Fraser highlights an unattractive feature of Mohist ethics: the Mohists, while criticizing their Confucian contemporaries, restrict one’s pursuits to the most basic sorts of goods. Fraser suggests that the Mohists assume the perpetuity of scarce resources, which leads to a commitment to austerity, which in turn leads them to deny a plausible third way between austerity and excess. In their defence, I argue that the Mohists do not assume perpetuity of scarce resources but rather the hedonic treadmill. And instead of (...) begging the question by assuming austerity and then denying a moderate alternative to excess, the Mohists take the hedonic treadmill to preclude a principled stopgap between austerity and excess, leaving austerity as the only acceptable option. Finally, these dynamics illuminate a feature that should make us wary of parallels to Millian utilitarianism: the maximization principle of the latter is absent from Mohism, and this goes hand-in-hand with austerity. (shrink)

The Mencius contains several negative remarks about the Mohists and their doctrine of ‘universal love’ (jian’ai). However, little attention has been paid to whether Mencius’ descriptions of Mohism were accurate. Fortunately, there is a surviving record of the beliefs of Mozi in the text that bears his name. In this essay, I analyze this text and descriptions of Mohism from other early Chinese texts, and compare them to the criticisms of Mohism in the Mencius. Ultimately, I show that the image (...) of the Mohists as ones who promoted a doctrine that contradicted filial piety was inaccurate, and obscured the complexities of filial piety in the Warring States period. (shrink)

Abstract Kung?sun Lung's thesis on ?White Horse [is] not Horse? has been solved by A. C. Graham on the basis of a part/whole logic and by Chad Hansen on that and a ?mass?noun? hypothesis. We present it as a case of reducing White Horse to its two most telling marks and then, on the basis of the good Sense (instead of Reference) in a Negative Logic?the pragmatics of locating X as the remainder left over when all non?X's have been removed?show (...) how a stable hand, receiving an order for White Horse would scan first for Horse by removing all non?horse shapes and then for White by removing all colours except White. This way we can prove how indeed ?A request for White Horse cannot be satisfied by Black and Brown that fills an order for Horse... (because) to exclude some colour [in the second scan] is not the same as to exclude yet no colour [in the first scan].? No part/whole or mass?sum is presumed. The whole discussion is set in the context of shifting criteria for judging name from Confucius to Hsun?tzu. (shrink)

This Nietzschesque “genealogy of morals” presents the Confucian virtue of xin (trust and true) so basic to friendship as a civic virtue rooted among social equals. Among non-equals, a servant has to prove his trustworthiness but not yet vice versa. The script 信 ( xin ) tells of living up to one’s words. Yanxing 言行 (speech and action) describes actively keeping a verbal promise. The Agrarian school endorses xin as the primary virtue in its utopia of virtual equals. It knew (...) oral trust and had no use for written covenants. In debating Mencius, Gaozi kept to that earlier primacy granted public speech as tied to one’s social reputation. Mencius turned inward and elevated mind as the inner good of moral intent instead. In the Doctrine of the Mean , inner xin would expand outward into becoming the ultimate truth, the sincerity of Heaven and Earth. The essay ends on an aside on the case of the Cretan Liar. (shrink)

The attitude toward li 利 is often identified as a key difference between the Mencius 孟子 and the Mozi 墨子. A common view is that for the Mencius, rightness (yi 義) and li are incompatible; but for the Mozi they are not necessarily so. In this paper I argue that the Mencius and the Mozi are in broad agreement on the issue of li, and their attitudes toward li are not as different as may seem at first glance. If we (...) take a finer-grained understanding of li in two ways, namely the self-regarding li and the other-regarding li, then both the Mencius and the Mozi would criticize the former but encourage the latter. The term li in the Mencius has a range of meanings, and it is not clear whether the Mencius actually opposes all li-pursuing activities. Mencius would agree with Mozi that, at least in some cases, one is obligated to seek li for others. Furthermore, despite their criticism of self-regarding li, both Mencius and Mozi allow that in some cases it is morally permissible to act from the motive of self-regarding li, as long as this motive coexists with the motive of rightness. That is, self-regarding li and rightness are not always mutually exclusive, even for Mencius, who seems to be more critical of li. (shrink)