 Though the Mohists advocate concern for all, it is unclear to what extent they endorse respect for the life or dignity of individuals. On the one hand, care about an individual cannot be abandoned, even if the world were to benefit (EC2). But one fragment in the Dialectics states, “Caring about them equally, select and execute one person among them,” and “if the benefit to the world is equal, then there’s no choosing between them. If the benefit of death and life are as one, then there’s no choosing between them” (EC6). Given their lack of context, any interpretation of these remarks must be tentative. But they might be taken to suggest that the only fundamental consideration in Mohist ethics is the greater benefit of all the world, not respect for individuals’ dignity or the intrinsic value of their lives. These remarks might seem to permit sacrificing an individual to increase overall welfare, or even just as long as there is no net decrease in welfare. However, the same fragment continues, “Killing a person to save the world, it’s not that we kill a person to benefit the world; killing oneself to save the world, it’s that one kills oneself to benefit the world.” This seems to indicate that even in the extreme case in which we can save the world by sacrificing another’s life, we do so not merely on the grounds of the net benefit to the world, since adopting such grounds might suggest that we could routinely sacrifice individuals for the benefit of society in less extreme cases as well. Rather, we do so because of the massive discrepancy between the harm we inflict and that we prevent—the loss of a single life versus loss of the whole world. If the life to be given up is our own, on the other hand, the fragment seems to imply that we should make the sacrifice on the grounds of benefiting the world, though only if the consequences are suitably weighty.