Fraser, Chris, The Essential Mozi: Ethical, Political, and Dialectical Writings
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Fraser, Chris, The Essential Mozi: Ethical, Political, and Dialectical Writings Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020, xxxviii + 279 pages Yun WU 1 Accepted: 1 September 2020/ # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
This book is a new translation of texts selected, edited, and translated from the Mozi 墨 子. It offers an exceptional and philosophically informed translation of the text. It is easily among the most important works of recent decades in Mohist studies. In the Introduction, Chris Fraser promises to offer a translation with “a specifically philosophical focus” (x), a promise that the book certainly lives up to. The translation is sensitive to philosophical nuances of the text, particularly those that have attracted the most attention in contemporary debate. Still, the prose remains lively and engaging. “Philosophical relevance” is also the principle determining which texts are included in the book. “All of the argumentative content has been included” (xxvii), while “material that is either philosophically less acute or of mainly historical interest” is omitted (xxviii). This principle makes the selection of materials very different from existing compilations of the text in English. For example, the passages omitted include not only the military chapters but also the first three books, as they are “not directly relevant to the aim of understanding Mohist philosophy” (xxvii). The same principle is also used in the arrangement of the texts to reach a more thematically coherent presentation. For example, in dealing with the texts in the two books of “Condemning Fatalism (Fei Ming 非命),” Fraser “moved several paragraphs from one book to another” (220). Its philosophical focus notwithstanding, this work is much more than a philosophical reconstruction of the original text in English. It carefully incorporates the latest sinological findings of the past decades. Even in its Introduction, Fraser astutely clarifies that, contrary to widespread assumption, the Mozi is likely not a monograph by Mozi, but rather composed and edited by various people “at different times, in different locations” and formed “most likely over a period of two centuries or more” (xiv). In line with this insight, Fraser provides “The Chronology of the Triads” (274– 277) based on his critical examination on related sinological findings in the Appendix. * Yun WU WU–[email protected]
1
Department of Philosophy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Rm. 232, No.1 Teaching Building, Xuhui District, Shanghai 200052, People’s Republic of China
Yun WU
Incorporation of sinological findings can be of great philosophical relevance. For example, relying on sinological findings, Fraser deliberately makes the two books with the title “Condemning the Erudites (Fei Ru 非儒)” (though only one survived) a separate group (Part III in this translation) apart from the group of the “Triads” (Part II). This is very different from a more common practice of classifying “Fei Ru” as part of the “Triads” or the “core doctrines,” as though it were one of them. In this respect, Fraser not
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