Nothing outranks doing right

Introduction

Esteeming Righteousness opens with the sentence 墨门 / The Mohist Community quotes most: "Of all things, nothing is more valuable than doing right" (万事莫贵于义). Mozi's example: I offer you a cap and shoes on condition that I cut off your hands and feet. Do you accept? No, because hands and feet are worth more than a cap and shoes. I offer you the whole world on condition that I kill you. No, because your life is worth more than the world. Yet people kill each other over a single word. So doing right is worth more than life itself. The structure of that argument is worth taking apart in 墨辩.

Mozi also defends his own way of living. Told that nobody else does right and he should stop wearing himself out, he answers: in a family of ten sons where one farms and nine sit idle, the farmer must work harder still. And he says words that can be carried out should be spoken often, words that cannot should not, because that is "idle mouth."

The sharpest passage comes near the end. Merchants pass checkpoints and bandits without flinching, because the profit is there. Scholars sit and talk about doing right, with no checkpoints and no bandits, and still do not act. "In reckoning benefit, scholars are less clear-headed than merchants."

Then the diviner, who blocks the road with an omen. Mozi does not dispute the omen; he pushes the rule to its end: by your rule, nobody could travel at all. That is putting a claim on the scale of use and seeing whether it jams life entirely.

The three tests

This chapter is the third test, use, from start to finish. "Nothing outranks doing right" rests neither on the sage kings nor on what crowds have seen, but on a chain of "would you trade?" questions, ranking values by consequences. The reply to the diviner is pure use: a rule that would paralyze everyone if everyone followed it cannot stand. The Community does not argue with anyone's private customs, but we apply the same ruler to our own beliefs: if everyone followed this rule, what would happen?

For families

• Play the cap-and-shoes game: list several things and have children rank them by worth, then ask where "keeping your word" lands.
• "Ten sons, one farmer": who does the chores at home, and who sits? Swap for a week.
• Talk about one "unlucky" saying in the family and try Mozi's question: if everyone followed it, what would happen?

For chapters

• 20 min reading · 20 min 墨辩 · 10 min 三表 review · 10 min 职 reports.
• 墨辩 motion: "Scholars reckon benefit less clearly than merchants." When the chapter pushes a project, should it count costs and returns as plainly as a trader does?
• Focus the 三表 review on one line: speak often the words you can carry out, not the ones you cannot. Each person names a sentence they keep saying but have not done.