Series on the History of Chinese Philosophy, Pt. 19
The Mohist Legacy and the Disputers of Names
From “Universal Love” to “The White Horse”
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Welcome to Part 19 of the series! The previous parts are here:
In this installment we’ll follow the philosophical line of thought from Mozi and his band of followers, down to the philosophers Hui Shi and Gongsun Long — who are associated with what’s become known as the “Disputers of Names,” or Míng Biàn [名 辩] school of thought.
Although Mohism (the school named after Mozi) and the Disputers of Names have traditionally been viewed as distinct intellectual lineages, it’s likely there was a philosophical thread connecting them, because there are some important overlaps in their approaches. We’ll connect those dots below…
Universal Love — A Plum for a Peach
In the previous installment we looked at the 10 Theses of Mohism. Probably the most well-known among them is the notion of “universal love” or, jianai. The Mohists thought the best way to ensure universal love was to do the opposite of what the Confucians taught. Instead of encouraging everyone’s devotion to their OWN families, Mozi and his followers thought people should first and foremost care for OTHER families fully.
The idea was based on a thoroughgoing concept of reciprocity. A passage from the Mozi illustrates:
those who desire to be filial to one another’s parents, if they have to choose (between whether they should love or hate others’ parents), had best first love and benefit others’ parents. Would any one suspect that all the filial sons are stupid and incorrigible (in loving their own parents)? We may again inquire about it. It is said in the “Da Ya” among the books of the ancient kings: “No idea is not given its due value; no virtue is not rewarded. When a peach is thrown to us, we would return with a plum.” This is to say whoever loves others will be loved and whoever hates others will be hated. It is then quite incomprehensible why people should object to universal love when they hear it. (Mozi Bk. 4, ch. 16)
The quoted line about peaches and plums comes from the Book of Odes (see Part 4) which was also one of Confucius’ favorite classics to reference. Psychologically speaking, it’s pretty sound advice… if you want to be likeable, start by liking others… if you want your family cared for, start by caring for other families
But, Mozi’s advice appears somewhat lacking if your hoping to build a moral philosophy out of it. Instead of positing the Confucian moral principle of “Not imposing on others what you would not have imposed on yourself,” Mozi’s principle sounds a little more like “If you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours.”
This isn’t the only place where Mozi differed from Confucius. Here’s a quick summary of some of the others:
The Fracturing of Mohism and the Rise of “Distinctions”
As Mohism developed, it appears to have splintered into three factions.
The Legalist text known as the Hanfeizi makes direct reference to the three factions and the Zhuangzi talks about how each group called the others “heretical.” We already saw the ways Mencius railed against Mohist ideas, and Xunzi likewise joined in on that criticism.
This later fracturing within the Mohist school is likely the source of the parts of the Book of Mozi known as the ‘Canons’, the ‘Canon commentaries’, and the ‘Major and Minor Illustrations.’ These develop a complex epistemology and logic built on the drawing of ‘distinctions,’ or biàn [ 辯], aimed at distinguishing the proper semantic relations between names (ming) and stuff (shi).
One example is the statement “killing robbers is not killing people.” As Chris Fraser states it:
The Mohists prohibited “killing people” (that is, murder) but enforced capital punishment against marauding robbers. Apparently, critics contended that this stance on capital punishment was inconsistent with prohibiting killing and, more important, with the core Mohist ethical doctrine of inclusive moral care for all. The Mohists responded with an analogical argument: just as “disliking there being many robbers is not disliking there being many people,” and “desiring there be no robbers is not desiring there be no people,” so too “caring about robbers is not caring about people, not-caring about robbers is not not-caring about people, and killing robber-people is not killing people.”
Whether these kinds of “distinctions” influenced — or were INFLUENCED BY — the logical paradoxes of the “Disputers of Names” is not manifestly clear. But, to later Confucians (like Xunzi) effective regulation of the use of names was pivotal to maintaining social and political order. Thus, Mohist dialectics was criticized and lampooned heavily from the Han onward.
A good example of this is the Ming dynasty folktale “The Wolf of Zhongshan,” which features a Mohist scholar (Dongguo) that was also lampooned in Zhuangzi’s 22nd chapter where we saw him talk about Dao being “in the piss and sh*t.” (see Part 14)
There are many versions of the story, but here’s my own re-telling which emphasizes how silly the Mohist three-part test for truth (whether or not a principle has precedent, evidence, and utility) must have appeared to philosophical rivals.
Once when Jian, lord of the Zhao, was out on a hunting expedition, his party crossed paths with an unusual creature — a grey wolf who could raise itself up on its hind legs and walk like a man. But, when they loosed their arrows, the wolf fled on all fours and escaped.
The hunting party gave chase, but the wolf was quick and cunning. As he fled, he happened upon a traveling Mohist scholar, Master Dongguo2, who was riding his donkey to town. The wolf said: “Please, fine sir, can you help me escape death at the hands of this hunting party?”
Being a Mohist, Master Dongguo took pity on the wolf and thought this a perfect opportunity to practice the principle of universal love, so he emptied the books from his knapsack and allowed the wolf to hide inside. When the hunting party arrived, Master Dongguo played dumb.
Once the hunting party had left, Master Dongguo opened the knapsack. The wolf climbed out and thanked him for his help. As Master Dongguo mounted his donkey to leave, the wolf stopped him: “When you hid me in your knapsack, did you not intend to save my life?”
“I did,” replied Master Donguo.
“Well, are you content to only do the job halfway? For I will surely starve, being this far from my home,” said the wolf.
“Well, I have no meat to offer you, unless you intend to deprive me of my donkey,” the Master exclaimed.
“No, no, donkey meat is no good,” replied the wolf, “but scholar meat is quite tasty!”
Master Dongguo cried out: “You would dare devour one who just saved your life?!”
“Since you’ve already ventured to save my life once, it makes sense that you should continue to do so,” the wolf answered.But, being a Mohist, Master Dongguo also wouldn’t do anything without first seeing its precedent, evidence, and applicability. So after much protesting he convinced the wolf to take their dispute to three elder judges. The first elder to whom they presented their argument was an old withering apricot tree, but it was bitter from how humankind had treated it for so many years: picking its fruits when young and now readying it for the axe… so it sided with the wolf (precedent). The second elder they petitioned was an aging water buffalo who had served her master faithfully for years, providing milk and toiling in the field until old age had taken its toll. Now that the buffalo was no longer useful, her master had summoned the butcher (utility). Because of such unfair treatment, the buffalo also sided with the wolf.
There was only one elder left — a decrepit old farmer — who had lost the ability to work in the field. After hearing their story, the farmer expressed incredulity:
“You mean to tell me, this wolf fit into that knapsack?! I don’t believe it. How can I decide your case if you present falsehoods?!” (evidence)
The wolf decided to demonstrate his honesty by climbing into the knapsack. But, when he had pulled the bag over his head, the farmer grabbed his pick axe and began beating the sack with all his might. When Master Dongguo opened the sack, he found the wolf nearly dead and felt an overwhelming sense of pity. As he considered nursing the wolf back to health, a woman ran in from the woods screaming, “There he is! That’s the wolf that ate my poor little boy!” Mr. Dongguo FINALLY saw things clearly. He took the pick axe from the old farmer’s hand and struck the final blow.
The Disputers of Names
As we saw back in Part 6, the traditional story for the origin of the Mingjia, or “School of Names,” identifies them as the court advisors who specialized in rhetoric and disputation. This is why this tradition is also sometimes called the “Rhetoricians” or the “Disputers of Names,” (Míng Biàn 名 辩 ).
We’ve just seen how the relation between object and name was at issue for the Mohists. It was also vital to the Confucian notion of the “rectification of names” (see Part 7). Zhuangzi even lampooned the relation in his famous second chapter (see Part 16). But, the Míng Biàn philosophers made it their MAIN topics of discourse.
Western scholars sometimes call these philosophers “sophists” because of the way their philosophical rivals criticized them for terminological hair-splitting in a fashion similar to the sophists of ancient Greece that Plato criticized.
Like most of the other “schools” of the Warring States period, Mingjia was not actually a systematic school of thought, but rather a designation for a handful of thinkers engaged in debates regarding the acquisition of knowledge and the distinction between language and reality (ming shi 名實).
We’ve already met one of its more prominent figures — Hui Shi — a friend of Zhuangzi’s and one of his most frequent interlocutors. In fact, most of Hui Shi’s biographical information is derived from the pages of the Zhuangzi.
If that account can be trusted, then Hui Shi lived from 380 to 305 BCE. After he died, Zhuangzi is reported to have said: “Since you died, Master Hui, I have had no material to work on. There’s no one I can talk to any more.”
It is believed that a book written by him or his followers once existed but is now lost. Many of his ideas, however, have been preserved in other works (besides the Zhuangzi) including: Xunzi, Hanfeizi, and the Lushi Chunqiu.
He is now most famous for 31 logical paradoxes. Here are just a few:
- What is without thickness cannot be piled up, but its size may extend over a thousand li.
- Heaven is as low as earth; mountains and lakes are level.
- The instant the sun is at its zenith it is declining. The instant a thing is born it is dying.
- I know the center of the world: it is north of Yen and south of Yue.
- Broadly love the things of the world; heaven and earth are one body.
- The arrow flies fast, but there are times when it neither advances nor rests.
It’s hard to know what to make of these statements. Scholars have been debating their meaning for centuries. Bryan Van Norden sums things up nicely:
the overall point of Hui Shi’s philosophy is that we should “indiscriminately care” for everyone and everything, because all spatial and qualitative distinctions among things are arbitrary and, hence, unjustified. Of course, this is just one way of understanding Hui Shi’s paradoxes and how they are related. Hui Shi is a fascinating figure but frustrating to study because we must guess what his arguments were. (p. 107–8)
But, perhaps the most notorious Míng Biàn thinker is Gongsun Long (c. 325–250 BCE), who became famous for his “Discourse on the White Horse” (Báima Lùn).
The statement under dispute in that dialogue is “A white horse is not a horse,” [白馬非馬] which seems self-contradictory at first blush. But, when one considers that there is no singular/plural distinction and no copulative verb in Chinese, then the statement may not be ridiculous. The word fēi [非] simply means negation (it depicts two wings in opposition), so reading it as “is not” in English might be misleading. Báimă fēi mă [白馬非馬] is intentionally ambiguous, so it could just as easily mean: “The phrase ‘white horse’ doesn’t mean “horse,” or “A white horse is not just any horse,” which is closer in meaning to English statement, “White horses aren’t all horses.”
In the Gongsun Longzi, a story is recounted of Kong Chuan, one of Confucius’ descendants, coming to study with Gongsun Long and asking him to give up the báimă fēi mă view. Gongsun Long replies by showing how even Confucius held a similar idea:
The King’s attendants asked to search for it. The King said, “Stop. A Chu person lost a bow. A Chu person will [eventually] find it. Why bother to look for it?” Confucius heard about it and said, “The King of Chu is benevolent and righteous but hasn’t yet followed all the way through. He should simply have said, ‘A person lost a bow, a person will find it,’ that’s all. Why must it be ‘Chu’?” In this way, Confucius took Chu people to be different from what’s called “people.” Now to approve of Confucius’s taking Chu people to be different from what’s called “people” but disapprove of my taking white horses to be different from what’s called “horses” is contradictory. (Gongsun Longzi 1.1/1/14–18)
Of course, this could be a reference to the Confucian ideal of rectifying names. We can even see how the Mohist idea of impartial care might have led to a similar point.
After all, MY father is not the same as ALL fathers — which should be the proper subject of moral consideration according to the Mohists — and that sentence has the same structure as: “A white horse is not the same as ALL horses.”
It’s unknown whether Gongsun Long was satirizing a Mohist doctrine, taking the Confucian rectification of names to its (il)logical conclusion, or seriously positing a point about the ambiguity of language. But, in any case, his “Discourse on the White Horse” has fascinated scholars for centuries.
Okay, that wraps up our jaunt into Mohist and Ming Bian thought. In Part 20 we’ll make a similar excursion into Legalism and military strategy when we discuss “the ministers of methods.”
Hope to see you there!
