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Thesis Mencius was unfair to Mozi: impartial care does not mean having no father

Chen Yuting Fellow
· 5 replies · 236 views
Moral theoriesChineseConfucianismDaoismMohismMenciusMoziZhuangzi#impartial-care#jian-ai#mohist-confucian-debate#partiality
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Where it stands

I'm writing a dissertation on the Later Mohist canons, and I've grown tired of how Mohism is introduced: through Mencius's insult. Mencius says that Yang Zhu's "each for himself" means having no ruler, and Mozi's impartial care means having no father, and that people without father or ruler are beasts. Most students meet Mozi through that sentence and never recover.

My thesis: Mencius misrepresents the doctrine. Jian'ai, impartial caring, does not ask you to stop caring for your parents. It asks you to care for others' parents as well, and to stop treating partiality as a reason to harm outsiders.

The "Impartial Caring" chapters argue this directly. Suppose you're setting off to war and must entrust your parents, wife and children to someone. Would you choose a friend who is partial, who cares for his own above others, or one who is impartial, who cares for your family as for his own? Everyone, Mozi says, even the critics of impartiality, would choose the impartial friend. And a filial son should want others to care for his parents, which he best secures by caring for theirs.

Mencius's charge only works against a version of impartial care that the texts don't defend. The real disagreement is about whether graded love is the foundation of morality or a bias to be corrected. That's a serious dispute, and it deserves better than "beasts".

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5 replies

For the thesis 1

  1. Elif Yıldız

    For Fellow

    For, partly. I study psychology, and the war-friend argument is actually a clever experiment. It asks what people choose when they need someone trustworthy, rather than what they claim to believe. That said, the argument shows we prefer impartial people as guardians of our own family, which is still partiality on our side. Mozi uses our self-interest to argue for impartiality. I find that brilliant and slightly suspicious.

Against the thesis 2

  1. Lin Pei-shan

    Against Contributor

    Against. Mencius isn't attacking a straw man; he's attacking the ground of obligation. In another passage a Mohist named Yi Zhi says love has no gradations but its practice begins with one's parents. Mencius asks whether he really believes a man loves his brother's son exactly as much as his neighbour's baby. The point is that if the practice begins with parents, impartiality isn't the foundation after all. The foundation is the graded love Mencius was defending. Yi Zhi's answer concedes the case.

    Helpful · 3
  2. Ji-woo Park

    Against Fellow

    Against. Teaching in Seoul, I see what Confucians feared. A child raised by someone who cares for all children equally is raised by nobody in particular. Graded love isn't a bias in that sense. It's how anyone learns to love at all, and it is then extended outward: Mencius's own image is extending what you feel for your own to others. That's not "beasts"; it's a developmental claim, and I think it's true.

    Helpful · 1

Other replies

  1. Liu Jianguo

    Contributor

    Neither side, from a Zhuangzi reader. The last chapter of the Zhuangzi, which surveys the schools, is respectful of Mozi as a person, praising him as someone who truly cared for the world. But it says his way was too harsh: no singing, no elaborate funerals, endless toil, and that ordinary people could not bear it. That seems to me the fairest criticism anyone made: not that impartiality is wicked, but that Mozi asked human beings to be something they aren't.

    Helpful · 2
  2. Chen Yuting

    Fellow

    Lin, the Yi Zhi passage is the strongest point against me and I accept that Yi Zhi lost that exchange. But I'd still separate the doctrine from its weakest defender. Ji-woo's developmental claim is Mencius at his best, and it's the same objection still made to utilitarianism today. Revised thesis: Mencius's dismissal was unfair; his underlying objection was serious and, Liu is right, Zhuangzi stated it more fairly.

    Helpful · 3