From the end of the Spring and Autumn Period to the beginning of the Warring States period, the Hundred Schools of Thought continued to develop, and the various schools of thought debated endlessly, of which the debate between Confucianism and Mojia was the most intense, Mozi and Mencius were almost equivalent to two tit-for-tat opposites, both of which did not agree with each other's views, so countless fierce debates were launched, but in the end neither of them was able to convince the other.
Interestingly, as far as Mencius is concerned, whether it is his behavior or personality, he is different from the Confucian sage Confucius, Confucius is generous and modest, but Mencius is just and upright; Confucius is gentle and elegant, Mencius is straightforward and fast-talking; Confucius is low-key, mencius is a man with a flamboyant personality... Therefore, when we read the Analects, we feel more about morality and etiquette.
Among Mencius's many remarks, there is more discussion of war, and although there are factors of the times, more are the differences in personal personality.
Overall, Confucius is gentle and thick, spring wind and rain, moisturizing things are silent... Mencius, on the other hand, was chivalrous, imposing, and washed away the air. In this way, Mencius is indeed more like Mozi, because the Mo family in the Warring States period was a school of chivalry and righteousness, and both of them practiced chivalry and righteousness, anti-war and love for the people.
So, in essence, why do two people who are so similar to each other have so many arguments between them? In this article, we will focus on analyzing this problem and see where the differences between Mozi and Mencius are.
Mencius and Mozi we mentioned above are both heroic and righteous, they are all opposed to war and love the masses, in the book "Mozi", there are "non-offensive" in the middle and lower three, it can be said that it is the earliest anti-war declaration in history, and he is the same in behavior, the most famous is the story of single-handedly resolving the war between the Chu and Song states.
It is said that at that time, Lu Ban, a famous craftsman of the State of Lu, built a kind of engineering instrument ladder for the State of Chu, and the State of Chu planned to use this equipment to attack the State of Song, Mozi immediately set off after hearing about it, walked for ten days and ten nights to the capital of the State of Chu, persuaded Lu Ban in words and deeds, and finally resolved the battle between the State of Song and the State of Chu.
This is Mozi's chivalry, after all, there is no record in history, indicating that Mozi is a Song person, and when the Chu State was preparing to cut down the Song, Mozi was not in the Song Kingdom, at the same time, the Song Kingdom did not ask him to help, and what is more excessive is that when Mozi helped the Song Kingdom to defuse the danger, he encountered heavy rain on the way back to China, but the Song people even opposed him to entering the city to avoid the rain.
It can be seen that there is no interest between Mozi and Song Guo, but even so, Mozi still walked for ten days and ten nights to help Song Guo, which is his courage to stand up, fight injustice, and save people from suffering.
We can use this story to roughly summarize the chivalry of the Mo family.
So let's look at the Confucian chivalry. We can prove Mencius's righteousness with another story, which is recorded in the "Mencius Liang HuiWang" article.
It is said that once there was a conflict between the State of Zou and the State of Lu, and 33 officials of the State of Zou died, but the people of the State of Zou stood by and watched, and they could not be saved when they saw death. As a result, the monarch of the State of Zou fell into a dilemma, because this matter was not easy to deal with at all, if it was impossible to kill these ordinary people who stood by and watched, it would be impossible to kill, was it because 33 officials were going to slaughter the city? Obviously not appropriate.
If you don't kill, then the majesty of the leadership will no longer exist, and Zou Mugong at that time was embarrassed and asked Mencius what to do? Mencius did not give this answer directly, but righteously said to Zou Mugong:
You deserve such a situation, who let you usually be bad to the people? When the zou state was in a famine, the people were old and weak and abandoned the wilderness, and the young and strong fled everywhere, but the treasury of the Zou state was full of treasures, the granary was full of grain, and Zou Guo obviously had the ability to relieve the people, but the officials of the Zou state did not choose to report the disaster upwards, which in itself was a kind of seeing death and not saving.
How do officials treat the people, and how do the people treat them? The so-called out of the blue, the opposite is also! Therefore, when the common people catch the opportunity to take revenge, how can they help these officials who have seen death and cannot be saved?
Mencius's righteousness is reflected in his courage to speak out, no matter what kind of words, he dares to speak bluntly to the monarch, and he is good at thinking from the perspective of the people, which is about the chivalrous righteousness of Confucianism.
The biggest difference between Mozi and Mencius is actually reflected in their chivalrous way.
We can see from the story that Mozi is practicing his own ideals, this ideal is both love, in the story, Mozi and Song Guo have no interest, but Mozi helps Song Guo is sparing no effort, this is the idea of simultaneous love.
Loving and caring for all people to reach a unified level and height, just like loving themselves or their parents, treating all the people in the whole world as the same person, giving reciprocal love, giving equal help, even if the people they need to love and care for are not friendly to themselves, they must also use love to impress them, so Mozi will travel thousands of miles to help a country that is not friendly to him.
But Mencius's views are not the same, we can understand from the story of Mencius's heroic righteousness and righteousness, there is a concept of equality in Mencius's concept, that is, how you treat me, how I treat you, under the premise of not doing evil, the attitude towards the other party depends on the other party's attitude towards himself, that is, love is actually an exchange.
What kind of love to give to each other can obtain the same degree of love, so that people's love is hierarchical, because people's love for their parents will certainly be more, and their love for other relatives will be relatively less, so the love obtained will be graded.
This is where the disagreement comes out. The Mo family, led by Mozi, advocated undifferentiated love, and the Confucians, led by Mencius, advocated differentiated benevolence.
The Mo family believes that under the role of simultaneous love, everyone is equal, the whole world is the same, all people can get the same love, all people will use the same love to love others, so that there is no contradiction between each other, no resentment, no war, everyone can love each other, unity and mutual help, close as brothers, this is not the common pursuit of all mankind?
It is true that we are now advocating the creation of a community with a shared future for mankind, in fact, is not the goal of chasing the four seas? From this point of view, Mozi's thinking is very advanced.
However, Mozi ignored a problem, since he is a social person and a natural person, then it is impossible for a person to have only love and no hate, it is impossible to have no interests, and it is impossible to have no contradictions and conflicts.
In the Confucian view, Mozi's idea is simply impossible, because according to people's actual life experience, we can get a common sense, that is, a person must love his children more than his brother's children, and he must love his brother's children more than the neighbor's children.
This is a problem that does not need to be discussed at all, even normal ethics and morality, the common sense of man, and even more the code of conduct between people, which is based on human nature and cannot be violated at all.
In Mencius's view, the Jane Eyre advocated by the Mo family is simply impossible to achieve, people cannot go against their own human nature to do things that cannot be done at all, or to do things that they are inherently incomprehensible, and even in Mencius's thoughts, if one thing goes against common sense and common sense, but there are still people who want to do it, that is hypocrisy, which is another way of evil.
The Confucians and the Mo family have been arguing endlessly, and no one can convince anyone.
In fact, from our modern point of view, both of the thinking is reasonable, the Concept of the Mo Family is the ideal we have been pursuing, and mencius's concept is based on common sense and common sense on human nature, fundamentally speaking, we have no way to violate the doctrines of the two.
Is it true that because people have common sense, they will not strive for ideals? Of course not! The same person cannot go against common sense that is incomprehensible at the moment because of ideals.
What we should do should be based on Mencius's ideas and try our best to achieve the great unity advocated by Mozi. In fact, only by breaking the boundaries between people and transcending the bounded love that can be achieved between people can we realize the broad love that everyone is equal in the world, and at that time can we truly create a perfect and fair world.
In essence, the concepts of Mencius and Mozi could not be applied to the same era, Mencius focused on reality, and Mozi thought of the distant future.
For us, we need to believe that what Mencius said is reality, but we can't ignore the beautiful ideal in Mozi's mind. After all, Mencius's realistic morality is reasonable, Mozi's transcendent morality is also reasonable, if you only talk about reality and do not talk about transcendence, then there will be no real morality, and only talking about transcendence without reality, it is immoral in the present.
From this point of view, whether it is Mozi's love or Mencius's benevolence, both are reasonable, if the two can be combined into one, perhaps more suitable for the current era, the ideal can pay attention to both love, reality is to pay attention to benevolence, to advocate benevolence with both love, to achieve both love with benevolence, which may be the most appropriate way.
However, in the era at that time, Mencius and Mencius could not get beyond the limitations of their own thinking, so although the two were very similar in personality and roughly similar in behavior, because the core views of the two were very different, the debate between them was endless, and the fierce debate was staged in turn, which became one of the most wonderful parts of the hundred schools of thought.