Mozi, as the founder of an important academic school in the history of China's thought, had a very far-reaching influence on the development of China culture with his unique opinions and unique opinions. This paper attempts to make a brief comment on Mozi's main viewpoints, hoping that these immature opinions of the author can be of little help to the study of Mohism.
one
As we all know, Mozi once studied Confucianism and was also influenced by Confucianism. Later, because he felt that "the ceremony disturbed him, he was unhappy, buried the poor in a thick way, and hurt his life for a long time" ("Huainanzi"), he resolutely raised the banner of rebellion and started his own business. It can be seen that Mozi started from the perspective of practical learning, and this spirit of practical learning runs through the whole book of Mozi and is in the same strain. Mozi regards "promoting the benefits of the world and eliminating the harm of the world" as the general purpose of Mohism. It can be said that all Mozi's main propositions, such as universal love, non-aggression, Shang Xian, Shang Tong, frugality, unhappiness and unhappiness, are based on this purpose.
two
"Universal love", that is, "love everyone equally", is undoubtedly the core proposition of Mozi. Further study of Mozi, we find that the original meaning of Mozi's so-called "universal love" can be more accurately described as "love your neighbor as yourself". This is contrary to the "pushing love" advocated by Confucianism, and it is "pro" and "respect". The key to the disagreement lies in the problem of "loving the poor and not being poor". Confucianism insists on it, but Mohism thinks it is not. To be fair, the ideal taste of "universal love" is a bit too strong, and I'm afraid it's hard for a great sage like Mozi to practice it. When we read the second and second parts of All-in-One Love, we saw that Mozi spent a lot of space to refute the accusation that "all-in-one love" is difficult to achieve, but it is difficult to convince readers.
Mozi's reasons for defending his claims are worth considering:
The first one comes from the practical level. Mozi said that if you don't love other people's relatives, others won't love your relatives. The different results of love can only be "mutual evil", so the way of "universal love" must be adopted. This is closely related to a concept of Mozi, that is, "those who love must love it, and those who are evil must hate it", and the journey of love and evil will be rewarded accordingly. In fact, this is not correct, but it is emphasized that only selfless love can summon love, and only when the whole society establishes the fashion of mutual love can people live happily in it, which cannot but be said to be Mozi's painstaking efforts.
The second reason has a strong religious meaning. Different from other schools, Mohism believes in a personalized "heaven", which has its own sacred will. This will, according to Mozi, requires people to "love each other and benefit each other." The way of argument is unique, to the effect that God raised us equally, which shows his love for mankind. He won't want to see the world killing each other, but he is bent on making people love each other and benefit each other. This reminds people of Christian teachings. On this basis, the ideal of universal love and the idea of universal love are interlinked.
Looking at these two reasons together, we find an extremely important feature of Mozi: he is a figure who combines extreme pragmatism and extreme idealism, but these two theories usually cannot coexist, and they form a tension in Mozi's thought. It was under this tension that Mozi put forward the "difficult" moral standard at that time and put it into practice wholeheartedly. This is not an easy task, only a saint can endure all difficulties and hardships to complete it.
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"Non-aggression" is probably the most well-known proposition of Mozi besides "universal love". "Non-aggression" directly stems from the ideal of "universal love". Mozi, with the idea of "non-attack", tried his best to persuade kings of all countries to stop fighting and fighting, so as to save the people of the world from suffering.
Mozi was indignant at some war apologists who talked about benevolence, righteousness and morality, and criticized them for "knowing small things but not big things". In order to make his claim more convincing, Mozi not only used strict logical reasoning to prove that the attack was against heaven, but also cited examples of defeat caused by aggressive wars in history, explaining the essence of harming others and benefiting themselves. These words were said by Mozi to the rulers from the standpoint of the civilian class, which reflected the aspirations of the civilians. But he was keen on annexing monarchs of various countries, but he didn't listen to the preaching of "non-attack", and Mozi's efforts had little effect. In fact, Mozi is doing something that he knows he can't do, but his humanitarian spirit and indomitable will to struggle are very valuable.
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Mozi's ideological system contains a complete theory of governing the country, which can be represented by "Shang Xian" and "Shang Tong" at the specific administrative level. In fact, this is the unanimous opinion of all pre-Qin schools except Taoism. Mozi's Shang Xian is more thorough than Confucianism in breaking the concept of family status and employing people in an eclectic way, so it can't be regarded as distinctive. Shang Tong's idea is the most distinctive. "Shang Tong", as an image metaphor, is like when we go out to March, we all look up to the leader, and then the leader looks up to the first person in his column, and so on, and finally the queue is uniform. Mozi asked the people at the next higher level to "keep up" with the people at the next lower level, and the people at the next lower level "keep up" with the people at the next lower level until the son of heaven and heaven. This kind of "alignment" is all-round, and people's ideas, emotional attitudes, behaviors and stand standards are all-encompassing. Why are you so eager to unify people's thoughts and behaviors so as not to be suspected of tyranny? It is to curb "chaos." Mozi, who was in troubled times, witnessed the disaster brought by "chaos" to the people and was deeply bitter about it. Therefore, it is inevitable to launch radical ideas and pay for them. This is something we can understand but disagree with.
From the viewpoint of Shang Xian and Shang Tong, we also found an internal contradiction of Mozi's thought, that is, the conflict between elitism and the position of civilians. On the one hand, Mozi is almost a spokesman for the interests of the civilian class, and his egalitarianism ideal is very obvious; On the other hand, he realized that governing the country must rely on elites and maintaining social order requires a strict hierarchy. It seems that the opposing sides of this contradiction have not been logically unified in Mozi's thought, but the existence of contradiction is also beneficial to prevent Mozi from slipping into the position of populism or discriminating against civilians.
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The most direct embodiment of pragmatism in Mozi's thought should be the proposition of "saving money", "saving burial" and "unhappy"
The concept of "frugality" is very strong among the hard-living civilians. Mozi has to stand on the standpoint of civilians and insist on this proposition. He regards all useless "clever, flashy" things as waste, and asks those who are powerful to live a poor and simple life like him. Regardless of whether his appeal will never get a strong response, we look closely and find that this proposition is actually closely related to a kind of understanding. This understanding is that the world is not rich in materials, and every penny should be fully utilized to make everyone warm. Any luxury consumption may be at the expense of depriving another part of people of food and clothing, and must be resolutely opposed. Later, Xunzi tried to shake Mozi's whole argument by denying this understanding. It can be seen that the root of the theoretical differences between the two factions lies in the different understanding of social reality by people of different classes.
The thought of "frugal burial" can be regarded as the concrete expression of the concept of "frugality" in funeral ceremonies. But this seems to have angered traditionalists even more, because at that time, funeral ceremony was an extremely important part of the whole etiquette system and even the political system, and denying the long funeral was tantamount to challenging the whole tradition of "rule by courtesy". Adhering to this idea is under great pressure. Mozi did not succumb to this pressure and advocated "saving burial" because pragmatism considerations prevailed. This is a noble pragmatism. In order to eliminate the disadvantages of "wasting people's money", Mozi really put people's well-being first and declared war on traditional forces.
The concept of "unhappiness" is an example of pragmatism going from rationality to extremes. How can you abandon all music and art? People have been criticizing Mozi for this, and I also think Mozi has gone too far here. Pragmatism, if confined in a narrow space, will be absurd and will eventually lose the sympathy of most people, which cannot but serve as a lesson for the Great Sage.
six
When discussing "universal love" earlier, we have touched on the religious elements in Mozi's thought. Although Mozi's religion advocates respecting heaven and ghosts, it strongly opposes the conclusion of the theory of destiny. In his view, the existence of heavenly ghosts does not directly control people's behavior, but gives fair rewards and punishments to people's good deeds and evil deeds. The most terrible consequence of the fate conclusion is that it is convenient for people to shift the responsibility to "Heaven", which makes people feel that everything is all right, and relieves the constraints on people's behavior (which should have been achieved through rewards and punishments), which eventually leads to man-made disasters and chaos in the world. Therefore, we must advocate the idea of "non-destiny", establish the enterprising spirit of people all over the world, and encourage them to practice good deeds for good deeds.
Obviously, this "doomed" thought is a positive outlook on life, which requires people to pursue a happy life with subjectivity. Compared with the popular concept of "destiny" at that time, this is really very advanced and healthy.
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Generally speaking, Mozi, as a passionate savior, put forward a set of political, religious and ethical propositions from the perspective of pragmatism. His thoughts complied with the demands of the common people and thoroughly exposed and criticized various social abuses at that time. Although there are many imperfections, he still loses his brilliance and deserves to be a unique great man in the ideological trend of pre-Qin philosophers.