Department of Philosophy, Peking University, Beijing 100871, China
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History+
Received
Published
2021-04-26
2021-11-20
Issue Date
2022-01-27
Abstract
The Debates of Mohists was a philosophical literature mostly characterized with logical rethinking in the Pre-Qin philosophy. In the period when modern academics was formed and got rooted, the study about The Debates of Mohists became an explicit learning. This article focuses on the “purely objective” view on things from The Debates of Mohists. The formation of the “purely objective” view on things was due to the chaos and collapse of the ritual orders at the end of the Spring and Autumn Period. With a radical “rationalist” attitude, the Mohists cleared up the value attribute endowed by the ritual orders. The more abstract geometrical view on things was originated from the Mohists’ serious attitude towards the debates and also from the needs for formal argument and formal defence with the rise of the study of debaters, which was generated from the continuous debates between the Confucians and the Mohists, and also between various sects among the Mohist School. The following ideological atmosphere, in which there were universal questioning and defense, produced profound influences on all the philosophical schools from the Spring and Autumn Period to the early Han Dynasty.