Abstract

Standard narratives on the relation between Mozi and Mencius portray them as early Chinese masters with consistent philosophies in opposition to each other. However valuable, these narratives tend to rely on the same interpretative choices that have become solidified into hardly questioned facts. Inspired by a “hermeneutic of informed ignorance,” this paper tries to unravel a number of alternative interpretations from the same texts. The focus is a limited set of passages: the four Mencius statements explicitly mentioning Mozi and the Mozi sections that may have inspired them. The resulting picture on for instance the presumed tension between Mo and Ru or on their presumed core values is more varied, tentative, and nuanced than in the standard narratives, even though it does not necessarily invalidate them.