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…On Universal Love.
When the princes love one another there will be no more war; when heads of houses love one another there will be no more mutual theft of office; when ordinary people love one another there will be no more mutual injury. When ruler and ruled love each other they will be benevolent and loyal; when father and son love each other they will be affectionate and supportive; when older and younger siblings love each other they will have harmonious words for everyone. When all the people in the world love one another, then the strong will not subdue the weak, the many will not oppress the few, the wealthy will not mock the poor, the famous will not look down on the humble, and the cunning will not deceive the simple.
It’s all because of mutual love that disasters, civil unrest, protests, and hatred are prevented from arising.
- tr. by me, after The Chinese Text Project
Mozi’s an interesting character. He’s a Chinese philosopher who gets compared to Jesus Christ an awful lot because both men based their teachings on the ideal of universal love – love for everyone, no matter who. Mozi, however, wasn’t really all that much like Christ in several other ways. For one thing, he was something of a military engineer – he designed devices called “cloud ladders” used to sack cities. He was also alive 300 years or so earlier.
When Mozi did his teaching, founding the school now called “Mohism” (but when I learned about it, called “Moism” as in he was very “Moist”), he set himself up in opposition to Taoism, which doesn’t have much to say about love per se, and to Confucianism, which is all about the love, but in strict gradations – family first, then associates, then out and out into more general connections in the world. You started with filial piety, the love & respect offered to family members. (In more contemporary Chinese culture, that’s often seen as the love given to biological family members first, which is part of the reason why domestic adoption is only taking off slowly in China – non-biological = not-quite-kin = outwith the bonds of Confucian responsibility.)
Mozi didn’t go for that. He didn’t think there was enough untrammeled, unconnected love in the world. If people were just plain nicer to each other, there wouldn’t be so many wars and catastrophes. He didn’t care as much about ritual as reflection – that was the way to self-perfection, he said. In modern times, Mozi’s adherence to rules of logic and scientific observation – ruthlessly eliminating whatever doesn’t create the good, inculcating what does – have been hailed as a precursor to the scientific method.
You can read more about him at Wikipedia or the Library of Chinese Classics.
He sounds rather cool.