MOHISM AND SELF-INTEREST

Chris Fraser

Abstract

The Mohists are often depicted as regarding human beings as predominantly self-interested, so much so that self-interest amounts to people’s only significant source of motivation. According to David Nivison, for example, the Mohists see human beings as self-interested, amoral “rational calculators,” who have no motivation other than “the desire to optimize material satisfaction.” Benjamin Schwartz claims that, for the Mohists, “all men and women, whether they be fathers, mothers, teachers, or rulers, tend to be nonloving and self-interested.” Other writers maintain that the Mohists think people can be motivated to practice their moral code only, or mainly, by seeing that doing so converges with self-interest. Kwong-loi Shun, for instance, suggests that the Mohists assume self-interest will be people’s main motivation for practicing inclusive care, their signature moral doctrine. In his view, Mòzǐ thought that “once one properly sees its link to one’s own interest, one is moved to practice it.” According to P. J. Ivanhoe, Mòzǐ believed people could be motivated to care about others only by seeing that doing so was part of a system for “the equitable distribution of material goods which guaranteed them treatment in kind.” All of these writers agree, then, that for the Mohists, self-interest is people’s principal source of motivation. I call this interpretive hypothesis the Self-Interest Thesis.

This article clarifies the role of self-interest in Mohist thought, along the way marshaling grounds to refute the Self-Interest Thesis. I examine passages from the Mòzǐ bearing on the role of self-interest in Mohist ethics and psychology and show that, in each case, an alternative interpretation explains them more adequately than the Self-Interest Thesis does. I argue that the Mohists recognize the obvious truth that self-interest figures among people’s basic motives, but they think people also have other important sources of motivation. Self-interest probably plays four main roles in Mohist thought, two normative and two psychological. Normatively, it counts among the goods that are criteria of what is morally right and among the objects of concern for a person who practices inclusive care. Psychologically, I think the Mohists must allow that nonmoral self-interest might be among some people’s motives for conforming to Mohist ethical norms. But they probably think that for most people it will be at most only an auxiliary motivation, since they assume people will generally be motivated on moral grounds. As I explain, the major role of self-interest in Mohist moral psychology is as a kind of constraint on a practicable moral code.

The article first briefly illustrates the Mohists’ assumption that self-interest counts among people’s basic motives and sketches its role in their normative ethics. Next it reviews potential grounds for the Self-Interest Thesis. Three sets of passages in the Mòzǐ are particularly relevant to the role of self-interest in Mohist thought: the “Identifying Upward” essays, the response to the objection that inclusive care is too difficult, and the response to the objection that inclusive care cannot be “applied.” The article discusses these passages in detail, showing that none of them supports the Self-Interest Thesis and that they jointly recognize several sources of motivation other than self-interest.

 To download the manuscript of the paper, click here.

Our recent anthology Ethics in Early China, published by HKU Press, is available through Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and similar sites. For the table of contents and Introduction, see this page.

An earlier episode, on Happiness, aired November 26, 2011, and can be heard here. In this show, I’m paired with my colleague and good friend Timothy O’Leary, also of HKU.

The whole series is highly recommended. An episode about Confucianism with Sungmoon Kim and P. J. Ivanhoe of City University of HK can be heard here.

This essay examines the theory of ritual propriety presented in the Xunzi and criticisms of Xunzi-like views found in the classical Daoist anthology Zhuangzi. To highlight the respects in which the Zhuangzi can be read as posing a critical response to a Xunzian view of ritual propriety, the essay juxtaposes the two texts’ view of language, since Xunzi’s theory of ritual propriety is intertwined with his theory of language. I argue that a Zhuangist critique of the presuppositions of Xunzi’s stance on language also undermines his stance on ritual propriety. Xunzi contends that state promulgation of an elaborate code of ritual propriety is a key to good social order (zhi) and that state regulation of language is a key to smooth communication and thus also good order. The Zhuangzi provides grounds for doubting both contentions. Claiming that ritual propriety causally produces social order is analogous to claiming that grammar causally produces smooth linguistic communication, when in fact it is more likely our ability to communicate that allows us to develop shared rules of grammar. Humans have fundamental social and communicative capacities that undergird our abilities to speak a language or engage in shared ritual performances. It is these more fundamental capacities, not their manifestation in a particular system of grammar or ritual norms, that provides the root explanation of our ability to communicate or to live together harmoniously. The Xunzi-Zhuangzi dialectic suggests that ritual is indispensable, but normatively justified rituals will be less rigid, less comprehensive, less fastidious, and more spontaneous than a Xunzian theorist would allow.

The paper will probably appear around June 2012. A preprint is available here.

The paper critiques Chad Hansen’s “mass noun hypothesis,” arguing that though most Classical Chinese nouns do function as mass nouns, this fact does not support the claim that pre-Qín thinkers treat the extensions of common nouns as mereological wholes, nor does it explain why they adopt nominalist semantic theories. The paper shows that early texts explain the use of common nouns by appeal to similarity relations, not mereological relations. However, it further argues that some early texts do characterize the relation between individuals and collections as a mereological relation. It includes a detailed review of the literature on the mass noun hypothesis up to 2005.

For an abstract and full-text preprint, see this page.

Later this month I’ll be attending an international workshop in Singapore called “Global Themes in Ethical Naturalism,” hosted by the Department of Philosophy of the National University of Singapore, June 27–28. My talk will be entitled “Chinese Naturalism and the Limits of Ethics.” An abstract follows.

Chinese Naturalism and the Limits of Ethics

Chris Fraser

University of Hong Kong

Early Chinese ethics is distinctive in its focus on the concept of dao (way, path, course), a normative or action-guiding notion that is explicitly naturalistic, being grounded in natural structures, patterns, and processes. Ethical theorizing centered on dao might point the way toward a defensible, non-reductive ethical naturalism. I will argue that the dialectic of early Chinese thought from Mozi through Xunzi to Zhuangzi partly fulfills this promise, by showing how natural features can provide agents with action guidance. At the same time, however, I contend that plausible versions of early Chinese naturalism do not generate the distinctive normative force—objective, universally binding obligation—often identified as specifically moral. Instead, they yield only evaluations of conduct as more or less fitting and blur the boundaries between morality, prudence, aesthetics, and etiquette. I will suggest that these results are virtues, not defects, however, as they reflect the genuine limits of ethical norms and ethical theory.

UPDATE: Anyone who would like the text of my remarks is welcome to contact me.