 Mencius viewed himself as a defender of the Confucian tradition, and saw the two major contemporary threats to that tradition as the doctrines of Mozi and Yang Zhu: “the doctrines of Yang Zhu and Mozi fill the world. If a doctrine does not lean toward Yang Zhu, then it leans toward Mozi. Yang Zhu is ‘for oneself.’ This is to not have a ruler. Mozi is ‘impartial caring.’ This is to not have a father. To not have a father and to not have a ruler is to be an animal” (Mengzi 3B9; Van Norden 2008, 85). Mozi (fifth century BCE) is the first systematic philosophical critic of Confucianism. He is generally interpreted as a sort of impartial consequentialist, who grounds ethics in maximizing overall benefit or profit, where this is defined in terms of material goods such as wealth, populousness, and social order. On this basis, Mozi criticizes the Confucian emphasis on ritual, regarding as wasteful such Confucian practices as elaborate funerals, lengthy mourning periods, and musical performances. In addition, Mozi advocated impartial caring (jiān ài, sometimes translated “universal love”), which he distinguished from the filial piety or differentiated caring of the Confucians. Mozi argued that caring more for oneself, one’s family, or one’s state was the cause of the warfare and cruelty of his era, and that impartial caring would lead to greater harmony and material satisfaction. Mozi certainly did not advocate eliminating the family as a social institution. However, he clearly rejected Confucian differentiated caring in favor of impartial caring: “I have heard that in order to be a superior person in the world, one must regard the well-being of one’s friends as one regards one’s own well being; one must regard the parents of one’s friends as one regards one’s own parents. Only in this way can one be a superior person” (Ivanhoe and Van Norden 2001, 70). Mozi presented a number of ingenious arguments in favor of his position, including a “state of nature” argument to justify government authority (Mozi 11; Ivanhoe and Van Norden 2005,  65),[18]  and a thought-experiment to justify impartial caring that seems almost game-theoretic in its precision (Mozi 16; Ivanhoe and Van Norden 2005, 69–70). In addition, to win over those attracted to Confucianism, Mozi argues that the goal of filial piety will in fact be best achieved by not favoring one’s own parents over others: “Clearly one must first care for and benefit the parents of others in order to expect that they in turn will respond by caring for and benefiting one’s own parents. And so for such mutually filial sons to realize unlimited good results, must they not first care for and benefit other people’s parents?” (Ivanhoe and Van Norden, 75; emphasis  mine)[19]  Mozi acknowledged that people do not seem to be predisposed to have impartial care for others. However, he argued that human motivations are highly malleable, and can be radically altered, so long as humans are given appropriate rewards for compliance and punishments for disobedience. As evidence for his claim, he cites the example of