Mohism

First published Mon Oct 21, 2002; substantive revision Thu Jul 16, 2009
courtesy of Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Mohism was an influential philosophical, social, and religious movement that flourished during the Warring States era (479–221 BCE) in ancient China. Mohism originates in the teachings of Mo Di, or “Mozi” (“Master Mo,” fl. ca. 430 BCE), from whom it takes its name. Mozi and his followers initiated philosophical argumentation and debate in China. They were the first in the tradition to engage, like Socrates in ancient Greece, in an explicit, reflective search for objective moral standards and to give step-by-step, tightly reasoned arguments for their views, though their reasoning is sometimes simplistic or rests on doubtful assumptions. They formulated China's first explicit ethical and political theories and advanced the world's earliest form of consequentialism, a remarkably sophisticated version based on a plurality of intrinsic goods taken as constitutive of human welfare. The Mohists applied a pragmatic, non-representational theory of language and knowledge and developed a rudimentary theory of analogical argumentation. They played a key role in articulating and shaping many of the central concepts, assumptions, and issues of classical Chinese philosophical discourse.

A later branch of the school (see the entry on Mohist Canons) formulated a sophisticated semantic theory, epistemology, utilitarian ethics, theory of analogical reasoning, and mereological ontology and undertook inquiries in such diverse fields as geometry, mechanics, optics, and economics. They addressed technical problems raised by their semantics and utilitarian ethics and produced a collection of terse, rigorous arguments that develop Mohist doctrines, defend them against criticisms, and rebut opponents' views.

Central elements of Mohist thought include advocacy of a unified ethical and political order grounded in a utilitarian ethic emphasizing impartial concern for all; active opposition to military aggression and injury to others; devotion to utility and frugality and condemnation of waste and luxury; support for a centralized, authoritarian state led by a virtuous, benevolent sovereign and managed by a hierarchical, merit-based bureaucracy; and reverence for and obedience to Heaven (Tian, literally the sky) and the ghosts worshiped in traditional folk religion. Mohist ethics and epistemology are characterized by a concern with finding objective standards that will guide judgment and action reliably and impartially so as to produce beneficial, morally right consequences. The Mohists assume that people are naturally motivated to do what they believe is right, and thus with proper moral education will generally tend to conform to the correct ethical norms. They believe strongly in the power of discussion and persuasion to solve ethical problems and motivate action, and they are confident that moral and political questions have objective answers that can be discovered and defended by inquiry.