ThePhilosophyCenter: Mohism and Legalism (Chinese Philosophy #2)

 Hello!

This is the final episode of Ancient Philosophy and the second portion of the Chinese Philosophy series. Today we will cover the Mohist philosophy and the Legalist philosophy. Outside of Confucian and Daoist system of thought, these two were also relevant in the world of Ancient chinese philosophy. 

1. Mohism

Mozi, or Mo Tzu, is the central philosopher involved in Mohism. Mo Tzu's philosophy is considered to do with ethics, just like most other Chinese philosophies. Mohism believes we should care or love everybody equally and you should treat others the way you want to be treated - these two beliefs and statements are often heard in this present day and age. Mo Tzu said these things to try and achieve peace, especially in the government. While those two statements are actually biblically valid, it lacks a "god" or power.

2. Legalism

When you hear of the word "legalism", even if you don't know the meaning, you might think about the prefix legal and then the suffix "ism" (suffix for philosophies, many academic terms, biases, etc). You might think it has some connection with the law, and it does. It tells us to obey the law as the ultimate thing and we should be punished strictly for breaking them. What it gets wrong is that salvation is not attained by these fulfillments of the law, but grace.

15 November Episode: Interlude to Rennaisance and Machiavellianism

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ThePhilosophyCenter: Rationalism #2

 Hello! Another relevant rationalist philosophers is Gottfried Leibniz, a rationalist philsopher. We will do his philosopher profile first before delving deeper. ----- CHARACTER PROFILE: GOTTFRIED LEIBNIZ Born: 1645, Leipzig, Germany. Died: 1716, Hanover, Germany. Works:Meditations on Knowledge, Truth and Ideas, Monadology, the Discourse on Metaphysics, etc. Ideas: Rationalism, Theory of Monads,  Text Intro: Leibniz is a polymath, meaning he had knowledge in many topics, butnhe also was a rationalist philosopher. He contributed greatly to mathematics, particularly calculus. He was religious.  ------ According to Leibniz, there was such thing as monads, which will be important later. What are monads? In usual terminology, monad an means a singular unit, anything, but in Leibniz' philosophy it has a similar yet slightly different meaning, a singular and indivisible (so infinitely simple) unit, whether it be an atom or person. We can see that "mono" is one (other examples of...
Read more

ThePhilosophy Center: Confucianism, Daoism, Mohism, Legalism (Chinese Philosophy) #1

 Hello! Today's episode will be about Chinese philosophy. We will have four small parts covering four prominent philosophies in Ancient Chinese culture and history: (1) Daoism, (2) Confucianism, (3) Mohism, and (4) Legalism. Each of these philosophies we might cover again one day to cover them one by one. Before we enter the big four Chinese philosophies we must see: what do Chinese philosophies have in common? How are they different from Greek philosophy, the only other group of sophisticated philosophies in their era?  They are more related to ethics (what should we do? is an exampleof a question in Ethics (philosophy)). The Chinese philosophies typically answer the question, "What is the purpose of life?". Meanwhile, Greek philosophy, ranges from ethics to metaphysics to epistemology. Today we will only cover the first two (Confucianism and Daoism(.  1. Daoism Daoism is a philosophy developed by the philosopher Laozi, also referred to as Lao Tzu. During his life, China...
Read more