Imagine living in an ancient society in which you are a successful, self-reliant craftsman—a carpenter, say—admired for your sturdy, useful products. Your diligence, skill, and integrity have won a demand for your services, ensuring that you have enough income to support your family. Your forebears were farmers and laborers, and most people in your society still work the land. Their lives are difficult, the threat of poverty and hunger never far off. But economic development and population growth have enabled you to make a decent living from your craft. You have even been fortunate enough to receive a rudimentary education, so that, unlike your ancestors, you can read and write, though haltingly. In your society, the class of partly literate, hardworking, urban middle-income people like yourself—artisans, merchants, teachers, civil servants—is growing rapidly. Unlike earlier times, there are real opportunities for advancement open to you and your peers in business, trade, government service, or the military.
Politically, though, you are nearly powerless. Your state, like others, is governed by a hereditary lord and his cronies. These aristocrats control the military, courts, and police, collect taxes, and provide limited public services—in the best cases, defense and security forces, public works, and famine relief. Fundamentally, you don’t object to rule by an elite few. It is the only system you know, and as a craftsman you think the best system of leadership, whether for a construction project or a community, is to put competent experts in charge. Long ago, people say, competent, honest leaders really did run things. The system worked, society flourished, and people were well-off. These days, however, many of those at the top are anything but effective and honest. They mismanage the government and economy. They appoint inept relatives and lackeys to run the courts and public works. Worst of all, many aristocrats are simply warmongering bullies who hardly care about building a stable, prosperous society. Infatuated with military glory, they dream of conquering the world and winning fame like that of the legendary kings of old. Heedless of the harm to people, property, and even their own interests, they raise massive armies and set off to plunder the treasure and enslave the residents of other lands...
You yourself have seen or heard of numerous states that were extinguished in unprovoked attacks, often at great cost to both sides in lives and wealth. Ultimately even the victors would have been better off had they never gone to war.
Beyond the direct costs of aggression, the rulers’ belligerent mentality percolates down through society, breeding a general atmosphere of selfishness and lawlessness. Not everyone disregards others, but enough people do that crime and disorder leave you deeply worried...
The self-centered aristocracy taxes their subjects heavily to fund lives of luxury for themselves. Among their most conspicuous displays of wealth are huge musical extravaganzas. A single massive set of bells for one of their court orchestras can be as large as a house and cost more than you and all your neighbors will earn in your lives. These shows are part of elaborate state ceremonies, over which preside another prominent elite group, who call themselves the Erudites. The Erudites wear peculiar, old-fashioned robes and hats, speak in a pretentious, archaic idiom, and spend their time studying ancient scrolls, practicing ceremonies and dances, and chanting poetry to music. Obsessed with ancient ways, they favor tradition over innovation. Despite fussing incessantly about virtue, they seem to do little to improve things. They claim, for instance, that a gentleman doesn’t take the initiative to dissuade his ruler from a bad policy. In any case, they hold, everything that happens is fated, so activism is pointless.
Even worse, as experts in funeral rites, the Erudites promote the wasteful custom of bizarrely protracted mourning rituals and extravagant burials. At the death of a lord of a state, the public treasury may be emptied to build an immense tomb filled with treasure, weapons, furniture, carts, and horses. Dozens of human victims might be sacrificed to accompany their deceased ruler in death. Under the prevailing custom of packing tombs with burial goods, even commoners’ deaths are likely to exhaust their families’ wealth. Meanwhile, mourners are expected to withdraw from normal life, live in a rough hut, sleep on the ground, wear thin, sackcloth robes, and eat only porridge, so that they appear suitably cold, hungry, weak, and miserable. The Erudites hold that such mourning practices should continue for more than two years after the death of a sovereign, parent, wife, or eldest son; one year after the death of uncles, brothers, or other sons; five months after the death of other close relatives; and several months for distant relatives.
These political and social circumstances would provoke frustration or outrage in many of us. But what would we do about them? What I have been describing was roughly the situation faced some twenty-five hundred years ago by residents of several of the “Central States” that were later united to form the Chinese empire. Many people reluctantly accepted the status quo and hoped a wise, virtuous leader might emerge to improve things. Confucius, China’s first great moral teacher and a leader among the Erudites, advocated a return to the ways of the glorious Zhou dynasty, whose decline precipitated the rampant interstate warfare. In the meantime, he is reported to have endorsed withdrawal from public service when the Dao 道一the right social, political, and moral Way—did not prevail in the world (LY 8.13). (Other remarks attributed to him, especially in later textual strata, suggest the early Erudites disagreed among themselves over whether to take up or avoid service in a corrupt government.) The writers of texts we now associate with the Daoist tradition— specifically, the Daodejing and the Zhuangzi—tended to recommend avoiding political activity and government service, if practical. Some went so far as to advocate leaving civil society behind and moving out to the wilderness.
By contrast, a charismatic artisan named Mo Di 墨翟, who lived in the middle of the fifth century B.C.E., thought the only defensible response to these problems was public activism. He condemned cruel, immoral rulers and customs, defended the interests of the poor and weak, and campaigned to reform society according to objective moral standards—as he saw it, the same sort of objective, reliable, publicly verifiable standards that a carpenter uses to saw a straight line or a wheelwright uses to shape a wheel. He traveled from state to state trying to persuade rulers and officials to adopt a platform of policies intended to end warfare, alleviate poverty, and promote the welfare of all. In the process, he became the first real philosopher in Chinese history, developing systematic ethical, political, and epistemological theories and giving clear, logical arguments to justify his views. A magnetic leader, he attracted a following that grew into one of the most influential social and intellectual movements in preimperial China. He and his school of followers—the Mohists—played a pivotal role in shaping and articulating the conceptual framework of early Chinese thought...
SOURCE: Fraser, Chris. 2016. The Philosophy of the Mòzĭ: The First Consequentialists. Columbia University Press.