 Instead, the extent to which we should seek to benefit others will normally depend on our relationship to them. The Mohists propose that our conduct toward others be guided by a code of responsibilities associated with various relationships, which they plausibly would have regarded as justified by its efficacy in promoting the welfare of all. This code is an articulation of the earlier Mohists’ commitment to the virtues associated with the paradigm social relations of ruler, subject, father, son, and brother. It may also have been a response to the criticism that impartial care for all undermines special personal relationships, which most of us agree are of great value. The Mohists often expressed their doctrine of all-inclusive care as “caring about others’ as one cares about one’s own,” a formulation open to the uncharitable construal that, for instance, one should treat everyone else’s father as having a status identical to one’s own. As the Mohists’ critics were quick to point out, the result would be that we fail to treat our father as our father, rather than simply as one male elder among others. On these grounds, Mencius, one of the Mohists’ Confucian opponents, claimed that the Mohist doctrine was tantamount to denying one’s father. The Mohists themselves clearly did not consider this a consequence of their position, which they repeatedly indicated was compatible with filial devotion (xiào 孝). But to settle the issue, an explicit account was needed of the role of special personal relationships in their ethics.