Mo Di and the Pacifist Humanism of Universal Love

Abstract

The first and most renowned representative of the Mohist school, the philosopher Mo Di 墨翟 (479–390 BCE), adopted and adapted numerous ideas from the Confucian doctrine in his theoretical framework, even though the two schools became highly critical of each other after 350 BCE. Both philosophical traditions arose from the cultural and political context of the state of Lu, where a pacifist tradition had, from the very beginning of intellectual discourse, emphasized the moral imperative of humanity, empathy, and the condemnation of aggressive wars. Despite their later divergence, the founders and lead­ing figures of these two schools—Mo Di and Confucius—both valued ethical governance grounded in merit and moral competence. Mo Di’s pacifism, however, is formulated far more systematically and radically than that of Confucius. This essay examines his con­cept of feigong 非攻 (“against offensive war”), which represents one of the earliest and most explicit rejections of aggressive military expansion in classical Chinese philosophy.