The Philosophy of the Mòzi: The First Consequentialists

The Philosophy of the Mòzǐ

The Philosophy of the Mòzǐ

The First Consequentialists

Chris Fraser

Columbia University Press

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Names: Fraser, Chris, author.

Title: The philosophy of the Mòzi : the first consequentialists / Chris Fraser.

Description: New York : Columbia University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2015038566 | ISBN 9780231149266 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780231149273 (pbk.) | ISBN 9780231520591 (electronic)

Subjects: LCSH: Moism.

Classification: LCC B127.M65 F73 2016 | DDC 181/.115—dc23

LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015038566

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Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Order, Objectivity, and Efficacy

2. Epistemology and Logic: Drawing Distinctions

3. Political Theory: Order Through Shared Norms

4. Heaven: The Highest Ethical Model

5. Ethics: The Benefit of All

6. Inclusive Care: For Others as for Oneself

7. Motivation: Changing People in a Generation

8. War and Economics

Epilogue

Glossary

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Preface

History has not been kind to Mòzǐ and the social and intellectual movement he founded. The Mohists were tremendously influential grassroots social reformers and one of the most prominent and respected schools of thought in preimperial China. They were instrumental in setting the early Chinese philosophical agenda, and their theories and arguments represent a quantum leap in clarity and rigor over anything that preceded them. In texts from the early imperial era, Mòzǐ is regularly paired with Confucius (Kǒngzǐ) as one of the two great moral teachers of the past.¹ Central Mohist concepts such as all-inclusive care for the welfare of others and the importance of clear, objective models for action strongly influenced Ruist (Confucian) thinkers such as Mencius (Mèngzǐ) and Xúnzǐ. The Mohist ideal of inclusive care appears ultimately to have been absorbed into Ruism itself.² During the Western Hàn dynasty (206 B.C.E.–8 C.E.), however, the Mohist movement faded away, probably largely because changing social, political, and economic factors in first-century B.C.E. China eliminated much of its intellectual appeal and sociopolitical relevance. With the exception of their dialectics, the Mohists’ philosophy no longer attracted much attention, and their texts fell into neglect. Throughout Chinese history, classical texts have been sustained as living, comprehensible intellectual resources through a lively commentarial tradition. But the only significant ancient commentary on the Mòzǐ was the now-lost work of Lǔ Shèng (fl. 300 C.E.), which covered only the dialectical chapters.

During the seventh century C.E., chance events contrived to prevent Mohist philosophy from receiving serious consideration from Chinese intellectuals for nearly a millennium. The unabridged text of the Mòzǐ was gradually pushed out of circulation by the publication of an abbreviated version comprising only the first thirteen of the seventy-one chapters. This truncated version was the edition read by Táng- (618–907) and Sòng-dynasty (960–1279) scholars such as Hán Yù (768–824) and Chéng Yí (1033–1107), whose remarks on Mòzǐ indicate that they never laid eyes on the essays expounding inclusive care or condemning the Rú (Confucians, Erudites). Fortunately, the unabridged text was preserved in the Dào Zàng (the Daoist Patrology scriptures), from which it was eventually recovered during the Míng dynasty and published again whole in 1552.³ Had the text not been included in this vast Daoist collection, many details of Mohist thought, including the main expositions of Mohist ethics and all the Mohist dialectical writings, might have been lost forever.⁴

With the development of rigorous philology in the Qīng dynasty, scholars set out to clarify or emend the many obscure or corrupt graphs in the Mòzǐ, explain its often peculiar grammar, and reconstruct the damaged, misarranged, and corrupt dialectical chapters. This work began with the pioneering efforts of Bì Yuán (1730–1797) and Sūn Xīngyǎn (1753–1818) and culminated in the comprehensive commentary of Sūn Yíràng published in 1894.

The Qīng philologists provided would-be readers of the Mòzǐ with a legible, intelligible text. But the availability of such a text does not ensure that it will be understood or appreciated. By and large, the Mòzǐ has fared badly at the hands of philosophical interpreters during the modern era. To be sure, the Mòzǐ found appreciative readers during the early decades of the twentieth century, when prominent public intellectuals such as Hú Shì and Liáng Qǐchāo turned to Mohism to explore alternatives to Ruism in the Chinese intellectual tradition. Chinese Marxists in the mid-twentieth century admired Mohism for its egalitarian and communitarian tendencies and its concern for the welfare of the common people. Some Chinese Christians felt Mohist religious beliefs resonated with their own.

But the general trend in both Chinese and international scholarship has been deeply uncharitable toward Mohism. Indeed, few philosophers in any tradition have been the victims of such bad press. The Mohists are regularly the targets of an implicit prejudice that casts Ruist views and practices as norms from which Mohist positions are deviations—even when the practice at stake is deeply questionable, such as the three-year mourning custom, and opposition to it surely reasonable. All too often, Mòzǐ is treated as a dull, misguided foil against which to contrast favored Ruist views, particularly those of Mencius, a self-described arch-opponent of Mohism. Mohist ideas are routinely misconstrued and frequently twisted into implausible caricatures wildly counter to common sense. Mencius himself called Mòzǐ a beast for advocating all-inclusive moral care, which Mencius equated with denying one’s father (Me 6.9). A related line of interpretation was taken up by the influential twentieth-century Ruist Táng Jūnyì, who suggested that on the Mohist conception of mind, agents lack any way of conceptualizing or caring about the particular, concrete man who is their father, as distinct from the entire set of men who together constitute the kind fathers.⁵ Another prominent twentieth-century Ruist, Móu Zōngsān, claimed that Mohism fails to recognize any source of genuinely moral motivation.⁶ Among Western interpreters, David Nivison attributes to Mòzǐ a bizarre form of voluntarism, on which agents can simply choose, easily and immediately, to feel an emotion or believe a claim, just as they can choose to move their limbs.⁷ Benjamin Schwartz claims that the Mohists saw all people as fundamentally unloving and self-interested.⁸ David Wong calls Mohist arguments defending inclusive care wishes masquerading as arguments.⁹ He charges the Mohists with advocating a wholly outer-directed ethics focused on mere behavioral conformity rather than ensuring that one has the right motives for acting correctly.¹⁰ Bryan Van Norden takes the Mohists to assume that the structure of human motivations and dispositions is almost infinitely malleable.¹¹ Most notorious of all is the curt, uninformed dismissal of Mohism by Wing-tsit Chan, dean of an earlier generation of scholars of Chinese thought: One thing is certain, and that is, philosophically Mohism is shallow and unimportant.¹² As this book will show, all these characterizations of Mohist thought are unjustified.

Among scholars publishing in English, defenders of the intellectual importance of the Mohists have been few and far between. I have already mentioned Hú Shì, who assigned the Mohists a prominent place in his pioneering 1922 work The Development of the Logical Method in Ancient China. Another important early advocate of the Mohists’ importance was Yi-Pao Mei, author of the earliest monograph on Mòzǐ in English, who rightly called the Mohist doctrine of inclusive care one of the epoch-making discoveries in the evolution of human relations.¹³ In the preface to Mei’s book appear these remarks, happily less accurate today than when he wrote them in 1934 but still pertinent:

The growing conviction through the work is that Confucianism is not the only valuable way of life that China has ever possessed and can offer, that that system has won its place of supremacy by accidental circumstances as well as intrinsic worth, and that Western attention in Chinese systems of thought has been led to distribute itself unjustly—a large amount to Confucius, only a little to Laotse, and none to speak of to Motse, to mention only the three most original thinkers. (ix)

Mei described his project as a positive endeavor to remedy the situation by presenting the much neglected author to the public (ix). Two important more recent contributors to this endeavor have been A. C. Graham and Chad Hansen.¹⁴ Graham’s 1978 Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science recognized the pivotal role of the Mohists in the development of classical Chinese thought and showed how a detailed account of Mohist dialectics was crucial to fully understanding the ethics, philosophy of language, epistemology, and psychology of early Ruist, Daoist, and other thinkers. Hansen’s 1992 A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought went further in articulating the Mohists’ role as a driving force—perhaps the single most influential driving force—in classical Chinese intellectual discourse. He identified numerous presuppositions common to Confucius and Mohism and showed how the early Mohists articulated much of the shared conceptual framework of preimperial thought. Hansen was probably the first to point out that, by our contemporary understanding of what philosophy is—not merely ethical instruction but a process of critically questioning values, concepts, and beliefs while seeking answers supported by good arguments—it is Mòzǐ, not Confucius, who deserves the title of China’s first philosopher.¹⁵

This book is intended as a contribution to what Hansen called the philosophical rehabilitation of Mohism.¹⁶ It does not aim to establish that Mohist positions in any particular area are correct—I myself disagree with many aspects of Mohist ethics—but to show that, properly understood, numerous features of Mohist thought are interesting, instructive, and worthy of attention. As Franklin Perkins remarks in an introduction to a recent collection of essays on Mohism, "in a global philosophical dialogue, the Mòzǐ has valuable things to say."¹⁷ One aim of this book is to help us see more clearly what some of those things might be.

In particular, I hope to elucidate the Mohist ethical theory—notable as history’s first version of consequentialism and perhaps the earliest systematic normative theory of any kind—and to show that it is both more plausible than it is typically taken to be and deeply instructive as to the shape a convincing normative theory might take. It does not, as often suggested, have the unappealing consequence that we have an equal moral obligation to promote the well-being of all persons, regardless of their relation to us.¹⁸ To the contrary, it emphasizes the central place of special kinship and political relationships in human life while also systematically developing the fundamental moral insight that the right way to live must take into account not only those with whom we share such relationships but also those with whom we have no personal or political relationship at all. An especially significant achievement of Mohist ethics, which I will explore at length, is their discovery of the centrality of impartiality—and, indirectly, universalizability—in ethical theory. Despite their tremendous contributions on this point, however, the Mohists’ approach to articulating impartiality constitutes a major flaw in their ethics. I will examine this issue in detail and argue that the Mohists’ mishandling of impartiality is among the most instructive features of their ethical theory.

A second topic to which I will devote special attention is the Mohists’ fascinating nonmentalistic, nonsubjectivist psychology, which permeates their epistemology, political theory, and ethics. The Mohists regard perception, inference, and action as based not on an innate capacity to form inner, mental representations or to grasp logical relations between propositions but on the public, often socially acquired ability to distinguish different kinds of things and respond to each kind in a consistent way. This model is the basis for a plausible philosophy of mind and action intriguingly different from the familiar individualist, subjectivist, and representationalist picture that has come down to us from the Judeo-Christian tradition and Enlightenment conceptualism. It is valuable both for its inherent interest and as a potential inspiration for contemporary philosophy of psychology. The failure to recognize the place of this model in Mohist thought is among the main factors driving the pervasive misunderstanding of their moral psychology.¹⁹

This book seeks to fill a gap in the literature on early Chinese thought by providing an extended, in-depth discussion of Mohism from a philosophical perspective. To my knowledge, it is one of only a handful of monographs on the Mohists in English and the first by a philosopher.²⁰ It is intended as a philosophical study, not a work of intellectual history. Hence I devote only limited attention to the Mohists’ historical background, to philological issues, and to relations between the Mohists and other thinkers. The content is deliberately imbalanced, in that the book devotes much attention to aspects of Mohist thought I find philosophically rich while touching only briefly on, or sometimes passing over entirely, other features that, despite their historical or anthropological value, seem philosophically less interesting. A further imbalance is that to address Mohist ethical and political thought in the detail it deserves, I have had to forgo an originally planned chapter on later Mohist philosophy of language, epistemology, and logic. This seems a reasonable trade-off, since I have previously published an easily accessible chapter-length account of later Mohist thought, which readers are invited to consult.²¹

I have tried to write the book to appeal to a broad audience, so that it will have something to offer university undergraduates and general readers as well as specialists. As a result, in a few places professional scholars may find the exposition too elementary, while in others general readers may find it too technical. Overall, however, I hope to have maintained a satisfactory balance between accessibility and depth.

Throughout the book, all translations from Chinese sources are my own. To complement this philosophical study, I have also completed a new, abridged translation of the Mòzǐ, which is forthcoming. Readers may wish to consult previous English translations of Mohist ethical and political writings as well. These include Yi-Pao Mei, trans., The Ethical and Political Works of Motse, which can be accessed online at Ctext.org, a rich electronic resource created by Donald Sturgeon; Ian Johnston, trans., The Mozi; and John Knoblock and Jeffrey Riegel, trans., Mozi: A Study and Translation of the Ethical and Political Writings. Partial translations are available in Burton Watson, trans., Mo Tzu: Basic Writings, and Philip J. Ivanhoe and Bryan W. Van Norden, eds., Readings in Classical Chinese Philosophy. Readers will find that my renderings of key Mohist philosophical terms often diverge from those of previous writers, such as my use of inclusive care where most translations have universal love or impartial love. These interpretive choices are explained in the relevant chapters that follow.

I have rendered all Chinese terms in the Hànyǔ Pīnyīn romanization system. The correct pronunciation of Hànyǔ Pīnyīn is typically not obvious to speakers of English, so I encourage readers to consult one of the many useful pronunciation guides available online. The Chinese characters for key terms are included at their first appearance in each chapter, and characters for all Chinese terms and names appear in a glossary at the end.

Citations to Classical Texts

Citations to ancient Chinese texts use the following abbreviations and editions.

Acknowledgments

All Academic authors owe a vast debt to family, friends, colleagues, and teachers for support and encouragement and for inspiring the ideas and formulations in their work. My understanding of the Mohists has benefited greatly from discussions with many people. I am particularly grateful to Chad Hansen, Dan Robins, Franklin Perkins, Kai Yee Wong, Hon Lam Li, Jiwei Ci, William Haines, Kwok Wai Lee, and the many thoughtful and enthusiastic students who have attended my courses on Mohist thought and Chinese ethics. I also thank Hui-chieh Loy, Franklin Perkins, Carine Defoort, and Karen Desmet for sharing with me their work in progress on various aspects of Mohism. Chad Hansen, Hui-chieh Loy, Franklin Perkins, William Haines, Dan Robins, Timothy O’Leary, P. J. Ivanhoe, and Carine Defoort all offered helpful comments on material later incorporated into the book, as did three anonymous readers for Columbia University Press, who saved me from several errors.

I am singularly indebted to Hansen for kindling my interest in the Mòzǐ in the first place through his book A Daoist Theory of Chinese Thought, which I read in 1994. A similarly important debt is to A. C. Graham, whose Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science has been an indispensable resource. Yet another influence has been Taeko Brooks, from whose model I learned much about how to read the Mòzǐ.

I am grateful to colleagues in the Department of Philosophy at the Chinese University of Hong Kong for providing a hospitable working environment and for their warm support during a health crisis while the book was in preparation. I also thank colleagues in the Department of Philosophy of the University of Hong Kong, my current institution, for a congenial, supportive climate. I thank my wife, Flora Chi, for her enthusiastic encouragement through the final stages of the project.

Earlier versions of some of the material in this book have appeared in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the Journal of Chinese Philosophy, and three edited anthologies, Ethics in Early China (Hong Kong University Press, 2011), edited by myself, Dan Robins, and Timothy O’Leary; The Mozi as an Evolving Text: Different Voices in Early Chinese Thought (Brill, 2013), edited by Carine Defoort and Nicolas Standaert; and Chinese Metaphysics and I ts Problems (Cambridge University Press, 2014), edited by Chenyang Li and Franklin Perkins. I thank the editors of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and of the Journal of Chinese Philosophy, the International Society for Chinese Philosophy, Blackwell Publishing, Hong Kong University Press, Brill, and Cambridge University Press for permission to use this material.

Finally, I am grateful to Wendy Lochner, Christine Dunbar, Mike Ashby, Amber Morena, and the production staff at Columbia University Press for their wonderful support and assistance.

Introduction

Imagine living in an ancient society in which you are a successful, self-reliant craftsman—a carpenter, say—admired for your sturdy, useful products. Your diligence, skill, and integrity have won a demand for your services, ensuring that you have enough income to support your family. Your forebears were farmers and laborers, and most people in your society still work the land. Their lives are difficult, the threat of poverty and hunger never far off. But economic development and population growth have enabled you to make a decent living from your craft. You have even been fortunate enough to receive a rudimentary education, so that, unlike your ancestors, you can read and write, though haltingly. In your society, the class of partly literate, hardworking, urban middle-income people like yourself—artisans, merchants, teachers, civil servants—is growing rapidly. Unlike earlier times, there are real opportunities for advancement open to you and your peers in business, trade, government service, or the military.

Politically, though, you are nearly powerless. Your state, like others, is governed by a hereditary lord and his cronies. These aristocrats control the military, courts, and police, collect taxes, and provide limited public services—in the best cases, defense and security forces, public works, and famine relief. Fundamentally, you don’t object to rule by an elite few. It is the only system you know, and as a craftsman you think the best system of leadership, whether for a construction project or a community, is to put competent experts in charge. Long ago, people say, competent, honest leaders really did run things. The system worked, society flourished, and people were well-off. These days, however, many of those at the top are anything but effective and honest. They mismanage the government and economy. They appoint inept relatives and lackeys to run the courts and public works. Worst of all, many aristocrats are simply warmongering bullies who hardly care about building a stable, prosperous society. Infatuated with military glory, they dream of conquering the world and winning fame like that of the legendary kings of old. Heedless of the harm to people, property, and even their own interests, they raise massive armies and set off to plunder the treasure and enslave the residents of other lands.

Now the rulers of the great states say, without scruples, Dwelling in a great state without attacking small states, how am I great? Hence they muster their sharpest soldiers and assemble their boat and chariot forces to attack an innocent state. Entering the state’s borders, they mow down its crops, fell its trees, raze its city walls, filling its moats with the rubble, burn its ancestral shrines, and slaughter its sacrificial animals. People who resist are beheaded; those who don’t resist are brought back in chains, the men to labor in stables and on chain gangs, the women to thresh grain.

The warlike rulers don’t know this is unbenevolent and unrighteous. They announce it to the lords of neighboring states, saying, I attacked a state, defeated an army, and killed such-and-such many generals. The rulers of the neighboring states don’t know this is unbenevolent and unrighteous, either. Some prepare furs and coins, opening their treasuries, and send envoys to offer gifts and congratulations. . . . The warlike rulers don’t know this is unbenevolent and unrighteous, the rulers of neighboring states don’t know this is unbenevolent and unrighteous, and hence the aggression goes on for generation after generation without cease.¹ (Mz 28/46–55)

You yourself have seen or heard of numerous states that were extinguished in unprovoked attacks, often at great cost to both sides in lives and wealth. Ultimately even the victors would have been better off had they never gone to war.

Beyond the direct costs of aggression, the rulers’ belligerent mentality percolates down through society, breeding a general atmosphere of selfishness and lawlessness. Not everyone disregards others, but enough people do that crime and disorder leave you deeply worried.

Now the various lords know only to care about their state and don’t care about others’ states, and hence they don’t hesitate to deploy their state to attack others’ states. Now the heads of clans know only to care about their clan and don’t care about others’ clans, and hence they don’t hesitate to deploy their clan to subvert others’ clans. Now people know only to care about themselves and don’t care about others, and hence they don’t hesitate to deploy themselves to injure others’ selves.

Thus the various lords not caring about each other, they inevitably go to war; the heads of clans not caring about each other, they inevitably subvert each other; people not caring about each other, they inevitably injure each other; rulers and subjects not caring about each other, they are not generous and loyal; fathers and sons not caring about each other, they are not paternally kind or filially devoted; elder and younger brothers not caring about each other, they are not peaceful and harmonious. The people of the world all not caring about each other, the strong inevitably oppress the weak, the wealthy inevitably humiliate the poor, the noble are inevitably contemptuous of the common, and the cunning inevitably deceive the ignorant. (Mz 15/4–9)

The self-centered aristocracy taxes their subjects heavily to fund lives of luxury for themselves. Among their most conspicuous displays of wealth are huge musical extravaganzas. A single massive set of bells for one of their court orchestras can be as large as a house and cost more than you and all your neighbors will earn in your lives. These shows are part of elaborate state ceremonies, over which preside another prominent elite group, who call themselves the Erudites. The Erudites wear peculiar, old-fashioned robes and hats, speak in a pretentious, archaic idiom, and spend their time studying ancient scrolls, practicing ceremonies and dances, and chanting poetry to music. Obsessed with ancient ways, they favor tradition over innovation. Despite fussing incessantly about virtue, they seem to do little to improve things. They claim, for instance, that a gentleman doesn’t take the initiative to dissuade his ruler from a bad policy. In any case, they hold, everything that happens is fated, so activism is pointless.

Even worse, as experts in funeral rites, the Erudites promote the wasteful custom of bizarrely protracted mourning rituals and extravagant burials. At the death of a lord of a state, the public treasury may be emptied to build an immense tomb filled with treasure, weapons, furniture, carts, and horses. Dozens of human victims might be sacrificed to accompany their deceased ruler in death. Under the prevailing custom of packing tombs with burial goods, even commoners’ deaths are likely to exhaust their families’ wealth. Meanwhile, mourners are expected to withdraw from normal life, live in a rough hut, sleep on the ground, wear thin, sackcloth robes, and eat only porridge, so that they appear suitably cold, hungry, weak, and miserable. The Erudites hold that such mourning practices should continue for more than two years after the death of a sovereign, parent, wife, or eldest son; one year after the death of uncles, brothers, or other sons; five months after the death of other close relatives; and several months for distant relatives.²

These political and social circumstances would provoke frustration or outrage in many of us. But what would we do about them? What I have been describing was roughly the situation faced some twenty-five hundred years ago by residents of several of the Central States that were later united to form the Chinese empire. Many people reluctantly accepted the status quo and hoped a wise, virtuous leader might emerge to improve things. Confucius, China’s first great moral teacher and a leader among the Erudites,³ advocated a return to the ways of the glorious Zhōu dynasty, whose decline precipitated the rampant interstate warfare. In the meantime, he is reported to have endorsed withdrawal from public service when the Dào 道—the right social, political, and moral Way—did not prevail in the world (LY 8.13). (Other remarks attributed to him, especially in later textual strata, suggest the early Erudites disagreed among themselves over whether to take up or avoid service in a corrupt government.⁴) The writers of texts we now associate with the Daoist tradition—specifically, the Dàodéjīng and the Zhuāngzǐ—tended to recommend avoiding political activity and government service, if practical. Some went so far as to advocate leaving civil society behind and moving out to the wilderness.

By contrast, a charismatic artisan named Mò Dí 墨翟, who lived in the middle of the fifth century B.C.E., thought the only defensible response to these problems was public activism. He condemned cruel, immoral rulers and customs, defended the interests of the poor and weak, and campaigned to reform society according to objective moral standards—as he saw it, the same sort of objective, reliable, publicly verifiable standards that a carpenter uses to saw a straight line or a wheelwright uses to shape a wheel. He traveled from state to state trying to persuade rulers and officials to adopt a platform of policies intended to end warfare, alleviate poverty, and promote the welfare of all. In the process, he became the first real philosopher in Chinese history, developing systematic ethical, political, and epistemological theories and giving clear, logical arguments to justify his views. A magnetic leader, he attracted a following that grew into one of the most influential social and intellectual movements in preimperial China. He and his school of followers—the Mohists—played a pivotal role in shaping and articulating the conceptual framework of early Chinese thought. Members of his school wrote a large collection of texts presenting, developing, and extending the ideas of their founder, whom they called Mòzǐ 墨子, or Master Mò.⁵ By the Hàn dynasty (206 B.C.E.–220 C.E.), these texts had been collated into an anthology called the Mòzǐ, the major source for our knowledge of Mohist thought. (In the older, Wade-Giles romanization, Mòzǐ is written Mo-tzu or Mo Tzu.)

This book explores the thought of Mò Dí and his school. As a first step toward understanding that thought, it is crucial to keep in mind the roots from which Mohism arose: opposition to the inhumanity and immorality of warmongering rulers, parasitic aristocrats, wasteful, senseless customs, and people with no regard for others—especially for the poor and powerless, the farmers, laborers, and artisans struggling to keep their families clothed and fed. Mohism was above all a social and political program aimed at overcoming war, strife, crime, and poverty. In some places, the Mohists’ rhetoric may exaggerate or their arguments oversimplify. But their aim was not pieces of argumentation fit to publish in a contemporary journal of analytic philosophy. It was to lead people—particularly the rich and powerful—to show concern for the interests of others—particularly the poor and defenseless—and to alleviate poverty, eliminate crime and feuding, and end meaningless warfare. To the extent that their rhetoric led a few merchants to donate food to the destitute or a warlike ruler to call off an invasion, their project was already partly successful. Just how successful they were is impossible to gauge—we have no way of counting the wars their activism might have prevented, for example. What we can say is that the Mohists helped change the tenor of classical Chinese moral and political culture, making the justification of war and the welfare of the common people issues no one could ignore. Above all, they spread the idea that conduct should be judged by objective moral standards, not just prevailing customs, and that concern for others is central to the ethical life.

The Mohists’ motivation and the nature of their project render some of their views deeply compelling, for often they are in effect arguing on behalf of basic decency and against utter disregard for others. Their motives and aims naturally evoke respect and appreciation. Mòzǐ and his followers were driven by a profound concern for other people and a desire to right the world’s wrongs. They were China’s first real social critics and political activists, who identified various problems in society, developed a theory to explain them, and set out to change things. At the same time, however, understanding their motivation can help us pinpoint some of Mohism’s weaknesses. As responses to perceived social, economic, and moral crises, Mohist ethical and political doctrines are infused with a sense of moral urgency that in most people’s lives—at least in more stable times—may be unnecessary or inappropriate. This air of crisis helps explain why the Mohists’ political philosophy places order and unity above all else and why their economic program is aimed solely at surviving hard times, without an inkling that spending on nonessentials might improve people’s quality of life or contribute to economic growth. Above all, as we will see, it tends to turn Mohism into an ethics for saints and heroes, not ordinary people.

The Warring States Era

Mòzǐ and his followers flourished during the Warring States era (481 B.C.E.–221 B.C.E.), historians’ term for the latter centuries of the long, gradual disintegration of the once-grand Zhōu dynasty (1045 B.C.E.–256 B.C.E.). By the Mohists’ time, the Zhōu was effectively powerless. An emperor, or Son of Heaven, still occupied the imperial throne at Luòyáng, and various fiefdoms and states remained nominally his vassals. But de facto power lay in the hands of the hereditary lords of roughly a dozen states, which had incorporated most of the small fiefdoms, and the non-Zhōu states of Chǔ, Wú, and Yuè in the south. By the Mohists’ time, these dozen-odd states had evolved into a system of rival powers linked by shifting alliances. A handful were particularly large, powerful, and aggressive, each aspiring to conquer the others and unify them under its rule.

By all accounts, this was a period of great social change and economic expansion. The decline of the old feudal and clan system led to an increase in social mobility and economic opportunity. Growth in cultivated land area and improvements in agricultural productivity sparked a rapid increase in population. Technological innovations and large-scale manufacturing led to greater occupational specialization and an expansion in trade. Reliable interstate transportation and stable trade relations facilitated the emergence of a class of prosperous merchants, some of whom eventually rivaled the aristocracy in wealth and power. Literacy became more widespread, and opportunities opened up for educated, capable commoners to reach positions of influence in government administration.⁶

Despite these positive developments, the Warring States was also an era of violent upheaval and perceived cultural decline. The larger states competed relentlessly for power, land, population, and wealth, frequently instigating wars of conquest against weaker neighbors. These conflicts were not the brief, small-scale skirmishes of earlier times but prolonged battles between massive infantry armies. Able-bodied men were regularly conscripted for military service or work gangs, while a steady stream of war captives were seized from their homes and enslaved. People were subjected to heavy taxes to pay for the grand palaces and luxuries enjoyed by despotic rulers. Landless peasants, frustrated in their attempts to make a living, formed roving bands of robbers who terrorized travelers and villages. Many rulers of states and fiefs were seen as ineffectual or immoral. The Zhōu social and political order was crumbling, and a new regime inspiring the same level of respect and loyalty was nowhere in sight. Teachers and scholars perceived the era as dissolute—the traditional order had been lost, the Dào (Way) had fallen into neglect.

Ironically, many of those who lamented the decline of the Dào probably owed their livelihood to the very social and economic factors that undermined the Zhōu order. For these also enabled the rise of a class of nonaristocratic statesmen, counselors, and scholars, or officers (shì 士). These men—as far as we know, they were all male—typically made their living as either government administrators, political advisers and retainers, or teachers and mentors to young protégés eager to move into government service themselves. Confucius and Mòzǐ are the first such teachers whose names have come down to us. They and their successors rarely succeeded in placing students in high office, but they seem regularly to have helped them find middle- or lower-level posts. Like Mòzǐ, many of these teachers and advisers devoted themselves to social and political advocacy, seeking to persuade rulers to adopt their policy recommendations, which were usually but not always humanitarian.

Such teachers and advisers also benefited from state patronage, as prestige-hungry rulers competed to attract brilliant or renowned figures to their retinue. Many of them fell into a class that became known as the disputers or dialecticians (biàn zhě 辯者). They debated philosophical and political issues among themselves and in the courts of the various lords, competing to attract adherents and win social and political influence. Despite the purported degeneracy of the era, it was actually among the most intellectually dynamic and fertile periods in Chinese history. Later scholars dubbed it the age of the hundred schools of thought. This is the intellectual milieu in which Mòzǐ exerted an early, formative influence and his later followers thrived, down through the unification of China under the Qín dynasty in 221 B.C.E. and well into the first century of the Hàn.

Mò Dí and the Mohists

History has preserved little biographical information about Mò Dí or the members of his school. The Hàn-dynasty Sh ǐ jì (Records of the grand historian) tells us he was an official in the state of Sòng who lived either at the same time as or after Confucius (d. 479 B.C.E.), with whom Hàn texts pair him as the two great moral teachers of the Warring States era (SJ 74, 2350). However, nothing in the Mòzǐ supports the claim that he held office in Sòng, or anywhere else.⁷ He could have been from Qí, as several anecdotes place him there and one has him traveling from Qí to see the King of Chǔ. But a stronger hypothesis is that, like Confucius, he was from Lǔ (in modern Shāndōng), which by triangulation seems the implicit point of origin for many of his reported journeys.⁸ The Mohist Dialogues (books 46–50 of the Mòzǐ) repeatedly mention him traveling to other states but only from, never to, Lǔ. Lǔ figures prominently in the Dialogues, is mentioned in the title of one, the Questions of Lǔ, and was the home state of Wūmǎzǐ, one of Mòzǐ’s frequent interlocutors (Mz 46/52–55). So it is the most likely candidate for Mòzǐ’s home state.

Given the dates of several kings and battles mentioned in the Mòzǐ, it seems probable that Mò Dí flourished during the middle to late decades of the fifth century B.C.E., roughly contemporaneous with Socrates in Greece. Mò 墨, the Chinese word for ink, is an unusual surname. Hence scholars have speculated that it may have been an epithet given Mòzǐ because he had the dark skin of a laborer or the facial tattoos of a slave or convict. It is hard to imagine Mò Dí committing a crime, however. One passage in the Mòzǐ quotes a fortune-teller commenting on his dark skin (Mz 47/49–53), though this is insufficient evidence to draw any conclusions. If in fact Mò was a sobriquet of some kind, its origin and meaning are probably lost.

Though the Mòzǐ contains many anecdotes