Quotation
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“Now if a man kills one person, he is judged unrighteous and must pay with his own life. If he kills ten people, he is ten times as unrighteous. Yet when it comes to the great unrighteousness of attacking a state, the gentlemen of the world do not condemn it but praise it, calling it righteous.”
Mozi · Mohism · Ancient · 5th–4th century BCE
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is a consistency test: if killing one person is a capital wrong, killing the people of a state is that wrong on a larger scale, and praising the campaign is a failure to apply one's own standard. A competing reading takes the line as pacifism about every use of arms, but Mozi distinguishes offensive war from defensive war and does not condemn the second. The argument opens chapter 17, the first of three chapters against offensive warfare. Gentlemen who condemn petty theft and praise invasion are the target.
Did Mozi really say this?
The library’s label is Paraphrase or translation. Burton Watson, Mo Tzu: Basic Writings, the opening argument of the first 'Against Offensive Warfare' chapter. The Black Sheep analogy, a few lines earlier, makes the same point about failing to recognise a larger case of a known wrong.
Where it comes from
Mozi, chapter 17, 'Against Offensive Warfare', in Burton Watson's translation
Approximate date: 5th–4th century BCE.
How to use it
A company in London that fires someone for fiddling a travel claim, and then celebrates a deal that depends on shoving a smaller supplier under, has split its standard in the way he describes. The sentence does not cost the deal by arithmetic alone. It asks why the small wrong has a name and the large one has a press release. Scale is not a moral detergent.
A mindset reading
When you change the name of an act as it gets larger, stop and reapply the small-case rule. The habit is especially useful around words like campaign, strategy, and necessity. He is not saying numbers do not matter. He is saying numbers make the wrong worse, which is the opposite of how praise usually moves.
Understand the philosophy
Mozi is attacking the Warring States habit of treating conquest as a gentleman's achievement. The key term is yi, righteousness, which he will not let change its meaning between a murder and a war. Chapter 17 uses the black sheep and the killing count before it gets to harm, cost, and Heaven's punishment. Later Mohists keep the ban on offensive war. Defending a city is a different chapter of the school's life.
- ethics
- justice
- power
FAQ
What does it mean?
The mainstream reading is a consistency test: if killing one person is a capital wrong, killing the people of a state is that wrong on a larger scale, and praising the campaign is a failure to apply one's own standard. A competing reading takes the line as pacifism about every use of arms, but Mozi distinguishes offensive war from defensive war and does not condemn the second. The argument opens chapter 17, the first of three chapters against offensive warfare. Gentlemen who condemn petty theft and praise invasion are the target.
Did Mozi really say this?
Paraphrase or translation. Burton Watson, Mo Tzu: Basic Writings, the opening argument of the first 'Against Offensive Warfare' chapter. The Black Sheep analogy, a few lines earlier, makes the same point about failing to recognise a larger case of a known wrong.
Which work is it in?
Mozi, chapter 17, 'Against Offensive Warfare', in Burton Watson's translation Approximate date: 5th–4th century BCE.