"Mozi saves the Song Dynasty" does not rely on moral preaching, but on "good obedience"

Of course, in the end, Mozi successfully prevented the King of Chu from attacking the Song. How did he do it? (ICphoto/Photo)

The story of Mozi saving Song is a must-tell story for those who introduce Mozi, and the amount of information in this story is really quite large.

Mozi's first step is to go to see the public lose and say that I will give you a sum of money, and you will kill someone for me. I am a principled person and cannot kill people. Mozi said, then you invented the cloud ladder to let the King of Chu attack the Song Kingdom, killing so many people, shouldn't you be responsible?

Here Mozi points out a problem: people who are not willing to do small bad things may do big bad things but do not feel any moral obstacles. Because killing a person with one's own hands, that feeling of guilt strikes directly into the heart; there are many people on the front line, but they need Mozi to remind them that it is impossible to avoid this fact.

The mentality of distance from the victim and feeling that there is no need to feel guilty about doing evil is of course very common. Even, because we do not want to have victims in front of us, it is not uncommon to create more victims in distant places. Alexander P. R. Downs mentions a study in "Civilians in War" that argues that, contrary to the autocratic empires that many people imagine, are keen to expand and massacre, "democracies" are more afraid of killing their own people, so in order to end the war as soon as possible, the slaughter of foreign civilians is often more crisp.

Another important point that Mozi emphasized to gongfu was that the State of Song was not guilty, so it was unjust for the State of Chu to attack the State of Song.

In other debates, Mozi made a distinction between the nature of war: evil wars are called "attacks", and just wars are called "curses", such as Shang Tang And King Wu of Zhou.

Mozi only opposed the attack, not the curse.

The impact of this mentality on what will happen to the war is actually a little difficult to say.

In the Spring and Autumn Period, King Zhuang of Chu defeated the State of Jin, but King Zhuang of Chu thought that he had many problems with himself, and could not be compared with King Wu of Zhou, and the generals of the State of Jin were loyal to their own country, and they were never compared with the army of Shang, so what they fought was not a just war. As a result, King Zhuang of Chu refused his subordinates' request to humiliate the corpses of the Jin army, and did not kill them all, allowing the defeated Jin army to flee back to the north bank of the Yellow River. In other words, instead of claiming to be righteous, killing is reduced.

On the contrary, if you confidently see your contest with the enemy as a struggle between good and evil, or a war between civilization and barbarism, you can indulge your cruelty with impunity. From modern times until the First World War, the European powers expanded around the world: the war between Europeans was a model, and the war between Europeans against the colonial peoples was another model. The former would, at least theoretically, argue that mistreatment of prisoners of war and massacres of civilians is wrong, while the latter does not have so much scruples. It was precisely because europeans believed that the colonial people were barbaric and uncivilized, and the sense of superiority of civilization and justice was even more explosive. At this level, Zhuangzi saw it more thoroughly than Mozi, and he said: "For the righteous soldiers, the foundation of the army." "The claim to eliminate war in the name of the pursuit of justice is the root cause of war.

In any case, it is useless to talk about morality, so enter the second step, Mozi goes to see the king of Chu, calculates economic accounts, and talks about whether it is worth it to fight the Song Kingdom.

Mozi said that the Chu state is very rich, the Song country is very poor, and the Chu country fights the Song country, just like the rich people steal the things of the poor.

The book "Mozi" does not mention how the King of Chu refuted Mozi, I suspect, in fact, the King of Chu made a very powerful refutation of Mozi at that time, which caused the Mo family to be embarrassed to write down this paragraph.

Because it is too easy to refute Mozi, in the era of the weak and the strong, the strong and the rich will not abandon the wealth, and it is too common to attack the weak and poor countries. If you are not willing to fight, it can only be that the cost of war is too high and the benefits are too small, not to mention that the Song Kingdom is not a poor country.

The rebuttal line for the King of Chu is as follows: "Dear Zi Mozi, according to your logic, even if the war is won, it is people who die, what they get is land, the population is a scarce resource, and some undeveloped land is." So it's not cost-effective to go to war. We should take a long-term view: there are so many lands under the world, and the population under the world has grown without limits. A war has been fought, and now a little bit of people are dead, but the acquisition of land has created space for the development of our country. Moreover, as you Zi Mozi said in the "Festivals", we can adopt appropriate fertility policies to accelerate the speed of population growth. In fact, the era of sparse population will soon be over. ”

Two hundred years later, Han Feizi can prove this, because in his time he was already "a people and a people with few goods and wealth, and a weak supply for everything, so the people quarreled, although they were rewarded and punished, they were not free from chaos."

At that time, Mozi was likely to lose this debate.

Of course, in the end, Mozi succeeded in preventing the King of Chu from attacking Song. How did he do it?

This is the third step, the climax of the story, Mozi and Gong lose in front of the King of Chu to carry out actual combat simulation, the results proved that with the Mo family's military technology level, they assisted in defending the city, you Chu state attack song is simply unable to fight.

The Mo family's "non-offensive" thinking is actually not very distinctive in the pre-Qin dynasties. Except for the Dharma, all factions were anti-war. The difference is that Mencius was anti-war and good at making highly literary humanitarian speeches; Zhuangzi was anti-war, and his sharp words were better than a thousand words from others, but did they really have a way to face the butcher's knife and the flames of war?

Only Mozi has it.

In Sima Qian's "Records of History", there are only 24 words to mention Mozi, which mentions, "Good to keep the emperor, for the sake of thrift", without mentioning propositions, only emphasizing practical practice, or very good at grasping the main points.

(The author is a university teacher and historian)

(This article is only the author's personal opinion and does not represent the position of this newspaper)

Liu Bo