Chinese · -470–-391
Mo Di may have been a craftsman, and his followers were certainly organised as something between a school and a militia. They trained in siege defence and hired themselves out to states under attack, on the principle that stopping a war was worth more than winning one. Mozi attacked the Confucians at every point: elaborate funerals waste the living, ritual music taxes the poor, family partiality is the root of conflict, and fate is a doctrine invented by lazy rulers. In its place he preached impartial care for everyone, thrift, and a test for any doctrine based on its consequences for the common good. His school produced the only sustained work on logic, optics and mechanics in early China. Mohism was the great rival of Confucianism for two centuries, then vanished almost completely after the Han unification and was not read seriously again until the nineteenth century.