In the Warring States period, Mohism stood beside Confucianism as one of the two "prominent schools," with a tight organization, explicit discipline, and the most advanced engineering of its day. After the Qin and Han it all but vanished; the text survived only because it was copied into the Daoist canon, and it lay unread for nearly two thousand years. A late-Qing commentary, a generation of early twentieth-century scholars, and a satellite named after Mozi brought it back into view one step at a time. 墨门 is the newest point on that line.
timeline
- c. 470 BCE — Mozi (墨翟, Mo Di) is born in the early Warring States period, of artisan background, usually placed in the state of Lu and associated with Tengzhou in today's Shandong.
- c. 450–420 BCE — Mozi studies Confucian teaching, rejects its elaborate ritual and costly burials, founds his own school, sets out the ten doctrines, and builds a disciplined order of followers.
- c. 440 BCE — Chu prepares to attack Song. Mozi walks ten days and nights from Lu to the Chu capital Ying, defeats the engineer Gongshu Ban nine times in a mock siege, and reveals that 禽滑厘 and three hundred disciples already hold the walls of Song. The king of Chu calls off the attack.
- c. 391 BCE — Mozi dies. Leadership of the order, the title 鉅子, passes to 禽滑厘, then in turn to 孟胜, 田襄子, and 腹䵍.
- 381 BCE — The 鉅子 孟胜, keeping faith with the Lord of Yangcheng, dies together with 183 Mohists, having first passed the title to 田襄子 (吕氏春秋·上德).
- 4th century BCE — In Qin, the son of the 鉅子 腹䵍 kills a man. The king offers a pardon; 腹䵍 has his son executed under the Mohists' law, "who kills shall die, who wounds shall be punished" (吕氏春秋·去私).
- 4th–3rd centuries BCE — The school splits into three lineages (相里氏, 相夫氏, 邓陵氏), each calling the others "deviant Mohists." Later Mohists compose the Canons (墨经) on logic, geometry, mechanics, and optics, including the pinhole image and the straight-line travel of light.
- 3rd century BCE — Han Fei writes: "The prominent schools of the age are the Confucians and the Mohists." Mencius, somewhat earlier: "Mozi's impartial care would wear him from crown to heel if it benefited the world, and he would do it."
- 221 BCE – 220 CE — Qin unification and the Han elevation of Confucianism. The Mohist order disappears; the text is scattered and damaged.
- 5th–15th centuries — The surviving Mozi is copied into the Daoist canon (道藏), which preserves it to the present day.
- 1893–1894 — 孙诒让 (Sun Yirang) completes 墨子间诂, a full critical edition and commentary that makes the Mozi readable again.
- 1904–1919 — 梁启超 (Liang Qichao) and 胡适 (Hu Shih) reopen the study of Mohist logic and the Canons, comparing Mohism with utilitarianism and scientific method, and launch modern Mohist scholarship.
- 1993 — The Mozi Memorial Hall opens in Tengzhou, Shandong; around the same time the China Mozi Society is founded with Shandong University.
- 16 August 2016 — The world's first quantum science satellite, 墨子号 (Micius), is launched, named for the man whose Canons recorded the pinhole optics experiment.
- 2026 — 墨门 / The Mohist Community is founded and mohist.org goes live, putting the ten doctrines back into practice in secular form.