An overview of the Mozi

By the traditional count the Mozi has seventy-one chapters. Fifty-three survive; eighteen are known only by title. The book falls into roughly six groups, and the year's schedule follows them.

1. The essays (chapters 1–7): 亲士, 修身, 所染, 法仪, 七患, 辞过, 三辩. Short, aphoristic overviews, generally thought to be later introductory material. We read them at the end of the first half of the year, as a review of everything before.

2. The ten doctrines (chapters 8–37): the heart of the book. Honoring the worthy, aligning upward, impartial care, against aggression, moderation in expense, moderation in burial, the standard of Heaven, the accountability of spirits, against extravagance, against fatalism. Each doctrine originally had three versions (上, 中, 下); twenty-three survive. The three versions overlap heavily and are usually taken to be records from different Mohist lineages. We read one a week, beginning with impartial care.

3. Against the Confucians (chapters 38–39): only the second part survives. The Mohist critique of the Confucian school.

4. The Canons (chapters 40–45): 经上, 经下, 经说上, 经说下, 大取, 小取. The earliest Chinese texts on logic, geometry and optics, extremely terse and famously hard. We skim them across four weeks in the second half of the year.

5. The dialogues (chapters 46–50): 耕柱, 贵义, 公孟, 鲁问, 公输. Conversations between Mozi and his students, rulers and rivals. The most readable part of the book, and the part where you meet Mozi himself.

6. The defense chapters (chapters 51–71): from 备城门 onward, eleven survive, on the engineering and discipline of holding a city. This is the part farthest from us, but the other half of "against aggression", helping the weak hold on, lives here. We read the key chapters.

On texts and translations. The Chinese text follows the Wikisource edition, which is in the public domain. For English, Y. P. Mei's 1929 translation of the ten doctrines and several other chapters is in the public domain in the United States and forms the basis of the English column on the Community's site. Chapters Mei did not translate (the Canons, the defense chapters and others) are covered by community drafts released under CC BY-SA 4.0 and marked "draft". They are imperfect; if you find a problem, submit a correction.

Every paragraph of every chapter has a fixed ID (for example mz.14.1) so it can be cited in discussion.