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Thesis Mozi was a consequentialist two thousand years before Bentham, and lost the argument the same way

Chen Yuting Fellow
· 5 replies
Moral theoriesChineseModern EuropeanConfucianismMohismUtilitarianismConfuciusJeremy BenthamMenciusMozi#consequentialism#impartial-care#mohism#partiality
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Where it stands

I read the later Mohist canons closely, so I live with this comparison. Here's the case.

Mozi, writing in the fifth century BCE, argued that the test of any doctrine or policy is whether it promotes benefit and removes harm for the whole world. He proposed three standards for judging a doctrine: its basis in the deeds of the ancient sage kings, its fit with what ordinary people have seen and heard, and its results when applied as policy, whether it benefits the state and the people. He attacked lavish funerals, expensive music and offensive war because they wasted resources and harmed the population. And at the centre was jian'ai, impartial care: concern for others' families and states as for one's own.

The Confucian response, most famously from Mencius, was that impartial care is psychologically impossible and morally corrosive: a man who cares for his father no more than for a stranger has, in effect, no father. That's essentially the objection later raised against utilitarianism, that impartiality destroys the special relationships that make a human life.

There's no documented transmission between Warring States China and eighteenth-century England. Yet the same form of argument appeared, met the same objection, and in China lost.

Thesis: Mozi was a consequentialist in every sense that matters, and his defeat by the Confucians anticipates the strongest objection to utilitarianism. (For translation, Ian Johnston's complete Mozi is the one to use.)

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5 replies

For the thesis 2

  1. Ethan Mercer

    For Fellow

    Consequentialism isn't the same as hedonism, though. Rightness determined by outcomes is the structure; what counts as a good outcome is a separate theory of value. Mozi has the structure and a different list of goods. As the resident sceptic in my effective altruism group, I find the Mencian objection eerily familiar: Bernard Williams's worry that a man who has to consult a principle before saving his own wife from drowning has had one thought too many. Different century, same complaint.

  2. Henrike Vogel

    For Fellow

    What interests me is less who was right than that it happened twice. If a consequentialist structure and its partiality objection both appear in Warring States China and again in modern Europe with no contact, that's evidence about the moral questions themselves: these are places reasoning tends to arrive. Teaching ethics, I'd have liked to show my students that pairing.

    Helpful · 3

Against the thesis 2

  1. Lin Pei-shan

    Against Fellow

    I'll push back on “every sense that matters”. Mohist benefit is not pleasure or individual welfare. It's measured in goods of the state: order rather than chaos, a populous population, sufficient wealth. And the Mohists ground the standard in the will of Heaven, which desires benefit for all. That looks less like Bentham and more like a theory in which Heaven's will and public benefit are the same thing. Consequentialist in structure, perhaps, but the resemblance to Bentham is thinner than your title suggests.

    Helpful · 3
    1. Chen Yuting

      Fellow

      Lin, I accept the point about Heaven, and the value list really is different. Some scholars call the Mohist view state consequentialism for exactly that reason. But Heaven's will is identified by its content: Heaven wants people to benefit one another. So the standard is still outcomes, and Heaven endorses rather than defines it. I'll narrow my thesis to the structure, as Ethan suggests.

      Helpful · 1
  2. Ji-woo Ryu

    Against Fellow

    Mencius's alternative deserves its own credit rather than just being the objection. Graded care starts with family and extends outward, the way ripples spread. It isn't partiality as selfishness; it's a theory of how real moral concern grows. Korean Confucians took that up for centuries. Whether Mozi “lost the argument” or lost the politics is another question, but the Confucian answer had real content.

    Helpful · 2