The Mòzǐ in Spanish; The politics of Universal Love. The complete philosophical texts of Moses.
Although Confucianism is the mainstream of Chinese millennial thought and the traditional public expression of its idiosyncrasy, allow me the reader here to show the evidence and sense of the capital importance of Moism, which is why we have translated his entire work for the first time. into Spanish under the title The Politics of Universal Love. The complete philosophical texts of Moísmo, Ed. Universidad de León, 2019.
The records of the Han dynasty, mainly of its great historian Sima Qian (139 BC - 86 BC), put Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC) and Mòzǐ (470 BC - 391 BC) on a par as the two great masters of the Chinese thought. Another measure or comparison of the scope of Moism, which is used often is the quote from the book of Mencius (372 BC -289 BC) stating that "the doctrines of Mozi and Yang Zhu occupy Heaven", however, Mencius does not return to mentioning or referring more to Yang Zhu, teacher of the 'selfish' school, while we can affirm that El Mencius is entirely dedicated to refuting Mòzǐ and trying to restore Confucianism in the face of the preponderance of Moism in his time.
As is known, Mozi's proposal is "universal love and cooperation for mutual benefit (common, universal)" - 兼 相愛 交 相 利. Confucianism did not deny universal love, but proposed a gradation of it, whose political source is the central power, the Kingdom of the Center (Zhongguo - China) and, more specifically, the Son of Heaven, who is instructed in the benevolence - the form of universal love in Confucianism. But another great difference between the two is more clearly manifested in the object of that ‘universal love’, since in the case of Confucianism it is surprisingly not the benefit (利 -Lì).
Mencius, the book of Mencius, begins like this:
“Mencius went to see King Hui of Liang. The king said, 'venerable sir, since you have not considered far to come here, a distance of 1000 li (500 kms), can I presume that you bring advice for the benefit (利 -Lì) of my kingdom?' Mencius replied , 'Why does your majesty have to use the word “benefit” (利 -Lì)? What I bring are advice of benevolence and justice, and those are my only issues ...... if justice ('distributive') is put at the end and the benefit comes before, (both) they will not be satisfied until they get everything … .. "
Likewise, Confucianism surely shares with Mòzǐ the view that partiality or exclusion (別 - Bié), the opposite of universality or inclusion, is the cause of the "calamities" of the world. However, according to Mencius, a society without a state cannot be conceived. In El Mencius, in the chapter titled Gaozi II, we are represented by Mencius meeting with a Moist teacher, Song Keng, who is on his way to Chu to try to convince the king not to go to war with Qin and adds that he will argue against of the war by showing him how detrimental, or not beneficial, it will be for both sides. Mencius replies that his intention is good, but his argument is not, because if the kings of Chu and Qin accept this argument, each person will seek their own benefit (利 -Lì) and this will damage the unity of purpose of the state and hierarchical relationships in it. He puts it like this:
'Master,' said Mencius, 'your purpose is good, but your argument is not. If you, starting from the point of profit, offer your persuasive advice to the kings of Qin and Chu, and if those kings indulge in the consideration of profit as to stop the movement of their armies, then everyone who belongs to those armies they will rejoice at the end of the war and will find their pleasure in the pursuit of profit. Ministers will serve their sovereign for the benefit they have in thinking of him; the children will serve their parents, and the younger brothers the older brothers, for the same consideration - and so it will turn out that, abandoning benevolence and justice, sovereign and minister, father and son, younger brother and older brother, all will establish relationships with the thought of profit on her breasts. But there has never been such a state of society without ruin being its result. However, if you, starting from the foundation of benevolence and justice, offer your advice to the kings of Chu and Qin and if these kings are pleased with the consideration of benevolence and justice as to stop their military operations , then all who belong to those armies will be pleased by the cessation of war and will find their pleasure in benevolence and justice. The ministers will serve their sovereign, praising the principles of benevolence and justice; The children will serve their parents, and the younger brothers the older brothers, abandoning the thought of profit and praising the principle of benevolence and justice, and they will carry out all their relationships on those principles. But there has never been such a state of society without the state where royal power prevails rising. Why do you have to use the word "benefit" (利 -Lì)? (Mencius, Gaozi II, 24 - https://ctext.org/mengzi/gaozi-ii)
In addition to The Mencius and The Analects, or Confucian dialogues, the other two books that make up the Four Classics of Confucianism are The Great Study (大學 - Dà xué) and El Justo Medio (中庸 -Zhōng yōng), the first one composed of a Disciple of Confucius, called Zēng Shēn (505 BC -432 BC), also known as Zēng Zǐ (Zēngcio, Master Zēng), whose exposition is the same as that of Mencius and, indeed, The Great Study concludes thus:
"So a state should not take profit (利 -Lì) as its wealth but benevolence and justice."
And the last of the Four Classics, The Middle Righteous, traditionally attributed to Confucius' grandson, Kǒng Lǐ's son, Kǒng Jí (483 BC - 402 BC), concludes as follows:
"The Book of Poetry says: 'The virtues are as light as feathers.' But feathers are shaped and contain analogy with something, so it is not an appropriate word to praise the subtlety of the virtues.
The Book of Poetry says: "The works of Heaven are invisible - they have neither sound nor smell." This is the best description of virtues. "
And even before these paragraphs, a string of sentences and admonitions, all of them insisting on the ineffability of virtue, properly benevolence, which is the genuine proposal of Confucianism as a system of government, which is reached through sincerity, but not of expression or communication but of introspection.
What does this part have to do, however, with Mòzǐ? In what way do you confront and deny it? Why does Confucianism also adopt the ineffability characteristic of Taoism and Legism, one of whose three main postulates for the leader (along with the “inhumanity of the position”, and “the law that punishes the one who does not obey”) is “ the secret of motivation ”? Precisely, a very important difference between benevolence and profit is that profit is based on the free decision of the interested party, while benevolence, as in the case of European enlightened absolutism, includes secrecy on the part of one, the one who exercises benevolence, and ignorance on the part of the recipient.
Secrecy and ignorance are the essence of inequality, or leadership by force tragically necessary for war, while truthful information, clarity, transparency and truth is the proper form of freedom. So Moism is the only one of these systems that really proposes freedom or liberation through (the communication of) the truth. While the other systems are "fatalistic", accommodating to our historical and current condition of "calamity" after calamity, as Moism accuses Confucianism time and time again, because it cannot be thought of someone who voluntarily renounces knowledge, which is the source of his freedom, of his choice, which is both an odious condition and a contradiction in terms.
But we can still elaborate on the matter. It is extraordinarily interesting that Aristotle dedicates his extensive treatise on Nicomachean Ethics entirely to the doctrine of the Just Middle with the same name, the same concept, and even the same definition as Confucius.
A gentleman conforms to the principle of the right middle because he adheres to the middle, without going too far or not far enough (Zhongyong, 2)
The reason why both Aristotle and Confucius coincide in appealing to the Just Middle as a measure of virtue is because previously both, unlike Mozi who proposes only the universal use of common sense, distinguish and value two types of justice. The first is the one referred to by Mòzǐ, the human one, the one with common sense, based on putting himself in the place of the other, which Confucius recognizes and refers to in the Analecta several times with the expression, “do not do to another what you do not want them to do to you. to you ”, an expression is known as the Silver Rule that in Aristotle translates into Spanish simply as“ justice ”, (while in English it is fairness). And the other form of justice, the predominant one, is the state, distributive or hierarchical, which both Confucians and legal scholars identify as the doctrine of The Rectification of Names, which governs pyramidal inequality, which in Spanish translates into Aristotle's Ethics as "legality."
Thus, for example, the way in which Aristotle makes both systems coexist in society we see in the next paragraph that refers to the application of justice in the courts - which for Aristotle is the restoration of the previously violated order. He says:
“A class (A) is the one that is manifested in the distribution of honor or money or other things that fall into being divided among those who have part in the constitution (of the state) because in these it is possible for a man to obtain an unequal part or the same as another, and another (B) is the one that plays a rectifying role in transactions between person and person. Of this there are two divisions: of the transactions (1) some are voluntary, contracts, and (2) others are involuntary - voluntary are transactions / contracts such as sale, purchase, consumer loan, promise, loan for use, deposit, rent (they are called voluntary because their origin is voluntary), while the involuntary ones, some (a) are clandestine, such as theft, adultery, poisoning, pandering, bribery of slaves, swearing false and other (b) violent, such as whipping, putting in jail, condemning to death, stealing, staining, saying an insult or doing an affront. " (Nicomachean Ethics, Book V, II)
The area closest to freedom is that which Aristotle calls voluntary transactions, precisely because they are those in which the decision is made with more information or knowledge at the time of the decision or choice, although that freedom is limited by its legal framework.
Here the reader could reply that the legal ones can not only be public but they need to be, as the Legislators say, because being different from natural common sense they must necessarily be exposed and specified in order to be known and only in this way can they be imposed or deterred. However, legal publicity only refers to the order or provision itself, but for legal scholars, as for Confucianists, the motivation must be hidden.
Concealment is the key to the Art of War, or art of deception. See Chap. XI in relation to the need of the leader to keep in ignorance or deceive the troops or human resources, so that, blind, they need leadership and give their lives to him, and beyond that; the war is won by getting more information than the other and about the other.
But from here we get another conclusion, well seen by Kant in the last chapter of Perpetual Peace, "On the harmony between politics and morals, in accordance with the transcendental concept of public law." The truth is incompatible with the impairment or the purpose of harm to the other, since the truth is simply the publicity of both the motives and the purposes, which, as public, must be equally universal or inclusive, since to publish is to remain open. everyone's sight, and that is also the true and only form of responsibility. And also, therefore, it is the search for universal benefit, the task of the sage, according to Mòzǐ, since all this is already in Mòzǐ.
This condition of universality of truth results in its insufficiency, partiality or exclusion (別 - bié), necessitating the concealment of the motivation that is achieved through mystification, figurations, deception and even Confucian silence itself.
Unlike Confucius who addresses the leaders of the state, Mòzǐ thinks and writes for the human being in general and repeatedly states that we all know good and evil in the same way, just as we all know what an object is when we know what it is for and what is its improvement, etc., because we have common sense, so if we share the information we have, if we make it public - which is the same as being universal, we eliminate evil, then, consequently, it will induce us to apply the Golden Rule; "We will treat the other as we want to be treated." Here is one of many similar examples in this sense that Mòzǐ uses:
The murder of a person is considered unjust and carries the death penalty. Following this discourse, the murder of ten people will be ten times more unjust and should be equivalent to ten death sentences; the murder of a hundred people will be a hundred times more unjust and must be equivalent to a hundred death sentences. All the gentlemen in the world know that they must condemn these things, classify them as unjust. But when it comes to the great injustice of states that attack others, they do not know that they should condemn them. On the contrary, they applaud them and qualify them as fair. So they are ignorant of what it is to be fair. Therefore, they have recorded their trials for posterity. If they had known it was unfair, why would they have recorded their false judgments to pass on to posterity? Now, if there is a person who after seeing a little bit of black, he says that he is black, but when he sees a lot of black he says that he is white, then he does not know the difference between black and white. Yes, he supposes that after tasting something a little bitter one says that he is bitter, but, after tasting something very bitter, he says that it is sweet; so we have to say that he does not know the difference between bitter and sweet. So when something is committed to some extent it is unfair, people know that they should condemn it, but when a great injustice is committed like attacking another state, people do not know that they should condemn it. On the contrary, it is applauded and considered fair. Can it be said that the difference between right and wrong is known? Therefore we know that the knights of the world are in confusion about the difference between right and wrong (Mòzǐ, Condemnation of the Offensive War, I, 2)
This and similar examples show that the damage is clearly and unanimously seen badly by all and all condemn it and cooperate so that it does not occur, and all approve and applaud the benefit, since our yardstick is inevitably to put ourselves in the place of others, but confusion arises with the absence of community, when we do not include the other in our consideration, when we decide to partially exclude them (別 - Bié).
Mòzǐ's proposal, known as the politics of universal love, is not idealistic, as it is sometimes understood in the similarity of the West; In other words, love is not the fruit of the will, because the condition of generalized war makes that love impossible and war is not overcome with the will (unilateral), on the contrary, unilateral love only results in self-harm. Therefore, what is required is change, the replacement of partiality by universality, as Mòzǐ accurately and literally expresses:
Mòzǐ said: Whoever condemns something must have the means to change it. If they condemn something without having the means to change it, if they criticize without offering an alternative, it is like trying to stop a flood with water or put out a fire with fire. Your explanations are worthless. Mòzǐ said: Universality must replace partiality. But how can bias be replaced by universality? Mòzǐ said: If people considered the states of others as they consider their own ... ... (Mòzǐ, Universal love, III, 2)
While love without universality is not only ineffective - this is how Mòzǐ illustrates it, pointing out that this is the love of thieves and robbers who steal and kill others because they want to benefit their families whom they love, but it is not even real. or possible, because partial love forces, violent to those who say they love to take part, so that it is harmed, what love could that be?
In reality, rival schools basically recognize the truth and validity of the Mòzǐ doctrine, see, for example, the last chapter of the Zhuangzi, or other Taoist texts that say that Mòzǐ is the most exalted being who has ever walked the earth. What happens is that they see it as unfeasible. And the same Moists say that opposing the doctrine of Mòzǐ is like trying to break a rock by throwing eggs at it, or that the truth of it is independent of whether there are humans or not on Earth.
The point is that Moism is not capable of advancing one step in any way towards universal love. And the legists considered him such a poison that when Qin gained power over China under his influence, he burned his books and his teachers. But why is Mòzǐ's project unfeasible as the rival schools see it sharply and clearly? In neo-Moist or late Moist texts, specifically in the latest Canons and Explanations B, from B72 to B74, they refer to space or its limits.
The Canons are structured as follows: a Canon, an Objection, and a Response to the Objection. And the Objection in these Canons B72 to B74 points against the viability of the Moist doctrine of Universal Love due to the circumstance of ignorance of the limits (of the world) and (the number) of its inhabitants, as well as their whereabouts and condition. The accusation that is poured on Moism in this passage is, neither more nor less, of “perversity”, since its proposal of universal love is not only unfeasible but also counterproductive or harmful for those who practice it, as we have said, then, truth, clarity, providing information, makes one vulnerable, it hurts.
B72
C: ‘No limits’ does not exclude (harm) ‘universal’. The explanation lies in being completed or not.
E: No: Objection: In the case of the South, if it has limits, then it can be 'exhausted'; if it has no limits, then it cannot be 'exhausted'. If you cannot know if it has limits or not, then you cannot know whether or not it can be 'exhausted'. And whether people 'fill' it or not cannot be known and thus, whether or not people can be 'exhausted' cannot be known. So, of necessity, claiming that people can love exhaustively (that is, universally) is perverse.
Answer: With respect to people, if they do not "fill" what "has no limits", then people have "limits". ‘Exhaust’ what ‘has limits’ does not present difficulty. If people ‘fill’ what is ‘without limits’, then what is ‘without limits’ is ‘exhausted’. ‘Exhaust’ what is ‘without limits’ does not present difficulty.
B73
C: Not knowing your number but knowing its 'completeness'. The explanation lies in the question.
E: No: Objection: If you don't know their number, how do you know that loving (being honest) people is something that 'completes' it?
Answer: There are some who are left out in your questions. If you question people exhaustively, then exhaustively love those who are questioned. So, not knowing the number and yet knowing that they are loved in their ‘completeness’ is not difficult.
B74
C: Not knowing where they are does not exclude (harm) love them. The explanation lies in the lost children. (Mòzǐ. The Canons and Explanations B)
Of B74 we have neither Objection nor Response to Objection, it may have had them in its day and they have been lost, but we can appreciate that it revolves around the same question as the previous ones.
Despite Moism's responses, universality is certainly impossible in a limited setting.
The same happened to Mòzǐ as in the West to Socrates and his faithful followers, the Cynics and the Stoics, both schools understood that common sense or logos, which had been manifested by Socrates in the face of the figurations of the state - which was condemned as it literally says in his accusation collected by Plato for "not believing in the gods of the polis and (consequently) corrupting the youth" - he could only reign if it was for all humanity, since the state, as we saw above, cannot promote the truth , and therefore both schools declared themselves cosmopolitan like Moism.
But us, what problem do we have now? Are we not all on the phone so we don't have to fool ourselves anymore? And it is not about personal matters, such as tastes, style, beliefs, etc., but about public affairs, objectives.
Manuel Herranz Martín,
Madrid, 27th November of 2020
