After Confucius’s moral order and Laozi’s harmony with the Dao, we come to Mozi, a radical thinker who believed the world needed less ritual and mysticism and more practical solutions. He lived during the Warring States period (c. 475–221 BCE), a turbulent time when China was divided into competing kingdoms locked in almost constant warfare. It was an age of chaos but also of great intellectual ferment, as different schools of thought sought ways to restore stability and order. In this environment, Mozi and his followers (“Mohists”) focused on how to create stability, prosperity, and fairness through reasoned principles.
Key Ideas
1. Universal Love (兼愛, jiān ài):
Mozi’s most famous teaching was the doctrine of universal, impartial love. He argued that partiality — favouring family, clan, or state over others — was the root cause of conflict. Instead, people should treat all others as they treat themselves and their kin. This was radical compared with Confucian filial piety, which prioritised family ties. For Mozi, peace depended on recognising the equal worth of every person.
2. Against Aggressive War:
Mozi strongly opposed offensive wars, calling them immoral and wasteful. He often sent his followers as engineers to help cities defend themselves, creating what we might call the world’s first “peacekeeping corps.” This made the Mohists not just theorists, but hands-on problem-solvers.
3. Meritocracy:
Meritocracy means a system where people are chosen for positions or rewards based on their skills, abilities, and achievements, rather than their social class, wealth, or family background.
Mozi criticised hereditary privilege and nepotism. He argued that leadership positions should be awarded to those with ability and virtue rather than to those born into wealth or noble families. This was a striking challenge to the entrenched aristocracy of his day. In Mohist communities, people were expected to contribute according to their skills, and leaders were chosen for their competence and dedication to the common good. In this, Mozi echoed Confucius but went further — rejecting elaborate rituals and hierarchies altogether, and insisting that society should be run by the capable, not simply by the well-born.
4. Utilitarian Thinking:
Utilitarian thinking is the idea that actions and policies should be judged by their outcomes, aiming to maximise benefits and reduce harm for the greatest number of people.
Centuries before Jeremy Bentham, Mozi argued that policies and actions should be judged by their consequences: do they increase the welfare of the people? He valued simplicity, frugality, and social benefit over extravagance.
5. Belief in Heaven’s Will:
Heaven (天, Tiān) in early Chinese thought was not a personal god like in Christianity, but a cosmic order that combined elements of nature, fate, and morality. During the Zhou dynasty, the idea of the Mandate of Heaven held that rulers governed with Heaven’s approval only so long as they were just; corrupt rulers would lose this mandate. In this sense, Heaven acted as a moral authority over human affairs.
Mozi took this idea very seriously and gave it a distinctive twist. He argued that Heaven actively desired the wellbeing of all people. For him, Heaven was an impartial moral force that rewarded just governance and punished aggression. Aligning human behaviour with Heaven’s impartiality meant practising universal love.
This contrasted with other schools: Confucius acknowledged Heaven but focused more on ritual and human relationships, while Daoists looked instead to the Dao (the Way), a more amoral natural order. Mozi was unusual in treating Heaven almost as a moral legislator, setting ethical standards for society.
Compared with Western traditions, Mozi’s Heaven predates Christianity and is closer to the Stoic idea of logos (a rational moral order) or the concept of natural law. It was not about worship or salvation, but about aligning society with an impartial, ethical principle. In this way, Mozi’s appeal to Heaven gave his philosophy both a spiritual and practical foundation for universal love.
The Doctrine of Universal Love (兼愛, jiān ài) Explained
Definition. Universal love (兼愛) is the obligation to care for others impartially (無差別, “without distinction”). Mozi does not ask us to erase family affection; he asks us to extend the same concern we feel for our own to everyone else. (See the Mozi, “Jian Ai” chapters I–III.)
Partiality as the root of conflict. Mozi argues that favouring one’s own clan or state over others—partiality—produces theft, violence, and war. If rulers and people alike loved others as themselves, there would be no incentive to exploit, deceive, or invade.
Practical application. Universal love is not a vague sentiment but a policy program:
- Reduce crime and interpersonal harm, because one does not injure those one truly cares for.
- End wars of aggression, since rulers would regard foreign subjects as their own people.
- Make governance fair, as officials decide for the benefit of all rather than their kin or faction.
Doctrine, not sentiment. Mozi calls universal love a teaching (兼愛之教) that can be inculcated through laws, moral education, and incentives. Government should reward impartial service and punish actions that privilege the few at the expense of the many.
Debate with the Confucians (graded vs. impartial love). Confucians defend graded love—strongest for family, then weakening outward. Mozi insists graded love perpetuates bias and conflict; only impartial care closes loopholes for nepotism and aggression.
Divine backing. Mozi argues that Heaven (天) itself loves people impartially and rewards rulers who emulate this. Practising universal love therefore aligns human society with Heaven’s moral order.
Comparisons and modern echoes. Universal love anticipates later ideas: Christian agape (“love thy neighbour”), Stoic cosmopolitanism (all humans as fellow citizens), and modern egalitarian ethics and human rights. Mozi’s distinctiveness lies in attaching these ideals to concrete administrative and military policies.
Critiques and limits. Opponents argued that strict impartiality is psychologically demanding and risks undermining special duties to family. Mohists answered that preserving family care is compatible with extending equal moral concern to all, and that the social benefits outweigh the costs.
Takeaway. For Mozi, universal love is the keystone: a rigorous ethic that, if taught and enforced, reduces harm, stabilises states, and maximises collective welfare.
Mozi vs. Confucius and Laozi
Where Confucius emphasised ritual, Mozi dismissed it as wasteful. Where Laozi sought harmony by retreating from worldly striving, Mozi doubled down on action and organisation. In many ways, Mozi was the most “practical” of early Chinese thinkers — closer to an engineer than a sage on a mountaintop.
Mozi on History
Mozi also reflected on the role of history in guiding present action. He rejected the idea that ancient traditions or rituals should be followed simply because they were old. Instead, he argued that we should judge the practices of the past by whether they benefited the people. Customs that wasted resources or encouraged war were to be abandoned, regardless of their antiquity. This historical perspective reinforced his utilitarian outlook: the value of the past lies in its usefulness to the present and future. Mozi often contrasted rulers who imitated wasteful traditions with those who innovated policies to promote peace and wellbeing. For example, he criticised legendary figures who squandered resources on extravagant music and ritual, while praising the early Zhou rulers who established order through frugality and just governance. By setting these contrasts, Mozi urged his contemporaries to learn selectively from history rather than slavishly revere it.
Mozi’s Writings
Mozi’s ideas are preserved in the text known simply as the Mozi. This wide-ranging collection was compiled by his followers and covers ethics, politics, logic, and even discussions of defensive warfare. It is organised into thematic chapters, such as those on Universal Love (Jian Ai), Against Offensive War (Fei Gong), and Moderation in Use (Jie Yong). The work also contains argumentative essays where Mohists set out their doctrines in clear, logical form, making it one of the most systematic bodies of thought from early China. The Mozi not only records Mozi’s teachings but also reflects the ongoing debates of his school, preserving both their philosophy and their practical guidance for rulers and society.
The Mohists: Mozi’s Followers
Mozi’s followers, known as the Mohists, lived in a disciplined and almost monastic way. They rejected luxury and ritual, practising frugality and communal living. Mohist communities were organised with strict rules, placing service and utility above personal comfort. They trained in defensive warfare and engineering, often travelling to fortify cities under attack, and became known for their practical skills as much as their philosophy. In many respects they were devout — committed to Mozi’s ideals of universal love, meritocracy, and simplicity — and their collective lifestyle made them stand out from the more socially embedded Confucians.
Influence, Longevity, and Decline
Mohism was not just a passing fad. From Mozi’s lifetime in the 5th century BCE through the following centuries, the school remained a serious rival to both Confucianism and Daoism. During the Warring States period, Mohist groups were well organised and often hired as defensive engineers, travelling to fortify cities under attack. For a time, Mohism’s emphasis on impartial love, meritocracy, and practicality attracted rulers who wanted stability and effective administration.
By the early Han dynasty (from 206 BCE), however, Mohism’s influence began to fade. The new imperial order preferred Confucianism, which supported hierarchical rituals and traditions that reinforced imperial authority. Mohism, with its rejection of luxury, ritual, and hereditary privilege, was less appealing to emperors who sought legitimacy through Confucian ideals.
That said, elements of Mohist thought persisted for centuries, influencing Chinese logic, science, and utilitarian debates about governance. Even though the organised Mohist school eventually disappeared, the writings and ideas of Mozi and his followers continued to be studied long after the movement itself had declined.
Parallels in Western Thought
Mozi’s utilitarian reasoning finds strong echoes in modern Western philosophy. His insistence that policies should be judged by whether they increase the welfare of the people parallels the ideas of Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832), the English philosopher who founded modern utilitarianism. Bentham’s famous principle of “the greatest happiness for the greatest number” reads like a direct continuation of Mohist thought, even though Bentham had no knowledge of Mozi. Both thinkers measured morality not by tradition or divine command, but by practical outcomes that improved people’s lives.
Bentham developed this principle into a systematic framework, proposing that pleasures and pains could be weighed and calculated — a kind of moral arithmetic. While Mozi never attempted such detailed quantification, his spirit was similar: wasteful rituals or aggressive wars should be condemned because they harmed more people than they helped. Useful acts — whether defensive engineering projects or simple frugality — should be praised because they increased safety and wellbeing.
Mozi’s doctrine of universal love also resonates with Christian faith, the unconditional love of all humanity, and with Stoic cosmopolitanism, the idea that all humans are fellow citizens of a single moral community. Unlike these Western traditions, however, Mozi grounded his teaching not in theology or abstract metaphysics but in the practical goal of reducing conflict and creating stability.
In this way, Mozi can be seen as a proto-utilitarian centuries before Bentham, and as a thinker who anticipated ideas that would later become central to Western ethics. Later, John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) refined Bentham’s utilitarianism by distinguishing between higher and lower pleasures, arguing that the quality of happiness matters as much as the quantity. This too has a Mohist flavour: Mozi valued actions that contributed to meaningful wellbeing and social harmony, not just fleeting satisfaction. Together, these parallels show Mozi as part of a global lineage of thinkers concerned with maximising human welfare.
Modern Relevance
Mozi’s philosophy, though rooted in the chaos of the Warring States period, continues to resonate today. His critique of aggressive war aligns with modern peacekeeping ideals, his doctrine of universal love anticipates human rights and humanitarian ethics, and his belief in meritocracy parallels civil service and exam-based systems that aim to reward ability over privilege. Even his suspicion of wasteful traditions echoes contemporary debates about resource use and sustainability. In this sense, Mozi’s teachings remain a valuable resource for thinking about justice, governance, and global responsibility.
The Mohist Canons and Later Texts
In addition to the core Mozi text, later followers compiled the Mohist Canons (墨經), a set of writings on logic, mathematics, optics, and defensive science. These canons show that Mohism was not only a moral and political philosophy but also a proto-scientific movement, interested in precise reasoning and technical knowledge. Although fragmentary today, the Mohist Canons demonstrate how the school expanded its scope beyond ethics into early science and logic, marking one of the most systematic intellectual traditions in ancient China.
Suggested Reading List
Primary Texts:
- The Book of Mozi (translations vary; look for Burton Watson or Ian Johnston versions for accessibility).
Secondary Studies:
- Angus C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao (Cambridge, 1989) – includes a detailed chapter on Mohism.
- Chris Fraser, The Philosophy of the Mozi: The First Consequentialists (Cambridge University Press, 2016).
- Ian Johnston, The Mozi: A Complete Translation (Columbia University Press, 2010).
- Benjamin I. Schwartz, The World of Thought in Ancient China (Harvard University Press, 1985) – situates Mohism alongside other traditions.
Further Reading
- Mozi – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Mozi – Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Wikipedia: Mozi
See also on Philosophical Chat:
Image Attribution:
Iflwlou, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Vjacheslav Rublevskiy, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons
