Intellectual setting
Mozi taught during the Warring States period as a direct rival to early Confucianism, organizing his followers into a disciplined movement skilled in defensive siege warfare that hired itself out to threatened states, reflecting his doctrine of opposing aggressive but not defensive war.
Key ideas
Impartial concern (jian ai)
Mozi argued that the social disorder of his time stemmed from partiality - people favoring their own family and state over others - and that impartial concern for all people equally, rather than Confucian graded love, would produce greater mutual benefit and social order.
Consequentialist critique of waste
Mozi evaluated customs and institutions by their tangible benefit to the state's wealth, order, and population, condemning elaborate funerals, ritual music, and offensive war as costly practices that produced no compensating benefit and often considerable harm.
Legacy
Mohism became a major rival school to Confucianism in early China and articulated one of the earliest systematic consequentialist ethical theories in world philosophy; though it declined after the Qin-Han unification, its logical and ethical arguments have drawn renewed comparative philosophical attention as an early utilitarianism.
Scholarly notes
Composition of the Mozi · contested
The Mozi is a compilation assembled by several Mohist groups over generations rather than a book by one author, and early sources report six quarrelling groups of Mohists; the later chapters on logic form a distinct layer whose relation to the ethical essays is not settled.