Philosophers · 哲學家 · China
Mozi 墨子 · 墨翟 Mo Di
A craftsman turned philosopher who taught that everyone’s welfare counts alike, walked ten days and nights to stop a war, and led a school that vanished for two thousand years.
一位工匠出身的哲學家；他教導每個人的福祉同等算數，走了十天十夜去阻止一場戰爭，並且帶領了一個後來消失兩千年的學派。
- Born 出生
- c. 470 BCE, probably in Lu or Song
- Died 去世
- c. 391 BCE
- Name 姓名
- Mo Di 墨翟. Mò means ink, and may have been a nickname for a branded convict or a dark-skinned laborer
- Background 出身
- Probably an artisan: a carpenter or military engineer
- The book 著作
- Mozi 墨子, 71 chapters originally, 53 surviving, written by his school
- Followers 門徒
- A disciplined organization under a Grand Master (巨子 jùzǐ)
中文翻譯Every paragraph has a Chinese translation. Tap 中譯▾ under a paragraph to open that one, or use Show Chinese · 顯示中譯 at the top to open them all. 每一段都有中譯：點段落下方的「中譯」只開那一段，或按上方的「顯示中譯」一次全部打開。
Life · 生平
A life in three scenes 三幕人生
A man from the workshop 從作坊裡出來的人
The great historian Sima Qian gave Confucius a chapter and Mencius a paragraph. To Mozi he gave twenty-four characters at the end of someone else’s biography: “Mo Di was a great officer of Song, skilled in defense and an advocate of frugal spending. Some say he lived at the time of Confucius, others that he came after.” Nothing more was known four centuries after his death. The rest has to be gathered from the book that bears his name. It suggests a man of the lower orders. His comparisons come from the workshop: the compass, the square, the plumb line, the wheelwright and the potter. His opponents called his teaching the way of menial laborers. He seems to have studied with Confucians as a young man and broken with them over their costly rites and their acceptance of fate.
偉大的史家司馬遷給了孔子一整篇，給了孟子一段。給墨子的，是附在別人傳記末尾的二十四個字：「蓋墨翟，宋之大夫，善守禦，為節用。或曰並孔子時，或曰在其後。」在他死後四個世紀，人們知道的就只有這些了。其餘的，得從那本以他為名的書裡拼湊出來。那本書暗示他是一個出身下層的人。他的比喻來自作坊：規、矩、繩墨、輪匠與陶匠。他的對手把他的教導稱為「役夫之道」。他年輕時似乎跟儒者學過，後來因為他們昂貴的禮儀與他們對「命」的接受而決裂。
He traveled from state to state as Confucius had, with one difference. Confucius sought office. Mozi sought to prevent particular wars, and he brought with him something rulers needed, a body of followers trained in the defense of walled cities.
他像孔子那樣周遊列國，只有一點不同。孔子求的是官職。墨子求的是阻止某一場具體的戰爭；而他身邊帶著統治者需要的東西：一群受過守城訓練的門徒。
Ten days and ten nights 十日十夜
The best-known story about him is in the book. The master craftsman Gongshu Ban had built scaling ladders for the king of Chu, who meant to use them against the small state of Song. Mozi heard of it in Qi and walked for ten days and ten nights to the Chu capital. He first argued with Gongshu Ban. You would refuse to kill one man for money, he said, and you are helping to kill multitudes. Gongshu Ban admitted the point and said that the matter was out of his hands. Before the king, Mozi took off his belt and laid it out as a city wall, and used small sticks for engines. Nine times Gongshu Ban set up a method of attack, and nine times Mozi repelled it. Gongshu Ban had used up his devices, and Mozi’s defenses were not exhausted.
關於他最著名的故事就在那本書裡。巧匠公輸般為楚王造好了雲梯，楚王打算拿它去攻打小國宋。墨子在齊國聽說了，走了十天十夜，到了楚國的都城郢。他先跟公輸般論理。他說：你不肯為了錢去殺一個人，卻在幫忙殺許多人。公輸般承認他說得對，卻說這件事已經由不得自己了。在楚王面前，墨子解下腰帶，擺成一道城牆，用小木片當作器械。「公輸般九設攻城之機變，子墨子九距之。」公輸般的攻城器械用盡了，而墨子的守禦之法還有餘。
Gongshu Ban then said, “I know how to defeat you, and I will not say it.” Mozi answered, “I know how you would defeat me, and I will not say it either.” The king asked what they meant. “He means to have me killed,” said Mozi. “But my disciple Qin Guli and three hundred others are already on the walls of Song with my devices, waiting for the army of Chu. You may kill me, and you will not have stopped them.” The king called off the attack. On his way home Mozi passed through Song in the rain and sought shelter in a gateway. The gatekeeper would not let him in.
接著公輸般說：「吾知所以距子矣，吾不言。」墨子回答：「吾知子之所以距我，吾不言。」楚王問這是什麼意思。墨子說：他的意思是要殺了我。「然臣之弟子禽滑釐等三百人，已持臣守圉之器，在宋城上而待楚寇矣。雖殺臣，不能絕也。」楚王取消了進攻。回程中，墨子路過宋國，碰上下雨，想在一處閭門下躲一躲。守門的人不讓他進去。
The school and its disappearance 學派與它的消失
His followers formed something new in China, an organization. They lived under strict rules, wore coarse clothing, obeyed a Grand Master, and were sent out as officials and as defenders of threatened cities. A story tells of a Grand Master whose son committed murder in Qin. The king offered to pardon him, and the father refused, saying that the law of the Mohists was that he who kills shall die. Zhuangzi’s school, which thought their way too harsh for human nature, wrote of Mozi with respect: “He was truly one who loved the world. He sought it and could not get it, and though he withered away he would not give up. A man of real talent!”
他的追隨者在中國形成了一種新的東西：一個組織。他們生活在嚴格的規矩之下，穿粗布衣，服從一位「巨子」，並且被派出去做官，或去防守受到威脅的城。有一個故事說，一位巨子的兒子在秦國殺了人。秦王願意赦免他，而這位父親拒絕了，說墨者的法是「殺人者死」。莊子的學派認為墨家的路對人性來說太苛刻，寫到墨子時卻帶著敬意：「墨子真天下之好也，將求之不得也，雖枯槁，不舍也，才士也夫！」
In the fourth and third centuries BCE the Mohists were the main rivals of the Confucians, and Mencius complained that the words of Mozi filled the world. Their later members wrote the most rigorous work in logic, geometry, optics, and mechanics that survives from ancient China, including the first known description of an image inverted through a pinhole. Then, within a century of the unification of the empire in 221 BCE, the school was gone. A society at peace under one ruler had no need of specialists in defending small states, and Confucianism became the creed of the court. The book lay almost unread for two thousand years, its logical chapters garbled by copyists, until Qing scholars restored the text in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Chinese reformers of the early twentieth century then discovered in Mozi a native tradition of science, logic, and equal concern for all.
在西元前第四、第三世紀，墨者是儒者的主要對手；孟子抱怨過，墨翟之言盈天下。他們後期的成員，寫下了古代中國留存至今最嚴謹的邏輯學、幾何學、光學與力學著作，其中包括已知最早的針孔成倒像的描述。然後，在西元前 221 年帝國統一之後的一個世紀之內，這個學派就不見了。一個在一位君主之下太平無事的社會，不需要專門防守小國的人；而儒家成了朝廷的信條。那本書有兩千年之久幾乎沒有人讀，其中談邏輯的幾篇被抄寫者弄得錯亂不堪；直到十八、十九世紀，清代的學者才把文本校理出來。二十世紀初的中國改革者，接著在墨子身上發現了一個本土的科學、邏輯與「平等關懷一切人」的傳統。
- c. 470 BCEBorn出生
- c. 440Stops the Chu attack on Song止楚攻宋
- c. 391Dies去世
- c. 300Later Mohists write the Canons on logic and optics後期墨家寫成《墨經》
- 221 BCEQin unifies China; the school fades秦統一天下；學派式微
- 1783Bi Yuan’s edition revives study of the text畢沅校本使墨學復甦
- 1894Sun Yirang’s Mozi jiangu孫詒讓《墨子閒詁》
The central idea · 核心觀念
Benefit to all as the test 以「利天下」為檢驗
Mozi was the first Chinese thinker to argue for his positions, and the first anywhere to propose a single test for every policy and custom. A doctrine, he says, must be judged by three standards. It must have a basis in the deeds of the ancient sage kings. It must be verified by what the common people see and hear. And it must be applied, by putting it into practice in government and observing whether it benefits the state and the people. The third standard does most of the work. Whatever enriches the poor, increases the population, and brings order is right. Whatever does the opposite is wrong. He applies the test without fear of the result. Elaborate funerals and three years of mourning waste wealth and weaken the living, so they should go. Music at court consumes resources that could feed people, so it should go too.
墨子是第一位為自己的立場提出論證的中國思想家；而在任何地方，他都是第一位為每一項政策與習俗提出單一檢驗的人。他說，一個主張必須用三個標準來判斷，「言必有三表」。它必須「本之」於古代聖王的事蹟。它必須「原察」百姓耳目所見所聞的實情。它還必須「用之」：把它實施在刑政上，觀察它是否符合國家與百姓人民的利益。第三個標準擔負了大部分的工作。凡是使窮人富足、使人口增加、帶來秩序的，就是對的。凡是造成相反結果的，就是錯的。他運用這個檢驗的時候，不怕結果。厚葬與三年之喪，浪費財富，削弱生者，所以該廢。朝廷上的音樂，耗掉了可以用來養活人的資源，所以也該廢。
Two conclusions made him famous. The first is impartial care, that one should regard others’ families and states as one’s own, since partiality is the cause of all the great harms. The second is the condemnation of aggressive war. His argument is a model of consistency. If a man kills one person, we call it wrong and put him to death. If he kills ten, the wrong is ten times as great. Everyone knows this. “But when it comes to the great wrong of attacking a state, they do not know to condemn it. They praise it and call it right.” A person who called a little black black and a great deal of black white would be thought unable to tell the colors apart. He permitted defensive war, and made himself the best military engineer of his age in order to make attack unprofitable.
有兩個結論使他聞名。第一個是兼愛：應該把別人的家與國看作自己的，因為「別」是一切大害的原因。第二個是對侵略戰爭的譴責（非攻）。他的論證是「前後一致」的典範。一個人殺了一個人，我們說這是不義，並且判他死罪。殺了十個人，不義就是十倍。這是人人都知道的。「今至大為不義攻國，則弗知而非，從而譽之，謂之義。」一個人看見一點點黑就說是黑，看見很多黑卻說是白，人們會認為他分不清顏色。他容許防衛性的戰爭；並且為了讓進攻變得無利可圖，把自己練成了那個時代最好的軍事工程師。
To kill one man is called unrighteous, and must be punished with one death. … But when it comes to the great unrighteousness of attacking a state, they do not know to condemn it. They praise it and call it righteous.殺一人謂之不義，必有一死罪矣。……今至大為不義攻國，則弗知而非，從而譽之，謂之義。
An argument from consistency, twenty-four centuries old and not yet answered. 一個訴諸「前後一致」的論證；兩千四百年了，還沒有被回答。
The strongest objection · 最強的反駁
A life no one can live 一種誰也過不了的生活
Mencius said that impartial care amounts to having no father, and the charge has two parts. The first is psychological. Human concern grows outward from the family, and a person trained to feel no more for his own parents than for strangers would end by feeling little for anyone. The second is that people will not do it. Mozi replied that rulers have got people to do harder things, such as starving themselves to please a king who liked slender waists, and that impartial care would be easy by comparison if rulers rewarded it. The reply reveals something about his view of motivation. He expects people to be moved by reward, punishment, and the will of Heaven, and he says little about how a person might come to want the good of strangers.
孟子說兼愛等於「無父」；這項指控有兩個部分。第一個是心理學上的。人的關懷是從家往外長的；一個被訓練得對自己父母的感情不比對陌生人多的人，最後會對誰都沒有多少感情。第二個是：人們不會照做。墨子回答：統治者曾經讓人們做過更難的事，例如為了討好一位喜歡細腰的國君而把自己餓瘦；相較之下，只要統治者獎賞它，兼愛是容易的。這個回答透露了他對「動機」的看法。他預期人是被賞、罰與天志推動的；至於一個人怎樣才會變得「想要」陌生人過得好，他說得很少。
Xunzi made a different criticism in one line: Mozi “was blinded by utility and did not understand culture.” A test that asks only whether a thing feeds, clothes, and orders the people will condemn music, ceremony, and ornament, and Mozi condemned them. Xunzi replied that human beings need form and beauty as they need food, and that rites and music are how feeling is shaped into something that can be shared. Zhuangzi’s school said the same more gently. Mozi would have people sing no songs in life and wear no mourning in death. “It makes people anxious and sorrowful. Its practice is hard to carry out. I fear it cannot be the way of the sage.”
荀子用一句話提出了另一種批評：「墨子蔽於用而不知文。」一個只問「這樣東西能不能讓百姓吃飽、穿暖、有秩序」的檢驗，會把音樂、禮儀與文飾全部判為有罪；而墨子確實這樣判了。荀子回答：人需要形式與美，就像需要食物一樣；而禮與樂，就是把情感塑造成可以共享的東西的方式。莊子的學派把同樣的話說得比較溫和。墨子要人活著不唱歌，死了不服喪。「使人憂，使人悲，其行難為也，恐其不可以為聖人之道。」
How we know · 史料
A book in ten voices 一本有十種聲音的書
Mozi wrote nothing that we can identify. The book is the work of his school over two centuries. Its core is a set of essays on ten doctrines, among them impartial care, against aggression, frugality, and the will of Heaven, and each essay survives in up to three versions that say the same thing in different words. Scholars think that these come from three branches into which the school divided, each keeping its own record of the master’s teaching. The style is plain and repetitive, built for memorizing and for persuading an audience by hammering. Other parts are later: the Canons on logic and science, and twenty chapters on the defense of cities that are among the oldest military engineering texts in the world.
我們辨認得出是墨子親筆的東西，一樣也沒有。那本書是他的學派歷時兩個世紀的作品。它的核心是談十項主張的一組論文，其中有兼愛、非攻、節用與天志；而每一篇論文都以多達三個版本流傳下來，用不同的話說同一件事。學者們認為，這些出自這個學派後來分成的三支，各自保存了自己那一份對老師教導的紀錄。文風樸素而反覆，是為了背誦、也為了用反覆敲打來說服聽眾而寫的。其他的部分是較晚的：談邏輯與科學的《墨經》，以及二十篇談守城的文字，那是世界上最古老的軍事工程文獻之一。
Because the text was neglected for so long, a third of it is lost and parts of the rest are corrupt. What we read is a reconstruction by scholars of the last three centuries, and the man behind it is known only through followers who were more interested in his arguments than in him.
由於這個文本被忽略了那麼久，它有三分之一失傳了，其餘的也有一部分訛誤。我們讀到的，是最近三個世紀的學者重建出來的；而文本背後的那個人，我們只能透過他的追隨者來認識，而那些人對他的論證，比對他本人更有興趣。
Dharma and the West · 佛法與西方哲學
Mozi and the Buddha 墨子與佛陀
The two were near contemporaries, and both taught a goodwill that makes no distinction of persons. Mozi’s “regard other people’s families as one’s own” and the Buddha’s wish for the happiness of all beings “with not a one left out” have the same reach. Both rejected the claims of birth: Mozi wanted office given to the worthy even if they were farmers or artisans, and the Buddha admitted all castes to his order. Both condemned the killing that their societies honored, and both founded communities of people who lived plainly under a rule.
兩人是年代相近的同時代人，都教導一種不分對象的善意。墨子的「視人之家若視其家」，與佛陀願一切眾生安樂、「一個也不遺漏」，範圍是相同的。兩人都拒絕了出身的特權：墨子要把官職給賢能的人，即使他們是農夫或工匠（尚賢）；佛陀讓一切種姓都可以加入他的僧團。兩人都譴責他們的社會所推崇的殺戮；兩人也都創立了依規矩過簡樸生活的團體。
They differ in what they think the trouble is and so in the cure. Mozi sees a problem of policy. People are partial because their rulers reward partiality, and they will be impartial when the incentives change and when they understand that Heaven wants it. He has no account of the mind. The Buddha sees a problem of craving and ignorance in each person, and he supplies what Mozi lacks, a method by which the feeling of goodwill can be made to grow. The meditation on loving-kindness begins with those who are dear and works outward to enemies. It thus accepts Mencius’s point about where care starts and arrives at Mozi’s conclusion. They differ, too, on war and on beauty. Mozi fortified cities. The Buddha taught that hatred is not ended by hatred. And where Mozi banned music as waste, the Buddhist tradition filled Asia with chant, painting, and sculpture, on the view that the mind is moved toward the good by what it loves (Dharma and the West, D19).
他們的差別，在於認為問題出在哪裡，因而也在於對治的方法。墨子看到的是一個政策問題。人之所以偏私，是因為統治者獎賞偏私；等到誘因改變、等到他們明白這是天所要的，他們就會兼愛。他沒有對「心」的說明。佛陀看到的，是每一個人裡面渴愛與無明的問題；而他提供了墨子所缺的東西：一種可以使善意的感受生長起來的方法。慈心的禪修從親愛的人開始，往外修到怨敵。於是，它接受了孟子關於「關懷從哪裡起步」的論點，而抵達了墨子的結論。他們在戰爭與美這兩件事上也不同。墨子加固城防。佛陀教導：怨恨不能止息怨恨。墨子把音樂當作浪費而禁止；佛教的傳統卻讓唱誦、繪畫與雕塑遍布亞洲，理由是：心是被它所愛的東西帶向善的（佛法與西方哲學 D19）。
Terms of art · 哲學術語
Words that come with him 跟著他一起來的詞
Ch. 兼愛 jiān’ài
Giving the interests of others the same weight as one’s own and one’s family’s.
給別人的利益與自己、自己家人的利益同樣的分量。
Ch. 非攻 fēigōng
The condemnation of offensive war as murder on a great scale.
把侵略戰爭譴責為大規模的殺人。
Ch. 三表 sānbiǎo
Mozi’s tests for a doctrine: precedent, the evidence of the senses, and benefit in practice.
墨子對一個主張的檢驗：先例、耳目之實，以及實行起來的利益。
Ch. 節用 jiéyòng
Spending only on what benefits the people.
只把錢花在對百姓有利的事上。
Ch. 尚賢 shàngxián
Appointing officials by ability and not by birth.
依能力而不依出身來任用官員。
Ch. 天志 tiānzhì
Mozi’s belief that Heaven desires righteousness and rewards those who benefit others.
墨子的信念：天欲義，並且賞那些利人的人。
Reading check · 理解測驗
Did it land? 讀懂了嗎
1. What is Mozi’s test for whether a custom or policy is right?
2. What is his argument against aggressive war?
3. What was Xunzi’s criticism of Mozi?
Go further · 延伸
Where he appears 他出現在哪幾課
- Mozi, Chinese text at the Chinese Text Project ↗Begin with chapters 16, 17, and 50. 從〈兼愛下〉〈非攻上〉〈公輸〉讀起。
- Mozi: Basic Writings, translated by Burton Watson (1963)The core essays in clear English. 核心論文的清楚英譯。
- Chris Fraser, The Philosophy of the Mòzǐ: The First Consequentialists (2016)
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Mohism” ↗