Mozi

Abstract

Mozi (fl. ca. 430 bce) was the charismatic founder of an influential philosophical, political, and religious movement that flourished during the Warring States era (479–221 bce) in ancient China. Arguably the first real philosopher in the Chinese tradition, Mozi initiated the practice of ethical argumentation in China. He was the first figure to undertake – as Socrates did in ancient Greece – an explicit, reflective search for objective moral criteria and to support his views with tightly constructed arguments. He and his followers – the Mohists (Mo zhe) – developed a systematic set of ethical, political, and epistemological doctrines that included history's earliest version of a consequentialist ethical theory (see Consequentialism), a state of nature argument for the existence of government, and an inchoate just war theory (see Just War Theory, History of). The Mohists played a pivotal role in shaping the central concepts, premises, and issues of classical Chinese ethics, political theory, epistemology, philosophy of language, and logic (Graham 1978, 1989; Hansen 1992). They also contributed to early Chinese science and mathematics. The Mohist movement continued for two to three centuries after Mozi's death before eventually fading away during the Western Han dynasty (206 bce–8 ce).