better off focusing on things that we can directly affect
And you can imagine Confucius counseling his followers this
way
But: once you raise these ideas to the status of a general
doctrine, it does start sounding like youre saying that people
shouldnt worry about contributing to society, they should
just worry about themselves
So: maybe the Mohist arguments that Confucians were
fatalists werent so far off after all