E Bruce and A Taeko Brooks
University of Massachusetts at Amherst
The Other China: An Ancient Philosophy of Peace
Monday 18 Feb 2008
7:30 PM, Johnson Auditorium, Sackler Science Center, Clark University
Sponsored by the Department of History and the Asian Studies Program
Summary
It is sometimes thought that the doctrines of the Micians all sprang from the brow of the movement founder, the unknown Mwo Di in the early 04th century. Careful reading shows that there is a sequence in the ethical essays preserved by the movement, and that they reflect the position of the Mician movement as it evolved over time. When read in chronological order, those essays tell us how the beliefs of this ancient antiwar movement began, were developed, and underwent change during the course of a century and a half. We also know what they did in the real world in furtherance of those beliefs, and what was the outcome of those efforts. The result is a capsule history of the group which devoted more thought to the question of war and peace than anybody in antiquity, and which put more muscle into following out their doctrines than anybody at all, whether ancient or modern. That history is of interest just for itself, as a unique page in the record of the past, and perhaps also as an object lesson for those in the present day who concern themselves with the question of War and Peace.
The primitive doctrines of the group were three. First, a disapproval of war not only because of its destructiveness, but because, as mass murder, it ought to be rejected by the state even more strongly than it rejects the murder of one person. Second, a positive definition of peace: it is amity between people, and to be effective as between states, it must be an undifferentiated amity, one that recognizes the humanity of all people, not just oneself (the universal tendency) or one's parents (a Chinese obsession). Third, the Micians dealt with one of the causes of war, which is like the cause of theft: one person needs what the other has. The cure for this at the state level, thought the Micians, was to reduce expenditures, among which they focused chiefly on the extravagant but nonfunctional luxuries of the rich.
In the course of time there were added to these basic three doctrines some opposition to specific luxurious practices, which were entirely consistent with the basic position. There were also some changes and extensions, the most important of which were (a) the doctrine of hierarchical subordination, where each social level accepts the judgements of the next higher level, an idea which made the Micians good candidates for office in the growing bureaucracy, and (b) a reinforcement of the ethical position by bringing in supernatural sanctions: the idea that Heaven, and later also the ghosts and spirits, including the avenging spirits of the wrongful dead, would punish evil deeds and balance the moral equations of the world. Eventually (c) the Micians also shifted their position on war: war was after all acceptable (just as it is acceptable for the state to put a murderer to death) if it is undertaken in order to punish the evil ruler of another state, and so benefit that state's oppressed population: the Just War doctrine.
Not content with theorizing, the Micians eventually became experts in the art of defensive warfare, and met the challenge of siegecraft not by talk, but by manning the walls in defense of threatened cities. This effort produced an escalation of technology between the attackers and defenders which lasted over the whole 03rd century. Keeping up the defensive side of that struggle came to absorb almost all the energies of the Mician movement. The effect of those efforts can be seen in the contemporary military manuals, which in the late 04th century report that cities were less attractive objects of attack then they had been. This Mician effort may well have prolonged the conquest process by about twenty years. In the end, war did continue, and finally resulted in the unified Chin Empire of 0221. In that unification was produced, though in a very different way, something of the uniformity that the Micians had sought by resisting war: a common political identity and a reduction of previous interstate ill feelings, there being no longer any multiple states to identify with.
People are free to draw their own conclusions about what, if anything, is to be learned from this curious chapter of history. We feel that the Mician experience, though not directly duplicable, is relevant at several points, and that from that ancient experience, modern advocates may see some things to do, and some things not to do, in our world. Our personal list would be something like the following:
- 1. The Micians were surely right to base their appeal on the feelings common to all men, the universal sense of right and wrong; what the Greeks call dikh. If our hopes for a more peaceful world lie anywhere, this is where they lie. Everything else is instrumentalities.
- 2. We differ from the Micians only in their adoption of supernatural sanctions to reinforce their ethical teachings. Those sanctions have proved to be divisive. Not everyone acknowledges a Higher Power, or cites that Power to the same effect. And the Chinese experience, like our own, is that any supernatural belief system is easily co-opted to serve the warlike tendencies of states. The Mician "Heaven" ended by authenticating the ruler, not (as the Micians had hoped) by giving the people a basis for judging the ruler's conduct. The whole category is politically perilous.
- 3. Justified war, however little it may appeal to individuals of sensitive conscience, is the majority theory among those concerned with the issue at all, and any answer to the question of war must lie with the majority. The Micians, unlike the religions of the West, saw states as capable of right and wrong actions, just like individuals, and they faced the question of who should punish a state (or a ruler) who oppresses his people or otherwise does evil. The answer they found to that question is probably the only one that exists.
- 4. Personally engaging in defensive war is no longer practicable for most individuals, but a closer rapprochement in our own time between soldiers and civilians would probably be a good thing. Each knows something that the other needs. Concerned civilians need to educate themselves in the specifics of war, so that as voters they can distinguish between justified and unjustified war, and between tactically viable and tactically defective war plans. Soldiers too should learn (and ROTC and the service academies do not presently teach them) the art of generalship, not just the art of bayonet drill, so that they too can contribute insightfully to discussions of war-related policy. Also, the soldiers need to have a better sense of the political goals for which, when they fight, they are fighting. The classical Chinese military manuals provide instruction on what to do after a conquest, and how to manage the retransition from war to peace. We in the modern world might do well to catch up.
- 5. The Micians were surely right not to take part in the various rejections of society that became common in the 03rd century (the individual unsullied hermits, the collective egalitarian rural communities), and have been common in our time as well (Brook Farm and the other Fourierist communities of the 19th century and after). These experiments do not work, and insofar as they do work, they do not affect the public outcome. It is the public outcome that counts. Those with a moral contribution to make should not cop out, but opt in, even at some loss of personal purity or personal safety. As the Confucians said in rejecting the hermit position, One must do what one can with people, such as they are (Analects 18:5)
The Micians ultimately failed to eliminate war, and probably any attempt to eliminate war in our time will also fail. Energy should accordingly go to what can possibly succeed, which in the light of the Mician experience is the more intelligent and morally responsible management of war. Current newspapers seem to suggest that there is a lot still to be done in this direction. Here, we end by suggesting, is where any modern Micians can honorably, and perhaps also fruitfully, take up the cause.
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