Work · East Asian Philosophy
Mohist Canons
Compiled by Mozi’s later followers: definitions and arguments on logic, ethics, optics and geometry – the most systematic early Chinese work of logic.
Introduction
Chapters 40 to 45 of the book Mozi, written by later Mohists around the third century BCE: the “Canons” and their “Explanations”, and two chapters known as the “Greater Pick” and the “Lesser Pick”. They define terms of ethics, logic, geometry, optics and mechanics and discuss how names relate to things, how to argue by analogy and when an inference such as “a white horse is a horse, so riding a white horse is riding a horse” holds. After the Han dynasty the text was neglected and badly corrupted in transmission; Qing-dynasty scholars began to reconstruct it, and A. C. Graham’s edition Later Mohist Logic, Ethics and Science (1978) made it accessible in the West.
Connections
Builds on
- Mozic. 400 BCE · Mozi
Taken up in
- Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy1919 · Hu Shih
More works by Mozi
- c. 400 BCEMozi
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