QuestionsWhat makes something right?Love all human beings without distinction, because it benefits the world most
What makes something right?Consequences

Love all human beings without distinction, because it benefits the world most

Universal love (jian ai); impartial care

Mozi (Mo Di) c. 470 BC · c. 391 BCLove all human beings without distinction: this is the one rule that brings the world peace.
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What it claims

Universal love is right and partiality is wrong: everyone must treat others, their families and their countries as his own.

Why

Wars and thefts come from each person loving only his own; if everyone loved others as himself, these evils would vanish.

The same idea through history
Mozi (Mo Di)400 BCMozi taught toward the end of the 5th century BC; the chapters on universal love survive in three versions, written down by his followers.
Jeremy Bentham1789Bentham also judges actions by their effects on everyone's happiness, each counting for one.Peter Singer1972Singer likewise asks us to help distant strangers as we help those close to us.
In short

"Love all human beings without distinction, because it benefits the world most" is an argument by Mozi (Mo Di) (Mozi, chapters 14-16 ("Universal Love"), 400 BC) on the question "What makes something right?" (answer: consequences). Its claim: Universal love is right and partiality is wrong: everyone must treat others, their families and their countries as his own. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P5). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 1 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Mozi, chapters 14-16 ("Universal Love")
Valid with an implicit premise

For Mozi, China in the Warring States period suffers from wars, thefts and divided families. The Confucians answer with rites and graded love: one loves one's parents first, then others. Mozi thinks this gradation is the root of the evil. If everyone loves his own more than others, everyone takes from others to give to his own. He proposes the opposite, universal love: regard the family, city and state of others as one's own. He justifies it by its results, not by a feeling.

P1What is good is what procures benefits for the world and removes its calamities. This is what the benevolent person seeks.
P2The greatest calamities (wars between states, strife between families, theft, discord between father and son) arise from partiality: each loves only his own and takes from others to benefit them.
P3If everyone regarded others as himself, there would be no more war or theft, and families would agree: universal love produces the greatest benefits in the world.
P4This is possible, for it is not a superhuman feat: what the ruler encourages, the people do. Rulers have already obtained far harder things from people (going hungry to have a slim waist).
P5 · implicit premiseOne must do what brings the greatest benefits to the world, when it is possible. Love without distinction is therefore the rule to follow, and partiality is to be rejected.
Therefore universal love is right and partiality is wrong: everyone must treat others, their families and their countries as his own.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P5, the computer finds a world where universal love is possible and beneficial, and yet one is not obliged to practise it: for instance because one keeps the right to give priority to those close to us.
With P5 the argument is valid. Without P5 it is true that universal love would benefit the world and would be possible, but it has not been shown that one must do it, nor that no other rule would do better. Mozi also assumes, without proving it, that partiality is the main cause of calamities: this is where his critics come in.
Analogy. A referee who always whistles for his own son makes the match unfair for everyone. Mozi asks every referee to whistle as if all the players were his sons.

Objections

3

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Mencius 300 BC · attacks premise 5

Mencius judges that loving everyone without distinction means no longer acknowledging the special place of one's father, and that whoever acknowledges neither father nor prince lives like a beast. For him, benevolence is born of a family attachment, which then extends to others by degrees.

a defender replies
C
Chris Fraser defender of the argument · 2016
Summary: Fraser reads Mozi's universal love as not requiring the same feeling for everyone, but equal consideration in practical decisions: everyone counts for institutions, and one cares for others without excluding anyone. It does not ask us to forget our parents, but not to favour their interests unjustly.
Where the debate stands (our summary)Mencius and Mozi agree on caring about others. The core disagreement: should one first develop attachment to those close to us and then extend it, or surpass it from the start with an impartial rule? The debate continues today between impartial ethics and ethics of relationships.
An objection drawn from the Analects of Confucius 500 BC · attacks premise 5

Confucius is asked whether one should repay injury with kindness. He answers: then with what would you repay kindness? Repay injury with justice and kindness with kindness. Benevolence is therefore not the same for all: it answers what each has done.

no reply
see the argument
We have not yet found a direct reply by Di) in the texts.
The debate goes on (our summary) Confucius died before Mozi: this passage is not an answer to Mozi, but the idea of graded benevolence that Confucius's followers defended against him. Mozi criticises the Confucians of his time in chapter 39 of the book. The core disagreement: is treating everyone the same a requirement of justice, or does justice consist in giving each what is due?
Bernard Williams 1976 · attacks premise 5

A morality that asks us never to prefer those close to us destroys what gives a life its meaning: our personal projects and attachments. If, to save one's wife, one must first ask whether it is permitted, that is already one thought too many.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1976, after the author's death (-391).
The debate goes on (our summary) Williams writes more than two thousand years after Mozi and does not cite him in this text. Defenders of impartiality (in the line of Mozi, Bentham and Singer) answer that impartiality governs institutions and major choices, not every private act. Williams's supporters answer that this separation does not hold, since the trouble comes from the demand itself.