Talk:State consequentialism

None of this is particularly important. I can simply differentiate state consequentialism as a variety of Mohist consequentialism.FourLights (talk) 04:12, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

state consequentialism

State consequentialism is a variety of interpretation for Mohist consequentialism. Ivanhoe first characterizes the Mohists as state consequentialists in his Confucian Moral Self-Cultivation (2000a, 15). Ivanhoe probably coined the category.

The article references Chris Fraiser of Stanford. Christ Fraiser started his website in 2002.

The state consequentialism wikipedia article was made in 2012.

Chris Fraiser discusses Mohist consequentialism, but his 2016 book , The Philosophy of the Mòzĭ: The First Consequentialists. It presents an alternative interpretation, Dao Consequentialism.

Essentially, whoever wrote this was probably legitimately was under the impression that state consequentialism and the Mohist consequentialism represented on Fraiser's website were talking about the same thing, since Fraiser's website doesn't use the term dao consequentialism, nor was his book published until after the article was made.

Although Fraiser's website uses the term Mohist consequentialism, they may very well not in fact represent the views of Ivanhoe.

I don't know what those views are, I am just autistic and trace lineages in Sinology. FourLights (talk) 03:14, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

merge

I'll merge this with this it's article unless there is any reason to think it an expansive subject.FourLights (talk) 04:10, 15 October 2015 (UTC)

What do you want to merge with what? noychoH (talk) 18:03, 2 August 2018 (UTC)

108.175.234.78 (talk) 21:51, 8 October 2021 (UTC) Doug Whitman's recommendations. There is only one paragraph that refers to state consequentialism. The rest of the article is Mohist consequentialism.

This paragraph from State consequentialism compares and contrasts the two concepts: Although the scholars cited above have suggested that Mohist consequentialism is a type of state consequentialism, a recent study of Mohism argues that this interpretation is mistaken, since the Mohists hold that right and wrong are determined by what benefits all the people of the world, not by what benefits the state. The Mohists' concern is to benefit all people, considered as an aggregate or a community, not to benefit a particular political entity, such as the state.[4]

State consequentialism is concerned with what benefits the state. Mohist consequentialism is concerned with what benefits all the people of the world. These are very different concepts. Please read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozi to see how much of this artice is there. --108.175.234.78 (talk) 21:51, 8 October 2021 (UTC) 108.175.234.78 (talk) 21:51, 8 October 2021 (UTC)

I can potentially expand this article. It is it's own subject at this point.FourLights (talk) 11:09, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Ivanhoe first first characterizes the Mohists as state consequentialists in his Confucian Moral Self-Cultivation (2000a, 15). Tao Jiang (2021) regards it as a category of interpretation for Mohist consequentialism. The other interpretation is Dao consequentialism, which Tao Jiang attributes to Sinologist Chris Fraiser of Stanford. He uses the term in The Philosophy of the Mòzĭ: The First Consequentialists.FourLights (talk) 02:54, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Academic lineage (article potentially backwards)

Liang Qichao (1873 – 1929) early elaborated a three elements view through a misinterpretation of Han Fei's critique of Shen Dao’s views on power, chapter 40, the “Objection to Positional Power”. Liang Qichao presents a view of "Legalist" thought as having one primary current and two deviant sub-currents, being Shen Buhai's principle of rule by techniques (shuzhizhuyi 術治主義), and Shen Dao's “principle of rule by positional power” (shizhizhuyi 勢治主義), with “Real” Legalists rejecting the subcurrents.

Liang Qichao did not receive much literary attention. Regardless of whether he received it, the early scholarship of Feng Youlan (1948) introduced the elements and thinkers in the west as representing three groups and three lines of thought preceding their synthesis under Han Fei. Shih was headed by Shen Dao, Shu by Shen Buhai, and Fa by Shang Yang. Feng Youlan characterizes Shih as power or authority, Shu as the method or art of conducting affairs and handling men (statecraft), and Fa as law, regulation or pattern.

With some recognition of a Mohist basis, Joseph Needham's (1956) Science and Civilization takes the "central conception" of Fa as "positive law", "expounded with great clarity by Gongsun Yang in the Shangjunshu". It takes note of Shu as connected with Shen Buhai, and the Shih of Shen Dao, who are as of yet an afterthought. It's idea of Fa consists in the rewards and punishments of a lawgiving prince.

Sinologist Herrlee G. Creel (1970) saw no evidence of a Shen Dao "school". Mr. Creel developed Shen Buhai and Shang Yang (Gonsun) as the two "schools" or "tendencies" of what Sima Tan termed the Fajia, with Shen Buhai focused on the dangers represented by the ministers. Han Fei criticizes Shen Buhai for lacking Fa, here as law, statute, decrees, rewards and punishments, and Gongsun for lacking Shu, providing no method for control of the ministers. Han Fei quotes Shen Buhai as using Fa in the sense of method but never law, whereas Shu does not appear in the Shen Buhai fragments. Remarkably similar to the Shen Buhai fragments, Creel notes the Han Feizi as more concerned with the role of the ruler and control of the bureaucracy.

Benjamin I. Schwartz (1985), with reference to the Mohists, noted the inaccuracy of law for Fa in many. per their logic discussions and engineering, he translates it as model, standard, copy, or imitation, with reference to the carpenter's square, compass and builder's plumb-line. The behavior of Mozi's ruler acts as Fa for the noble's and officials as in Confucianism, moving towards "prescriptive method or techne", describing craft and political technique. Schwarz regards Fa as an alternate means to social control from Li.

As the dominant interpretation for the Fajia modernly, Mohist interpretation dates back to Sinologist Chad Hansen's (1992) work, who took the work of A.C. Graham (1989) as a theory, while vacillating against meaning change of the Mohist's Fa of the previous two scholars, hence reinification of Legalist interpretation under Graham.

Ivanhoe (2001) could still be taken as a early work in this regard, at least in the sense of having been released almost a decade before the first editions of the Routledge (2009) or Oxford (2011) present Mohist interpretive for the Fajia more broadly.

Reading in Chinese Philosophy only contains one use of the term State consequentialism. Confucian Moral Self-Cultivation (2000a, 15) is where Ivanhoe actually is said to use the term state consequentialism.

Although Mohist paramilitaries would never have thrived under the Qin, Ivanhoe notes "with irony" that the "ideology of the Qin finds clear precedents in Mozi’s philosophy", representing "several prominent ideas" held by the Fajia “Legalists”. Ivanhoe's bibliography indicates interaction with Hansen along the lines of the Zhuangzi, as per Hansen's interests; hence the title of the latter's work, the Daoist Theory of Interpretation.

Taking the position of a Daoist, Hansen doesn't espouse especially high regard for the ruler-centric Fajia, even if he presents them against Legalist interpretation as circumscribing punishment in ruler's interests. He was more concerned in this regard with negating Legal positivist interpretation of the Fajia, as had been in vogue more or less since 1956. The Routledge contains his work as one of four in it's relevant chapter's bibliography, relegating Fajia (Legalism) as a philosophy to it's appendix as not constituting an independent movement.

Van Norden (2007) represents the other figures of state consequentialism, also referenced by Tao Jiang (2021). He worked together with Ivanhoe on the 2000 work. However, he doesn't use the term in his 2007 work, Virtue Ethics and Consequentialism in Early Chinese Philosophy. Tao Jiang presents him instead as having used a act- versus rule-consequentialism - whatever that means.

Founded in 2002, Mohism Stanford's (Sinologist Chris Fraiser) bibliography contains all four figures, instead using the term Mohist consequentialism, only directly discussing and vacilitating against Hansen in a discussion on Semantics.

More modernly, Tao Jiang compares Han Fei's "Fajia project" with state consequentialism. He regards it as a category of interpretation of Mohist consequentialism along with Dao consequentialism. He terms Han Fei's project the "operationalization" of state consequentialism, essentially carrying out the Mohist project of impartial universal justice within an "exclusively statist framework." As not unreasonble in the very least for a derth of work on the subject, Tao Jiang's work is considered particularly noteable by Sinologist Yuri Pines for the uncommon extent to which it deals in the Fa tradition's subject.FourLights (talk) 02:28, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

References