Mozi: Annotated and Translated

The Mozi is the collected writings of the Mohist school, active from the 5th to the 3rd century BCE. Mohism was a major school among the pre-Qin thinkers, once ranked alongside Confucianism as a prominent doctrine; it later fell into obscurity and has regained attention in modern times. Mozi: Annotated and Translated is a collaboration between Tan Jiajian and Sun Zhongyuan, two scholars long engaged in Mohist studies. It takes as its base text the fifty-three-chapter Mozi contained in the Daozang (the tenth year of the Zhengtong era, Ming dynasty), an early and relatively good surviving edition, and draws on a century of commentaries and existing translations from both sides of the Taiwan Strait to collate, annotate, and render the entire work into modern Chinese. It is a comparatively systematic and comprehensive annotated reading edition of the Mozi. The book divides the text by content into five groups: the first, from Cultivating the Self to The Three Arguments, outlines several aspects of Mohist thought; the second, from Exalting the Worthy I to Against Confucianism II, presents the core early Mohist doctrines of universal love, opposition to aggression, exalting the worthy, identifying with the superior, economy in expenditure, simplicity in funerals, the will of Heaven, clarifying ghosts, condemning music, and condemning fatalism; the third, from The Canon I to Lesser Selection, records ancient logic and scientific knowledge; the fourth, from Geng Zhu to Miscellaneous Defense, records dialogues and deeds of Mozi with his disciples and contemporaries; and the fifth, from Preparing the City Gates to Miscellaneous Defense, documents Mohist siege-defense tactics and mechanical techniques. For ease of reading, the annotators combine the four chapters The Canon I and Explanation of the Canon I, The Canon II and Explanation of the Canon II into two, renumbering the table of contents as chapters one through fifty-one and setting aside the Daozang sequence numbers first through seventy-one. Each chapter generally consists of the original text, annotations, and a vernacular translation; the annotations focus on glossing words and explaining names and institutions, while the translations strive to adhere to the original meaning and remain clear and readable. A preface discusses the origins and development of Mohism and the editorial principles of the volume, and a list of major references is appended. For the notoriously difficult Canonical Chapters, the annotations and translations also offer readers a way into their logical and scientific content.