Mozi (Mo Di)

Mo Di, a craftsman or military engineer of humble origin, founded a disciplined order whose ten doctrines are preserved in the Mozi: impartial care (jian ai) for all persons without regard to family or state, since partiality is the source of every harm; condemnation of offensive war as the greatest of crimes, while his followers made themselves experts in the defense of besieged cities; moderation in expenditure and in funerals, and rejection of music, as useless costs; the will of Heaven, which loves all impartially and rewards and punishes, as the “compass and square” of righteousness; the existence of ghosts and spirits, argued from the testimony of many; rejection of fate; promotion of the worthy; and “conformity upward,” so that the judgments of the whole state agree with the ruler and the ruler with Heaven. Every doctrine is tested by three standards: the precedent of the sage kings, the evidence of the people's eyes and ears, and its benefit to the state and people in wealth, population and order.

Why he matters: He is the first consequentialist in history and the first Chinese thinker to argue for a personal, loving, judging Heaven, and Christian missionaries and modern Chinese Christians alike saw in impartial care a foreshadowing of universal charity; his twentieth-century revival was partly driven by that comparison. He is also the standing case against Confucian graded love, which is why Mencius attacked him by name.