Chinese philosophy · c. 430 BCE
Mohism
Overview
Care for everyone impartially, test teachings by their basis, evidence and use, and judge customs by what they do for the many.
Mohism grew from the teaching of Mozi, who lived in China in the fifth century BCE, a time of constant war between states. He asked a practical question: what does a teaching do for the people? His answer was that most harm comes from partiality, each person, family and state favoring its own. The remedy he offered was jian ai, caring for others as one cares for one’s own.
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Mozi also offered tests. A teaching should have a basis in the record of the wise, fit what ordinary people see and hear and benefit the people when put to use. By the same measure he criticized lavish funerals, long mourning and costly court music as waste, and he opposed aggressive war as theft on a large scale. The later Mohists worked on argument, definitions and proof.
Confucians answered that love naturally begins with family and widens from there, and that Mozi’s ideal asked too much of ordinary feeling. Critics also note that judging every custom by cost and benefit leaves little room for ritual’s own meaning. The habit worth keeping is to ask whose interests a decision leaves out, and what a costly practice buys for the many.
Where it answers
Who should govern?
Care for every family in the city as for your own, and drop customs that cost the many more than they give.
How should we act?
Test a teaching by its basis, what people see and what it does when used. Keep what earns its cost.
Key terms
- Jian ai (impartial care)
- Caring for everyone, not only for your own family or state.
- Three gauges
- Mozi’s tests of a teaching: its roots in the sages, the evidence of people’s experience and its results.
- Frugality
- Cutting waste, such as lavish funerals and music, to meet people’s needs.
- Against offensive war
- Mozi condemned wars of conquest as theft on a large scale.
In their words
“The wise man who has charge of governing the empire should know the cause of disorder before he can put it in order.”
Further reading
- Mozi · Mozi and his followers
- Mohist Canons · the later Mohists
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Quest2Reason. “Mohism.” https://quest2reason.com/learn/ideas/mohism. Accessed 13 November 2026.