Austin Shin

Kate Monaghan

As the Zho dynasty (the last great Bronze Age dynasty) began to decline, and
iron started replacing bronze as the primary manufacturing material, Chinese
society saw a change in social infrastructure, wealth distribution, and quality of life.
What was initially a powerful aristocracy melted into collection of warring states
that became more autonomous and bureaucratic. They hired bureaucrats who could
read, write, and think critically about how to optimize state life while protecting the
state from bordering states. Of the many practical questions pondered by these
bureaucrats (who would later make up the class of Chinese philosophers), one of the
most persisting questions was how to lead a better life.
While many would later develop answers to that question, Mozi and
Confucius answer in a particularly contrasting way, especially with regard to a few
basic questions that would be controversial even today. First, what is goodness?
Confucius claims there isnt a definitive answer to that question. As noted When it
comes to being Good, defer to no one, not even your teacher (Confucius 15.36).
Mozi, on the other hand, assumes that the actions that directly benefit the most
people are good actions, The business of a benevolent person is to promote what is
beneficial to the world and eliminate what is harmful (Mozi 16). Second, is society
even capable of making good decisions? As we will later see, Confucius thinks so, but
Mozi believes that we must manipulate society to inspire good in people. Confucius
and Mozi take these basic premises for granted, and thus their philosophy diverges
here.

Given the respective assumptions of Mozi and Confucius, we can reconstruct
their philosophies and answer the question of how to lead a better life. I argue that
the fundamental difference in the two texts reveals the authors respective
assumptions about human nature. While Confucius believes that we can train
ourselves to become better human beings through deliberate rational thought, Mozi
believes it is necessary to impose social order, suggesting that he does not value
individual rational thought as a necessary component of leading a good life.
Throughout the text, Confucius comments on the role of rituals in daily life.
When people first learn a new ritual, they understand the purpose and the action of
that ritual. For example, when the blind Music Master Mian visits Kongzi, the Master
assists Mian and proclaims to Zizhang, this is indeed the way to assist a Music
Master. After learning from the Master, Zizhang understood one way in which he
can assist a music master (Confucius 15.42). At first glance, such an incident is
mundane and inconsequential, but now Zizhang will remember to assist the music
master in this way, remembering that he is blind and that careful attention to the
steps and seats must be made to ensure the music master gets to his destination
safely. However, as time passes and rituals like the one mentioned above are
engrained into memory, their purposes can be lost and the deliberate action and
attention paid to the rituals diminish.
Confucius warns of this: When we say, music, music, are we speaking
merely of bells and drums? (Confucius 17.11). Here, Confucius draws attention to
the first things one may think of when they think of musicthe instruments and
noises that are apparent in the music. But people dont listen to music to hear
noises. They listen to music to feel rhythm, appreciate harmonic and dynamic
contrast, and ultimately connect with aspects of the music that exist outside of the
physical sound waves of the noise. Appreciating these musical aspects requires
active listening to and appreciation for music as an art form. This is an example of a
ritual (the act of listening) that can diminish in significance because the listener
forgot to deliberately listen to the music. There is no absolute way to listen to the
music, except to pay close attention and think rationally about what is heard. But
Confucius suggests that by recognizing that meaning is lost in autonomous ritual,
one can reorient to goodness. As Zixia says, Learning broadly and firmly retaining
what one has learned, being incisive in ones questioning and able to reflect upon
what is near at handGoodness is to be found in this (Confucius 19.6). Although no
particular action is seen as good (in contrast to Mozis philosophy), the way in which
rituals are performed determines whether or not such actions are good. If Confucius
holds any optimism for the future of the human race, where goodness is entirely
dependent on the deliberation and rationality of people, he must believe in our
ability to be rational, thoughtful, and deliberate.
While Confucius emphasizes the importance of deliberation and rationality of
rituals, it appears that Mozi does not. To see why, it is important to note that Mozi
does give a vague definition of goodness, The business of a benevolent person is to
promote what is beneficial to the world and eliminate what is harmful (Mozi 16).
Although it is not clear as to what is beneficial to the world and what is harmful, it is
clear that whatever good is, Mozi believes it propels one to help the most people and
hurt the least people. He explicitly states that it is not only good to do this, but also
necessaryit is the business of such a benevolent person. For example, in the case
of economic systems, Mozi demonstrates a clear problem with economic systems
that foster competition for profit: Your Majesty says, How can my state be
profited? The Counselors say, How can my family be profited? The scholars and
commoners say, How can I be profited? Those above and those below mutually
compete for profit and the state is endangered (Mozi 1). Because the state is
endangered, such a system could not be good, even if many of the individuals are
thinking about how to make a profit. However, participating in deliberate, strategic
profit mining could be a good ritual from a Confucian perspective.
How Mozi attempts to fix this endangerment to the state is to provide a
different incentive to help other people: Now if we could just persuade the people
of the world to believe that ghosts and spirits can reward the worthy and punish the
wicked, then how could the world ever become disordered? (Mozi 31). If
implemented correctly, Mozis system would prevent disorder. If everyone feared
punishments from ghosts for doing things that are not beneficial to many people,
they would commit good deeds. However, this assumes that people blindly follow
the stories of superiors prophesizing that ghosts and spirits exist, and directly
opposes the Confucian assumption that people can think for themselves. In fact, if
such a system were to exist, it would require that everyone be irrational and
unreflective, since people who understood what was really going on would attempt
to persuade others of their knowledge. Mozi addresses another issue, mass murder
through war, with a similar position, Now suppose there is someone who does the
following: when they see a little black they say that it is black but when they see a lot
of black they say that it is white (Mozi 17). Such a statement describes Mozis
perspective on the naivety of so many peoplethat they are morally insensitive and
dependent. Since they can only see deviations from the norm, and not absolute
color or morality, they lack the ability to make their own judgments and act upon
them. As Mozi later suggests, the ideal situation would be a paramilitary group to act
on behalf of everyone else as a disincentive to attack any state.
That these two philosophers have such strikingly different approaches to
changing human nature for the better illuminates the difference between their
opinions of human rationality. On one hand, Confucius thinks we can change the
world by improving ourselves at an individual levelthe practice of deliberation.
Its quite an optimistic perspective. On the other hand, Mozi wishes to restructure
society so that such choices would be unnecessary. Although Mozis text does not
state that humans are incapable of rational thought, it seems highly unlikely that
large numbers of rational people could be tricked into following a social order. It
would seem that, if society had incentives to be a good person, then being a good
person would be easy and relatively normal. If that was the case, whats the purpose
of being good at all?