Rationally Speaking #223 (16 Dec 2018): Chris Fraser on “The Mohists, ancient China’s philosopher warriors”
The Mohists were a group from early China, either the Qin dynasty or whoever preceded the Qin dynasty. Then in the following dynasty, they were mostly forgotten.
They were consequentialists, and the consequences they considered good were something like, material wealth, something I forget, and people acting in their assigned roles. (Fathers acting as fathers, administrators acting as administrators, that sort of thing.) They were also anti-war, and their philosophy encouraged them to actually go out into the world and try to make it better. If there was a war, they’d offer their services to the defender, making it more costly to the attacker. They were kind of well-known for that. One story tells their founder walking ten days to talk to an aggressor and try to convince them to call off the attack. Aggressor is like “well but I’m all prepared now, it would be awkward to cancel. Plus I’ve got these neat siege engines”. Mohist demonstrates how he’d defeat the siege engines, and says he’s placed thousands of followers on the walls of the defender, which in this case is a flat lie but it works. Aggressor sighs and calls off the attack.
They were very religious, and their philosophy followed from their religion, but I didn’t really follow how. Also, they weren’t into equality. They thought society should be stratified, and the people above should be rewarded, but also they should use their rewards to help the poor.
A few factors in their decline. One was that their rank-and-file got super into giving stuff away for status, like you couldn’t live comfortably and be a proper Mohist, which the central Mohists didn’t agree with at all. Parallels to EA there. (Though the central Mohists did think you shouldn’t have, like, decorated clothing or weapons, because they function just as well as clothing or weapons without the decoration.) Another was that Chinese unification meant there were fewer wars for them to make themselves useful in. Another was that they sort of got into the water supply, some of their ideas became mainstream and then there was less distinguishing them from others.
Rationally Speaking #223 (16 Dec 2018): Chris Fraser on “The Mohists, ancient China’s philosopher warriors”
The Mohists were a group from early China, either the Qin dynasty or whoever preceded the Qin dynasty. Then in the following dynasty, they were mostly forgotten.
They were consequentialists, and the consequences they considered good were something like, material wealth, something I forget, and people acting in their assigned roles. (Fathers acting as fathers, administrators acting as administrators, that sort of thing.) They were also anti-war, and their philosophy encouraged them to actually go out into the world and try to make it better. If there was a war, they’d offer their services to the defender, making it more costly to the attacker. They were kind of well-known for that. One story tells their founder walking ten days to talk to an aggressor and try to convince them to call off the attack. Aggressor is like “well but I’m all prepared now, it would be awkward to cancel. Plus I’ve got these neat siege engines”. Mohist demonstrates how he’d defeat the siege engines, and says he’s placed thousands of followers on the walls of the defender, which in this case is a flat lie but it works. Aggressor sighs and calls off the attack.
They were very religious, and their philosophy followed from their religion, but I didn’t really follow how. Also, they weren’t into equality. They thought society should be stratified, and the people above should be rewarded, but also they should use their rewards to help the poor.
A few factors in their decline. One was that their rank-and-file got super into giving stuff away for status, like you couldn’t live comfortably and be a proper Mohist, which the central Mohists didn’t agree with at all. Parallels to EA there. (Though the central Mohists did think you shouldn’t have, like, decorated clothing or weapons, because they function just as well as clothing or weapons without the decoration.) Another was that Chinese unification meant there were fewer wars for them to make themselves useful in. Another was that they sort of got into the water supply, some of their ideas became mainstream and then there was less distinguishing them from others.