Ancient Chinese Mohists already deployed watchful supernatural punishment as social order

Evidence

In the “Mohist” period (fifth century BCE), we see Mohist philosophers arguing for the existence of supernatural punishment. Many Mohist philosophers believed that much of the chaos of their time could be traced to what they saw as the loss of belief in watchful ghosts who dole out punishment and reward. Modern scholars debate the meaning of these arguments. Did the Mohists themselves believe in supernatural monitoring, or did they think that it was an effective social tool, even if not literally true? Either way, for such arguments to be relevant, they must have been occurring against the background of some cultural belief in supernatural punishment. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 829

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

• XREF: Directly parallels the Big God / omniscient-monitoring mechanism the reader is mapping onto Father Rodrigues’ moral psychology in Silence.
• QUESTION: Whether Mohists personally believed the ghosts or used them as social tool is unresolved in the scholarship — worth chasing.

Related

• Mohist moralizers deployed belief in watchful punishing ghosts (similarity 0.94)