Reading Notes about Fung Yu-lan’

Reading Notes about Fung Yu-lan’s A Short History of Chinese Philosophy: Part XI, the latter Mohist and the Yin-Yang school

We have already known that the School of Names is contrary to the common sense, and maintains that the actual things are relative. The book of Zhuang-tzu agrees with this school in the lower level knowledge, but criticizes the them in the higher level knowledge. While, according to Mr. Fung, the Mohists and the Confucianists are philosophers of common sense, and this two groups are both practical and in opposition to the arguments of the School of Names. Mohist school has their classical work called “Mohist Canons,” which has an interest in logics as well as the School of Names. This book defines a cause as “that with which something becomes,” and classifies it into two kinds: the major cause is one with which something will necessarily be so, and without which it will never be so; while a minor cause is one with which something may not necessarily be so, but without which it will never be so. As Mr. Fung explains: “It is evident that what the ‘Mohist Canons’ call a minor cause is what in modern logic would be called a necessary cause, while what the ‘Mohist Canons’ call a major cause is what modern logic would describe as necessary and sufficient cause.”[1] But the Mohists did not find the other cause that is the sufficient cause.

This book also has an interest in epistemology. It maintains that one has a knowing faculty which “is that by means of which one knows, but which itself does not necessarily know.” Mr. Fung calls such epistemological theory as a kind of “naïve realism.” In the “Mohist Canons” we read that: “knowledge is that in which the knowing [faculty]meets the object and is able to apprehend its form and shape.” And besides the sensory organs, the “Mohist Canons” believe that, there also exists the mind. All the statements above, in my opinion, are similar to those in Aristotle’s De Anima.

The Mohist school admires the principle of “obtain benefit and avoid harm,” and maintains that “of the benefits, choose the greatest; of the harms, choose the slightest.” The beneficial is that with the obtaining of which one is pleased. The harmful is that with the obtaining of which one is displeased. “This position,” as Mr. Fung says, “reminds us of the ‘principle of utility’ of Jeremy Bentham.”[2]  As Mr. Fung explains: “Thus Bentham reduces good and bad to a question of pleasure and pain. According to him the aim of morality is ‘the greatest happiness of the greatest number’.”[3] Such a principle of Bentham can be compared with the “all-embracing love” of Mohist.

The Yin-Yang school is some kind of occultism or magic. While, as Mr. Fung says: “occultism or magic is itself, of course, based on superstitions, but it has often been the origin of science.”[4] For example, this school has an interest in mathematic and believes that the mystery of the universe is to be found in numbers. We can find a evident scientific tendency through the magical essence of this school. The two major concepts of this school are “Yin-Yang” and “Five Elements”(in fact, this is a concept in the Grand Norm, which is a Confucian work). Yin and Yang are considered as two major principles of the universe including the human world. To the concept of Five Elements, the early Yin-Yang school considered them as actual substances, while the latter used such a concept to indicate a kind of metaphysical power, and the details is that the Wood produces Fire, and the Fire produces Soil, and the Soil produces Metal, and the Metal produces Water, furthermore, any element overcame by another. The Soil is the center, and the Wood, Fire, Metal, Water, dominate the spring, the summer, the autumn, the winter respectively. The Yin-Yang school also established a new historical philosophy, that is, not only the changes of nature, but also that of dynasties or history, are according to the Five Powers. This school believes that every emperor become Emperor “by virtue of” one of the Five Powers, that is, every dynasty has its corresponding element, and any two adjacent dynasties have a relationship of producing and overcoming.

[1] Fung Yu-lan. A Short History of Chinese Philosophy. The Free Press, 1948,p.121.

[2] Ibid.,p.123.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid.,p.130.