versa 1 love possible in a world without family units. Finally, with regard to the point on gratitude, the Mohist would probably point out that if we love and are loved by others universally, then this sense of gratitude would be owed to anyone who is kind to us.
Can a Mohist social reconstruction ever be accomplished? Again, we have to see which form of love is more
natural
to human beings.According to Wong, love does not first begin
universally
and then movetoward particularity; instead, loves begins with
particularity
becauseit is the love which one has received since infanthood that gives one the ability to love or to care for others later in life.14 From this point of view, human beings naturally form family relations. When we have been
born into a particular family, have been taken care of by two particular people, have grown up with a few particular siblings, to renounce love with particularity would be to renounce our natural sentiments toward these people who are the closest to us. To deny this prioritization and to
denounce any distinction in our sentiments would turn us into
unloving
creatures. Hence, love with particularity is not just a sub-division of the universal love. Universal love is only possible through the extension of our natural love with particularity.
From this consideration based on our given social environment, we can say that partial love is the more natural sentiment for human be ings. However, Mozi was fully aware of the difficulty in teaching people to go against their natural sentiments. Hence, his other strategy was to appeal to humans' natural desire to benefit themselves, to make them see how beneficial it would be if everyone were able to love one another universally. He pointed out that "one who loves will be loved by others, and one who hates will be hated by others. ,, 15 By extension, if we can love others' parents, then others will also love our parents; if we can love others' countries, then people in other nations will also love our country. Ultimately, our own self-interest is best secured when we can love universally.
Mozi says:
Let us examine for a moment the way in which a filial son plans for the welfare of his parents. When a filial son plans for his parents, does he
Ancient Chinese Philosophy
wish others to love and benefit them, or does he wish others to hate and injure them? It stands to reason that he wishes others to love and benefit his parents. Now if I am a filial son, how do I go about accomplishing this? . . . Obviously, I must first make it a point to love and benefit other men's parents, so that they in return will love and benefit my parents. So if all of us are to be filial sons, can we set about it any other way than by first making a point of loving and benefiting other men's parents?16
Expanding on this comment, we can express Mozi's moral philosophy as being based on the following reasoning:
1 Our primary concern is our self-interest.
2 The most effective way of satisfying our self-interest is when others
are all working toward the same goal on our behalf.
3 But others are not going to work toward our self-interest unless they see that we are doing the same for them.
4 Therefore, we ought to benefit one another mutually.
5 But to be able to benefit one another mutually, we must develop mutual love for one another.
6 One who loves others will be loved by others; one who hates others
will be hated by others.
7 Therefore, we must develop universal love within ourselves.
We can see that in this reasoning, " universal love" is not the primary goal of Mohism; rather, it is seen as a means to an end. Mozi thought that the maximization of universal benefits can never be accomplished unless everyone is induced to love one another equally. At the same time, even though Mozi's ultimate goal was the overall benefit of the world, he understood that everyone is intrinsically a self-interested crea ture. Therefore, to induce people to adopt the mental frame of universal love, he appealed to individuals' self-interest to accomplish that goal. As Schwartz says, "Unless men can be induced to love all men universally, the general interests of mankind as a whole will never be realized. In the end, only universal love can enable individuals to identify their own interests with the interests of others.,,17 To argue that universal love, as a moral virtue, is
intrinsically good,
and to argue that it is valuable onlyas a means to an end, are different positions. If universal love only has an "instrumental value,,18 to Mozi's real goal, then once the instrumen tal value is lost, even Mozi himself would abandon this theory as well. It is thus no wonder that one of Mozi's contemporary philosophers,
Yang Zhu, with the same goal, promoted the theory of
selfish love
as away of obtaining universal benefits. Yang Zhu argued that if everyone is 1 14
Mozi (Mo Tzu)
intrinsically self-interested, when they all work toward their own self interest, society will benefit since society is simply the sum of individu als. In Mencius' time, Mohism and Yangism were the two rivalries that
challenged Confucianism from the perspective of
benefits.
It is no wonder that Mencius would often remark: Why does one need to discuss benefits? One should just focus on righteousness.
Next, we turn to Mozi's moral theory based on the consideration of benefits.