1.8 Puett丨Mohism: The Foundation of Meritocracy

So, the two key figures in question herewill be Confucius himself, this early great philosopher from the Chinese tradition and then his first great interpreter, a figure named Mencius. Confucius himself lived in the late 6th and early 5th centuries BCE. Mencius lived a bit later in the 4th century BCE. And both therefore lived in this crucial moment when the earlier Bronze Age societies were collapsing. New states were beginning to be formed butwithout a clear sense as to what this would entail and what kind of a worldwould be created. And both of these figures were actively involved with trying to rethink that world around them and make arguments for the directions that world ought to be going in.

So, having explored these really Confucian ideas based upon the view that theworld was fundamentally capricious and the goal of humans was to use rituals tohopefully make us into better human beings, let us now turn to one of theearliest strong critics of this Confucian perspective.The figure in question here is named Mozi,a figure who lived after Confucius and before Mencius, a figure who clearlyknew the Confucian ideas extremely welland thought they were not only wrong, but dangerous. Let us lay out what Mozi's ideas were, why he was arguing them,and why, as we will see, they become so important for our larger understandings of Chinese ideas.

So, let us begin with this deity thatwe've already noted in the Bronze Age named Heaven. Heaven, as we noted, is thefigure in the Bronze Age that, at least by the time of the Zhou, was seen asrewarding the good and punishing the bad, but only so at the level of the king.Heaven would grant a mandate to a good ruler. That ruler’s lineage, hisdescendants in other words, would maintain power usually for two to threecenturies. And when they ceased to be virtuous, Heaven would withdraw themandate and grant the mandate to the next most virtuous person in the realm,thus beginning a new dynasty.

And the view in the Bronze Age, or atleast by the Zhou, werethat there were three such dynasties. Mozi takesthis idea, but then tries to radicalize it. The argument is that Heaven is afundamentally moral deity, a moral deity that created the world, a moral deitymoreover that actively rules over the world to ensure that the good are alwaysrewarded and the bad are always punished—not simply the king and not simply theking over the course of a two to three century span of a dynasty, actually Heaven would do this with everyone. And indeed, under Heaven are arrayed a seriesof ghosts and spirits that are Heaven's helpers to maintain this world. Thesehelpers are equally rigorously good. They rigorously reward the good and punishthe bad, and since it's an entire bureaucracy, a celestial bureaucracy that does this, they regulate the world completely.

Not, again, just for kings, but foreveryone. If I act properly, I will be rewarded by at least the ghosts andspirits. If I act improperly, I will be punished by, again, the ghosts and thespirits. Indeed, within such a world, you may wonder, are even things likesacrifice necessary? As we noted in the Bronze Age, the reason you would dosacrifice is that you're trying to do sacrifices to a fundamentally capriciousbody of spirits, trying to gain their support. Well, for Mozi, the answer was, yes, you should dosacrifice, but not to try to appease capricious spirits because there's nothingremotely capricious about them. You simply do sacrifice to teach a properreverence to these inherently moral figures, period. The world itself isalready moral, and all we must do is live properly within it.

Once Mozilays out this argument, he then takes it to the next level. If they, thedivine powers, are fundamentally moral, then what we as humans need to do ismodel ourselves on them. We should create a political world in which, bydefinition, the most moral would be on top, and everyone else in the hierarchybelow that figure would be arrayed on, ideally, purely meritocratic grounds. Inother words, we should create a political world that flawlessly mirrors theperfectly moral cosmos around us. We should create a political world whereeveryone who is good will automatically be rewarded, and in this case promoted,and anyone who was bad will of course be, by definition again, not promoted ifnot punished.

And once you work this out on an entiresocietal level, it would mean a flawless meritocracy in which the leading elitewould not be an aristocratic elite who gained their power through birth. Itwould be a meritocratic elite who were there where they are because they hadbeen rewarded for acting properly. And therefore just as the cosmos is moral,so would the political order be moral. And in terms of laying out what thisproper behavior would be, here too there was a very strong sense that thisought to be a very straight forward calculus because, number one, we can ofcourse follow what Heaven and the ghosts and spirits dictate, but also there'sa clear, rational calculus, and so what this would mean to follow the goodwould be clear.

It would, of course, mean following thedictates of Heaven and the ghosts and spirits, but you could also do a clear,rational calculus, because what is good would be by definition what wouldbenefit the most people since, again, it is a moral cosmos. And what wouldbenefit the most people is by definition what clearly the ghosts and spiritswould support. And so, you have a clear, rational calculus of how to behave.The world should be organized according to this rational calculus, and if youdo so, you live properly within it in a flawlessly moral cosmos.

Now, note immediately when Mozi is laying out this argument, this insome respects would seem to very perfectly correlate with at least a few of Max Weber's ideas about Chinese cosmology.Without question, Mozi was saying it isa moral cosmos. Yes. He was also saying it is a cosmos in which we willautomatically be rewarded if we behave properly. Absolutely. He is also callingfor a purely meritocratic political world to be formed where we wouldpolitically do the same thing that Heaven and the ghosts and spirits are doingfor us. And in that world, one could be eternally optimistic that properbehavior will automatically be supportive, and moreover it certainly is a worldin which we don't need to alter the world around us.

In fact, we're being asked not to. We arebeing asked to live properly within the world that already exists because thatworld is already moral and already governed by moral deities. Weber, in short, could, and in fact did,point to many of these ideas as exemplifying his notions of what is soimportant for understanding Chinese cosmology. But here we get to one of ourfirst examples of something we will see repeatedly in this course, which isthat the ways ideas play out historically are every bit as important as thecontent of what specific people say. In the case at hand, yes, Mozi lays out ideas that a Weber can correctly quote as almost perfectlyembodying his view as to what makes China tick.

However, if you look at the historicalinfluence of the Mohists, thehistorical influence will come down on the political side, the commitment tocreating meritocratic states. That idea, so important to Mozi, will, as we will see, become incrediblyimportant in Chinese political theory, that you should create a state in whichpositions of power are ideally defined exclusively according to merit, notaccording to birth. That idea will become incredibly important, but the ideathat the world is already inherently moral, governed by a set of spirits, and ontop a Heaven, that will flawlessly reward us if we are good and flawlesslypunish us if we are bad, actually that idea falls out dramatically.

It is rather the Confucian notion of an inherently capricious world that willbecome dominant, and the Mohist idea of trying to build a meritocratic societywill be built into the view that this is part of what we humans do because wecan flourish if we so build a meritocratic society. But we do so not becausethere is some cosmos out there that will automatically reward us and, indeed,already functions like a grand cosmological meritocracy. On the contrary, theview tends to be, as we will see, the one that actually, no, the cosmos priorto human action is not inherently moral, and therefore whatever is moral aboutthe world will depend upon what we as humans do within it.

In short, Moziwill lay out one key idea that will become incredibly influential, thisnotion of a meritocratic political society, but his views of a flawlessly,moral cosmos that we should not try to alter because it is already perfect,that view, on the contrary, we will see will be strongly rejected by many ofthe thinkers that will come immediately after Mozi,and indeed the Mohists, for the most part, will lose this argument. We willtherefore see why it is that Weber’s readingwas not only selective, but actually missed a lot of the key elements thatwould later become so important for Chinese notions of the cosmos. Thank youvery much.