Mo
Tzu (herafter Mozi, ca. 490-403 BC) was China’s first true philosopher. Mozi
pioneered the argumentative essay style, constructed the first normative and political
theories. He formulated a pragmatic theory of language that gave classical
Chinese philosophy its distinctive Character. Speculations about Mozi's origins
highlight the social mobility of the era. The "Warring States" demand
for scholars perhaps drew him from the lower ranks of craftsmen. Some stories
picture him as a military fortifications expert. His criticisms show that he
was intimately familiar with Confucianism.
Mohism
became highly influential as technical intelligence challenged traditional
priestcraft. Mencius (MENCIUS 371-289 BC) complained that the "words of
Mozi and Yang Zhu fill the social world." The Mohist movement eventually
spawned a school of philosophy of language (The Later Mohists) that shaped the
mature philosophies of both Daoism (CHUANG TZU or ZHUANGZI ca 360 BC) and
Confucianism (HSUN TZU or XUNZI 298-238 BC).
The
core Mohist texts have a deliberate argumentative style. It uses balanced
symmetry of expression and repetition that suggests it was intended for easy
memorization and popular effect. These are a natural stylistic aid, signaling
grammatical and logical structure, for an analytic language like Classical
Chinese which lacked part-of-speech inflections. The style suggests deliberate
authorship, but the reference to "The Master Mozi" confirms that
students probably transcribed polished orations into the artificial literary
written form.
The
craft explanation of the Mohist movement helps us understand the distinctive
character of disciplined philosophical thought in China. In Mohist analysis the
issue is which standards guide the execution of instructions. Mozi's moral and
linguistic reasoning and examples routinely appeal to measurement-like
operations. His grounds are best understood as an appeal to reliable standards for
fixing the reference of moral terms. Rather than a search for the ultimate
moral axiom, Mozi searches for a constant standard of moral
interpretation.
Mozi's
attack on commonsense traditionalism illustrates how it is inconstant.
Mozi tells a story of a tribe that kills and eats their first born sons. We
cannot, he observes, accept that this tradition is yimoral or
renbenevolent. This shows the error of treating tradition as
a standard for the application of such terms. So, he argues, we need some more
reliable standard for applying these terms and thus declaring which traditions
are moral and should be made constant.
Mozi's
search for a reliable standard links his Utilitarianism to his focus on tiannature:sky.
Tian was the traditional source of political authority ("the
mandate of heaven") that was "naturalized" in the philosophical
period. It was characterized by the changconstancy. Mozi
exploited its connotation of authority to argue for a non-traditional standard
of ethical choice. We can flee from a family, a society, even a kingdom, if we
do not like its way. We cannot similarly escape the constancies of nature.
Conveniently,
the constant natural urge he identified was one that he also thought could be
reliably measured—the distinction between benefit and harm. Thus he proposed
using that as the "uncontroversial" or universal standard to
determine which traditional practices count as 'moral' and 'benevolent'. The
will of tian, he says, is like a compass or a square. It does not depend
on a cultivated intuition or indoctrination.
The
moral reform of society takes place by reforming the social daoguiding
discourse. The discourse that society uses to educate people is
internalized and becomes their devirtuosity, their
disposition to moral behavior. Devirtuosity produces a course
of action in real time. Whether the course produced by discourse like
"When X do Y" is successful or not depends on what actors identify as
"X" and "not-X." For the sake of social coordination, we
train humans to make these distinctions in similar ways. The key way to reform
guiding discourse is to reform how we make distinctions, e.g. the distinction
between 'moral' and 'immoral'.
Mozi
understands the training process in several related ways. (1) we emphasize or
make a different set of distinctions the dominant ones--hence provide different
words for programming dispositions. For example, he says the ruler should use
the word jianuniversal and not the word biepartial.
We make the benefit-promoting names constant in our social discourse.
(2) We reform how we make the distinctions associated with terms which remain
the same. For example, we will assign different things to shiright
and feiwrong. (3) We can change the order of terms in the
guiding discourse--use it to give different advice.
Notice that Mozi's posture as a moral reformer puts him in an
argumentative bind that is related to one faced by Utilitarianism in the West.
He admits he is challenging existing judgments and intuitions. What is the
status of the principle he uses in proposing his alternative? How can he make
his alternative seems other than immoral to someone from within that tradition?
How can a moral reformer get over the impasse posed by conflicting moral
intuitions?
One
possibility emerges in another of Mozi's philosophical stories. He uses the
story to criticize Confucian pro-family and "partial" moral
attitudes. His story depicts a conscript leaving his family to make war. It
argues that if he were concerned about his family, he would want those to whom
he entrusts them to adopt an attitude of more universal concern. He would, Mozi
argues, not seek out a person with "partial" moral attitudes. The
family centered moral attitude is "inconstant" in the sense that it
leads him to prefer that shared social attitudes be more universal than
his own. He would achieve his "partial" goals only if the public morality
were altruistic. Confucian partiality is "inconstant" in that it
chooses its own rejection as a public daoguiding discourse.
Mozi's
analysis shows Chinese thought has a notion of morality as independent from
social conventions and history. However, it does not tie morality to the
familiar Western concept of "reason" nor of principles or maxims
which function within a belief-desire psychology. The psychological and
conceptual structure of Mozi's moral analysis treats human nature as social and
malleable. Human malleability derives from our tendency to learn, to mimic, to
seek support and approval from those we respect—our social superiors. It
derives also from the effect of language on "inner programming."
Mozi
promotes renhumanity as the appropriate utilitarian
disposition—the virtue of benevolence. He links it to his choice of universal
over partial "love." Mozi acknowledges that instilling universal
moral concern requires social reinforcement--official promotion and
encouragement. The system that brings this about is Mozi's social theory of shang-tongagreeing
with the superior. Here Mozi gives a familiar "hypothetical
choice" justification of a system of authority.
Mozi's
theory asks why we would choose ordered society over anarchy—the original state
of nature. His description is of a state of inefficiency and waste. Mozi sees
humans as naturally moral creatures who disagree. Prior to society, humans had
different yimorality. They end up in conflicts fueled by
moral judgments. They cannot agree on what is shiright and feiwrong.
It is clear, he says, that the bad situation arises from the absence of a zhangelder.
So [we] select a worthy man and name him tian-zinatural master.
He then selects others of worth and creates the governing hierarchy. It works
by harmonizing our yimorality, our use of shithis:right
and feinot-this:wrong. We report "up" what we see
as shithis:right and feinot-this:wrong; the
superior endorses it and then we all call shi what he calls shi.
Note
the absence of any concept of law or retributive punishment. People are
punished in Mozi's political world for failing to join in the utility
preserving system of coordinating our attitudes, but not for violations of
rules promulgated by the superior. All the superior "promulgates" is
moral judgments. What society gains is coordination of behavior through a
"constant" daoguiding discourse. Making the
judgment that something is shiright amounts to choosing it.
The
ruler does not have arbitrary discretion in his assignments of shi-feiright-wrong
and all humans have access to the natural measurement standard. Ultimately we
"conform upward" only when we correctly use the utility standard in
judgment. Still, agreement is itself a utilitarian good, so we report our
judgments up, and accept the unified judgment that comes down.
This
tension among standards for language use becomes explicit in Mozi's account of
three fameasurement standards for yanlanguage.
He lists first the model of past sage kings. Second, he observes the importance
of standards to which ordinary people have access "through their eyes and
ears." Clear, measurement-like standards can be applied by "even the
unskillful" with good results. He lists the pragmatic appeal to usefulness
third. While it anchors his reform spirit, he clearly recognizes the importance
of historical and traditional patterns in determining correct usage.
Mozi
applies his standards in a famous set of arguments concerning 'spirits' and
'fate'. He appeals to what the sage kings and old literature say, what people
in general say, using their "eyes and ears" and, most importantly,
what effects on behavior will result from saying "have spirits" vs.
"lack spirits" or "have fate" vs. "lack fate."
Mozi acknowledges that there may be no spirits. Still, he argues, the standards
of language all weigh in favor of saying 'have'. He characterizes his
conclusion as knowing the daoway of 'have-lack'. Knowing how
to deploy this distinction is knowing to say 'have' of spirits and 'lack' of
fate. We change the content of discourse via making the have-lack distinction
in a particular way.
Mohism
died out when the emerging imperial dynastic system promoted a Confucian
orthodoxy. Mozi's long term influence is controversial. Confucian histories
treat Mohism as a brief, inconsequential interlude of "Western Style
thought." However, his influence arguably shaped Confucian orthodoxy as
much as did Confucius. Mozi made classical Confucians defend their normative
theory philosophically and in doing so, they adopted his terms of analysis and
his key ethical attitudes. Paradoxically, the vehicle for the absorption of
Mohist ideas was his chief detractor, Mencius who effectively abandons traditionalism
and constructs a Confucian version of benevolence-based naturalism.
Daoism,
similarly, grew out of their relativistic analysis of the Confucian-Mohist
debate. Arguably, we owe to Mozi the fact that Chinese philosophy exists.
Without him, Confucianism might never have risen above "wise man"
sayings and Daoism might have languished as nothing more than a "Yellow
Emperor" cult.
Bibliography
Graham,
Angus. 1978 Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science (Hong Kong and
London: Chinese University Press) .
Hansen,
Chad. 1989 "Mozi: Language Utilitarianism: The Structure of Ethics in
Classical China," The Journal of Chinese Philosophy 16 pp. 355-380.
Hansen,
Chad. 1992 A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought (New York: Oxford
University Press)
Mei,
Y. P.. 1929 The Ethical and Political Works of Mo-tse (London: Arthur
Probsthain) .
Mei,
Y. P.. 1934 Mo-tse, the Neglected Rival of Confucius (London: Arthur
Probsthain) .