Mozi

Mozi, personal name Mo Di, was a Chinese philosopher of the Warring States period and founder of the Mohist school. The dates of his life are uncertain (c. 470-390 BCE), and even his surname's origin is disputed. He was probably born in the state of Lu (modern Tengzhou, Shandong). After early Confucian study he turned against what he saw as the partial, family-centred love of Confucianism and built a rival philosophy.

Mohist doctrine is organised around ten core theses. The two most distinctive are jian ai (impartial care) and fei gong (rejection of aggressive war). Jian ai claims one should care for all human beings equally, since unequal care is the engine of strife and exploitation; fei gong condemns offensive war while permitting self-defence. Mozi pressed his case with a famous logical thrust: if killing one man is a death-penalty crime, killing a hundred is a hundred-fold crime — yet the general who kills millions is given medals.

The other doctrines are: shang xian (promote the worthy regardless of birth), shang tong (align values around the wise), jie yong and jie zang (frugal living and simple funerals), fei ming (against fatalism), fei yue (against extravagant music), tian zhi (Heaven's will enforces justice) and ming gui (rewarding-and-punishing spirits exist). Several theses directly rebut Confucian ritual culture.

The Mohists were not only ethicists. They were a disciplined order of artisans and engineers specialising in defensive fortification. The Mohist Canons in the Mozi text preserve a system of logic and geometry along with optics, including possibly the earliest description of the camera obscura. China honours Mozi as a forerunner of science: in 2016 it launched the first quantum-science satellite under the name Mozi.

Mohism flourished alongside Confucianism but lost out under the Han Confucian cult and vanished by the early Han. Liang Qichao and Tan Sitong rediscovered Mozi as a Chinese forerunner of equality and pacifism.