29
and evil, at least as normally understood. From the analytical perspective of Western thought,
however, this transformative unity is only apparent; for what maintains order without the further
use of violence is really the threat of violence. In well-ordered commonwealths that enjoy the
assent of most their subjects, this threat can be so implicit that it becomes unnoticeable. But as
long as at least some of the organs of the state, who are entrusted with administering the public
order, remain armed, the threat of violence remains as well. Moreover, the threat of violence is at
bottom a use of violence, albeit in a potential form.
At any rate, whether the transformative union of evil deeds and good ends is real or not,
Shang’s acceptance of necessary evil puts him at odds with both Confucians and Taoists. As
Mencius (c. 372-c. 289 A.D.), Confucius’ greatest disciple, put it: "Had it been necessary to
perpetrate one wrongful deed or to kill one innocent man in order to gain the Empire, none of
[the sages Po Yi, Yi Yin, and Confucius] would have consented to it," on the simple but
unshakeable ground that "it is contrary to benevolence to kill one innocent man."
34
Likewise, the
Taoists limited the use of force to those who have forfeited their immunity of account of
wrongdoing: "Sages’ use of arms is like combing hair or thinning sprouts: a few [i.e., the bad
ones] are removed for the benefit of many. There is no harm greater than killing innocent
people."
35
In Western terms, Shang’s consequentialist approach clashes with the moral
absolutism that Confucians and Taoists upheld. In the West, this position was held by the
Socratic tradition, but became the bedrock of common morality through the influence of the
Hebrew-Christian ethic, beginning with the first book of Moses, where Abraham got God to
agree to spare the city of Sodom if ten innocent men could be found there, and culminating in
Thomas Aquinas’s dictum that “evil must not be done that good may come (Rom.iii.8) or that
34
Mencius, trans. D.C. Lau (London: Penguin Books, 1970), II.A.2, p. 79; VII.A.33, p. 189.
Convention