Punishment versus aggression

Introduction

非攻下, Against Aggression III, is the longest of the three and the one that needs the most care, because it handles the hardest problem for the doctrine: is there ever a legitimate use of force?

The opening is accounting again from a new angle. A warlike ruler's campaigns last "years at the longest, months at the shortest"; men and women are separated, the population falls, and the dead "cannot be counted." He adds one more cost: the spirits lose those who made offerings to them. Read today, that is the community's fabric being torn.

He then answers the claim that war pays. Someone says Jing, Wu, Qi and Jin were once small and grew great by conquest. Mozi answers with the doctor analogy: many take the medicine, few recover. Countless states once existed; the ones swallowed up were all losers at the game of conquest.

Then the heart of the chapter. Someone asks: Yu campaigned against the Miao, Tang overthrew Jie, King Wu overthrew Zhou. Did those sage kings not use force? Mozi replies: "You have not examined the category of what I said, nor understood the reason. That is not what I call aggression. It is punishment" (彼非所谓攻，谓诛也).

The distinction: aggression attacks a state that has done no wrong, for its land and goods; punishment strikes a tyrant who has already done evil, when the whole world suffers from him. In each story, Mozi first describes the tyrant's crimes (Jie's, Zhou's) and only then the campaign.

He ends on method. A ruler who uses force well is not one who never uses it, but one who "does not attack a state that has done no wrong." Opposing aggression is not non-resistance; it is refusing to be the aggressor. This distinction underlies the Community's 非攻 Corps and next week's chapter, 公输: Mohists oppose attack, but they will help defend.

The line looks clear and is extremely hard to apply. Nearly every aggressor in history has claimed to be punishing. So do not hurry to a conclusion this week.

The three tests

This chapter uses the first and third tests together. Precedent: Yu, Tang and Wu are precedents for punishment; Mozi uses precedent to define the category. Application: aggression reduces the population and breaks communities, which is harm.

But the real methodological issue here is 察类, examining the category. Mozi says the objector "has not examined the category." The three tests ask whether a claim is right; examining the category asks which kind of thing it is. This question returns in week 32 with 小取.

For families

• Explain the difference between fighting and stopping a fight: one child shoving another is aggression; a teacher pulling the shover away is punishment. Ask for examples.
• Ask: if someone says "I hit him because he was bad first," how do we know it is true?
• When telling the story of Tang and Jie, stress that Mozi describes Jie's crimes first: judgment before action.

For chapters

• Reading: the passage "that is not what I call aggression; it is punishment," and the account of Yu and the Miao.
• Debate: each person brings one punishment, one aggression and one undecidable case. Spend most of the time on the undecidable ones. Host: this week can slide into arguments about current politics; pull it back to "what standard are we using to sort them?"
• Three-tests review: can the three tests tell punishment from aggression? If not, what else do we need? Record the conclusion and return to it in week 32.