Equal Care versus Graded Love

The central question for this paper is: what should we do when the interests of our family members conflict with the interests of strangers? There has been a heated debate within the Chinese philosophy community on this question. The debate is situated in two classic Chinese schools of thoughts: Confucianism and Mohism. This paper begins by analyzing the debate. Recently, some scholars have argued that this so-called Confucian-Mohist debate is the result of misinterpretation. I reject this view and argue that, although Confucians and Mohists have some common grounds, they do have a central difference. Mohists believe that we should treat family members and strangers equally when they conflict, whereas Confucians believe that we should treat family members with some priority. Besides the interpretation issue, I argue that Confucians are right on the normative aspect. We should give family members some priority, and this is one of the important factors to consider when facing the moral conflict between family members and strangers. However, I argue that there are other important factors to consider, including our equal obligation towards strangers. Thus, in order to make a better decision in the conflict, we need to distinguish between doing and allowing harm, and love and care.