A Comparison between Mohism and Utilitarianism

Xiaofei MA

Abstract


Mohism is not a form of utilitarianism. First of all, neither of the two is ego-oriented. Besides, utilitarianism is based on individual interest, and the interest of community is simply the sum up of every individual interest; while Mohism does not put self-interest or individual interest first, but rather treat interest of community as primary consideration, which sometimes requires individuals to satisfy their own interest to make the public interest possible. The comparison between Mohism and utilitarianism illustrates the danger of employing western philosophical ideas to interpret ancient Chinese terms.


Keywords


Mohism; Utilitarianism; Reverse analogical interpretation

Full Text:

PDF

References


Bentham, J. (2005). An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation. New York: Oxford University Press.

Feng, Y. L. (1976). A Short History of Chinese Philosophy. New York: The Free Press.

Garfield, Jay L., & Edelglass, W. (2011). The Oxford handbook of world philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ivanhoe, P. J., William, B., & Norden, V. (2005). Readings in classical Chinese philosophy. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing.

Liang, Q. C. (2012). History of political thought in the Pre-Qin Dynasty. Beijing: China Renmin University Press.

Liu, J. (2006). An Introduction to Chinese Philosophy, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.

Liu, X, G. (2006). A dilemma of reverse analogical interpretation----Examples from studies of Laozi’s Dao. Journal of Nanjing University (Philosophy, Humanities and Social Sciences), (2), 76-90.

Schwartz, B. I. (1985). The world of thought in ancient China. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Xiao, G. Q. (2010). History of Chinese political thought. Beijing: New Star Press.




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3968/12006

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2021 Canadian Social Science

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Reminder

  • How to do online submission to another Journal?
  • If you have already registered in Journal A, then how can you submit another article to Journal B? It takes two steps to make it happen:

1. Register yourself in Journal B as an Author

  • Find the journal you want to submit to in CATEGORIES, click on “VIEW JOURNAL”, “Online Submissions”, “GO TO LOGIN” and “Edit My Profile”. Check “Author” on the “Edit Profile” page, then “Save”.

2. Submission

Online Submission: http://cscanada.org/index.php/css/submission/wizard

  • Go to “User Home”, and click on “Author” under the name of Journal B. You may start a New Submission by clicking on “CLICK HERE”.
  • We only use four mailboxes as follows to deal with issues about paper acceptance, payment and submission of electronic versions of our journals to databases: caooc@hotmail.com; office@cscanada.net; ccc@cscanada.net; ccc@cscanada.org

 Articles published in Canadian Social Science are licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC-BY).

 

Canadian Social Science Editorial Office

Address: 1020 Bouvier Street, Suite 400, Quebec City, Quebec, G2K 0K9, Canada.
Telephone: 1-514-558 6138 
Website: Http://www.cscanada.net; Http://www.cscanada.org 
E-mail:caooc@hotmail.com; office@cscanada.net

Copyright © Canadian Academy of Oriental and Occidental Culture