Chapter VI – Applying Phenomenology of Will to the Philosophy of Mozi
3. The Will of Heaven
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model of willing and action, which was devised and expanded in the previous Chapters of this paper.
Moreover, the research results of this research on Mozi will enable us to attempt a comparative study of some elements of Arendt’s and Mozi’s philosophies, which will be done in the course of this Chapter’s discussion, whenever it may be deemed appropriate. It should be noted that both philosophic traditions have an intertwining of the anthropological and political conceptions, which will make a comparison between the two philosophies especially interesting. An attempt at such a comparative research is thus to be also done in the subsequent sections of this Chapter.
3. The Will of Heaven
For Mozi, “Heaven” or the “Supreme Lord” denotes an ultimate source of moral laws and an absolute supreme authority, Heaven is responsible for rewarding people for virtuous deeds and punishing for evil ones.
There were different opinions on whether the “Heaven” of Mozi is personified and has a nature of an acting subject. It may be inferred from Mozi’s use of the term that he uses “anthropomorphic language” to express the “attitude” or “behaviour” of Heaven, however, the very meaning and significance of Heaven does not carry a personified character, rather, Heaven is often associated with the norms/standards or “measuring principles,” which fully explain and express all “attitudes” and “behaviour” of Heaven.
Thus, Heaven may be considered as an ultimate source of the set of laws, which includes fixed principles of the moral life of people, and this concept is sometimes expressed in anthropomorphic way, which provides for vividness and understandability of this concept to people, who would listen or read this, including people from both educated and ordinary classes.
Scott Lowe expresses this characteristic of Mozi’s “Heaven” in the following way:
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The Heaven of the Mohists is omniscient and utterly impartial in its dealings with humanity; there is no hint of unpredictability or caprice in its actions.182
However, this researcher is still mislead by the Mohist terms “love,” and “will,”
which are often attributed to Heaven by Mozi. Mr. Lowe says that:
…although Heaven is a stern judge of human behavior, it is also asserted that Heaven loves humanity… While there is no necessary conflict between the role of divine judge and loving deity, this depiction adds a measure of complexity to Mozi's otherwise straightforward theology. …Heaven is depicted as the conscious organizing power responsible for all that is right in the world.183
All of the statements in the above quotation are false. Heaven is interpreted as a
“conscious” “divine judge,” a “loving deity,” who “loves humanity” and there is some
“theology” of this Heaven. All of these words, which are marked by quotation marks are not directly applicable to Mozi’s “Heaven,” and if such words are to be applied to Mozi’s thought, they have to be marked and explained to be used metaphorically. All of such misinterpretation of Mozi results from not knowing or forgetting that Mozi’s
“Heaven” is not a freely acting Divine Person, but is rather a set of principles, which have a common name of “Heaven,” which is rooted in ancient Chinese religion. There is no notion of “personal behaviour and freedom” of Heaven, nor there is an indication that humans may enter into an inter-subjective relationship with Heaven. This is the phenomenological manifestation of “Heaven” according to Mozi’s philosophy, we are not concerned with its ontological grounding.
182 Lowe, Scott. Mo Tzu’s Religious Blueprint for a Chinese Utopia: The Will and the Way. P.
134.
183 Lowe, Scott. Mo Tzu’s Religious Blueprint for a Chinese Utopia: The Will and the Way. P.
134.
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The “Heaven” and “Supreme Lord” may even have been understood by Mohists as a Supreme Being or Person, however, the real implications, which are derived by Mozi from the existence of Heaven, may be understood in a way, which does not require positing existence of the Supreme Subjective Being. This is good for our research, since it aims at remaining a philosophical inquiry and does not aim at issues related to super-natural and religious aspects. Thus, for the purposes of this research, we may treat
“Heaven” simply as a philosophic notion indicating an ultimate set of universal laws and principles, which include principles of human moral behaviour, and work in such a way as to either punish evil/unjust deeds or reward the virtuous and just deeds. The principles, which indicate whether a deed is virtuous or evil will be discussed at a greater depth later in this Chapter.
There is a lot of academic discussion regarding whether the “Heaven” advocated by Mozi has a personal nature, is an agent, which may have a free will. Some scholars support this claim, while others reject it and argue that Mozi’s “Heaven” is an impersonal set of principles or some kind of metaphysical source or framework of natural and moral order of the world. This argument is outside the scope of the current research inquiry, since there is no concern about metaphysical or ontological claims of Mozi. What concerns us is the way Mozi “Heaven” “appears” or discloses itself to the world of human experiences. In other words, our research inquiry is concerned only with the phenomenological side of Mozi’s philosophy, everything else is put into brackets and there is no need to discuss it in any length in this dissertation.
The phenomenological side of Mozi’s “Heaven” is as follows: “Heaven” is relevant to people only as a source and carrier of moral and natural principles, there is no spontaneous will exercised by Heaven, which may influence human life, there is also no interpersonal dialogue between humans and Heaven, which is accounted for by Mozi.
Mozi indicates that “Heaven” and “Ghosts” exist, and thus there is a real purpose of making sacrifices to them. However, these sacrifices carry a mechanistic nature, they function in a similar way to tokens thrown in a vending machine, which gives us something in return to our “sacrifice”. Thus, we claim that for the phenomenological
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purposes of current research there is no need for postulating Mozi’s “Heaven” to be or not to be a personal agent. It suffices to say that phenomenologically “Heaven” does not manifest itself as a free acting or spontaneously willing agent.
Mozi introduces a concept of the “Will of Heaven.” This notion also carries an athroponoetic character, since the word “will” implies that Heaven may have noetic characteristics similar to that of humans. However, there is no need to understand this notion literally, since it means only a correspondence of human’s behaviour to the moral principles supplied by Heaven, as well as the necessary consequences, which follow from either following or breaking these laws. Thus, there is no subjective decision making on the part of Heaven, there is no freedom in the “Will of Heaven.”
There is no need to do a deep research of the Mozi’s concept of “Heaven,” since it is not a goal of our research. More important are the implications of Heaven and the
“Will of Heaven” for people, their wills and actions.
Mozi describes the main principles upon which Heaven’s rewards and punishments are based in the following way:
So, how is it I know that Heaven desires what is just and abhors what is unjust?
I say it is because when there is justice, all under Heaven has life; without justice they die. With justice there is wealth; without justice there is poverty.
With justice there is order; without justice there is disorder. Therefore, Heaven desires that things live and abhors that they die, desires that they are wealthy and abhors that they are poor, desires their order and hates their disorder. This is how I know that Heaven desires what is just and abhors what is unjust.184
Thus, according to Mozi the basic consequences of just and virtuous deeds are life, wealth and order, while the basic consequences of unjust deeds are death, poverty and disorder. These consequences are necessary, they are the natural outcomes of just
184 Translated from Sun Yirang 孫詒讓. Mozi jian gu 墨子閒詁. (Taipei: Huaqu shuju, 1987). P.
176.
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and unjust behaviour. Essentially these consequences are the manifestations of the “Will of Heaven,” so it is evident, that there is no subjective or personification element in the concept of the “Will of Heaven” at least with respect to these laws.