Week 3 · 18 January 2027 – 24 January 2027
The impartial and the partial person
Chapter 16 Impartial Care III
This week's question
Mozi asks: if you had to go far away, to whom would you entrust your family, a partial person who says 'I look after my own' or an impartial person who says 'I treat others as myself'? He says no one in the world would choose the partial one. Does the thought experiment hold for you? If it does, why do we still live the partial way most of the time?
This week's practice
Write down who you would entrust your family to if you had to leave for a year, and why that person. Then ask: am I that person for anyone else?
Introduction
兼爱下, Impartial Care III, is the longest and most fully argued of the three, and it contains Mozi's most famous thought experiment.
It opens as before: "the business of the humane person is to promote the benefit of the world and remove its harms." Then it sets 兼 and 别 side by side. The partial person (别士) says: how could I treat my friend's body as my own, my friend's parents as my own? So when the friend is hungry he gives no food, when cold no clothes, when sick no care, when dead no burial. The impartial person (兼士) says the opposite and does the opposite.
Then the question. Suppose you must put on armor and go to war, not knowing whether you will live, or set out on a distant mission, not knowing whether you will return. To whom do you entrust your family, the impartial person or the partial one? Mozi says: "I believe that at such a moment there is no fool in the world, man or woman, even one who rejects impartial care, who would not entrust them to the impartial person." He calls this "rejecting impartiality in words, choosing it in action" (言而非兼，择即取兼).
He runs the experiment again with rulers: would you rather live under an impartial ruler or a partial one? Same answer.
The second half handles objections. Someone says impartial care cannot be done; Mozi cites Tang and King Wen and says "within a single generation the people can be changed." Someone says impartial care harms filial duty; Mozi asks: if you want others to treat your parents well, is it more effective to treat their parents well first, or to harm them first?
The line to hold on to is 兴天下之利，除天下之害, "promote the world's benefit, remove the world's harms." It is the title of the Community's annual self-review and the rule we measure all our work by.
The three tests
This is the fullest application of all three tests. Evidence: the entrustment experiment is really a way of making each person consult their own eyes and ears: what would you choose? Precedent: Tang and King Wen. Application: impartial care means parents are cared for and the orphaned and widowed are looked after, which is benefit.
Focus the discussion on the second test. The experiment's evidence is "everyone's intuition." Is that reliable? Does it prove impartial care is right, or only that people wish others practiced it?
For families
- Ask a child the entrustment question directly: "If we had to go far away, whose house would you want to stay at? Why?" The reasons children give are usually 兼.
- Make a family list of "people we trust," then ask what those people have in common.
- Tell the story of Tang as a leader willing to take responsibility for his people. Ask: would you want to follow someone like that?
For chapters
- Reading: the contrast between the impartial and the partial person, then the passage "rejecting impartiality in words, choosing it in action."
- Debate: split the question in two. Does the experiment hold? If so, why don't we act on it? The second half is harder; leave more time for it.
- Three-tests review: record the line "promote the world's benefit, remove the world's harms." It returns as the title of the annual self-review in week 51. The chapter lead should file this week's conclusion.