A Study Of Mo-tse’s View Of "Public Interests" From The Conflict Between Righteousness And Relatives

Mo-tse’s concept of "righteousness" is essentially the combination of "publicity" and "interests". Righteousness is rooted in "Tianzhi" and "loving and benefiting people" is the driving force to do the righteous things. As the key point of Mo-tse’s claim of "public interests", "universal love" reflects the publicity of God’s will and the intention to love and benefit people. So the paper is trying to interpret the matter of "Halls of the Dead" that Mencius criticized the conflict between universal love and partial love in Mo-tse’s system as the thesis that "universal love is unrighteous". Unrighteous means unsuitable as well as immoral, so universal love is unrighteous on two aspects:on the one hand, people who have universal love are deemed as immoral "animals without parents". The universal love "goes against the basic human relations", and the pursuit of "public interest" obliterates the definition of "relatives": First, Mencius claims that Mo-tse’s "righteousness" is a matter of "Halls of the Dead" life during the conversation with the Mohist Yi-zi; Second, through the critique of Mo-tse’s idea of "funeral frugality", Mencius pointed out that "righteousness" counts against the spirit of "reverence for ancestors". On the other hand, universal love is a kind of unsuitable moral demand. "Unrighteous universal love" can be seemed as a demand that violates the "personal integrity"."Treating others’ relations just like our own relations" is a kind of "impartial perspective", and "filial piety" that maintains special responsibility for family is a kind of "partial perspective", when the personal gain is unrighteous, Mo-tse hold that we should place righteousness above family loyalty. Thus, the conflict between universal love and partial love, i.e. the conflict between selflessness and the special responsibility for family, becomes a challenge to Mo-tse’s view of public interests.This paper will go back to the text of Mo-tse, depending on the discussion about moral demand between consequentialists and anti-consequentialists, analyse and response the argument of "unrighteous universal love" raised by Mencius, and defend Mo-tse’s view of "public interests". The paper tries to argue that universal love and partial love in Mo-tse’s theory are in fact quite harmonious. The study of the relationship between universal love and partial love not only deepens our understanding of Mo-tse’s thought of "righteousness", it also can provide some kind of paradigm theory about the corresponding topic.