ABSTRACT
The Mohists and the Zhuangists agreed that truth is normative and constitutive of our attitudes, dispositions, reasoning, emotions, and actions. Truth can be defined as a series of embodied beliefs and perspectives that lead to fitting dispositions, emotions, and actions (regardless of whether they accurately describe the world, or whether there are other competing beliefs and perspectives that equally accurately or inaccurately describe the world); whereas falsity, rather than mistaken descriptions of reality, are certainties that produce unfitting behavior leading to conflict and harm. This shared understanding of truth, nevertheless, develops into two radically different sociopolitical and ethical positions. The Mohists wished to take advantage of the causal power of beliefs to implement a government-sanctioned ideology that couldn’t allow for pluralism in values, norms, beliefs, and practices. The Zhuangists, on the other hand, warned us against the dangers of using single-truth discourses to enforce ideological monopolies and engaged in a sophisticated critique of dogmatism.
