Abstract
Mozi 墨子 is repeatedly named by Xunzi as an important opponent. In fact, aspects of Xunzi’s own thinking appear to be shaped by a felt need to respond to Mozi’s ideas. This chapter examines Xunzi’s arguments in response to the latter’s critique of Confucian ritual and music, and beyond that, the Mohist doctrine of frugality. Xunzi argues that Mohist frugality is founded on a mistaken belief about the natural world. He further argues that Mohist frugality is counterproductive with respect to the Mohists’ own goal to promote order in the world. In contrast, Confucian proposals are more effective in securing the same goal. As the paper will show, Xunzi’s discussion of Mozi is marked both by opposition to the latter and also many crucial points of concurrence.
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- 1.
See Sect. 2 below for an overview of the elements in Mohism that relate to the dialectic between Xunzi and Mozi. On the Mohist school, see Knoblock and Riegel 2013: 7–14 and Johnston 2010: xxii–xxv. An ancient tradition has it that Mozi studied with Confucian teachers but eventually “regarded their rituals to be worrisome and inappropriate” and so rejected them ( Huainanzi 21.4; Major et al. 2010: 864). All citations of the Mozi will be by chapter and paragraph number, using the division of the text in Johnston , though the translations are my own.
- 2.
Munro 1996: 193 made the point as well, though without presenting numbers. There are some 23 explicit mentions of “Mozi,” “Mo Di” (the personal name of Mozi), “Mohists,” and the like across ten different chapters in the Xunzi. The two main concentrations are in Xunzi, chapter 10, “Enriching the State,” and chapter 20, “Discourse on Music,” and both essays can be read as anti-Mohist polemics. In comparison, Song Xing , who was denounced together with Mozi in chapter 6, “Against Twelve Masters,” merited only a total of eleven explicit mentions across four different chapters, the bulk of which are concentrated in one continuous passage in chapter 18, “Correct Judgments.” Mencius , Xunzi’s main Confucian rival, was mentioned nine times across four chapters, including four times in chapter 23, “Human Nature is Bad,” where he is the main foil. Other named opponent thinkers include Hui Shi (five mentions in four chapters), Shen Dao (three mentions in three chapters), Wei Mou, Shen Buhai , Laozi , Zhuangzi (one mention each). The numbers become even more lopsided if we accept the identification of Song Xing as a Mohist (Schwartz 1985: 240–41). Be as it may, while Song Xing is criticized together with Mozi in “Against Twelve Masters” (HKCS 6/21/20), the two are contrasted both in “Discourse on Heaven” (HKCS 17/83/4–5) and in “Undoing Fixation” (HKCS 21/103/8). In addition, the theses Song Xing is presented as propounding and which Xunzi criticizes in “Correct Judgments”—(1) “making clear that being insulted is not disgraceful will cause people not to engage in brawling”; (2) “being insulted is not disgraceful”; and (3) “people’s inborn disposition is that they desire little, but they all believe that their inborn disposition is to desire much [and] this is a mistake” (HKCS 18/88/10, 18/88/21, and 18/89/11)—are either not found in the Mozi corpus or are in tension with its teaching. For instance, compare thesis (2) with Mozi 47.1, which argues that yi 義 (“righteousness”) is more important than anything else in the world, as shown by the fact that people are willing to contend and kill over a single yan 言 (“words”; though here referring to ethical doctrines). Song Xing will not be discussed in this study.
- 3.
- 4.
See also Schwartz 311–14; K I.30–31, 81–82, 149, 183; K III.113–38.
- 5.
[Editor’s note: for more discussion of the relation between Xunzi’s view of language and that of the Mohists, see Chris Fraser’s essay in this volume.]
- 6.
That Mohism is opposed to Confucian ritual and music is noticed from early on in the tradition. See e.g., Zhuangzi , chapter 33, “Beneath Heaven,” and Han Feizi , chapter 50, “Eminent Intellectual Orientations.” The slightly later Huainanzi preserves this tradition: “Singing to stringed instruments and dancing to drums so as make music; turning, bestowing, diminishing, yielding so as to practice the rites; having lavish burials and lengthy mourning so as to send off the dead: these were established by Confucius , but Mozi opposed them” (13.9; Major et al. 2010: 500–501).
- 7.
- 8.
- 9.
Scott Cook argues that “Though Mohism, at least in its early forms, by no means espoused doing away with hierarchical privilege altogether, it is possible that by Xun Zi’s time they had increasingly inclined toward taking such a stance” (Cook 1997: 14n40). But there is no actual evidence that such a development occurred. The Lüshi chunqiu portrays them as seeking employment or being employed in the governments of their time, or as submitting to the authority of their own leaders who were, in turn, ostensibly able to pass on their titles (19/3.4; in Knoblock and Riegel 2000: 16/7.1). All this suggests that, if anything, the latter-day Mohists were quite comfortable with the idea of hierarchy.
- 10.
Xunzi uses this characteristically Mohist phrase in HKCS 9/36/11, 9/38/6, 10/46/21, 12/57/15–16, 12/60/10, 12/63/6, 13/64/13, 16/76/4, 24/119/12. See also 23/117/9, 25/121/7, and 25/121/8–10. “Exalt the Worthy” names three core chapters (chapters 8–10) in the Mozi, which are the main sources for the corresponding Mohist doctrine.
- 11.
- 12.
See the essay by Hutton in this volume (pp. 79–81).
- 13.
The fact that the burial Xunzi prescribes for the executed convict resembles that prescribed by the Mohists is a thinly veiled jab that the latter would have people treat all manner of departed “as no better than executed criminals” (Hutton 2014: 208n30).
- 14.
See the essays by Berkson and by Hutton and Harold in this volume.
- 15.
See also the essay by Hutton and Harold in this volume (pp. 287–88).
- 16.
The main difference is that the Mozi presents the problem faced in the state of nature in terms of people fighting each other because they hold to diverse and conflicting conceptions of righteousness, rather than because they are pursuing their own desires. The corresponding solution in the Mozi thus consists in the enforcement of a common conception of righteousness by a hierarchy of leaders; see the more detailed analysis in Loy 2005.
- 17.
For a more extended discussion of the consequentialist structure of both Mohism and Xunzi’s thinking, see Robins 2009.
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Acknowledgments
A version of this paper was presented at the conference “Traditional Non-Confucian Political Philosophy in East Asia” at the City University of Hong Kong (March 2014) and the author profited from the ensuring discussions with Yuri Pines, P. J. Ivanhoe, Bryan Van Norden, Eirik Lang Harris and Dan Robins, among others. In addition, Winnie Sung and So-Jeung Park read and offered valuable comments on earlier drafts; and Jonathan Sim and Jeremy Huang provided helpful research assistance. The editor of this volume and Chris Fraser, too, gave many useful suggestions. My thanks to all of them.
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Loy, Hc. (2016). Xunzi Contra Mozi. In: Hutton, E. (eds) Dao Companion to the Philosophy of Xunzi. Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-7745-2_12
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