ABSTRACT
Are there any reliable guidelines for human action? And if so, what are they? Starting in the spring and autumn period in China (c. 722-481 BCE), this question
preoccupied social theorists such as Confucius, Mozi, and Laozi. During the Warring States period (c. fifth century BCE-221 BCE), such inquiries intensified, growing more complex as the question expanded from simply expounding guidelines (as one finds, for instance in the Confucian Analects) to a variety of attempts to establish justifications for the various standards being advocated by competing scholars (such as the theories of human nature in Mencius and Xunzi; logic and the will of heaven in Mozi; etc.). This period saw not only debates about moral and political standards, but a pursuit of standards of all sorts: how to measure and partition land; weights and measures for commerce and construction; musical tuning theories, etc.1 While metrological standards have varied during Chinese history (e.g., the actual length of a Chinese inch has varied over time), during the Warring States period they were quite uniform. Standardization also means uniformity. The Warring States ended with the establishment of the Qin Dynasty, which not only unified China for the first time, but carried the program of standardization forward, standardizing such things as the writing script, which has remained the standard until modern times. Bringing things into uniformity, when applied to people, means promoting conformity, so that people think alike. If a ruler’s strength and effectiveness can be measured by his military capability and the loyalty of his subjects, having a populace unified, of “one mind” with his will, is a ruler’s strength. Not surprisingly, texts such as Mozi and Guanzi advocate this standardization and unification of the mind of the people for precisely these reasons.
