| Mozi depends on 天 tiannature:sky in this context and he makes appealing to 天 tiannature:sky more central to normative theorizing. Tiannature:sky天 is not "escapable" the way the edicts of a ruler or the conventions of a social group are. He also treats 天 tiannature:sky as a solution to the twin problems because of its measurement-like operationality. The standard exemplified in 天 tiannature:sky is the distinction between 利 害 li-haibenefit-harm (and the natural preference for libenefit). This step extends the apparatus of dao to natural inclinations. Any learning of a way presupposes some natural way—namely our capacity to acquire and follow it. So the idea of a 天 tiannature:sky 道 daoguide becomes important in ancient Chinese dao talk. The Zhuangzi takes up the theme of daos depending on daos in the form of talk about dependency. Neither the Mohists nor the Zhuangists make a clear distinction between justification and motivation, reasons and causes. Tiannature:sky's天 operational standard is not evidence for the daos it leads us to choose, as much as a cosmic metaphor for our having a way to choose and follow daos. So we have daos of choosing and interpreting dao both built into identifiable discourse daos (like books of ceremonial ritual or existing conventions) and we have daos built into us as natural ways of acquiring, selecting and mastering socially generated discourse daos. In any normal dao-guided activity, much dao is presupposed (depended upon). It is important to recognize that the Mohist doctrines, while giving us the language of analysis of daos, differ from Daoist analyses. The appeal to 天 tiannature:sky 道 daoguide and the ideal of a constant dao are Mohist innovations, not specifically Daoist doctrines (in fact, as I argue below, Daoist theory effectively critiques both notions). Mozi speaks of "constanting" (常 changconstant used as a verb) language (Mozi 80/46/37-8, 82/47/18) that is adequate to promote, pick out or restore行 xingbehavior. The idea if a 常 changconstant 道 daoguide goes together with the idea of a 天 tiannature:sky 道 daoguide --constancy being the salient feature of 天 tiannature:sky and its operational, inescapable standards. So we have ample basis for understanding talk of dao being everywhere, inescapable, incapable of being made fully explicit, even for understanding Zhuangzi's metaphor of humans being in dao as fish are in water. None of this talk requires that dao has changed its meaning. All the Mohist apparatus of normative analysis of dao applies to both the activity of interpreting a discourse into performance and evaluating a performance as a particular "walking" of a discourse dao. The language is also highly context specific, e.g., "choosing this and not that," interpreting in ways that "benefit." And finally his dao seems to place much more emphasis on the performance side since a test applied to the effect of performance determines what discourse dao is right. In some sense the real dao for Mozi is the way it works out in performance--which, via the standard for judgment (benefit-harm) brings nature into the discussion both as the operational standard and as the context in which success is achieved or not. These are other themes developed in the Zhuangzi with the suggestion that the context is as much a part of any process of dao guidance as is the explicit discourse. In the course of any behavior, we presuppose other dao besides the one in view--dao of how to select a first order dao and dao of how to interpret it. The idea of 德 devirtuosity in performance pulls in the dependence on context and criteria of success in real time. Clearly any act involves lots of dao (many daos) and they are likely to be intertwined in a "bloomin' buzzin confusion" -- not of experience, but of guidance. [24] This iteration of dao together with the individuation, blurring and the naturalness of summing to include context can even explain the talk of a holistic or single dao. The Mohist analysis itself promoted this view of the unity of dao. The natural standard of benefit-harm is shared in every natural kind and everywhere--it is constant nature. The standard and context are set in constant nature and the ideal of finding a natural dao to guide all human action seems the solution that will yield an integrated constancy in human affairs. The ideal, however, quickly required adjustment to fit the complexity noticed in the natural world. Mohist utilitarian analysis put the emphasis on the results of actual performance and stimulated a trend toward emphasizing the uniqueness of situations of performance at the same time the universalized reasoning encouraged summing. Other moral thinkers, like Mencius and Yang Zhu followed suit (or influenced Mozi) in appealing to 天 tiannature:sky's authority but tilted away from discourse toward a special intuition tuned to guiding concrete process. They still disagreed in their accounts of what behavior was dictated by natural standards—their answers ranging from Mozi's universal utility to Yang Zhu's egoism. The move toward intuition was thus both a product and a betrayal of the Mohist ideal of a 常 changconstant 道 daoguide. The original goal was a formula or norm that could be a standard for choosing, reforming, etc. a constant discourse dao whose content will not have to vary with time or location. It also envisioned a discourse together with internal operational standards of interpretation into practice that were both unequivocal. Neither the content nor the interpretation should vary with schools of emphasis as the traditionalist Confucian dao did. Implicitly, the goal was to evade the normal play of intuition, but the emphasis on performance made special intuitionism the dao of choice--prior to Zhuangzi.
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