Introduction

There were direct reactions to the Confucian system. In particular, Mohism and Legalism, both members of the Six Schools of the Classic period, posed a challenge to the assumptions on which Confucianism was based.

The Text Mozi

The first reaction that we’ll consider is the "School of Mo" (墨家, mòjiā), created by followers of Mozi[1] (墨子, Mòzǐ; 470–391). The teachings of this school are found in the book Mozi, which was only relatively recently partially recovered. It was ‘lost’ or neglected after its decline as a living school and was only recovered as an antiquarian interest. The original text is known to have had 71 chapters, but only 53 are now extant. There are certain core chapters (8-39) that are thought to be an accurate enough representation of Mozi’s thought, and we’ll simply assume that Mozi speaks through them. On the other hand, we’re pretty sure that 1-7 (the epitomes), 40-45 (on logic), and 51-61 (on war) are additions from after Mo’s time: the doctrines in those chapters we’ll refer to as those of the later Mohists.

From this book we learn that Mozi explicitly rejected the teachings of the Confucians. In particular he denied (1) that the decaying society could be saved by a return to the supposed virtues of the former feudal nobility; and (2) that the degree of concern that one deserves from another depends upon the social relationship that exists between the two. It is often supposed that the fundamental reason for Mozi’s rejecting these ideas is that he was himself (unlike all other school founders) a commoner, and so had fewer illusions about the way the earlier society worked and less affection for a social hierarchy in which he would have been disadvantaged. Be that as it may, Mozi is very unusual in Chinese philosophy in that he actually argues for his positions, so we don’t have to pay much attention to this sort of speculation. (Perhaps this too is a consequence of his not belonging to a class trained in the classical literature – his writings are notoriously clunky, as if he was self-taught.)

The book describes 10 theses of Mohism in 10 triads of chapters (not all extant, unfortunately) from chapter 8 to 37. The triads are arranged in 5 pairs, in this order:

1.                    Exalting the Worthy (尚賢, shangxian) :                  The best people should have office

2.                    Exalting Unity (尚同, shangtong):                            Everyone ought to agree on what’s right

3.                    Universal Love (兼愛, jianai):                                    Love all equally

4.                    Against Warmongering (非攻, feigong):                 Shun aggressive war

5.                    Economy in Expenditures (節用, jieyong):              Prefer necessities and avoid luxuries

6.                    Economy in Funerals (節葬, jiezang):                       Avoid showy funerals

7.                    Heaven’s Will (天志, tianzhi):                                    Heaven will declare what is right

8.                    On Spirits (明鬼, minggui):                                         Believe in the spirits

9.                    Against Music (非樂, feiyue):                                   Music is a luxury best avoided

10.                 Against Fatalism (非命, feiming):                              Our destiny is our own to make

This is, however, probably not the best order in which to explain them. In what follows we’ll see how these theses can be seen as parts of a coherent philosophical system.

Models and Metaprinciples

We can start with motivations: Mozi’s principal concern – as it was for so many of the Chinese philosophers – was with finding a way to repair his damaged society and escape from the Hell of war and revolution that had been created by the collapse of the Zhōu dynasty. What this meant – according to the prevailing understanding of the culture – was discovering principles of behaviour that would lead to harmony in society. However, it’s important to keep in mind that (even for the Mohists) such principles were not supposed to be premisses in a syllogism of practical reasoning; instead, they were considered to be models (法, fǎ) of behaviour or templates to which behaviour could be compared. (Possibly inspired by the Mohist use of them, the idea of such fa became even more important in later schools such as the Legalists.) In the course of his search for appropriate principles Mozi determined that there were certain tests that any such principles would have to pass before they could be accepted. These ‘meta-principles’ were the following[1]:

1.                    It should be based on the deeds of the ancient sage-kings

2.                    It is to be confirmed by the senses of hearing and sight of the common people

3.                    It is to be applied by adopting it in government and observing its benefits to the country and the people

These metaprinciples are not intended to be criteria for the truth of a tested principle (remember the Chinese preference for utility:) they are intended to give guidance as to the acceptability of the behaviour that the principle describes. For a principle to be acceptable it could not be denied by any of these criteria.

The first of these principles is a standard appeal to the authority of the past, with the slight twist that Mozi leapfrogs the Zhou kings, and, skipping also over the Shang and Xia, went to the earliest possible. By this means he trumps the Confucians, whose entire system was predicated on the authority of their Zhou exemplars. The second principle is a bit vague, but it appears to mean little more than that the proposed principle should not violate the common sense of the people or declare things to be the case which they can’t credit.

Consequentialist Ethics

Of these metaprinciples, however, the last is the most important and interesting. It marks Mozi out as a very early consequentialist, who would claim that a principle is right to be followed only if that principle, when followed, resulted in benefits to the society as a whole. With just a few modifications here and there, that could easily be a statement of ‘Rule Utilitarianism’ such as J. S. Mill is said to have propounded and that is still influential. (Most people are some kind of Utilitarian today, even if they’ve never heard the term.) The first implication of this doctrine to note is that Mozi, again unlike most Chinese philosophers, is not principally interested in developing the moral character of a person. A thing is good or bad depending on the actual results and does not depend on the motivation of the person doing it. Good intentions count for nothing.

Utilitarians, of course, phrased their principle in terms of the greatest happiness of the greatest number, and the meaning of ‘happiness’ was (at least originally) taken to mean little more than pleasure. Mozi’s rule, on the other hand speaks of ‘benefits’ (利, lì) – and by benefits he means a range of things not very clearly specified, but including material wealth, a large population or family, and social order. These are fairly basic material goods, and Mozi goes on to inveigh against lavish expenditures, excessive funeral rites and even music (in theses 5, 6, and 9,) because money spent on these things would result in more ‘benefits’ if spent elsewhere. The general impression that one gets is that the list of ‘justifiable’ goods in society is pretty short and unexciting. A similar result has long been an embarrasment for Utilitarians in the West, but it was embraced by Mozi. Since a society run according to these principles would quite obviously be a spiritually impoverished, brutal thing, it did not appeal to many people as an ideal to which to aspire, and this probably contributed to the quick disappearance of Mohism. This fault wasn’t immediately apparent, however, and the ideal of benefiting the people at first seemed wholly admirable – especially given the contemporary chaos.

One of the most curious consequences of the Mohist doctrine was that, since aggressive warfare waged by irresponsible rulers was obviously a drain on resources, and a burden and a curse to the people (see thesis 4,) it was determined that Mohists should oppose it wherever they could. To that end, they did more than just protest: they actively assisted in the defence of small, victimised states. They were able to do this effectively because the Mohists organized as militias and behaved as a corps of knights-errant. This fact, and their apparent military and strategic prowess, has suggested that the Mohists drew a good deal of their support from a class of former knights who had been made free of their feudal ties in the chaos of those times and were looking for a new role in society for their old skills.

Universal Love

Oddly enough for a soldier’s creed, however, Mohism is best known for its championing of ‘universal love’. This is Mozi’s third thesis, though the meaning of the phrase is controversial and is probably better translated as ‘impartial concern.’ In proposing this as a principle, Mozi was directly arguing against the the discriminating and partial concern of the Confucians, and his argument is perfectly straightforward: he puts their principle of partiality to the benefit test, and finds it wanting, and concludes that the principle of impartiality is therefore to be preferred. Thus, looking at the disasters and misfortunes of the world he asks:

When we come to think about the cause of all these calamities, how have they arisen? Have they arisen out of love of others and benefiting others? Of course we should say no. We should say they have arisen out of hate of others and injuring others. If we should classify one by one all those who hate others and injure others, should we find them to be universal in love or partial? Of course we should say they are partial. Now, since partiality against one another is the cause of the major calamities in the empire, then partiality is wrong.[1]

It’s easy to get a bit carried away by the ‘love’ thing though. Other passages in Mozi indicate that he should be understood as saying that we should consider the interests of others to be as important as our own, and if we treat them that way then all of society will benefit. Yet other passages indicate that the only requirement is that we refrain from harming others to the degree that we would have others refrain from harming ourselves or those closest to us. In either case, it is a cold calculation, not an emotional state, that should drive this behaviour.

The Will of Heaven

But why would anyone obey a principle that is justified as being for the benefit of society in general but not of themselves in particular? If people are going to act to pursue benefits, isn’t it more reasonable that they should act to pursue benefits for themselves rather than for others? One obvious answer is that if society as a whole benefits then the individual as a member of society will benefit, and this will act as a motivation for the individual to act appropriately. But this answer is not convincing, because it is not necessarily true: it might well be that more often than not the rational thing to do is to act selfishly and let others be altruists. This is the age old problem of the free rider, the prisoner’s dilemma, the tragedy of the commons, etc.

Mozi, however, would have had a better answer. He argues[1] (for thesis 7) that Heaven and the spirits exist and have an interest in our behaving according to the Mohist recommendations – presumably because Heaven wants mankind to be benefitted, and the Mohist recommendations are the only way to benefit mankind as a whole. Those who obey the rational law of the Universe will be rewarded by Heaven and those who don’t will be punished. Therefore, everyone also has a selfish interest in acting ‘altruistically’. It’s a scheme that we’re familiar with from our own history, but with respect to Chinese philosophy it is yet another very unusual feature of the Mohist system. (It’s also a bit out of place there, because this is apparently a principle that ‘justifies’ a metaprinciple – which is why it is sometimes considered to be a metaprinciple itself.) In fact, it was one of his main complaints against the Confucians that, even when they were prepared to believe that there were such things as Heaven and the spirits, they didn’t think it was possible to know what they wanted, and so we should pay no attention to such things in our search for the proper Tao.

Actually, many have thought that a better way to state what thesis 7 is saying might be to say that Mozi gives arguments that can be used to convince others to believe in Heaven. He may not actually believe in Heaven himself, but he thinks that it is beneficial for others to do so. Thus in  ‘Heaven’s Will II’ we read that

If the fact that ghosts and spirits reward the worthy and punish the evil can be made a cornerstone of policy in the state and impressed upon the common people, it will provide a means to bring order to the state and benefit to the people.

This would be in line with the Chinese preference for valuing propositions by their ‘utility’. On the other hand, one of Mozi’s criticisms of the Confucians was that they were enthusiastic, even excessive, practitioners of the rites, without actually believing in Heaven and the spirits. The Confucians thought that performing the rites showed a proper respect for the ancestral traditions, and was therefore socially useful whether or not there were spirits. But if his attitude towards Heaven was actually the same then his criticism would seem a little odd.

Another criticism that Mozi makes of the Confucians is that they encourage the idea that one’s fate was  predetermined, which led to resignation and failure to strive on the part of the people. Mozi seems to have believed to the contrary, that a man’s fate was to be shaped by a man’s efforts; that Heaven might guide, but it did not control directly. We can see Heaven’s light hand at work with Mozi’s explanation of how it is that he had become sick, though sickness is a punishment from Heaven for bad behaviour and yet Mozi had not misbehaved. He said[2]

Though I am sick how (does it follow that the ghosts and spirits) should be unintelligent? There are many ways by which a man can contract diseases. Some are affected by climate, some by fatigue. If there are a hundred gates and only one of them is closed, how is it that the burglar should not be able to get in?

This is simply saying that Heaven is a sufficient but not a necessary cause for blessings or curses in life, and it does not adversely affect Heaven’s ability to discourage people from pursuing only their own interests.

The Absolutist State

Mozi, in any case, does not appear to believe just that people will simply act in their own perceived best interests. What he seems to believe is that people naturally have diverse interests, and that these interests may conflict. This, he thinks, has consequences for the kind of political organization that is best suited to bringing benefits to the country and people. He argues (see theses 1 and 2,) in much the same way that Hobbes does (in Leviathan,) that a single ruler is required to deliver us from the discord of a ‘State of Nature ’:

Mozi said: In the beginning of human life, when there was yet no law and government, the custom was "everybody according to his own idea." … and so arose mutual disapproval among men. … The disorder in the (human) world could be compared to that among birds and beasts.[1]

Yet all this disorder was due to the want of a ruler. Therefore (Heaven) chose the virtuous in the world and crowned him emperor.[2]

The function of this wise ruler is to determine what the true interests of the people are. He then delivers to them a single set of values which they are obliged to adopt. Naturally this correct set of values will be those of the Mohists, since the wise ruler is wise enough to agree with God on that. The obligation of the people to obey this ruler probably arises from the manner of his selection, which, however, seems to be undecided as between divine selection (as in the passage just quoted), or selection by the mass of the people. In either case the obligation is said to be absolute.

Conclusion

Mozi’s system did not survive the classic age. The reasons are probably many: the eventual realisation of aridity of the ideal he aimed at, the failure to acknowledge the familial preferences of Chinese society, the decline in the class of functional knights with unification, the poor nature of the text perhaps, etc. However, in the times of its popularity it inspired reactions from the other schools who adopted some of its more attractive and digestible doctrines – thus making the need for a revolutionary change less. This was particularly the case with the Confucians, who were directly challenged by the Mohists and emerged both stronger and more subtle from the confrontation.