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Reading group: the Mozi’s three chapters on impartial caring (jian’ai), one a week

Chen Yuting Fellow
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Moral theoriesChineseConfucianismMohismMenciusMozi#consequentialism#impartial-care#mozi#reading-group
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The later Mohist canons get most of my attention, but I keep returning to the core chapters, the three on jian'ai, usually translated as “universal love” or, better, “impartial caring”. They are short, vigorous and argumentative, and they make the case that partiality toward one's own family and state is the root of social harm. Chris Fraser's study of the school calls the Mohists the first consequentialists; that characterisation is his, and we can test it as we read.

The three chapters are numbered 14, 15 and 16 in the received text. They are probably three versions of the same doctrine, preserved by different branches of the school, which is why they repeat each other and also why the differences are interesting.

Week 1. Chapter 14. The diagnosis: disorder arises because people do not care for each other impartially. Thieves care for their own household and not for others'.

Week 2. Chapter 15. The objection that impartial caring is too difficult, and Mozi's answer, which uses some memorable examples of rulers whose people did very hard things to please them.

Week 3. Chapter 16. The fullest version, with the thought experiment about choosing a guardian for your family, and the reply to the charge that impartiality is unfilial.

Translations: Ian Johnston's complete bilingual edition (2010) is ideal; Burton Watson's older selection includes part of this material. Keep in mind what the Mohists counted as benefit: wealth, order and population, not happiness. That makes them an unusual kind of consequentialist, if that is what they were.

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6 replies

  1. Liu Mingqiao

    Fellow

    Week 1. I expected a sermon and got an argument. The structure is almost medical: what is the illness, what is its cause, what removes the cause. Thieves steal because they care about their own house and not others; ministers plot against each other's families for the same reason; states attack states. If everyone regarded others' houses as their own, who would steal? It is simple, perhaps too simple, but I can see why Zhuangzi's book treats Mozi with grudging respect for his sincerity even while doubting anyone could live that way.

  2. Javier Ferrandis

    Fellow

    Week 2. The examples are wonderful for an economist. A king of Chu admired slim waists, so his courtiers starved themselves to the point of needing a wall to stand up. A lord of Yue admired bravery, and his soldiers rushed into fire. Mozi's point: preferences that look fixed are shaped by what is rewarded. If rulers rewarded impartial caring, people would find it no harder than starving for a waistline. That is a theory of preference formation, two millennia before economists took the question seriously.

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  3. Ji-woo Ryu

    Fellow

    Week 3. The guardian thought experiment is the strongest passage. You are going to war and may not return; to whom do you entrust your parents, wife and children: someone who cares impartially or someone who cares only for his own? Mozi says even those who reject impartiality in theory will choose the impartial guardian. It is a clever move because it uses your own partial concern for your family to argue for impartiality in others.

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    1. Lin Pei-shan

      Fellow

      On the unfilial charge in chapter 16: this is what Mencius later attacked, saying that Mozi's impartial caring amounts to having no father. Mozi's reply is reciprocal: if I care for other people's parents, they will care for mine, so impartiality serves filial piety. Mencius thought that missed the point. Love for one's parents is not a policy justified by its returns; it is where moral feeling begins and from where it extends.

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  4. Elif Yıldız

    Fellow

    A psychology footnote. Mozi's claim that people could care impartially if it were rewarded is an empirical claim, and the evidence is mixed. Concern for in-groups is very robust. But the circle of the in-group is surprisingly flexible, and it shifts with institutions and incentives. So Mozi was wrong that partiality could be abolished, and closer to right than Mencius that it could be widened by policy.

  5. Chen Yuting

    Fellow

    A note for anyone tempted to equate this with modern utilitarianism: some scholars have read jian'ai deontologically, as a duty rather than a policy justified by its results, and the texts can support more than one reading. What seems secure is the method: test doctrines by their effects on the people, alongside precedent and ordinary observation, which the Mohists set out as their three standards elsewhere in the book.

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