The Junzi II

Posted: Wed, Sep 10, 2025

Ban Zhao

Skilled in double meanings:

  • “The Needle and Thread”: Metaphor for the yang (“sun”) and yin (“moon”) producing harmony.
    • Note the use of feminine-coded objects.
  • “Traveling East”: Road ~ Dao.
    • Attempts to resolve the fate vs. self-cultivation tension: “I know that man’s nature and destiny rest with Heaven, / But by effort we can go forward and draw near to [goodness].”
  • Lessons for Women: Survival manual for young girls in a Confucian society.
    • Morality or expediency?
    • Husband/wife ~ yang/yin.
      • The yang controls the yin; the yin serves the yang.
      • Argument against domestic violence: Divides the yang/yin.
      • Argument for educating women: Necessary for the wife to serve the husband.

Mozi’s critiques

On ren/goodness: Against rituals.

  • Analects 11.26: How would you rule a state?
    • Zilu: “infuse … people with courage and a sense of what is right.”
    • Ran Qiu: “see that the people would have all that they needed.”
    • Zihua: “serve as a minor functionary—properly clad in ceremonial cap and gown—in ceremonies at the ancestral temple, or at diplomatic gatherings.”
    • Zengxi: “In the third month of Spring, once the Spring garments have been completed, I should like to assemble a company of five or six young men and six or seven boys to go bathe in the Yi River and enjoy the breeze upon the Rain Dance Altar, and then return singing to the Master’s house.”
    • Kongzi: “I am with Zengxi!”
  • Mozi: Does this benefit or harm the people?
    • “The business of a benevolent person is to promote what is beneficial to the world and eliminate what is harmful.”
    • Against following traditions: “The so-called ancient style of dress and speech was once new.”
    • Against fatalism: If people believed this, there will be “poverty and disorder”—“a great harm to the people of the world.”

On filial piety: Against partiality/for universal love.

  • In deciding what’s beneficial/harmful, everyone’s well-being counts equally.
  • The partial vs. impartial person: p. 67.

On ghosts: “If the kings, dukes, great officials, and gentlemen of the world today really seek to promote what is beneficial to the world and eliminate what is harmful, they must inquire carefully into the issue of whether or not ghosts and spirits exist.”

  • Why?