Mohisiv

Mohism names a philosophical tradition from ancient Warring States China associated with Mozi (5th to the early 4th centuries BCE) and his school. Mozi's followers, the Mohists, formed a quasi-religious and paramilitary community committed to promoting social and political reform through propagating the doctrines of their teacher. The community appears not to have survived the unification of China under the Qin Dynasty (221—206 BCE).

As with the case of their chief rival Confucianism, Mohism is primarily aimed at offering a solution to the social and political chaos perceived to characterize Warring States China. For the Mohists, the desired outcome is a state of ecumenical order in which “right” rather than “might” prevails over human affairs and where the least well off are cared for. To this end Mohism made various policy prescriptions addressed especially to the political elite.

Within Mohism, a policy prescription is to be justified (or rejected) in terms of its conforming to various criteria of moral rightness. The two main criteria are a policy's propensity to promote the impartial benefit of the world (suggesting a form of state consequentialism) and accordance with the Heaven's will (suggesting something in the region of a divine command doctrine of right). Whatever the relative status of the two criteria, the impartial benefit of the world—sometimes narrowly construed in terms of people having their [Page 901]basic material needs met—appears to be the operational criterion by which Mohist policy prescriptions are justified.

Mohist writings contain a state-of-nature account, reminiscent yet different from that of Thomas Hobbes, in which it is argued that people fight in the primitive state because of widespread conflict over values. The conclusion is drawn that unity in people's moral views, maintained by a panoptic hierarchy of rulers and leaders through education and coercion, is a necessary condition of social and political order. In the area of governance, Mohists advocate that rulers make government appointments on meritocratic considerations rather than kinship and social background. In political economy, they inveigh against aristocratic extravagance in funeral rituals, music display and lavish expenditure in general. In the area of international relations, not only did the Mohists condemn military aggression as immoral, they were also involved in lending aid to states threatened by military aggression through their expertise in counter-siege technology.

Finally, Mohism also includes a religious dimension to its political doctrines though here, as elsewhere, the underlying concern is ultimately with social and political order. Apart from the (already mentioned) notion that Heaven's will is a source of right, the claim is also made that widespread belief in the existence of providential ghosts—supernatural agents of Heaven—that punish the wicked and reward the just is useful and necessary to the maintenance of social and political order.