The story
Mozi (Master Mo, dates roughly 470 to 391 BCE, though they are debated) lived in the Chinese states of Lu and Song and taught a doctrine of jian ai, impartial or inclusive care. The book that bears his name argues that the chaos of the age comes from people loving their own family and state more than others. If everyone cared for strangers as for kin, there would be no aggression and no feuds. Mozi tests every custom by whether it benefits the people. By this test he rejects aggressive war, extravagant funerals, long mourning and court music, all of which waste resources.
Mozi built his school in conscious opposition to Confucius, whose ethics begins with graded duties to family. His followers formed a disciplined brotherhood that practiced what it preached, serving as expert defenders of besieged small states. A story in the book tells how Mozi walked ten days to stop the state of Chu from attacking Song, and used his belt and wooden blocks to show the king's engineer that every siege device could be countered. During the Warring States period, Mohists rivaled the Confucians in influence. The school faded after the Qin and Han dynasties, but its later writings on logic, argument and optics are among the earliest in China.
Why it mattered
- Mozi's impartial care is among the first systematic ethics in which an action is judged by its results, a position later called consequentialism in the West.
- His challenge forced Mencius and Xunzi to defend Confucian ethics with explicit arguments.
- The Mohist logic and science chapters record early work on argument, geometry and optics.
Sources
- Mohism Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Mozi (Mo-tzu) Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Mohism Britannica
Community notes
Loading notes…