- Lived:
- c. 470–391 BCE (dates uncertain) · the warring states of ancient China, probably Lu or Song
- Tradition:
- Classical Chinese; founder of Mohism, the first great rival to Confucianism
- The Big Idea:
- Almost all the world's harm comes from partiality — loving your own people more than everyone else — so the cure is jian'ai: caring for all people impartially, and judging every doctrine by whether it actually benefits them.
- In their words:
- "If a man kills one person, he is condemned as unrighteous and must pay for the crime with his own life... But when it comes to the enormous unrighteousness of attacking another state, the gentlemen of the world do not know enough to condemn it. They praise it and call it righteous."
- If you remember one thing:
- Two thousand years before anyone in Europe said "the greatest good for the greatest number," a Chinese craftsman built an entire philosophy — and a private army of rescuers — on exactly that idea.