28. Ting Mien Lee on Mohism and Confucianism

An interview on the contrasting views of Mohists and Confucians on ethical duties and warfare.

• T.-M. Lee, “When Ru-Mo may not be ‘Confucians and Mohists’: The Meaning of Ru-Mo and Early Intellectual Taxonomy,” Oriens Extremus, 53 (2014), 111-38.

• T.-M. Lee, “Mozi as a Daoist Sage: An Intertextual Analysis of the Gongshu Anecdote,” in P. van Els and S. Queen (eds), Between History and Philosophy: Anecdotes in Early China (New York: 2017), 93-112.

• T.-M. Lee, “Ru-Mo and Kong-Mo in Late Imperial Confucian Controversy.” Oriens Extremus 57 (2020), 315-40.

• T.-M. Lee, “The Role of Mohism in Kang Youwei’s Arguments for His New-Text Theory of Confucianism,” Dao 19 (2020), 461-77.

• T.-M. Lee, “Yang Zhu and Mozi as Critics of Unification Warfare,” in The Many Lives of Yang Zhu: A Historical Overview (New York: 2022), 47-77.

• T.-M. Lee, “Can Confucianism Morally Justify the Just Hierarchies? Mohismt as An Alternative Solution,” Ethical Perspectives 29(2022), 439-53.

• T.-M. Lee, “Interstate Relational Ethics: Mengzi and Later Mohists in Dialogue,” Religions 14 (2023).

Note: this transcription was produced by automatic voice recognition software. It has been corrected by hand, but may still contain errors. We are very grateful to Tim Wittenborg for his production of the automated transcripts and for the efforts of a team of volunteer listeners who corrected the texts.

PA: It's great to have an expert to discuss with us this very interesting tradition of philosophy from the Warring States period, Mohism, which is based on this central text, the *Mozi*, which we'll talk about in a few minutes. But first, let me start with a more general question. What is the main contribution to our understanding of Chinese intellectual history that we get from Mohism? And in particular, what does it tell us about Confucian philosophy? So to put that the other way around, what would we not know about the Warring States philosophical scene if we didn't have the *Mozi*?

TML: That's a good question. First of all, some scholars would argue that there were actually only two schools of thought back into Warring States, which were Confucianism and Mohism. And according to Han Feizi, they were the two most dominant schools of thought at the time. So without knowing Mohism, it would be like we don't know the mainstream of thoughts back in the Warring States. And more importantly, according to many early texts, including the *Zhuangzi*, Mohism and Confucianism had intense debates with each other. So without knowing Mohism, we cannot really understand or fully understand what Confucianism is all about. It's pretty much like we are having a debate right now, while the audience can hear only my voice. So they probably cannot tell which parts of my statements disagree or disagree with you on. I think it's good for scholars in Confucian thoughts, study Mohism and vice versa.

PA: That's interesting that you say that some people would say that there's really only two parties to this debate: namely Confucianism and Mohism. Because people... (and in fact, this is how we're going to do it in the podcast), so we're treating Warring States philosophy as consisting of at least four traditions, because in addition to these two, you would also have Taoism and Legalism. So do you mean more like there's an ethical debate between the Confucians and the Mohists, and then there's some other stuff going on as well? Or how do you mean that exactly?

TML: Thank you very much for asking this question. That gives me an opportunity to clarify what I mean. Some people would argue that Taoism and Legalism, etc... are retrospective creations. Because if we accept the characterization of "school" as an organization or thinkers, who identified themselves with a certain trend of thought or intellectual tradition and at the same time they have master and disciple lineages, and if we accept this definition, then there were only Confucianism and Mohism, when we look back into the Warring States. This is what I mean.

PA: I see. So there are other texts floating around that are of a philosophical nature, but there's no well-constituted schools, as it were.

TML: And they also didn't identify themselves with Legalism or Taoism or something.

PA: Oh, right. 'Hi, I'm a Taoist.' Right. They didn't say that. Whereas people clearly did say, I'm a follower of Confucianism, or I belong to the Confucians. Okay, so let's dig into the similarities and dissimilarities then between these two schools, the Mohists and the Confucians. The most prominent disagreement, obviously, is this notion that we find in Mohism of 'inclusive care', which is in Chinese, *jiān ài*. I Probably didn't pronounce that very well.

TML: Pronunciation is great!

PA: Good. I keep trying to work on that. And there's a kind of backlash against that from Confucian authors. So Mengzi and Xunzi, for example, who basically say this is unrealistic because you're asking us to abandon our attitudes of care towards our intimates, right? So you're asking us to value complete strangers on the same level as, for example, our own mother and father, and this is ridiculous. Do you think that's a fair criticism at all?

TML: Yeah, indeed. We know the classic example of the disagreement between Confucianism and Mohism is Mengzi's critique of most *jiān'ài*, which is often translated as 'inclusive care.' And the popular interpretation of this criticism is that most inclusive care somehow violates the Confucian norm of filial piety. And the reason why Confucians care so much or promoted the value of filial piety because they believe this is the ground of benevolence or kindness, namely the moral values in general. So according to, once again, the popular interpretation of Mengzi's criticism of *jiān'ài*, most thesis of inclusive care is perverse because it basically undermines the foundation of ethical values in general. However, I don't find this to be a fair criticism, so I don't want to suggest that Mohism doesn't advocate for the value of inclusive care. But it's equally important to note that in the *jiān'ài* chapters of the book *Mozi*, the expression being frequently used is not *jiān'ài*, but rather *jiānxiāng'ài*, which means 'caring for each other mutually.' However, we sometimes in some occasions read in the book *Mozi* the expression of *jiān'ài* and *jiān'e'ài zhì*, which means 'care for all the people' or 'care for all impartially or inclusively.' However, we should notice that when the book *Mozi* uses the expression of *jiān'ài*, it usually applies to heaven or the sum of heaven - namely the king of the world. So I would say that the Mohist thesis of 'inclusive care' or 'impartial care' means that 'the sum of heaven should care for all inclusively or impartially.' However, in terms of feudal lords or their people or common people or their officials, most thinkers wouldn't advocate the idea that every individual like this should care for all inclusively. They would suggest them to take care for each other mutually. So this would be my answer to that question.

PA: Oh, that's really interesting. So that means that this idea that we have that the Mohists are giving a kind of almost utilitarian or consequentialist rule for how everyone should behave at all times: namely try to maximize benefit for all people on the earth or everyone under heaven. That is just a kind of unrealistic ideal given the historical situation because there's only one person who's in a position to do that: namely the emperor, or maybe we could say the most powerful leaders, because obviously we're in a time where there isn't really a unified empire. But once we get down to the level of normal people, what they'd be suggesting is something a lot closer to what the Confucians would suggest, namely, 'Well, look after each other.' Of course, that would start with your family and friends and the fellow villagers or whatever.

TML: Right, exactly.

PA: Okay. Yeah, I think that's historically more plausible. So that would mean that the Confucian recommendation to exercise benevolence (ren) and also to show filial piety (xiao) would be effectively in agreement with the Mohists. Is that right? Or is there still something dividing them, do you think?

TML: Yes. If we read the book of *Mozi*, we would notice that Mohists also advocate for filial piety. They would say that a criteria to judge whether a person is worthy or not is to see if this person is filial to their parents. The *Mozi* also states that if many people in the world do not take care of their parents, then the world will fall into chaos and disorder. So in that regard, I would say Mohism and filial piety, and they promote filial devotion to one's own parents. But if there is any difference between Confucianism and Mohism in terms of their idea of filial piety, I would say that for one thing, Mohism doesn't emphasize too much of the moral feeling or affection one holds towards their parents. And the other difference lies in the Mohist belief in ghosts and deities, which means they focus much more on ancestors instead of the living fathers or living parents. And this brings us to a fascinating question of what ancient people mean by filial piety. According to the *Book of Rites*, there are three domains of filial piety. One is that when your parents are still alive, you take care of them: you give them food, you take care of their feelings, emotions, etc. And when they pass away, you hold a proper funeral ceremony. And afterwards, you make sacrificial offerings to them because then they become ancestors: namely ghosts and deities, because ancient people believed that ancestors are either ghosts or deities. So you may notice that in the book of Mozi, much, much more emphasis is placed on ghosts and deities instead of fathers - living parents. So in this regard, I agree with Mencius' criticism of the Mohism, which is their inclusive care or their filial piety in a way gives little role to living fathers, which is true.

PA: Okay, that's really interesting. By the way, maybe I should just parenthetically mention that the person we've been calling Mengzi in the episodes so far, you're calling Mencius because that's like the kind of English name, which is fine. I just wanted to make sure the listeners know it's the same guy. Okay, so let's talk about one other potential source of conflicts between the Confucians and the Mohists, and this is their views on war. I think it's one of the most interesting things about Mohism. So they're extremely critical of the idea of starting wars. And you kind of get the impression that they're either saying, 'You should never fight wars', or they're saying, 'In some cases, you could fight wars, but these cases are so limited that it would almost never be justified to start a war.' Whereas with the Confucians, people often think that they were maybe even in favor of fighting wars, especially if the leader is virtuous and could export their virtue to another territory, then they should go for it, right? And so there seems to be a kind of conflict again between the two. Again, same question, really. Do you think that's right? Do you think the conflict between them is as clear as that?

TML: Yes, although we may have the impression that both of them promote the idea of kindness or benevolence and righteousness or justice, *Ren* and *Li*, both of them advocate these moral norms and apply these values in assessing whether a war is justified or not. But like you said, Mohism and Confucianism may have different standards in terms of deciding which war is justified or not. According to Mencius, if a ruler is benevolent, while another ruler is mistreating their people brutally, then launching a war to eradicate that terrible regime is justified, and it is a moral thing to do. However, most people would say, 'No. If heaven wants you to punish a state, it will send you clear signs, which are extreme disasters, such as water..., you will be having water freezing during summer, blood rains for several days, and sun shining during the night.' So without this signal sent by heaven, human beings cannot say, 'Okay, I'm a virtuous person, so I'm going to launch a righteous war and just war against a tyrant.' This is not going to be allowed by heaven. Most would argue so.

PA Yeah, that's kind of what I had in mind when I said on the one hand, they say, 'Well, in theory, there would be circumstances under which you could justifiably start a war.' But then when they actually tell you, 'Here's what the circumstances would have to be,' it would have to be something like it's in the morning and the sun is shining. So I guess unless you're in Scandinavia in the middle of summer, then you would never start a war, right? Okay, that's interesting. So there is maybe more, maybe not so much an issue of principle that's dividing the Confucians and the Mohists. They both agree that war is justifiable in theory. It's more that when they actually tell you how the theory works in practice, they give you different advice on when you would be able to start a war. Is that right?

TML: Say Confucians would say, 'It is the people who is going to decide whether or not they want to have their ruler or their regime to be overthrown.' However, in most theory, they would say that, 'Both other people and the states belong to heaven.' So it is the heaven who is going to decide which states can be eradicated. But usually most wouldn't allow any states to be totally eradicated because once again, their filial piety somehow contains more ancient meaning, which means 'ancestral worship'. So if one eradicates a state, which means cut off their worship for their ancestors, so this is not allowed and totally forbidden.

PA: Okay, that's interesting. So there's a theme running through a lot of what you've said, which is that you're reading Mohism as a... Maybe this is the wrong word, but the obvious word to use is that it's more of a religious philosophical perspective than we find in Confucianism. Let's go back to the *Mozi* itself, the actual book, because it's a very complicated text. So it has these sets of chapters where the same topic is discussed three times - the so-called triads. But it also has something we haven't talked about that much in the podcast so far, but will, which is the Mohist canons: the *Mojing*. And these, you were telling me before we started the interview that you tend to think that these so-called canons were produced in part because of a felt need to respond to the Confucians. So can you say more about that?

TML: Right. If we read the book *Mozi* and compare *Mozi* with other Confucian texts, we will see immediately that they share basically the same vocabularies. All of them would talk about caring for other people, filial piety, and also benevolence and righteousness, and so on and so forth. But however, what they mean by 'filial piety' or 'benevolence' and 'justice' are also quite different. So I think in order to clarify their stance, most scholars or most thinkers, they probably didn't have scholars back into warring states. *Mozi* authors composed - this is my hypothesis of course - they composed *Mozi* *Canons* to elaborate on the vocabularies they use to make their audience more aware of what they mean by those terminologies. For example, Mencius in some other early texts would argue that sometimes resorting to violence is a necessary evil or how to predict gen, it's convenience or convenient measure that people should take. Like the example we just mentioned earlier, if a ruler is treating his people in a terribly brutal way, then a benevolent person or righteous force can intervene. And usually, under normal circumstances, military intervention is forbidden. But in this situation, Mencius would argue that this is a moral and justified intervention, and they call this kind of intervention 'convenient measures'. But then like we also just discussed, most thinkers would say, 'Sorry, but this is not a right way to write intervention. This is not justified.' So they have to define what they mean by 'convenient measures', because then people would argue against Mohism saying that, 'How is this possible to have a moral philosophy, which allows no room for expedient measures, because sometimes we face moral dilemma. And when we are dealing with moral dilemma, we need to decide which value we are going to temporarily discard or put aside.' So most of them wouldn't go that far to argue that, 'Oh, we are not going to give any room to expedient measures.' Instead, they said, 'Okay, we accept this value, but let us define this value or redefine this value.' So they argue that by 'expedient measure', people mean that they are going to sacrifice something that is part of themselves. You cannot say that, 'Okay, I'm going to sacrifice some of my people to rescue the people of another state,' which doesn't make much sense to most thinkers. So this is one of the examples of their elaborations on the moral vocabularies they use. So in summary, I would say that they need this Mohist canon, this text, to show the people that although they share the same moral language, but by those terms, most thinkers have quite different definitions of those terminologies.

PA: So actually, in some ways, the canons are already kind of an early commentary on the core part of the *Mozi*, is that right? Yeah. Which is interesting because actually, there aren't that many commentaries on the *Mozi* as a whole. So I mean, if you take the core part of the *Mozi* - the first 39 chapters, and then the canons, so the *Mozi* as we have it - unlike the *Analects*, for example, of Kǒngzǐ, we don't have this long running commentary tradition that goes through the Han period and so on. Is that just because the Mohists lost out to the Confucians as an approach to moral philosophy?

TML: I probably forgot to mention this in our conversation earlier, that most philosophy is much more about how to convince the rulers of powerful states not to invade small states or weak states, while at the same time, they try to defend weak states against military aggressions. And this kind of moral theory somehow becomes irrelevant after the unification of the empire. I think that's one of the main reasons. Another reason is that a careful reading of the book *Mozi* would reveal that in their theory about what makes a king a sage King, or about what makes a government a good government, etc. They don't place emphasis on patriarchal system or clan-based system (zōngfǎ), which means that they wouldn't argue that a ruler or the heaven's mandate will be given to a ruler just because of his blood. They will give the position to a ruler who actually increase the benefits of the world or make concrete contribution to the well-being of mankind. I don't think this idea is going to be welcomed by emperors because they want to maintain the regime's stability and they want to pass on their throne to their sons. So I think this is another major reason why *Mozi* would disappear in Chinese history.

PA: So it's almost like Mozi, what they were saying was so relevant to the Warring States period that once the situation changed radically and you have the Han coming in and you have unification, it no longer speaks to their concerns. Whereas the Confucians who were these retrospective thinkers who looked back to the Zhou time - which was a time of unification - their ideas were actually even more relevant after their own time in a sense because they fit perfectly into the Han ideology or whatever you want to call it. Let's go even further now and talk a little bit about the contemporary relevance of Mo-ism: and I have a couple of questions for you about that. One is really staying with the theme of political interrelations because you've written about the relevance of this Mohist idea of inclusive care at the geopolitical level. I mean, before we were talking about ow would you relate to your own parents or in fact your dead ancestors who have become ghosts, right? But one might also think, well, perhaps one country could have an attitude of inclusive care towards other countries. Does that make sense?

TML: Yes. If we disregard or forget about the historical context of Mohism, I would find Mohism much more suitable... Of course, this is a controversial claim - I'm aware of this. It might be more suitable for contemporary situations because according to Mohism, every state should look after one another because all of the states or nations belong to heaven, although they never clearly define what they mean by 'heaven'. And they would fight self-defense to be the only justified military act. So in this regard, I would say Mohism aligns much more with our contemporary moral theories regarding warfare.

PA: Yeah. And it's not an anachronistic thing to say, right? Because as we saw, they were very interested in the question, for example, of whether one state should invade another state. So if you had Mohists sitting at the Security Council of the United Nations, they would say, 'No, this country should not invade this other country', pretty much in under any circumstances. Confucianism in contemporary scenario might sound very awkward then, because then they will say, 'Okay, this is a nice intervention because you are a benevolent state. You are treating your people well.' So it is okay that you go around to other states to take over those states and eradicate that one. This would sound very strange to contemporary ears, I would say.

PA: Yeah. Although in a way, the criterion they would then add, namely that the leaders of the states who are doing the invading have to be extremely virtuous. I mean, we don't usually think of political leaders as being extraordinarily virtuous, right? Okay. Let me ask one last question, which is pulling out to a more abstract or broad perspective. We've talked in previous episodes about Mohism as being a kind of consequentialism. And even given the caveat you gave us before that the idea of looking to the benefit of all under heaven is more the perspective of the emperor, let's say, than the perspective of an individual commoner, (like a Farmer). Still, it does seem to be a form of consequentialist ethics, right? So I'm wondering how you would compare it to other forms of consequentialism. Does it have something distinctive to say that's appealing within the kind of broad spectrum of consequentialist ethical theories?

TML: Yes. I think Mohism or Mohist Moral Theory can be characterized as a form of consequentialism. In the sense that they don't talk too much about moral feelings or self-cultivation. They measure one's moral value according to one's concrete contributions to the common good. In that regard, it is a form of consequentialism. And another thing is that what's nice about this form of consequentialism is that it doesn't have the problem of meritocracy. Although many scholars would apply meritocracy in interpreting most philosophy. But if we read the book Mo-zi, we would notice that the philosophy of Mo-zi emphasizes very much about caring for the vulnerable people or the people in need, including the states in need. In that regard, they wouldn't say that, 'Okay, you contribute more to the world, so you are the hero', or, 'You are more successful.' It's not as simple as that. Your contribution to the world includes your contribution to the people in need and the vulnerable group of people. So this is one thing I want to point out. And another thing is that this form of consequentialism emphasizes the devotion to heaven. So it has some religious undertone there. Although it focuses on the concrete contribution and using it as a standard to measure one's virtue. Not virtue, they also don't talk too much about the virtue to emphasize one's moral quality or contribution to the world. But at the same time, they consider this to be a duty. Because everyone, like I mentioned, belongs to heaven. And everyone belongs to heaven because the food we are eating every day is given by the natural world, which is heaven. So in this regard, everyone owes heaven. And that's why they have the duty to look after one another because heaven feeds everyone inclusively and impartially. So this is our duty as a being: being nurtured by heaven. So in this regard, Mohism is a form of consequentialism which emphasizes duty and also the duty towards two different vulnerable people. So I would say so.