墨子

Mòzǐ 墨子

The Master Mo

by 墨翟 (Mò Dí, c. 470 – c. 391 BCE; founder of the Mohist 墨家 school)

About the work

The principal text of the Mohist school of pre-Qín thought, transmitted in fifteen juan and (in the SKQS recension) effectively 53 of an originally cataloged 71 piān. The book is in fact a school anthology, not the work of a single author: most chapters speak of 子墨子 (“our Master Mò”), the form a disciple uses, and the doctrinal “core” chapters survive in the famous “upper / middle / lower” triplets that record three differently-edited recensions of the school’s central teachings — Shàng xián 尚賢 (Elevating the Worthy), Shàng tóng 尚同 (Conforming Upward), Jiān ài 兼愛 (Impartial Care), Fēi gōng 非攻 (Against Offensive Warfare), Jié yòng 節用 (Restraint in Use), Jié zàng 節葬 (Restraint in Burials), Tiān zhì 天志 (The Will of Heaven), Míng guǐ 明鬼 (Explaining Ghosts), Fēi yuè 非樂 (Against Music), Fēi mìng 非命 (Against Fatalism). Beyond these are the disputational Jīng / Jīng shuō / Dà qǔ / Xiǎo qǔ chapters (the so-called “Mohist Canon” or “Later Mohist” logical and protoscientific essays), the dialogues, and the eleven extant chapters on military fortification and defensive warfare. Catalogued under Záxué zhī shǔ 雜學之屬 of the Zájiā 雜家 division — a Sòng-era reclassification reflecting the long absence of an active Mohist tradition.

Tiyao

We respectfully submit that Mòzǐ in fifteen juan, the old text titled “composed by Mò Dí of Sòng,” is examined as follows. The Hàn shū · Yìwén zhì lists Mòzǐ in 71 piān and notes “named Dí, a dàfū of Sòng, contemporary with — and after — Confucius.” The Suí shū · Jīngjí zhì likewise says “composed by the Sòng grandee Mò Dí.” But the book repeatedly says “Master Mò” 子墨子 — these are the words of disciples, not Dí’s own writing. The Sòng Imperial Library catalog gives 15 juan in 61 piān. The present text terminates at piān 71, in agreement with the Hàn zhì, but checking the table of contents, ten piān are missing, leaving exactly 61 — in agreement with the Library catalog. Of these 61, eight are titles only with no surviving text — perhaps this is the very recension Chén Zhènsūn’s Shūlù jiětí describes as “another version preserving only 53 piān.” The Mohist current is rarely catalogued in the standard histories, since after Mèngzǐ’s onslaughts no one cared to claim the name. Yet Buddhism took its quietism from Lǎo and its compassion from Mò; Hán Yù’s 韓愈 Sòng Fútú Wénchàng xù says “Confucian in name but Mohist in conduct, Mohist in name but Confucian in conduct,” and identifies Buddhism with Mohism, getting close to the truth — though his Dú Mòzǐ essay’s claim that “Mò must use Kǒng and Kǒng must use Mò” opens the door to later “Three Teachings as One” 三教歸一 syncretism and is not a sober verdict.

Within Mohism’s own school, men were able to discipline themselves and at intervals do good in the world, and so could stand on their own. This is why Mohism kept its place in the Nine Streams and why the text has not perished. From piān 52 onward all are military writings; their language is archaic and obscure, sometimes unpunctuable, and unlike the rest of the book — perhaps because of piān 51’s account of Gōngshū Bān’s 公輸般 nine attacks and Mòzǐ’s nine defences, the disciples gathered the techniques and appended them at the end. Note the report that disciple Qín Gǔlí 禽滑釐 and three hundred others were holding the defensive engines on the wall of Sòng — testimony that they could indeed transmit his arts.

Respectfully revised and submitted, ninth month of the forty-third year of Qiánlóng [1778].

General Compilers: Jǐ Yún 紀昀 (note: 均 in the original is a typographical slip for 昀), Lù Xīxióng 陸錫熊, Sūn Shìyì 孫士毅. General Reviser: Lù Fèichí 陸費墀.

Abstract

Mò Dí 墨翟 (conventionally Mòzǐ; c. 470 – c. 391 BCE), a native of the small state of Sòng (or possibly Lǔ — sources disagree), was the founding teacher of the Mohist school. The text bearing his name is, however, a multi-author school compilation assembled and re-edited across the late fifth through third centuries BCE. The Hàn shū · Yìwén zhì recorded 71 piān; sometime between the Hàn and the Sòng about a fifth of these had been lost, leaving the 53 textually-extant chapters of the present recension (with eight further title-only stubs and ten missing entirely). Modern scholarship (Graham, Watanabe Takashi, Knoblock-Riegel, Brooks) treats the surviving text as a stratified composition with three principal layers: the doctrinal “triplet” chapters (which may represent originally three distinct Mohist subschools’ redactions of the same core teachings), the disputational Jīng / Jīng shuō / Dà qǔ / Xiǎo qǔ (the “Later Mohist” canon, dating roughly to the late fourth and third centuries BCE and constituting the most sophisticated logical / epistemological / linguistic / protoscientific writing of pre-Hàn China), and the military-defensive chapters at the end of the book.

The dating bracket adopted here (notBefore −390, notAfter −221) reflects the received compilation: the earliest stratum cannot pre-date Mò Dí’s lifetime, and the latest stratum (Later Mohist canon, Bèi chéngmén and related military chapters) is securely pre-Qín. The school itself fell silent in early Hàn, but the text continued to be transmitted (with growing corruption); the Daoists preserved it (KR5f0010 = DZ 1162 Mòzǐ) at a time when the Sìbù tradition had largely lost interest. Sūn Yíràng’s 孫詒讓 Mòzǐ jiāngǔ 墨子閒詁 (1894, rev. 1907) is the single great pre-modern critical edition and the foundation of all subsequent scholarship.

The work is included in 《漢書·藝文志》, 《隋書·經籍志》, the Sìkù, the Dàozàng, and innumerable later compendia. The Sìkù editors place it under záxué 雜學 of the Zájiā 雜家 — a reclassification away from the Hàn zhì’s independent Mòjiā 墨家 listing that reflects the long suppression of an organized Mohist current.

Translations and research

This is one of the best-served pre-Qín texts in modern translation and scholarship.

• Ian Johnston, The Mozi: A Complete Translation (Chinese University Press / Columbia University Press, 2010 — bilingual). Now the standard complete English version, replacing earlier partials.
• John Knoblock and Jeffrey Riegel, Mozi: A Study and Translation of the Ethical and Political Writings (Institute of East Asian Studies, UC Berkeley, 2013). Translation of piān 1–39 with extensive philological apparatus.
• Mei Yi-pao 梅貽寶, The Ethical and Political Works of Motse (Probsthain, 1929; repr. 1973). The pioneering English translation, now superseded.
• A. C. Graham, Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science (Chinese University Press, 1978). The fundamental study of the Jīng / Jīng shuō / Dà qǔ / Xiǎo qǔ chapters; reconstructs the Later Mohist canon and remains essential reading.
• A. C. Graham, Disputers of the Tao (Open Court, 1989), chapters on Mohism.
• Carine Defoort and Nicolas Standaert (eds.), The Mozi as an Evolving Text: Different Voices in Early Chinese Thought (Brill, 2013). Collected essays on the text’s stratification.
• Erik W. Maeder, “Some Observations on the Composition of the ‘Core Chapters’ of the Mozi,” Early China 17 (1992): 27–82.
• Wáng Yú’ān 王裕安 et al., eds., Mòzǐ dàcídiǎn 墨子大詞典 (Shāndōng Dàxué, 2006).
• Sūn Yíràng 孫詒讓, Mòzǐ jiāngǔ 墨子閒詁 (1894, rev. 1907) — the indispensable critical recension and commentary.
• Wú Yǔjiāng 吳毓江, Mòzǐ jiàozhù 墨子校注 (Zhōnghuá Shūjú, 1993).

French: Jean-Paul Reding, Les fondements philosophiques de la rhétorique chez les sophistes grecs et chez les sophistes chinois (Lang, 1985); Jean Lévi, Les œuvres de Maître Mo (Encre Marine, 2008). German: Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer (ed.), Mo Ti: Solidarität und allgemeine Menschenliebe (1975) and Mo Ti: Gegen den Krieg (1975), Diederichs.

Other points of interest

The Later Mohist Jīng and Jīng shuō chapters — though textually corrupt and almost unreadable without modern reconstruction — preserve what is by some distance the most rigorous treatment of definition, classification, language, optics, mechanics, and ethics in any pre-Hàn source. Graham’s reconstruction (1978) is itself a landmark of twentieth-century Sinology. The military-defensive chapters (52–71) are the principal source for our knowledge of Warring-States siegecraft, since Mohist engineers were professionals in defensive engineering for hire by small states.

Links

• Sìkù quánshū zǒngmù tíyào 四庫全書總目提要, Zǐbù · Zájiā lèi, Mòzǐ entry.
• Wikipedia: Mozi (book); Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Mohism” (Chris Fraser).
• Wikidata: Q207822 (Mozi, book).
• Parallel recension: KR5f0010 (Dàozàng DZ 1162).