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Notes on video lecture:
Mozi's Anti-Confucian Chapters
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on February 28, 2018 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
power, communist, musical, suffering, benefit, internal, utilitarian, innovate, fair, insights, funeral, emotional, balance, external, control, reshaping, stratified, desire, subsistence, livestock, now, order, cultivate, nepotism, expensive, ancient, heaven, consequentialist, ritual, objective, inhuman, waste, essential
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Mozi is a materialist, state                                 
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measuring material profit and                ("li")
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wants to maximize the
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wealth
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population
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           of the state
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characteristics which can be measured
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in the Warring States, population is           
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you can measure ideas and processes with these three criteria
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Mozi believes there are many things going on in the Warring States societies which don't pass these three tests
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the anti-Confucian chapters
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against Confucian                practices
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wants them more moderate
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condemnation of                performances
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condemnation of fatalism
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against Confucians themselves
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problems with Confucianism
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partiality is built into Confucianism
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don't treat your own parents better than other's parents
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for Mozi, this doesn't pass the order principle
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leads to                  and chaos
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Confucian ethics are built upon                    family ties
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Confucianism produces a lot of           
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music and ritual consume vast amounts of material and labor resources
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he's not against music per se, but it is very                    and provides no benefits
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he means public music, massive orchestras
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Confucian bells put in arrays
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expensive to built
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expensive to play
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Mozi is a
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materialist and so only materialist goods matter to him
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goods that you can actually measure
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externalist
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only                  characteristics matter
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he is not trying to                    you
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for Confucius, music is about                    people from the inside out
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Mozi doesn't care about these                  states
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Mozi was later criticized as being               
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people want to sing and Mozi won't let them sing
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there's no obvious answer to how you                cultural goods, art, and moral improvement
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Confucian counter argument
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we want people to have enough food to eat, but human beings aren't                   
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human beings need other things, too, e.g. beauty and culture
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to reduce human live to                        survival is not the best goal
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at what point is spending on art and culture too much, at what point is spending on social services not enough
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every society has to grapple with and it will define their society
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Mozi has a passionate moral vision
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Confucians are spending money on things that we don't need and that are not                   , or at least we shouldn't think about until basic needs are met
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is upset that the Confucians think the past is good in and of itself
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their mindless aping of the past
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The Confucians say, "The superior man must use                speech and wear ancient dress before he can be considered benevolent."
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"...but we answer: The so-called ancient speech and dress were all modern once, and if at that time the men of antiquity used such speech and wore such dress, then they must not have been superior."
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why would you want to only transmit and not                  in the modern world
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it comes down to practical benefits
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against fatalism
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Confucians say that there are things outside your               
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how long you live
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whether you are wealthy or not
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             will give it to you or not depending on fate
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Confucianism
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you want to focus on the internal goods of the Confucian way
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money and fame are either going to come or not
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says things cannot be changed.
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if officials believe in fate, they will become lax in their duties
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Mozi vs. Laozi on social reform
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Mozi has a social reformer mission behind him
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they both are opposed to Confucianism
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think that there is something wrong with the elites
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for Laozi, the elites cause suffering because they're greedy
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greediness is caused by desire so let's eliminate             
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disband these large-scale societies and get everyone to go back to                        farming in agricultural communes
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for Mozi, the elites are causing                    in that they are doing wasteful activities
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keep hierarchical society but do it in a          way
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not because you are related to someone, or you look nice, or you can sing the odes
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but because you're a worthy person and good at your job
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we keep large-scale society
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material goods are not the problem, but we should distribute it more fairly
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some people portray Mozi as socialist or                   , that he wants everyone to share things
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his society is a very social                      one
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but people get their position in society based on                    measures
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Mozi vs. Confucius on human nature
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Confucius
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people without culture were not human beings
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we wouldn't want to live in a world where we didn't have these things
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Mozi
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everyone has there basic needs met but there's no music, no             , when our parents die, we bury them in an unmarked grave and go back to work again
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the argument that we need to cultivate culture is the way spoiled elites think
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in the Warring States period, many people didn't have their basic needs met
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the beauty of this debate is that it was happening in the 4th century B.C. China and it's happening       
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reading about ancient people grappling with these problems can give us new                  into our world

Ideas and Concepts:

On the balance of cultural and economic welfare, via tonight's Ancient Chinese Philosophy class:

"Mozi was a materialist and so was only interested in material goods, i.e. external goods that you can be measured in society, e.g. wealth, population, and order.

He used this as a litmus test to measure and determine how useful things were to society. So while he wasn't against music per se, he saw the way that music was supported by Confucian society, e.g. public money financing musical performances, massive orchestras of Confucian bells played by state-sponsored musicians who spent much of their lives learning to play these bells with expertise, was a waste of money, time, and effort. Publicly sponsored music for Mozi was expensive and provided no benefits.

While Confucius saw a goal of music to reshape people's characters from the inside out, Mozi didn't care about these supposed internal states. He was an externalist and so only external characteristics mattered to him. He was not trying to internally cultivate people as Confucius was, but was interested only in external production that could be measured.

For these views, Mozi was later criticized as being inhuman. It was said, for instance, that people want to sing and Mozi wouldn't let them sing.

But the moral tension that Mozi raises is a real one that we deal with today in our societies as well. We have societies that are taking public money and using it to support massive symphony orchestras which encourage healthy, young people to spend their time practicing music instead of growing food or doing something more obviously useful in societies that suffer from homelessness and poverty.

We have publicly sponsored universities with professors and students wasting their time learning about ancient Chinese philosophy when they could be learning how to maximize carbon removal from the atmosphere or something more obviously useful and measurable.

So there's no obvious answer to this question of how you balance public support of providing for people's physical needs and financing cultural goods such as music, art, and the opportunity for people to learn about philosophy, religion and other languages to encourage them to improve their intellectual and moral development.

There's a tension between cultural goods and the fact that basic material needs of a large part of our societies are not being met. And so we don't want to be too glib about dismissing Mozi on this point of societal reform to solve the material needs of people in the most efficient way possible."
Questions that define a society, via this morning's Ancient Chinese Philosophy class: "At what point spending on art and culture is too much, and spending on social services is not enough, are questions that every society has to grapple with, the answers to which will in a very comprehensive way will define life in that society."
Mozi on the importance of believing in personal responsibility, via this afternoon's Ancient Chinese Philosophy class:

"The Confucians believe firmly in the existence of fate and propound their doctrine, saying that long life and early death, wealth and poverty, safety and danger, order and disorder are all decreed by the will of Heaven and cannot be modified.

If the various officials believe such ideas, they will be lax in their duties, and if the common people believe them, they will neglect their tasks."
The Definition of Religion
Mind/Body Dualism and Cognitive Control
Deontology, Utilitarianism, and Virtue Ethics
Wu-Wei, Dao, Tien and De
The Shang Dynasty (1554-1045 BC)
The Beginnings of Written Chinese History
Eastern Holistic Thinking and the Paradox of Virtue
The Golden Age of the Western Zhou (1046–771 BCE)
Philosophical and Conceptual Innovations in Zhou Thought
Confucius and the Analects
Confucius: I Transmit, I Do Not Innovate
Confucius' Use of Ritual as a Tool
Confucius' View on Learning vs. The Enlightenment
Confucius and Holistic Education
Confucius and the Art of Self-Cultivation
At Home in Virtue
Non-Coercive Comportment, Virtue, and Charisma of the Zhou
The Transition to Becoming Sincere
The Primitivists in the Analects
Laozi and the Daodejing
Laozi: Stop the Journey and Return Home
Laozi and The Desires of the Eye
Laozi: He Who Speaks Does Not Know
The Concept of Reversion
Laozi on Shutting Down the Prefrontal Cortex
The Guodian Laozi
Mozi and Materialist State Consequentialism
Mozi's Idea of Ideological Unity
Mozi's Doctrine of Impartial Caring
Mozi's Anti-Confucian Chapters
Mozi's Religious Fundamentalism and Organized Activism
The Language Crisis in the Warring States Period
Yang Zhu and Mid-Warring States' Focus on the Body
The Guodian School of Confucianism
Qi and Self-Cultivation