溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
Must Love Widen Outward in Degrees Starting from One's Parents, or Be Equal to All from the Start?
Is the demand to love another's parents exactly as one's own the fulfillment of true love, or a failure to grasp love's very nature?
Look upon another's parents as you would look upon your own.
This dispute between universal love and graded love became a lasting axis of East Asian ethics. Xunzi attempted a synthesis, holding that love does have degrees, but that these arise naturally from the distance of relationship rather than a hierarchy of rank. A similar structure recurred in the West under different faces — the Stoics' concentric love, and later universalist ethics holding all humans equal, carried on the same tension. Does nearness justify a privilege of love, or must love be impartial from the start? This question continues today in debates between local community and cosmopolitanism.
Every time we decide priorities for giving or volunteering, this ancient question quietly resurfaces — care for those near first, or treat strangers as equals from the start?
Mozi argued that the world's conflicts spring from partial love, and proposed universal love — loving another's parents as one's own — as the cure.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
Mozi argued that the world's conflicts spring from partial love, and proposed universal love — loving another's parents as one's own — as the cure. Mencius pushed back fiercely: making love for one's parents equal to love for a neighbor amounts to having no father at all. I see both sincerities at once in this dispute — the wish to embrace the whole world, and the wish to love those nearest specially. I too have not yet settled where my own circles of love should begin, and how far they should widen.
✍️Your Answer
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