Xing zi ming chu

The text entitled Xing zi ming chu by the modern editors of the Guodian manuscripts has rightfully attracted a great deal of scholarly attention. It deploys terms (such as xing 性, “inner nature”; or qing 情, “feelings”) that we know to have acquired profound significance in the discourse of the late Warring States and Han. Moreover, it constellates and orients these terms in ways previously unseen. However, much analysis of the Xing zi ming chu has been methodologically ahistorical. One prominent tendency has been to view the text as an intermediary evolutionary “stage” in the development of “Confucian” philosophy, placing it at the midpoint between landmark figures.Footnote ⁸ This is not to say that any “evolutionary” reading is perforce invalid. But to view the text as the expression of a “Confucian” school trying to get from Point A (say, the Lun yu) to Point B (say, the Mencius) robs an evolutionary scheme of most of its interpretive value. If some sort of cultural or intellectual development is afoot, we stand a much better chance of uncovering the forces that are driving this change by comparing Xing zi ming chu to the texts with which it was synchronically discursively engaged rather than the texts we have a priori judged to be its diachronic genealogical affiliates.

Still, one might fairly ask why Xing zi ming chu should be compared to the Mozi. There is much evidence to place Mohists in Chu at the time the occupant of Tomb One was active. The figure who gives his name to the text, Mo Di 墨翟, was born in Lu 魯 and lived and taught from the late fifth century to the early fourth century b.c.e.Footnote ⁹ The Mozi records a journey of Mo Di to Chu in order to persuade the monarch of that kingdom to desist from attacking Song.Footnote ¹⁰ After Mo Di's death the movement he founded persisted as a paramilitary organization led by an officer known as a “juzi (literally ‘hammer’)” 鉅子. The Lüshi chunqiu 呂氏春秋 gives the name of one such juzi, Meng Sheng 孟勝 (d. 381 b.c.e.), and records that he was a loyal client of the Lord of Yangcheng 陽城君, a Chu noble.Footnote ¹¹ Han Feizi 韓非子 (c. 280–c. 233 b.c.e.) reports that upon Mo Di's death the movement split into three lineages, that of Xiangli 相里氏, Xiangfu 相夫氏, and Dengling 鄧陵氏.Footnote ¹² Chapter 33 of the Zhuangzi ranks Master Dengling among the “Mohists of the south” 南方之墨者 and notes that these southerners accused the northern disciples of Xiangli Qin (and perhaps also one another) of being “heretical Mohists.”Footnote ¹³ There is thus good contemporary testimony that the Mohists were active in Chu up to and during the time when the occupant of Tomb One was alive.

The current text of the Mozi itself poses challenges to historical analysis. Large parts of the text are lost or corrupted, and the remaining portions exhibit structural idiosyncrasies that complicate any attempt at precise dating or classification. Angus Graham proposed that one series among the “Core Chapters” of the Mozi could be identified with what the Zhuangzi calls “the southern Mohists.”Footnote ¹⁴ By his reading these southerners were quite distinctive within the larger tradition of Mohism, they were “deviant” in being willing to compromise some of the most radical values propounded by the founder. If Graham's analysis is correct we would be on firmest ground comparing the Guodian manuscripts only to those “J series” chapters representative of the southern Mohists.

Erik Maeder points out, however, that the synoptic parallels and borrowings between the core chapters are so complex as to defy determining with any confidence what circumscribed the textual arsenal of any particular group of Mohists at any given time.Footnote ¹⁵ He sees evidence that the extant “chapter (pian 篇)” was not the operative unit in which Mohist writings circulated during the Warring States. Rather, “the various schools had on hand a number of short ce 冊 … from which they then quoted as they saw fit when setting out to compose what would thus be entirely new, and once more fully authoritative, pieces of writing.”Footnote ¹⁶ Graham himself, while noting particular points on which the “three sects” can be seen to diverge, acknowledges that the text as a whole manifests a “general agreement in thought.”Footnote ¹⁷ Although these structural complexities preclude precise dating, most of the extant text can confidently be dated to the fourth century b.c.e., with the exception of some of the later “logic” and military chapters that may have been composed as late as the third century b.c.e.Footnote ¹⁸ We can thus use most of the Mozi as a source for the state of Mohism during the lifetime of the occupant of Tomb One and as an index of the intellectual positions against which he was engaged.Footnote ¹⁹

Yet contemporaneity itself does not argue that juxtaposing the two texts will prove illuminating. Indeed, superficial appearances might be interpreted to imply the contrary. The term xing 性 or “inner nature” appears only four times in the entire Mozi as opposed to dozens of times in the Xing zi ming chu, despite the fact that the former text is easily fifty times the length of the latter. If a shared terminology is the sine qua non of intertextual comparison, then we are much wiser to place the Xing zi ming chu next to the Mencius or the Xunzi.

But an only slightly more discriminating survey of Xing zi ming chu yields suggestive leads. First is the prominent place given the term “ming” 命 or “fate.” Though it is not discussed in detail, fate is put forward as the source of inner nature: “Inner nature emerges from fate, fate descends from Heaven” 性自命出, 命自天降.Footnote ²⁰ This is significant, as the Mozi consistently contains strident arguments denying the existence of fate: “Now those knights and gentlemen of the world who want to debate the causes of right and wrong, benefit and harm, cannot but urgently negate those who hold that Heaven [-sent] fate exists. Those who hold that fate exists are a severe impediment to the world, thus Master Mozi rejects them” 今天下之士君子, 將欲辯是非利害之故, 當天有命者, 不可不急非也. 執有命者, 此天下之厚害也, 是故子墨子非之也.Footnote ²¹ At one point Mozi quotes a purported Zhou canon that avers, in language inverting the text of Xing zi ming chu: “There is no Heaven [-sent] fate … [Fate] does not come down from Heaven, it is attained by me” 無天命 … 不自天降, 自我得之.Footnote ²²

Another concern of the Xing zi ming chu that has strong negative resonance with the Mozi is that of music:

Xing zi ming chu propounds a program of personal cultivation to which music is central. A cursory glance reveals that the Mozi is unequivocally opposed to such a perspective. Three chapters of the Mozi are entitled “Against Music (Fei yue)” 非樂. The text of the last two chapters is missing, but the text of the first is still extant, and enumerates detailed arguments condemning the practice of music, repeatedly intoning the formula, “Therefore Master Mozi says, ‘making music is wrong!’” 是故子墨子曰, ‘為樂非也’.Footnote ²⁴

These two comparisons do not, in and of themselves, prove definitively that Xing zi ming chu was written in dialogical response to the Mozi (or the teachings of the Mozi’s authors). They do, however, provide evidence that further investigation is warranted. Deeper examination of the premises and assertions of the two texts might substantiate the juxtaposition suggested by initial comparison.

Let us begin with the issue of music. Conventionally, the Mozi’s opposition to music is understood as prudential; the text condemns music because it entails a wasteful expenditure of resources and time.Footnote ²⁵ But if we look more closely at the discussion of music in the Mozi and how it relates to the larger doctrine that text espouses, we can see that more fundamental concerns are at stake. The Mozi does not, in fact, disagree with Xing zi ming chu about the subjective impact of music:

Although one might be tempted to underscore the differences between the Mozi and the Xing zi ming chu, the striking similarities they share are equally instructive, perhaps more so. The two texts describe the experience of music in virtually identical terms. The Mozi writes of the “joyousness” of music just as the Xing zi ming chu portrays the listener's being “joyously aroused” by the sounds of songs and odes. The above passage from the Mozi even deploys tropes to be found in the Xing zi ming chu: the benevolent person and the sage king. The key departure to be perceived in the Mozi is its employment of the terms “benefit” and “harm.” But even here we cannot leap to the conclusion that the texts disagree. The Xing zi ming chu describes benefits to be derived from music, albeit benefits won through the mediation of long practice and habitual change. To establish that this is where conflict lies, we must further examine the Mozi’s notion of “benefit.” Later in “Against Music,” we read:

The Mozi acknowledges none of the less tangible benefits of music described by the Xing zi ming chu. Here, as elsewhere, the text restricts “benefit” to narrowly material terms. In this sense the Mozi’s opposition to music, despite the text's fundamental accordance with Xing zi ming chu’s description of its “joy,” becomes more comprehensible. Music's emotional power makes it more rather than less condemnable. Although it produces no benefit in and of itself, music requires an investment of the very goods the text defines as “beneficial.” Having enjoyed music once, people will be tempted to hear it again and again, resulting in a vicious cycle of indulgence and waste. Indeed, at various points the text speaks of music as a kind of addiction with destructive consequences not unlike a dependence on strong wine.Footnote ²⁸

Though one might be tempted to reduce the Mozi’s message to one of strict material utility, this would be a distortion. The opposition of the two texts cannot be put down to a simple divide between crass materialism and moral idealism. A subtler dynamic is at work. As the title of Mozi chapter 47, “Valuing Rightness (Gui yi)” 貴義, suggests, this text centers upon a vision of the moral society and the duties of the morally conscientious individual. However, within this chapter can be gleaned a key to understanding the divergence of the overall perspective of the Mozi from that of Xing zi ming chu:

Compare the above passage to the opening passage of Xing zi ming chu:

Both texts adduce “rightness” as a central moral category, but they diverge sharply as to how rightness is constituted. For the Mozi, only by eliminating subjective emotional responses can we arrive at rightness. Pleasure, anger, joy, sorrow, and love are all “blockages” to the achievement of morality. This might seem to raise a contradiction, as one of the principle doctrinal chapters of the Mozi advocates “Universal Love (Jian ai)” 兼愛.Footnote ³¹ But if we look at how rightness is defined throughout the Mozi, we see that there is no paradox. “Rightness is benefit” 義, 利也.Footnote ³² That is to say, rightness consists of producing benefit for the world. Because for the Mozi benefit is understood in perfectly material terms, the degree of one's rightness is likewise objectively quantifiable by how much benefit one generates. In this sense, “Universal Love” and the “love” of “Valuing Rightness (Gui yi)” 貴義 must thus be distinguished from one another. The former denotes one of the objective means by which rightness is realized, through benefiting all people impartially. The latter signifies a spontaneous, subjective emotional response. “Valuing Rightness,” like “Against Music” and virtually all the chapters of the Mozi, treats the emotions with a scorn verging on (and occasionally flowing over into) suspicion. Rightness does not depend on our emotional responses, but is an exclusively rational choice based upon an external, objective standard.

By contrast, any possibility of morality for the Xing zi ming chu rests in the quality of our subjective emotional responses. The rhetorical framing of the feelings in Xing zi ming chu does not allow for the possibility of their being “discarded” as the Mozi advocates. Emotions are built into the fundamental organic structure of our person. They will inevitably be expressed upon our encountering the phenomenal world; this is not a matter of choice. We can only seek to train our inner nature so that it becomes “good,” so that its emotional responses to “things” will be appropriate to their “context.”

The distinction between Mozi and Xing zi ming chu thus does not emerge from moral versus materialist perspectives, but is rooted in a dispute over where the source of morality should be sited. Xing zi ming chu places the ultimate source of morality, the Way, within the human subject: “The Way originates in feelings, feelings are generated by inner nature.” We have seen that the Mozi places the source of morality external to human beings, in the material realm of the phenomenal world. But where within that realm does the ultimate source of moral guidance lie? The Mozi is very clear on this score:

The Mozi promotes “benefit” as a standard on the authority of Heaven. The rhetorical power of the text's claim derives from its being rooted in empirical observation. We can be confident that Heaven wants us to benefit one another because we can see Heaven doing so daily in the world around us. Everywhere people live they are able to sustain themselves through agriculture or pastoralism, this is proof that Heaven “universally possesses and feeds them.”

The Mozi establishes Heaven as an objective gauge of morality, and as we shall see goes to great lengths to sustain it. A natural question that arises is why the authors of the Mozi would commit so firmly to this idea. An inkling of the answer is contained in the passage quoted above. The Mozi repeatedly presents Heaven (or “Heaven's will [Tian zhi]” 天志) as being as consistent and invariable as the measuring standards employed by craftsmen:

Heaven's will, like the wheelwright's compass and the carpenter's square, is not bound to any particular time or place. Wherever one travels in the wide world their efficacy remains unchanged. Bury one away, and if it is disinterred in one thousand years (providing it has not decayed) it will still measure accurately. What is true of these instruments for geometric figures, says the Mozi, is true of Heaven's will in measuring benevolence and rightness. Heaven's will affords us a standard of morality that (just as Heaven does) transcends time and space; it can thus defeat the vagaries of cultural diversity and historical change.

The Mozi’s message was extraordinarily persuasive in the unique conditions of the Warring States. The people of that time were experiencing profoundly rapid and disorienting cultural, technological, political, economic, and social change. They had to learn to live with institutions and conditions unknown in the memory of recent generations. Moreover, the development of commerce and the expanding size of individual sovereign realms brought people detailed knowledge of conditions far away, producing an unsettling awareness of regional diversity. These factors, combined with a climate of increasing discord and violence, produced a sense of urgency and alarm. Against this context the message of the Mozi was both consoling and empowering.

Given the persuasive power of the Mozi’s message in the world of the Warring States, it is not surprising that its authors’ opponents would demonstrate great ingenuity in countering its teachings. Whether this was the text's “intention” or no, the Xing zi ming chu contains claims and assertions that strike at the heart (what Yu cong IV might call “the crux”) of the Mozi’s doctrine. This is one consequence of the central role the text gives the concepts “xing” and “qing.” Not only do these terms ground the root of morality within the subjective self rather than the phenomenal world, they also subvert the very notion of Heaven's will itself as an “objective” standard. This is the (or if not “the,” one) import of the lines for which the text has been so celebrated in modern scholarship: “Inner nature emerges from fate, fate descends from Heaven.” To the extent that Heaven's will is accessible at all, it can only be done through the physical Heavenly bequest that each of us carries within, the “qi of pleasure, anger, grief and sorrow” that is the potential field from which the Way emerges. Thus, the text explains:

The filaments of human culture, the Odes, Documents, rites and music, are all expressions of feelings that the human mind generates on encountering the “things” of the world. The sages take these expressions and form them into coherent and positively transformative patterns, so that they may be turned back on people and condition their minds to respond normatively in the future, generating “virtue from within.” This is the process described in the first passage from Xing zi ming chu, cited above. There we were told that music can “enter into and profoundly stir people's minds ... If you maintain this a long time, returning to goodness and diligently reverting to the origin, you will become compliant in your comings and goings, giving rise to your virtue.” The Mozi presents individual subjectivity as an obstacle to a shared morality. Xing zi ming chu not only denies that the phenomenon of subjectivity can be avoided, it asserts that within the subjective person of each individual is resident the only resource by which collective moral transformation may be achieved.

There is a logical problem here that the Xing zi ming chu does not directly address, although it is accounted for within the text as a whole. How can the sages create morally edifying culture out of the expression of human feelings if they are human beings themselves? The answer lies in the inner nature of the sage. The text allows for the possibility that human beings may spontaneously respond to “things” normatively: “When they have not been taught but the people are constant, it is because their inner nature is good 未教而民恒, 性善者也.”Footnote ³⁶ The “goodness” of inner nature has not become, in Xing zi ming chu, part and parcel of a logical dispute over people's impulses at birth. Rather, it denotes a stage in the individual's moral development. If a person occupies a point where her inner nature is good (whether she arrived at that point by birth or through practice), she will respond to phenomena with feelings that spontaneously accord with rightness. This raises the question of how one can recognize normatively correct feelings. Here the text puts forward a somewhat ironic but logically coherent standard: “What grows inner nature is the Way 長性者, 道也.”Footnote ³⁷ In other words, moral emotional responses are those that aid the further long-term vitality and dynamism of their source, inner nature. Conversely, “immoral” responses would be those that, given their “context,” are destructive of this vitality and dynamism. This analysis raises further questions and intriguing parallels and correspondences with later Warring States, Han, and even Song literature. While these issues are undeniably worthy of investigation, they are beyond the historical scope and concerns of this article. Suffice it to say that this understanding of morality and moral transformation is a powerful challenge to the doctrine of the Mozi. Not only does the subjective person contain the only resource for collective moral transformation, it provides the only “objective” standard by which moral value may be measured.

To this point we might view the opposition between the Mozi and Xing zi ming chu as one of assertion and counter-assertion. The Mozi sites the source of morality in Heaven, Xing zi ming chu locates it in personal inner nature. The choice between these two is largely a matter of faith. However if we examine these issues against the larger context of the Mozi’s program for building a moral society, we see that the polemical perspective of Xing zi ming chu has further destructive consequences for the doctrine propounded by the Mozi. The Mozi’s blueprint for the achievement of the moral society is quite consistent throughout the text. In chapter 11, “Promoting Conformity, Part I (Shang tong, shang)” 尚同上, we read:

Here again we see the recurrent theme of how individual subjectivity poses an obstacle to the realization of the moral society. The Mozi proposes that we may defeat this entropic tendency by establishing a single standard of rightness enforced rigidly from above. The Mozi’s rightness may be applied this way because it is objective, transparent, and universally recognizable (like the carpenter's square or the wheelwright's compass). The moral society is thus established and maintained by a kind of endless feedback loop: the Son of Heaven promulgates a clear standard of rightness (that of Heaven's will) down through the ranks of society which is then transmitted back to him without distortion. The elegance of this feedback system resides in its being driven by the same principle underlying the very standard of rightness it keeps in circulation: benefit. Compliance with the system leads to increased benefit (in the form of rewards), deviance to decreased benefit (in the form of punishment). This produces a general sense of fairness: compliance with the system naturally affords one a share in the goods it generates.

As mechanically flawless as the system might seem (or as the Mozi might present it to be), it is not wholly divorced from the realm of human emotional responses. This becomes clear when we examine the way rewards and punishments establish and maintain the moral order. In chapter 10, “Elevating the Worthy, Part III (Shang xian, xia)” 尚賢下, we read:

As this passage attests, the principle of “elevating the worthy” is critical to the moral order the Mozi propounds. The worthy are those who understand and adhere to the Mozi’s standard of rightness. A dearth of worthies leads to chaos, because without agents at the medial points in the virtuous feedback system detailed in “Promoting Conformity” the system cannot function. Luckily, the Mozi’s clearly articulated concept of rightness empowers the ruler to produce “worthies” by a fairly simple and transparent process, through the same application of reward and punishment advocated in “Promoting Conformity.”

Here is where emotions come into play. The emotions play no more of a role in understanding how to be a worthy than they do in understanding how to be a good archer. Worthiness originates in a standard of rightness that is completely rationally intelligible and which, like archery, produces results that can be objectively observed (and thus sanctioned). But in order for state power to be capable of producing worthies in the same way it might produce able archers, the emotions must be operative. The state's production of worthies depends on people's pleasure at the rewards for personal success in this endeavor and their fear of the punishments that will follow failure. The Mozi’s vision of collective moral transformation does not depend on people's feelings being qualitatively good or malleable, but it does necessitate their being consistent and predictable. If people's individual love of benefits and fear of punishment cannot be relied upon, the whole system is threatened with collapse.

If we closely examine the assertions of Xing zi ming chu, we see that this is precisely the possibility that they prefigure:

The first part of this passage may be read (or rather utilized) as a critique of the Mozi’s application of its standard of rightness, especially with regard to the production of worthies. No task, argues Xing zi ming chu, is devoid of an emotional substrate. If one is rationally capable of some activity but does not have the correct subjective affective disposition it entails, this is artifice. Artifice, asserts the text, is doomed to be ineffectual. Why is this so? The text of this passage is not explicit, but Xing zi ming chu’s earlier discussion of music suggests an answer: “sounds that emerge from feelings are faithful, only then can they enter into and profoundly stir people's minds.” Inner nature is such that only a genuine expression of inner nature can move it. Unless an expression is “heartfelt” it cannot penetrate and transform another person's mind.

Because all affairs and tasks entail an emotional substrate, success or failure in any social endeavor is contingent on the emotional disposition of the people involved. If people are disposed to love something, even if it is wrong (“a transgression”) they will not be averse to it. If people have no affection for some accomplishment, even if it is difficult they will not be impressed. In this sense, the propagation of a moral standard that requires no emotional commitment from either those who apply it or those to whom it is applied is, from the perspective of Xing zi ming chu, woefully misguided. Having no feeling for it, none of those involved will either genuinely understand or be genuinely transformed by the Mozi’s form of “rightness.”

Even more devastating from the perspective of the Mozi, the efficacy of the structures by which that text's moral order would be instituted is cast into doubt by Xing zi ming chu’s analysis of the inner emotional world of the individual. As Xing zi ming chu points out, people will be encouraged even before they are rewarded and afraid even before they are punished. Thus the motive power of rewards and punishments does not lie in the benefits and harm they entail, but in the emotional disposition of the person to whom they are applied. Thus if their emotional disposition changes (a contingency the Xing zi ming chu persistently argues is not only possible but necessary), the motive power of rewards and punishments can be lost. This is a possibility for which the Mozi does not allow, and that is fatally subversive to the text's whole project of collective moral transformation. If people's emotional response to rewards and punishments is at all flexible, the pristine elegance of the Mozi’s social edifice collapses. This is illustrated by a short narrative contained among the Guodian manuscripts, Duke Mu of Lu Queries Zisi (Lu Mugong wen Zisi) 魯穆公問子思:

The contrast between this vision of moral public service and that found in “Promoting Conformity” is a stark one. In the Mozi we are enjoined to “affirm what [our] superiors affirm, negate what [our] superiors negate.” Here no such compliance is advocated, quite the contrary.Footnote ⁴² In a move analogous to that of Xing zi ming chu, Duke Mu Queries Zisi gives priority to subjective emotional states over rational discursive standards. The only way to make the ruler moral is to transform him to love morality. If he is not now moral (as an historically cognizant reader would know of Duke Mu), a moral minister is left with no choice but to talk to the ruler of what he hates. Moreover, the power of the state to impose its will upon its servitors is shown to be contingent on their own level of moral development. If a minister has reached the level of moral awareness (as exemplified by Zisi within the narrative itself) where he no longer fears the loss of wealth or status, the persuasive measures advocated by “Promoting Conformity” and “Elevating the Worthy” are no longer effective.

Xing zi ming chu configures the moral world in such a way that only events and transformations transpiring within what it calls “inner nature” or “the mind,” are fundamentally real. The objective phenomenal world is morally neutral, it is only our subjective emotional responses to “things” that create moral value. Real moral change, on either the individual or collective level, is only attained when people's emotional disposition to the world is transformed. This can only be achieved through the culture produced by the sages, because only this culture encodes the authentic and normatively correct expressions of inner nature. This is the ultimate import of Xing zi ming chu’s assertion that “only the human Way can be followed.” Only the Way of human culture bears the real potential for effecting moral change, as its source is the same as the object of moral change (and is thus the only type of influence to which it will respond): inner nature. By contrast, the Mozi’s “Way,” rooted in its concept of “Heaven's will,” is a house of cards built on tertiary concerns.

I have demonstrated how when the two texts are juxtaposed, Xing zi ming chu can be shown to have destabilizing consequences for the doctrine propounded in the Mozi. I have also shown how another text of the Guodian corpus, Duke Mu Queries Zisi could be used in tandem with Xing zi ming chu in a program aimed at deconstructing the Mozi. I will now examine the remaining texts of the Guodian corpus and investigate whether they, too, could serve the same polemical ends.

Zun deyi 尊德義, Wu xing 五行, Chengzhi wenzhi 成之聞之, Zi yi 緇衣, Zhongxin zhi dao 忠信之道

At first glance, Xing zi ming chu might seem to be an exceptional text within the Guodian corpus. In no other text found in Tomb One do the concepts of “xing” and “qing” figure so prominently. But if we look closely at many of the other texts with which Xing zi ming chu was interred, especially if we similarly juxtapose them to the Mozi, we see that they are commonly antagonistic to the perspective of that text.

If one of the key polemical moves effected by Xing zi ming chu against the Mozi is to shift the locus of genuine moral value from the objective standard of Heaven to the subjective realm of the sage or worthy, this move may be clearly correspondingly perceived in five other Guodian texts: “Honoring Virtue and Rightness (Zun deyi),” “The Five Conducts (Wu xing),” Chengzhi wenzhi,Footnote ⁴³ “Black Robes (Zi yi),” and “The Way of Loyalty and Trustworthiness (Zhongxin zhi dao).”

Zun deyi diverges significantly from Xing zi ming chu in giving no discussion to either “inner nature” or “feelings.” But in its discussion of “the human Way” we can see echoes of the latter text:

Although the argument of Zun deyi is not as coherent or incisive as that of Xing zi ming chu, in their shared terms and tropes we can see a common rhetorical orientation contra the Mozi. Both texts give priority to the “human Way” over any objective moral standard grounded in Heaven. Both advocate ritual and music as principal modes of moral transformation. Where Zun deyi states that “One who examines [looks] outward, this is in order to understand one's self,” we can see a profound potential challenge to the Mozi. The Mozi would advocate that people “examine outward” in order to discern the perceptible marks of Heaven's will, while by contrast Zun deyi places self-discovery as the goal of this process. Though Zun deyi and Xing zi ming chu may diverge in the fine points of logical structure, both texts assert (contra Mozi) that the search for a moral standard must begin within the person.

The Wu xing is a more elaborately sophisticated text and even closer in its perspective to Xing zi ming chu. As the text opens we are told that the “five conducts” of humaneness, rightness, ritual, wisdom, and sagehood can only be deemed “the conduct of virtue” when they “take shape within.” Reading on, we discover:

The rhetorical vocabulary of Wu xing diverges somewhat from Xing zi ming chu, in that it ultimately gives priority to the “Way of Heaven” rather than the “Human Way.” Yet when we examine how the Way of Heaven itself is derived, the perspective of Wu xing corresponds to that of Xing zi ming chu and opposes that of the Mozi. In Wu xing the sage ultimately arrives at the Way of Heaven not by observing the phenomenal world as the Mozi advocates, but by cultivating what is within his own mind. Reading on in the text, we see that the means by which it advocates a gentleman cultivate these internal virtues include those advocated by the Xing zi ming chu and (at least in the case of music) denigrated by the Mozi: the Odes, the rites, and music.Footnote ⁴⁶

Similar rhetorical moves may be perceived in Chengzhi wenzhi. In that text we read: “Only the Way of the gentleman can be sought nearby, and cannot be reached for from afar. Why, of old, did gentlemen have the saying, ‘The sage has the virtue of Heaven?’ This says that one carefully seeks it in oneself, and is then able to perfect compliance with the constancy of Heaven.”Footnote ⁴⁷ Here again the virtue of Heaven is arrived at by internal cultivation.

The same emphasis on subjective emotional states as we perceive in Xing zi ming chu can be seen at work in Zi yi. From the very opening of the text as it was interred in Tomb One, the question of the feelings of the ruler comes to the fore:

The contradiction between the emotions of the ruler and the application of punishments conveys strong negative resonance with the Mozi. Again where the Mozi would advocate that rewards and punishments might be applied to coordinate the activities of the people, Zi yi insists that this is a secondary technique of order. If the ruler aligns his inner emotional life to produce the proper edifying effect, the need for punishments may be obviated. Just as in Xing zi ming chu the transformative power of the ruler is tied to the genuineness and intensity of his inner feelings. Many of the subsequent commentarial notes of the Zi yi continue and expand upon these themes. Since the Mozi also makes use of texts such as the Odes and the Documents, a commentarial work like the Zi yi would have had a special place in a polemical arsenal built in opposition to the Mozi, as it attempts to control the meaning of earlier canonical texts so that they may not be harnessed to the Mozi’s doctrinal agenda.

The text Zhongxin zhi dao or The Way of Loyalty and Trustworthiness treats moral values which are shared concerns in the text of the Mozi. Above, we have already seen that the Mozi endorses loyalty and trustworthiness as qualities the state should seek in the “worthy”: “Suppose I try to entice them thus, saying ‘All those knights in my state who are loyal and trustworthy, I will reward and ennoble. All those knights within my realm who are not loyal and trustworthy, I will punish and debase.’ If you ask of that state's knights, who will be pleased and who afraid?” Though Mozi and Zhongxin zhi dao may agree on the positive value of loyalty and trustworthiness, they disagree as to how these values operate as instruments of state:

Once again, we see that moral and effective rule lies not in the adoption of a rational and objective standard, but in the subjective dispositions of ruler, minister, and the people at large. In the Mozi’s system of social engineering, loyalty and trust are more ends than means—one fosters them through the consistent application of benefit and harm. In Zhongxin zhi dao those priorities are reversed, and the smooth operation of government must begin with a commitment to loyalty and trust before the material benefits of good rulership may be enjoyed. The Mozi reads as if loyalty and trustworthiness were objectively quantifiable achievements like the skillful practice of archery. In Zhongxin zhi dao these qualities depend as much on what happens within the heart and mind of the gentleman as what is observable in his conduct. Moreover, where the Mozi focuses on achieving tangible obedience and conformity, the goals of Zhongxin zhi dao are affective and qualitative. Good government does not begin when properly designed institutions operate as they were intended, but when loyalty and trustworthiness produce a state of mutual intimacy and confidence between ruler, ministers, and people.

Liu de

Where the above four texts parallel Xing zi ming chu in emphasizing the human Way and the inner emotional life over objective, “Heavenly” standards of morality, the text Liu de stands out for placing much less emphasis on the emotions and the inner subjective realm. This is not to say that it accords with the perspective of the Mozi, however. A reading of Liu de against the Mozi reveals different but equally powerful negative resonance between the two texts:

Where Xing zi ming chu and other of the Guodian texts place the source of morality within the subjective self, Liu de portrays moral values as rooted in the relative dispositions of individuals within society. The six canonical virtues of the text's title are generated through the interaction between the six cardinal stations that constitute the family and the state. While this is a very different argument from what we have seen in virtually all of the other texts we have examined, it is no less hostile to the perspective of the Mozi. Though the source of moral value is not to be found within the human subject, it has yet been transposed from Heaven to the structural dynamics of the human community. In effect, Liu de thus reconstructs “the human Way” on a different basis from what we have seen in any of the prior Guodian texts. Moreover, the operation of the six virtues themselves runs strongly counter to the perspective of what is perhaps the most famous and exemplary section of the Mozi, “Universal Love.” In chapter 16 of the Mozi, “Universal Love, Part III (Jian ai, xia)” 兼愛下 we are presented with the negative exemplar of the partial knight:

The text goes on to describe how the words and actions of the impartial knight are diametrically opposed to that of the partial knight, and how the latter is definitely superior to the former. While the Mozi may rhetorically frame the partial knight as a negative exemplar, we can see that his perspective is not very divergent from that of Liu de: “One may break with one's friends for one's clan, one may not break with one's clan for one's friends.” The relationships delineated in Liu de are intrinsically partial. Indeed they must be so if they are to serve as a source of moral value. Since there is no standard external to the six stations (such as Mozi’s Heaven's will) that might regulate the interaction between them, only their fixed disposition toward one another may serve as a point of origin for virtues such as benevolence and rightness. Beyond challenging the legitimacy of its exhortation to “universality,” the prioritization of the partial relationships outlined in Liu de further undermines the fabric of the Mozi’s doctrine: “One may break with one's ruler for one's father, but may not break with one's father for one's ruler.” This privileging of the role of father over that of ruler completely subverts the radical centralization of the moral order envisioned in “Promoting Conformity.”

Tang Yu zhi Dao 唐虞之道

One of the most intriguing texts in the Guodian corpus is the idiosyncratic Tang Yu zhi Dao, or The Way of Tang and Yu. On the surface, this text would seem to be perfectly out of step with the other writings interred in Tomb One. Tang and Yu are the reign titles of the sage kings Yao 堯 and Shun 舜, the legendary rulers renowned for having abdicated the throne to the worthiest man of the realm rather than passing it to their own sons. The text contains an extreme denunciation of the principal of dynastic primogeniture: “Since the first birth of the people, there has never been [a ruler] who has not abdicated the throne and yet has been able to transform the people” 不禪而能化民者, 自生民未之有也.Footnote ⁵⁵ As the other texts of the Guodian corpus generally revere the Zhou kings who practiced royal inheritance rather than abdication, this would seem to place Tang Yu zhi Dao at odds with the other writings in Tomb One.

Once again, however, if we examine the text in light of the Mozi, we see that its polemical thrust runs counter to that text in ways comparable to the rest of the Guodian corpus. The opening of Tang Yu zhi Dao reads:

The abdication of Yao and Shun is cast as a paradigm of moral action, one that is ultimately subversive of the moral perspective of the Mozi. By abdicating the throne they forfeited all of the benefits of kingship. The term denoting “benefit” here is li 利, the same term that is employed as the material basis of ethics in the Mozi. Having reached the heights from which no further benefit might be acquired, both Yao and Shun were able to relinquish it all. In assessing their sacrifice, one must remember that in ancient religion the material needs of the individual did not end with death. Thus by refusing to pass the throne to their sons and thereby bequeathing them the royal treasury with which to carry on their ancestral sacrifices, Yao and Shun had condemned themselves to an afterlife of penury (this is the significance of the line, quoted above, “they died without profit”).

Both Yao and Shun had been able to transcend attachment to material benefit. As the opening of Tang Yu zhi Dao implies, they had reached this moral plateau through their own effort: “They were certain to rectify their persons and then ordered the age.” The text has thus cast them as ultimate case studies of the kind of moral perfectibility discussed in Xing zi ming chu and Duke Mu Queries Zisi. This is made especially clear in the case of Shun:

Here again Shun's supreme indifference to benefit is something for which the Mozi’s construction of human psychology does not allow. If the gain or loss of the world cannot move him one way or the other, there is truly no way that reward or punishment could hold any sway over him. The fact that Shun was king does not lessen the subversive implications of the narrative for the Mozi. Within the Mozi’s moral universe the king is portrayed as being locked into the same top-down structures as the rest of the human world. He is only different from the rest of humanity in being subordinated directly to Heaven. But even so, the king's obedience to Heaven is perceived as being secured by his own love of benefit and terror of punishment.

Whether this account of Yao and Shun was “intended” to be so or not, it can be put to ample polemical use against the doctrine of the Mozi. Tang Yu zhi Dao presents a vision of kingship based on moral self-development rather than adherence to rational moral principles. It also underscores a logical weakness of the Mozi’s vision, as it is difficult to reconcile the constant level of self-interest the Mozi assumes for all human beings with the convergence of supreme responsibility and massive temptation toward self-enrichment occurring at the top of the Mozi’s ideal society. If the authors of the Mozi would admit that the role of king requires any degree of self-control above and beyond that of the average person, then it is only a small logical step to the conclusion that someone like Yao or Shun should be king. If this is so the system collapses under the weight of self-contradiction, as the king would rule by virtue of having a quality that his subjects must not possess in order for the system to work. The other possibility redeems the system but is only marginally more appealing. This is to say that the personal qualities of the sovereign have absolutely no bearing on the exercise of kingship, the king and all his ministers are effectively reduced to cogs in a machine, and are just as expendable and interchangeable.Footnote ⁵⁸

Finally, while the occupant of Tomb One may not have assented to all of the extreme views articulated in Tang Yu zhi Dao, one polemical use to which the text could be applied in attacking the Mozi lies in the fact that both texts make rhetorical use of common historical figures. As we have seen above, the Mozi appeals to the sage kings of high antiquity, including Yao and Shun, as among the first discoverers and practitioners of its moral teachings. As Sarah Allan has shown, the Mozi adduces Yao's abdication of the throne to Shun as a paradigmatic instance of “elevating the worthy (shang xian)” 尚賢.Footnote ⁵⁹ In one chapter of the extant Mozi, “Three Disputations (san bian)” 三辯, the text even makes the argument that because Yao and Shun made the least recourse to music, their kingship was the most excellent: “King Cheng of Zhou's ordering of the world was not up to that of King Wu, King Wu's was not up to that of Cheng Tang, Cheng Tang's was not up to that of Yao and Shun. Thus the more elaborate music becomes, the more order diminishes” 周成王之治天下也，不若武王．武王之治天下也，不若成湯．成湯之治天下也，不若堯舜．故其樂逾繁者，其治逾寡.Footnote ⁶⁰ Just as “Three Disputations” applies a framework of progressive cultural degeneration to the legendary figures of Yao and Shun, Tang Yu zhi Dao appeals to the shared lore about their abdications. However, the particular rhetorical implications the latter text derives from this narrative (concerning the sages’ orientation toward benefit) highly problematize the Mozi’s use of these legendary sage kings as moral exemplars.

Qiong da yi shi 窮達以時

Among all the texts in the Guodian corpus, Qiong da yi shi is the most overtly and specifically crafted as a response to particular assertions in the Mozi. Though nowhere in the text does it employ the term “fate” (ming), the text may be read as an extended refutation of the Mozi’s rejection of fate and its doctrine of Heaven's will. In chapter 4 of the Mozi, “The Standard and the Model (Fa yi)” 法儀, these ideas are succinctly articulated:

We can see how integrally this vision of Heavenly reward and retribution fits into the Mozi’s portrait of the moral society. As was said above (and as is rendered problematic by the implications of Tang Yu zhi Dao), the Mozi consistently assumes that the ruler is as much a fixture of the system of moral incentives over which he is the human custodian as anyone else. The only difference between the king and his subjects is that where the king is empowered to sanction individuals’ actions with rewards or punishments, he himself comes under the direct scrutiny of Heaven. Heaven's relationship to the sovereign is not materially different from the sovereign's relationship to his subjects; it sanctions the king's actions using the same rewards and punishments as those employed by the king, only with much higher stakes. As we have seen, this move is made absolutely necessary by the fact that the Mozi’s doctrine requires all agents within its moral system to have the same consistent, predictable degree of self-interest. If no force existed to hold the king accountable, then the efficacy of the system would rest on the state of the king's moral character, which would cause the entire dynamic structure of the Mozi’s moral society to unravel.

As we will see, the passage quoted above from “The Standard and the Model” reveals a logical weakness that is exploited in Qiong da yi shi. As noted previously, the sanctions employed by Heaven upon the sovereign operate on a superlative scale. This is very clear where “benefits” or rewards are concerned, as Heaven blesses the king with possession of the entire world. The text seems to encounter difficulty in creating equilibrium on the “punishment” side of the royal scale, however. On reflection the reason for this is quite understandable. In logical terms, though the king gains much more from his reciprocal relationship with Heaven than any other human being possibly can, he has nothing more to lose than the least of his subjects: his life. The text countervails this fact with the observation that tyrannical rulers will suffer the ignominy of future generations, presumably as long as human memory persists. This puts the text in a bit of a logical bind, although there is no indication in “The Standard and the Model” that its authors were aware of this fact. The negative sanction threatening the king depends for its force upon a departure from the strictly material standard of value the Mozi applies to all other moral judgments.

As Qiong da yi shi demonstrates, memory as a carrier of value cuts both ways:

Here we see the critique implicit in Xing zi ming chu’s prioritization of “the human Way” made explicit by Qiong da yi shi. The text's exhortation to discover “the division between Heaven and humanity” is an overt challenge to the Mozi’s doctrine of Heaven's will. We can see this in the subtle difference between Qiong da yi shi’s account of the ascendancy of Shun with that of the four sage kings recounted in “The Standard and the Model.” From the perspective of Qiong da yi shi, the Mozi confuses the actions of Heaven and humanity. The fact that Shun was worthy of being king was a result of his own efforts. The fact that he actually became king was a result of his “encountering” Yu. This encounter was Heaven's only part in Shun's ascendancy, all of the other work involved in preparing Shun for kingship was done by Shun himself.

The key here is that the Mozi’s notion of Heaven's will provides very little guidance to those, like the young Shun laboring at farming and pottery, whose just desserts have not yet arrived. This point is underscored if we contemplate the existential position of Sunshu Ao as described in the same passage. During the time he was repeatedly being censured in his capacity of a minor official, what was to sustain Sunshu Ao in his continuing endeavors? The Mozi would promise that, thanks to Heaven's intercession, he would eventually win through to glory. Although this does, in fact, happen, this would have been cold comfort to Sunshu Ao after his second unjust dismissal.

As the subsequent example of Wu Zixu 伍子胥 suggests, history provides ample testimony that Heaven's will is not as infallible as the Mozi would suggest. Thus though the notion of Heaven's will may have some abstract logical appeal, it is inadequate as a guide to conduct right now. This is the import of the assertion that “discovering the division between Heaven and humanity one understands how to act.” If we want people to pursue morality in the present moment, we must ask them to understand that moral conduct is its own reward. Or, if it is rewarded, it will not be in the tangible terms promised by the Mozi. Here is where the logical fallacy of the Mozi lies exposed. Just as the severity of the tyrants’ crimes may be redressed by the excoriation of subsequent generations, the unjust injuries of those like Wu Zixu who suffer blamelessly may be redeemed in the same realm of human memory. The Mozi’s recourse to a non-material measure of value is the top of a slippery slope, the contours of which are elaborated by Qiong da yi shi.

We can see that though it treats very different concerns and employs little of the same key terminology, Qiong da yi shi arrives through an historical and cosmological argument at the same point reached by Xing zi ming chu. The labors of Shun, Sunshu Ao, and Wu Zixu were praiseworthy precisely because they were undertaken without expectation of reward, Heavenly or otherwise. In any given moment, whether one is suffering extremity or enjoying success, the imperatives of virtuous conduct remain the same. Thus our true moral worth is not to be found in our objective circumstances but in our subjective response to those circumstances. Heaven cannot serve as a guide to inform our moral choices in the current moment, thus “the gentleman is resolute in returning to himself.”

Taiyi sheng shui 太一生水 and the Laozi 老子 Parallels

Much of the presumed “eclecticism” of the Guodian corpus adduced by recent scholarship centers on the inclusion of four texts among those interred in Tomb One. Three of these texts have been labeled Laozi A, B, and C by the editors of the Guodian texts because of their close relationship to the transmitted text of that name. The fourth, Taiyi sheng shui (Supreme Unity Generated Water), because it treats the concept of “the Way” in terms quite congruent with the three Laozi texts, has generally been grouped with them. In fact, Taiyi sheng shui is inscribed on strips of equal length to those of Laozi C, so they may have been bound as a single text.Footnote ⁶⁴

Although there are other reasons that might be cited for this analysis,Footnote ⁶⁵ these four texts are principally deemed “Daoist” because of the transmitted Laozi’s inclusion in the Han shu “Yiwen zhi's” catalogue of Dao jia 道家Footnote ⁶⁶ writings. I do not mean to join battle with those who insist that these writings are Daoist. I would only contend that we cannot be sure that the Han shu’s perspective on these texts (or rather, on their transmitted textual cousin) would have been shared by the occupant of Tomb One (or those who interred him). Moreover, even if the collector(s) would have recognized the texts in question as “Daoist” in some form, we cannot leap to the conclusion that he (they) interred these texts in Tomb One out of an impulse to eclecticism or pluralism.

Analyses of the “eclecticism” of the Guodian corpus have centered on a comparison of the individual texts interred in Tomb One to one another. While this type of study is intrinsically intriguing and important, it is not guaranteed to illuminate the social uses of the text at the time they were interred. As I have been suggesting over the course of this article, comparing all of the Guodian texts in tandem against some other contemporary text or texts produces a radically different picture of their interrelationship. Thus if we press forward with a reading of Taiyi sheng shui and the three Laozi texts against the Mozi, they appear less exceptional within the larger Guodian corpus.

Taiyi sheng shui has created much excitement among scholars because it is perhaps the earliest genuine cosmogony in the known world of Chinese letters. The text describes how “Supreme Unity (Taiyi)” 太一 generates water, setting off a cosmogonic cycle that ultimately results in the emergence of the entire phenomenal universe. The text then goes on to state:

Taiyi sheng shui’s establishment of a cosmic force prior to and surpassing Heaven poses a direct challenge to the moral cosmology of the Mozi. If Heaven and Earth are both either secondary or tertiary creations of the Supreme Unity, then Heaven's status as the final arbiter of right and wrong is called into question. This implication is reinforced by the pronouncement that the Supreme Unity is “what Heaven cannot kill,” thus it, at least, lies beyond the power of Heaven to reward and punish. Beyond this, neither Heaven nor any of the discrete phenomena of the perceptible world are genuinely autonomous. Although analytically distinct, they continue to be pervaded and impelled by the Supreme Unity out of which they emerged. Heaven is thus thoroughly “dethroned” as the supreme authority of the universe.

Moving from the ultimate to the contingent realm, we see that Taiyi sheng shui’s Way of Heaven conflicts significantly with the Mozi’s doctrine of Heaven's will. Heaven's movements evince no compliance with human values. It favors the weak over the strong, paring down the mature to provide fodder for the newly born. The Mozi is particularly vulnerable to a critique based on the Taiyi sheng shui because both texts share a fundamentally materialist perspective. The Mozi proposes that morality be grounded in the material realities of food, clothing, and shelter. The Taiyi sheng shui demonstrates that the extension of this materialism to the cosmic realm subverts the Mozi’s attempts to anthropomorphize the cosmos. In material terms Earth is soil; Heaven is mere air. Moreover Heaven is tilted, implying that it is far from flawless, resulting in the skewed course of the sun, moon, and stars across the sky during the cycle of the seasons.Footnote ⁶⁸

Thus the Taiyi sheng shui’s description of Heaven's Way, like the Mozi’s articulation of Heaven's will, draws rhetorical power from being empirically verifiable. This is the consequence of expanding the cosmic perspective beyond Heaven to that of the Supreme Unity. When one views the universe from an angle beyond the narrow focus on Heaven's relation to humankind, Heaven can be seen as obeying no rule other than that of the Supreme Unity's unvarying circularity (“cycling and beginning again … now empty, now full”). All new life in the phenomenal world is predicated on recent death. The “benefits” that the Mozi’s Heaven bestows so impartially are no exception. Humanity's “reward” necessarily entails another creature's “punishment.” This change of focus destroys the value of “benefit” and “Heaven's will” as fixed and objective standards of moral value.

If we examine the content of the Guodian Laozi Parallels interred in Tomb One we can see similar consequences for the Mozi’s moral cosmology. Guodian Laozi A describes a cosmic vision consonant with that of Taiyi sheng shui: “Humanity models itself on Earth, Earth models itself on Heaven, Heaven models itself on the Way, the Way models itself on the self-so” 人法地, 地法天, 天法道, 道法自然.Footnote ⁶⁹ “The Way of Heaven is cyclical, all things return to their root” 天道芸芸, 各復其根.Footnote ⁷⁰ Just as in Taiyi sheng shui we see a universe in which Heaven has been demoted to a tertiary place in the cosmic order. At the same time, the circularity of Heaven's Way precludes its being adopted as a fixed moral standard.

One might object that these cosmological ideas are irreconcilable with the perspective of the rest of the Guodian corpus. Combining all these texts in an attack on the Mozi would be hypocritical at best, self-destructive at worst, as the rhetorical stance of such an individual would sink into the shifting sands of self-contradiction. I would disagree. Although there might be tension between texts such as Wu xing and Taiyi sheng shui, these belie certain less apparent similarities. These become more discernible if we compare Taiyi sheng shui to Qiong da yi shi. Although these texts’ orientations toward morality differ, their representations of the cosmos are not fundamentally in conflict. Both texts affirm that, from moment to moment, Heaven's dispositions do not necessarily accord with human desires. The circularity of Heaven's activity described in Taiyi sheng shui does not destabilize Qiong da yi shi’s depiction of Heaven's fickle agency in human history. Indeed, it would take little hermeneutical effort to reconcile Taiyi sheng shui’s circular motion of Heaven with the alternating phases of “extremity” and “success” portrayed in Qiong da yi shi. In general, both Taiyi sheng shui and the Guodian Laozi parallels do not contradict, but rather affirm a central perspective put forward in common by Qiong da yi shi, Xing zi ming chu, Wu xing, Zun deyi, and Chengzhi wenzhi: that Heaven or Heaven's Way is inadequate to serve as the sole and objective standard of human morality.

Other than their uses in critiquing the Mozi’s moral cosmology, the Guodian Laozi parallels evince a further perspective that would have intrigued opponents of the Mozi. The opening passage of Guodian Laozi A is suggestive in this regard:

My translation of the text is somewhat provocative. As I have interpreted it here, it, like the passage from Yu cong IV translated above, describes a strategy to be used in oral argumentation. Although it is arguable whether this was the “intended” significance of the passage, it is undeniably one way that the text might have been understood by the occupant of Tomb One. Viewed in this light, we can see how the strategy described in Guodian Laozi A1 would support the rhetorical agenda of a text like Xing zi ming chu, especially as it was applied against the Mozi. Like Xing zi ming chu, Guodian Laozi A1 rejects artifice and cleverness. Contra Mozi it denigrates benefit as a standard of value, implying that the Mozi’s attachment to benefit is a self-fulfilling prophecy that creates ostracized categories such as “robbers.” Most importantly, Guodian Laozi A1 reinforces a theme that we have seen propounded not only in Xing zi ming chu, but in many of the Guodian texts: the dynamic transformability of the individual's subjective dispositions.

This is the significance of the last lines of Guodian Laozi A1: “Focus on plainness, embrace simplicity, reduce selfishness, lessen desire” 視素保檏, 少私寡欲. Reading the whole passage as a strategy for oral argumentation, we can imagine why these last “commands” might be construed as a final fatal blow, à la Yu cong IV, against the “crux” of an argument defending the Mozi. Like Xing zi ming chu, these lines call into question a fundamental premise of the Mozi, that people's affective disposition toward “benefit” is universal and consistent. The possibility that a person might be able to “reduce selfishness” and “lessen desire” calls into question the fundamental necessity, and wisdom, of the Mozi’s complex program of moral social engineering.

Guodian Laozi A1 is only one point where the three Guodian Laozi parallels address this issue. At many points these texts talk about the potential to control or change human consciousness so as to liberate the mind from the control of fear and greed: “There is no curse more great than to not know what is enough. If one can know enough as enough, one will always be content” 禍莫大乎不知足. 知足之為足, 此恒足也.Footnote ⁷² Harold Roth suggests that the Guodian Laozi parallels allude to particular techniques of personal cultivation that could be used to induce these changes in consciousness.Footnote ⁷³ One intriguing example he points to is found at Guodian Laozi A15:

Right away we can see the implications of this for a polemical attack on the Mozi. If one could reach a state where one was neither “benefited” nor “harmed,” in other words, if one no longer felt the joy or terror these phenomena normally occasion, this would place one beyond the Mozi’s entire edifice of social control, and thus cast doubt upon the efficacy of its whole program. One cannot deny that there are manifest tensions between some of the material in the Laozi parallels and other texts in the Guodian corpus. As I will explain, below, however, the clear uses to which all these texts could be put in countering an advocate of the Mozi might well have overridden any doctrinal inconsistencies betwixt and between them in the eyes of the person(s) who collected them.

Implications and Conclusions

The reading of the entire Guodian corpus against the Mozi is obviously a hermeneutical technique and might be criticized as arbitrary. Equally profitable readings could be derived by juxtaposing the Guodian texts to other antecedent, contemporary, or near-contemporary writings. A thorough historical study of the Guodian material would necessitate not only that all these comparative readings be done, but that they be cross-referenced and cross-compared, and that the entire project be extended backward and forward in time to include the texts composed prior to and, especially, after the interment of the texts in Guodian Tomb Number One.

One objection that might be raised against reading the Guodian texts against the Mozi is that these texts never mention that text or its eponym. This is by no means a determinative critique, however. None of the readings I have proposed necessitate the texts in question having been written in explicit opposition to the Mozi, only their being useful to intellectual debate against an advocate of the Mozi’s ideas. If only one or two of the texts in Tomb One could be used that way it might be a coincidence arising from the collection's “eclecticism.” The fact that all the texts can be used that way (beyond this, all the texts contain assertions that are radically destabilizing to the socio-moral edifice of the Mozi) precludes such coincidence. Moreover, not mentioning a text can not be equated with registering no opposition to it. The Analects never mentions the Mozi, but it would be foolish to insist that there is nothing in the former text which opposes the latter. The Guanzi never mentions Confucius, but it is easy to find places in that text where the teachings of Confucius are explicitly rejected. Finally, if I am right that the occupant of Tomb One collected these texts for their utility in combating Mohist opponents, their mentioning the Mozi would not add to that utility. The one who collected the texts would need no reminder of their intended use.

Further support for reading the Guodian corpus against the Mozi can be derived from a study of their mutual similarities. As much as the texts in the Guodian corpus are opposed to the Mozi, they also evince that text's influence. An interest in logical argumentation pervades the texts discovered at Guodian, especially the Yu cong texts which contain strings of definitions reminiscent of no other Warring States writings more than the “Canons” and “Explanation of the Canons” chapters of the Mozi. Given this evidence of shared focus and interests, the diametrical polarity of the Mozi and the Guodian texts is made even more remarkable. If the collector(s) of the Guodian texts possessed truly “eclectic” tastes or intellectual dispositions we would expect that at least some of the texts concerning logical disputation would define and constellate terms or construct arguments in ways that support rather than subvert the logico-ethical vision of the Mozi, but we do not. This simultaneous convergence of practical interests and polar opposition of social and moral ideas strongly suggests a process of purposive selection.

Together with the Mozi the Guodian texts provide evidence of a heated intellectual contest in a particular place and time. Circa 300 b.c.e., the collector(s) of the Guodian manuscripts was locked in intellectual combat with (an) adherent(s) of the Mozi in the state of Chu. Although this might seem like sparse information, it alone opens up a new potential vista on the intellectual world of the Warring States. As Li Xueqin 李學勤 has noted, our initial reaction to even finding such a cache of “Confucian” texts in Chu might well be one of surprise.Footnote ⁷⁶ Chu was depicted even in the texts of the late fourth century as a cultural backwater, and by 300 b.c.e. had entered a long period of political decline leading to ultimate collapse.Footnote ⁷⁷ Yet if such radically opposed thinkers were staking such divergent and sophisticated claims in the cultural landscape of the Chu court, its intellectual life must have been much more rich than the rhetorically slanted historical sources would allow us to believe.

At this point, complex questions arise. Exactly what the social context of this intellectual struggle might have been, and how it might have been played out at the Chu court, we cannot be sure. Chinese scholars have speculated that the occupant of Tomb One might have been the tutor to the Chu heir apparent.Footnote ⁷⁸ If so, it is unclear what institutions or circumstances would bring him into contact with advocates of the Mozi. Yu cong IV suggests that the author and/or owner of the text was engaged in highly competitive oral debates. It is thus possible that the occupant of Tomb Number One was called upon in his capacity as an educator to face off with other scholars, either bureaucratic servitors of the Chu throne or guest clients of powerful Chu princes, or both at once, in oral debates held at the royal court or in princely households.

Although all this is speculative, there are some more concrete inferences we can make from a reading of the Guodian manuscripts against the Mozi. Up to this point I have studiously avoided characterizing the Guodian manuscripts as belonging to a particular “school,” as the assignment of individual texts to these categories is based on anachronistic criteria. But if we are to conclude that the occupant of Tomb One was a member of a group in conflict with other groups, it is fair to ask to what group he belonged, or rather, to what group he perceived himself as belonging. I would venture that we can determine this by a close comparative reading of the texts under study, but that we would be best served to cleave as closely to the evidence as possible.

Comparing the Guodian texts to the Mozi, it is evident that these two texts do not only evince the propagation of two different doctrines. In fact, as I will explain below, a strict analysis into two “doctrines” would distort the evidence. Taken together they express two fundamentally different approaches to intellectual social organization and participation, both individual and collective, in the cultural life of the Warring States. On the one hand, in the text of the Mozi, we can see a strict attention to unity and discipline of doctrine. Although doctrinal deviations and distortions can be detected as one moves from chapter to chapter in the Mozi, these are amazingly slight given the probable range of time and space over which the individual chapters of the text were written.Footnote ⁷⁹ The “Mohists” (i.e., the adherents of the Mozi) as a group were thus distinguished in the Warring States not only by their unique doctrine, but also by the stress they laid upon doctrinal consistency and conformity in the constitution of group identity.

By contrast, the group represented by the occupant of Tomb One, to the extent that he can be taken as representative, obviously did not view doctrinal consistency as a sine qua non of group coherence or participation. Many of the claims and assertions made by the various texts gathered together in Tomb One contradict one another, even among the texts deemed to be of the same “school” through the application of Han bibliographical categories. Whatever group the tomb occupant belonged to, it obviously viewed (certainFootnote ⁸⁰) texts more as polemical instruments than regulating and canonical touchstones of orthodoxy. Although the Guodian texts do not afford a coherent and internally consistent set of theories and principles, they do present an impressive array of concepts, tropes, narratives, and arguments available for deployment in rhetorical and philosophical combat with the Mohists.

What then of the group identity of the occupant of Tomb One? Must we rest content with labeling him an “Anti-Mohist?” Despite the lack of a unifying “orthodoxy,” the Guodian corpus does provide evidence of a basis for a positive identity of its collector(s). A common theme throughout almost all the texts is a commitment to the set of practices which come under the rubric of what Xing zi ming chu would call “the human Way”: poetry, exemplified by the Odes; prose, exemplified by the Documents; ritual and music.Footnote ⁸¹ If we range throughout the corpus of Warring States letters, we find that this unique constellation of practices is exalted and given primacy in certain texts: most especially the Analects, the Mencius 孟子, and the Xunzi 荀子. We are thus justified in surmising that the occupant of Tomb One belonged to the same group with which the authors of these texts identified themselves,Footnote ⁸² the Ru 儒. Though this is a category that appears in the Han bibliographical literature, we may apply it to the compiler(s) of the Guodian corpus if we do so with due historical caution. To call the occupant of Tomb One a Ru is not to call all or any of the writings with which he was buried “Ru” texts, nor is it to invite facile equation or conflation of these texts with other Warring States writings. The chief benefit of identifying the tomb occupant as a Ru is to elucidate the fact that Ru identity during the Warring States was constituted in fundamentally different ways from that of the Mohists, and that individual participation in a larger “Ru” project was driven by fundamentally different concerns. Where a logically consistent doctrine was central to the Mohist sense of common purpose, the Ru placed much greater emphasis on a shared devotion to revered cultural practices.Footnote ⁸³

This is not to argue that we would be wise to scrap the terms Ru and Mohist in favor of sobriquets like “Practitioners” and “Doctrinists.” The Ru were not wholly without doctrine, but as a group each individual Ru could exercise much more autonomy and flexibility in composing (or compiling) the doctrinal basis of his participation. The doctrinal parameters of the group were elastic enough to accommodate diverse positions, individuals could stray quite far from one another doctrinally and still acknowledge common fellowshipFootnote ⁸⁴ as long as each other's commitments to the core practices remained unimpeachable. The Mohists likewise were not wholly without a body of praxis, but doctrinal considerations played a prime role in determining one's participation in the group, even in the realm of practice.Footnote ⁸⁵ A key lesson to be learned from Tomb One is that the application of any category drawn from Warring States discourse, especially those, like Ru and Mohist, which enjoyed a longevity beyond the Warring States, must be done with a close sensitivity to the way that category is being renegotiated and reconstituted even within the evidence under study.

The last inference we can make from the evidence contained in Tomb One concerns the history of the Ru movement that the tomb occupant exemplifies. If conditions in Chu were at all representative of the state of the Ru community in 300 b.c.e., the Guodian corpus evinces that at that moment the polemical engagement between the Ru and Mohists was particularly intense. Whether because of the inherent persuasive power of their message or some fortuitous turn in geopolitical events, the Mohists seem to have risen to a position of such prominence as to draw the concentrated rhetorical fire of Ru scholars c. 300 b.c.e. (in Chu, at least). In the process, the Mohists exerted, at least in the case of the Guodian corpus and its collector(s), a kind of gravitational influence on the rhetorical and philosophical expressions of their Ru opponents. We can see that in the realm of doctrine, the authors and collector(s) of the Guodian corpus were driven by their focused antipathy to the Mozi to emphasize the internal subjective life and the inner workings of consciousness. If we view in this light the textual record of the subsequent Ru movement, particularly the Xunzi, we might analyze many of the developments it manifests as a response to the historical trend evinced in the Guodian corpus.