1 The Ethics of Pragmatic Reason

Li Zehou emphasizes that traditional Chinese social, axiological and political systems were permeated with a rational attitude or spirit (Li Zehou 1980a, 89), which defined what he calls “pragmatic reason” (shiyong lixing 實用理性). In the first draft of his book titled “A Reevaluation of Confucius” (Kongzi zai pingjia 孔子再評價), Li initially denoted this kind of rationality as “shijian lixing” 實踐理性 (Li Zehou 1980a, 77).² However, in Chinese translations of Western philosophical texts of the time, this concept was already widely applied as a translation of Immanuel Kant’s “practical reason.” Therefore, Li explained in a footnote to this text (ibid., 89, footnote 3) that Kant’s “practical reason” differs from his own concept, which derives from Confucian rationality.³ Later, he created the term “pragmatic reason” to clearly distinguish between the two notions. According to Li, the Chinese cultural tradition is focused upon this kind of reason because it looks down on pure speculative thinking. He noted, however, that even though they are different, there is still a certain similarity between Kant’s and his own concept, especially concerning their close connection to ethics, which was a basic characteristic of both concepts (Li Zehou 2008, 246).

In general, most people see reason (lixing 理性) as an epistemological category. In Li’s system, it is also a fundamental concept pertaining to his philosophy of ethics, because epistemology arises from ethics and hence the latter defines the former:

Ethics is primary, and epistemology secondary. Cognitive laws (like linguistics or logic) evolve from ethical imperatives. This is immensely important.

先有倫理, 後有認識. 認識規則 (語法, 邏輯) 是從倫理律令中演化出來的, 這一點至為重要.

Li Zehou 2016b, 260

Ethical norms develop in accordance with the principles of pragmatic rationality, which are tightly linked to particular historical and social contexts and to qing, i.e., the shared emotional realms that arise in human beings in these contexts.⁴ In this sense, it is a product of human material practices. Li explained that pragmatic reason could not be equated to the modern Western notion of cognitive (renzhi lixing 認知理性) or ethical reason (lunli lixing 倫理理性), which are both rooted in a strict separation between subject and object, neutrality of values, objective truth, natural rights, independent individual or formal justice. In this context, it has to be seen as a different kind of reasonableness (ibid., 304), one that simultaneously pertains to material practice and to cognitive patterns or laws (Li Zehou 2008, 246).

A detailed elaboration on pragmatic reason and its relations to other crucial concepts such as the “culture of pleasure,”⁵ was first published in Li Zehou’s book, On Ancient Chinese Intellectual History (Zhongguo gudai sixiang shilun 中國古代思想史論), which was published in 1985. At that time, it was popular to be anti-traditional, and many Chinese scholars harshly criticized him for promoting such ideas and also for advocating thereby a revival and a transformed continuation of Chinese traditional culture, not only in terms of its superficial forms and patterns, but also in terms of its cultural “spirit.”

For many years later Li elaborated further on the concept in different ways. He explained it (as well as its connection to the specifically Chinese type of culture, i.e., “the culture of pleasure”) in detail in his book entitled, Pragmatic Reason and the Culture of Pleasure (Shiyong lixing yu legan wenhua 實用理性與樂感文化), which was completed in 2004, but first published in January 2005.

Typical for China, the pragmatic reason as a form of nontranscendental moral reasoning was a product of the one-world-view, which is paradigmatic for traditional Chinese thought. It arose through the practice of its early shamanistic-historical tradition. Pragmatic reason is characteristic of classical Confucianism and a crucial element of the traditional Chinese culture of pleasure (D’Ambrosio, Carleo, and Lambert 2016, 1063). “Li believes that this pragmatic reason and the Confucian humanistic tradition have formed China more than anything else and have contributed to its long and uninterrupted civilization” (Pohl 2018, 65). Hence, it is not a coincidence that this form of reason not only belongs to, but also determines and permeates all five major factors defining the traditional Chinese culture, which can be found according to Li’s analysis and interpretation of the Confucian Analects (Lunyu 論語) in the following features:

1. Blood (kinship) relations;

2. Psychological principles;

3. Humanism;

4. Ideal personality;

5. Pragmatic reason.

The characteristic feature of pragmatic reason was its pragmatic orientation toward the actual, material world in which people live. This kind of reason was not limited to an abstract, cognitive, or theoretical kind of rationality.⁶ The dominant cultures in ancient China were more or less indifferent toward such speculative reason. Already the earliest Confucian scholars mainly believed that abstract reasoning without a direct link to actual life was meaningless. In this sense, pragmatic reason primarily means that the practical undertakings in actual society have to be governed by rationality. In such framework, emotions and desires are cultivated by means of rational principles. Li Zehou believes that in the beginning of human evolution, people’s operative accomplishments in the form of making and applying tools offered them prospects for controlling the environments in which they lived. In the course of historical development, the accumulation of such experiences enabled them to surpass other species and become supra-biological beings. Such developments shaped this kind of specifically human reason, which sedimented in the vibrant formations of human mind. Even though this exclusively human feature was still rooted in our animal nature, it also allowed people to transcend their physical limitations. For Li, the making and using of tools is the original human practice and from this, through a long historical process of accumulation and sedimentation, a cultural-psychological formation takes shape that eventually operates beyond discrete practices (Ames and Jia 2018, 14).

In his anthropo-historical ontology, Li therefore argues that human rationality is generated from empirical reasonableness. The operational labor (laodong caozuo 勞動操作) of making and using tools shaped the specifically human forms of knowledge (logic, mathematics, dialectics, and so on). When such labor advanced in human societies, it also generated ethics and morality.

In this context, Li Zehou highlights that Confucianism has always laid stress upon the ethical practice. Even though for most Confucians, there is no supernatural or metaphysical source of human cognition, pragmatic reason still cannot be seen as functioning in a simple one-to-one correspondence with the empirical world (Lynch 2016, 718). To a certain extent and in certain aspects, Li’s theory of pragmatic reason can be compared to Dewey’s pragmatism, for both theories see usefulness as a measure for determining reasonable behavior. However, there is a very important difference between them as well, and Li Zehou emphasizes that his ethics is not a form of pragmatism but rather belongs to anthropological ontology⁷ (Li Zehou 2011, 159). The basic approaches of this theory can also help us clarify a question that was raised in this context by Andrew Lambert, namely, how could Li Zehou establish the categorical imperative (which he unquestionably endorses)⁸ as a foundational principle, given that he rejects Kant’s category of the a priori in human cognition.

More specifically, given that such a form of rationality is not crucial to the Confucian tradition—a tradition in which, according to Li, pragmatic reasoning (shiyong lixing) dominates—then how could it come to hold a dominant place in the psychological formation of a subject immersed in that tradition?

Lambert 2018, 103–104

Lambert finds the answer to this important question in the unboundedness of the cultural-psychological formation, which represents the central concept of Li’s theory of mind. This means that this formation is open to all influences “as long as these can be integrated into existing social practices and categories of understanding” (ibid., 104). In Lambert’s view, this is also the reason why globalized psychological formations could gradually emerge in the cultural-psychological formations of different cultures in Li’s system. In this way, the Chinese tradition could absorb numerous initially foreign influences, including the idea of the categorical imperative. As Lambert puts it, “In a global marketplace of concepts and ways of thinking and feeling, the categorical imperative could emerge as the acme of reason, something to which subjects feel a strong commitment” (Lambert 2018, 104).

It is certainly true that Li Zehou seems to present the categorical imperative as a universal ideal toward the realization of which all people and all cultures evolve. However, Li never seems to have seen this form of reason as something that could be (via modernization and globalization) introduced from other cultures to the cultural-psychological formation of the “Chinese mind.” First, in Li’s system, particular forms of human mind were shaped and accumulated through much longer periods of history. Second, the categorical reason is not merely “a form of thinking and feeling” (see the above quotation) but a basic formation of human mind; hence, it cannot be limited to methods of cognition or a cognitive means to decide upon discrete moral actions. Third (and perhaps most important), in Li’s view, Confucianism certainly contained absolute principles that could have evolved through nothing else but a specifically Chinese version of categorical imperative. Here, we have to note that in contrast to pragmatism, Li’s pragmatic reason not only accepts but also respects, follows, and even underlines its correspondence with objective principles, laws, or codes, which are independent from concrete, situationally conditioned human inclinations or experiences. The Confucian philosophical tradition denoted these objective orders and principles as “the Way of Heaven” (tian dao 天道) or the “decree of Heaven” (tian ming 天命) (Li Zehou 2008, 247). Although Li’s pragmatic reason is by no means a transcendental instrument, it still governs human behavior in accordance with absolute norms, which are certainly comparable to Kant’s categorical imperative. Li repeatedly emphasizes that its sublime power is something that in principle is shared by all human species, for it belongs to those special foundational principles, which make human beings human.⁹

Hence, pragmatic reason can be seen as a philosophical generalization of reasonableness, but one that negates the pure form of speculative reasoning a priori. Although it considers the influences of relativity, uncertainty, and nonobjectivity, it is by no means a kind of relativism, for it is still determined by absolute norms and principles (Wang 2018, 231–232).

This amalgamation of historical and categorical elements comprised in the concept of pragmatic reason is often difficult to understand through the lens of Western philosophy. This is because Western academia mostly proceeds from an approach that includes a strict division between the absoluteness of psychological forms on the one side, and multifaceted, changeable features of human historical development on the other. In Li’s view, such a separation is a necessary result of the so-called two-world view (liangge shijie guan 兩個世界觀) that prevailed in Western philosophical discourses. Hence, Li highlights the double ontological nature of this kind of rationality:

Pragmatic reason … manifests itself on the surfactant levels of cultural features, but simultaneously, it also constructs deep structures of specifically human mind.

實用理性 … 既是呈現於表層的文化特徵，也是構成深層的心理特點.

Li Zehou 2016d, 119

In Li’s view, the basic principles of Confucian ethics are comparable to those constitutive to Kant’s categorical imperative. Both models are systems of self-inflicted restrictions or guidelines, standing in a shrill contrast to those forcibly imposed to people from outside. In this context, Li emphasizes that such standards are not only an integral part of Kant’s categorical imperative, but also represent a core part of Confucian ethics. He points out that it can be found in numerous well-known Confucian quotations (Li Zehou 2016b, 208) such as in the following dialogue, in which Confucius tried to explain to his disciple Yan Yuan that moral principles are a part of the inner nature of human beings and not something that are enforced upon them from outside.

Yan Yuan asked about humaneness. The Master replied: “Humaneness can be achieved through self-control and a revival of rituality. If you can control yourself and revive rituality only for one single day, all under heaven will return to humaneness.”

顏淵問仁。子曰: 克己復禮為仁。一日克己復禮，天下歸仁焉.

Lunyu s.d., Yan Yuan: 1

Li believes that such statements belong to rational categorical imperatives. Regarding their emphasis upon such characteristic features of moral psychology, Confucius and Kant are entirely in agreement (Li Zehou 2016b, 208).

Li emphasizes that in both Confucian and Kantian model, such categorical imperatives belong to morality, which is internal and represents a crucial part of human psychological formations. In his view, categorical imperative is a mental form described by both Confucian and Kantian moral philosophies, which equally emphasize that while human beings (as individuals) are educated and cultivated by ethics, by different systems and orders they still possess psychological formations of an absolute nature (Li Zehou and Tong Shijun 2012, 172). Therefore, Li still considers Confucianism as comprising certain “semireligious” elements, although the Confucian teachings are not based on any idea of an external (anthropomorphic) god.¹⁰

In this context, Li highlights that such a theoretical foundation pertains to agnosticism, which was philosophically quite mature for ancient times, because the existence of supernatural deities is difficult to scientifically confirm or to falsify. In his view, such an agnostic principle is strong evidence for the “clear rational spirit” inherent to the Confucian ideational system (Li Zehou 1980, 89). Therefore, the rationalization of emotion, which took place in China in the course of transforming natural religions into the ethics of humaneness (ren 仁), was not based upon restraints of human desires. In the traditional Chinese “culture of pleasure,” people were instead offered a regulated way of satisfying their wishes and needs.

There was no need for an external God, whose orders, which were based upon irrational authority, should be blindly followed. On the other hand, people still possessed hope for salvation (humanism) and self-fulfillment (individual sense of mission) without rejecting this world or humiliating themselves…. Everything could be left to the balanced measure and regulative function of the pragmatic reason.

不需要外在的上帝的命令，不盲目服從非理性的權威，卻仍然可以拯救世界 (人道主義) 和自我完成 (個體人格和使命感)；不厭棄人世，也不自我屈辱、^……，一切都放在實用的理性天平上加以衡量和處理.

Li Zehou 1980, 89

Similar to most other concepts of Li Zehou’s ideational system, which is based on paradigmatic foundations of Confucianism and some other Chinese philosophical traditions, pragmatic reason is also a dynamic notion (Li Zehou 2008, 250). Its dialectical logic is by no means “fatalistically deterministic” (Lynch 2016, 719) but rather opens enough space for considerations of situationally determined necessities and contingencies, including the “potential and accidental elements of human choices and decisions” (ibid.). Li often writes that in applying pragmatic reason, people have the choice to modify and regulate their own lives:

“Pragmatic reason” is situational, it arises from a certain situation, but it does not belong to the situational ethics.

“實用理性” 就是看 situation 的，從情境出發嘛，但它又不是情境倫 理學.

Li Zehou and Liu Yuedi 2014, 214

In this way, the correlative dialectical interactions between eventuality and necessity, and between potentiality and factuality, define the concrete operating dimension and came to be the historic keynote of human existence.

Although it operates in accordance with objective principles, pragmatic reason is not absolute in the sense of transcending all time and space; in this sense, it is not entirely a-priori. As we have seen above, even though the Confucian pragmatic reason includes the cultivation and the development of moral formations, which belong to human inwardness and can be regarded as a kind of categorical imperative, it also comprises emotions.

There is also another famous reply, ascribed to Confucius, namely “a person who possesses humaneness loves human beings.” The content, which is emphasized in this reply, is indeed something emotional. We also saw that quotations such as “self-control” and “revival of rituality” lay stress upon reason. However, in general, we can see from numerous descriptions of humaneness given by Confucius that he mostly referred to human emotio-rational structure, which consists of both reason and emotion (qing). Kant, on the other hand, only speaks about reason. His concept of reason surpasses and outgrows the humankind, whereas the Confucian emotio-rational structure explicitly belongs to the humans. This is a fundamental difference.

孔子還有 “仁者愛人” 的著名回答, 這個回答所突出的, 確是情感, 有如 “克己復禮” 的回答側重理性, 但總擴孔子對 “仁” 的眾多回答, 其最終歸結仍在塑建既有情又有理的人性情理結構, 而不同於康德只講理性之上。 康德理性是超於和高於人類的, 孔夫子的 “情理結構” 是專屬於人類的. 這就是根本的不同.

Li Zehou 2016b, 208

For Li, material existence is fundamental, and this kind of reason is necessarily a product of material practice and arises from it. According to Li, the operative processes of work, and its products provide the basic contents of experiences. However, symbolic operations abstracted from this foundation come to possess an independent character that can be separated from concrete experiences (Lynch 2016, 719). In this sense, reason cannot be hypostatized; it is just a manner of cognizance or an instrument that can be used by people when dealing with various issues and objects from their life.

Reason is merely a tool, and the ultimate goal of “pragmatic reason” is the sustainable preservation of human existence. Not only does it not possess any transcendental nature, it also never departs from experience and history. In the scope of such rationality, there can be no separation between “the Way of Humans” and “the Way of Heaven.” They are both the same, and besides, it is the “Way of Humans” that generates the evolvement to higher stages. (This implies that the development does not proceed from Heaven toward the humans, but in the opposite direction.)

理性只是工具，“實用理性” 以服務人類生存為最終目的，它不但沒有超越性，而且不脫離經驗和歷史. 它認為沒有與 “人道” 分離的 “天 道”， “天道” 與 “人道” 一致，而且是 “人道” 的提升 (不是由天而人，而是由人而天).

Li Zehou 2016, 157

On the other hand, pragmatic reason is a part of human universal necessity, because human mind—an objective factor of that which makes us human—is rooted in natural biological instincts, which accumulated and were shaped through history (regarding humankind as a whole) and education (for the individual), respectively. Hence, it is also an outcome of rationalization. Such a process includes the condensation of reason, which is tightly linked to the shaping of moral consciousness and free will.

Li explains that according to his theory, human reason originally generated out of the making and using of tools in communities; he simultaneously proceeds from two well-known ancient definitions of humans: “humans are rational animals” and “humans are animals that create tools.” For him, these two definitions are tightly linked to one another. Hence, his return to and his modification of Kant’s rationalism shows, on the one hand, that reason is a significant element of humanness, while on the other, it clearly shows that the notion of pragmatic reason cannot be seen as one that pertains to inherent and a-priori mental structures.

When I interpreted Kant in the past, I talked about “objective sociality.” Now, I can confirm that it is an empirical rationality. The notion of pragmatic reason is a philosophical epitome of such “empirical rationality.” One of the chief characteristics of Chinese philosophy and culture is that it denies the existence of a-priori reason and it does not raise reason to the highest position.

以前我闡述康德時，我講過 “客觀社會性”，現在我明確它即是經驗合理性，

實用理性正是這種 “經驗合理性” 的哲學概括。中國哲學和文化特徵之一，

是不承認先驗理性，不把理性擺在最高位置.

Li Zehou 2016, 157

In his view, pragmatic reason is rather something modifiable and moldable that not only preserves but also develops humanity. It arises from practical initiatives and from practices that are based upon initiatives. It is a kind of empirical reasonableness that does not rely on any kind of transcendental formulas but rather on the mere fact of human life, from which it arises and evolves, continuously discovering and accumulating new experiences (ibid., 163).

Li’s understanding of the pragmatic reason is comparable to the approaches of the second period of Confucianism, which took place during the Han period and in which the more rationalistic tradition was in the forefront. In his book On Ancient Chinese Intellectual History (Zhongguo gudai sixiang shilun 中國古代思想史論), Li points out that in this second period, Confucian philosophy transformed the structural pattern li 理 (which can, to a certain degree, be compared to the Western notion of reason) from the previously cosmologic concept to one that refers to human inwardness, which is permeated with ethical connotations (Li Zehou 1985a, 220–222). In the third period of Confucianism (during the Neo-Confucianism of the Song period) this concept was further modified, particularly by Zhu Xi 朱熹, the main representative of this school of thought. At first glance, Zhu Xi’s understanding of li 理, according to which it is inherent in every object of the factual world, stands in sharp contrast with Li’s belief that reason is something that is impeded by or applied to objects from outside.

However, recent research in its semantic development showed that in the post-Han era, li 理 was gradually understood as the mutually compatible, dynamic structure of the external word and the mind (Rošker 2012, 8). In the scope of Neo-Confucianism, the notion li 理 was seen as both a particular structural pattern as well as the all-embracing, overall structure determining the universe. Cheng Hao 程顥, for instance, had argued that “the basic structure of each single thing is also the basic structure of everything that exists” (一物之理即萬物之理) (Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi 1981, I, Yi shu, 13).

Hence, Li points out that the moral foundations of human mind originated from progressive internalization of rationality, which was imposed onto human mind from outside, through rites and codes of ethical regulations (Li Zehou 1980, 85) and that being a result of this continuous process, pragmatic reason was never an unchangeable, fixed, or purely abstract entity. Rather, it must be seen as a flexible and dynamic formation that allows humans to adapt to and to regulate issues connected to historically different circumstances and requirements. Against such background, it is even easier to understand the question that will be analyzed in the next section, namely, why and in which way pragmatic reason could include a functional combination of emotion (qing) and rationality.

As we will see, such an amalgamation of reason and emotions in the scope of pragmatic reason—in contrast to various religious approaches—is possible without the help of any outward dogmas. This fundamental characteristic enables pragmatic reason to permit (and even encourage) people to be open to new insights and new things. In this way, pragmatic rationality inspires people to adopt historical experiences and adjust them in such a way that they could best serve the requirements of their concrete societies. In this context, Li points to the destiny of science and technology in China. Even though the dominant intellectual history never established abstract foundations of scientific thought to any significant extent, the Chinese people nevertheless rapidly (and most capably) embraced all these methods of thought as soon as they came to understand their pragmatic value after Western thought was introduced to China:

Due to “pragmatic reason,” technology developed very rapidly in ancient China. But on the other hand, I was never able to produce a system of mathematical axioms or an abstract speculative philosophy like those that were developed in ancient Greece. Hence, in the modern times, it was confronted with enormous challenges. But precisely due to its pragmatic nature, it began effectively to accept and assimilate them as soon as it became clear that abstract reasoning and scientific methods are beneficiary to people.

“實用理性” 使古代中國的技藝非常發達， 但始終沒能產生古希臘的數學公理系統和抽象思辨的哲學， 所以， 它在現代遇到了巨大的挑戰。 但也因為它的實用性格， 當它發現抽象思辨和科學系統有益於人的時候，便注意自己文化的弱點而努力去接受和吸取.

Li Zehou 2016, 157

Accordingly, pragmatic reason is a most suitable tool for a reasonable human development:

Representing the structural principle of the cultural psychological activities of the Chinese people, pragmatic reason is by no means a static, unchangeable formation. What it values is precisely the change, expansion, renewal, and development. Hence, Chinese tradition, Confucianism, and pragmatic reason cannot be seen as obstacles to modernization.

實用理性作為中國人文化心理活動的結構原則，並非靜止的、一成不變的形式，它重視的正是變化、擴展、更新和發展。從而，中國傳統、儒學和實用理性不會對現代化構成障礙.

Li Zehou 2008, 251–252

Li firmly believes that within the contemporary antirational trend China should certainly put forth the reconstruction of rationality, but not one that is based on transcendental reason (Li, Zehou 2016, 1143). Instead, it should rather revive and employ the elementary potencies of traditional pragmatic rationality.

Therefore, Li’s anthropo-historical ontology rejects post-modernism and promotes a re-establishment of the authority of pragmatic reason. It highlights that the traditional Chinese culture of pleasure discards nihilism. Instead, it encourages the belief in human life. Li Zehou argues that a creative transformation of such Chinese cultural characteristics could obtain universality and serve as new universal ideals. As Wang, Keping (2018, 225) notes, Li has been preoccupied with both the human condition in general and China’s reality in particular. “Hence, through his interpretation of pragmatic reason, Li has attempted to work out a concise but strategic blueprint to address sociocultural issues and the possibility of human ‘becoming’ in both Chinese and global contexts” (Ames and Jia 2018, 14).

2 The Emotio-Rational Structure and the Fusion of Reason and Emotions

As we have seen in the previous section, Li Zehou believes that Chinese philosophy, as a one-world discourse, never rigorously separated reason from emotion (Li Zehou 2008, 248), for in its elementary framework the two are mutually combined and cannot function self-sufficiently in a pure form. Although Li sees human beings as “rational animals,” he emphasizes that our rational abilities are not divided from our animal origins (Lynch 2016, 714). In his system, human mind is ordered in accord with the emotio-rational structure (qingli jiegou 情理結構), where reason is incorporated into and combined with animal sensibility. The emotio-rational structure denotes the specific interrelation of reason and emotion in which they intermingle with one another in vibrant, constantly changing associations of different ratios and on different levels. It is a “deep structure” (shenceng jiegou 深層結構) of human mind that is especially typical for Chinese people, for it was strongly shaped through traditional Chinese teachings, and is embedded in the Chinese “cultural-psychological formation” (wenhua-xinli jiegou 文化—心理結構). In the process of its creation, Confucianism played a prominent role:

Confucianism cannot be reduced to pure speculative philosophical deductions, nor to an attitude of pure emotional faith; therefore, it has the potential of a religious morality but also includes rational approaches that are based upon respecting experiences. All this is comprised in this cultural-psychological formation, in which emotions are fused with and permeated by reason.¹¹

儒學既不是純思辯的哲學推斷，也不是純情感的信仰態度；它之所以具有宗教性的道德功能，又有尊重經驗的理性態度，都在於這種情理互滲交融的文化心理的建構

Li Zehou 2010a, 10

Li exposes the coherent and balanced nature of this formation. His theory of the emotio-rational structure represents a creative combination of Kantian and Confucian philosophy. As Jia Jinhua notes (2016, 757): “Li admires Kant’s rational ontology of ethics, but criticizes his exclusion of human emotion and desire.” She also observes that in the dominant course of traditional Western philosophy, reason and emotion were mostly understood as being in mutual opposition or even in contradiction. However, in recent years, this presupposition has been criticized by numerous sociologists, psychologists, and philosophers who maintain that reason cannot be entirely disconnected from emotions and that emotions are not always purely subjective or private. On the contrary, emotions often play a decisive and crucial role within cognitive judgements and rational discriminations. Such contemporary discourses mainly proceed from the idea of an emotional-rational continuum, which has a remarkable resemblance to Li’s emotio-rational structure. Jia (2016, 758) additionally points out that “Li Zehou’s study of the Confucian ethics of emotion started in the early 1980s and his theses of emotion-based substance and emotio-rational structure provide pioneering contributions to this new intellectual trend.” Li himself also often exposes that contemporary neuroscience likewise points toward the idea of the existence of an emotio-rational structure.

Li argues that the idea of the amalgamation and mutual interaction of reason and emotions, which takes place in the human emotio-rational structure, belongs to crucial methodological differences between transcendental and pragmatic reason. The latter is not limited to a direct and universal imposing abstract rational principles on particular objects. In Li’s view, such a universal application of abstract reason is methodologically superficial and unrealistic (Li, Zehou 2016, 1079).

As we have seen, Li’s theory emphasizes the importance of historical specificities. In the scope of pragmatic reason, which includes ratio and emotions, human actions are carried out in accordance with du (度), which can be understood as a specifically Chinese, dynamic type of something similar to the Western concept of “proper measure.”¹² This criterion conforms to reason as well as emotions. Even though in the domain of the emotio-rational structure, reason is of primary importance, it is still not the sole and absolute driving force of ethical behavior. Therefore, pragmatic reason never relies on absolute normative standards of right and wrong. Ritual regulations are namely based on collective emotionality, which arises (as a shared reaction) from joint circumstances of social life and represents a foundation for inter-human harmony. In contrast to such high evaluation of emotion as an auxiliary force for generating harmony, which is seen as a most precious ideal in traditional Chinese philosophical discourses, the traditional Western ideal of justice grants absolute value merely to reason (Li Zehou and Liu Yuedi 2014, 195).

In such a traditional Chinese resolution of the dichotomy of reason and emotions, we can notice another difference between some fundamental approaches of Li’s ethics on the one side, and Kant’s deontology on the other. While Li is more concerned about the constitutive conditions of humankind as whole, Kant is more apprehensive about the cultivation of humans purely as moral beings, for his practical reason is interacting not only with his conception of categorical imperative, but also with his theo-ethical awareness of the highest good (Wang 2018, 245). In contrast to such an approach, the fusion of reason and emotion, which constitute pragmatic reason, was not a product of any transcendental force, but rather a result of education. Li writes:

This is why I say that the “emotio-rational structure” was not shaped by a mysterious “Heaven,” nor by an a priori “Goodness.” It arose out of a concrete down-to-earth “learning.”

所以我說，不是神秘的 “天”，也非先驗的 “善”，而是腳踏實地的 “學， 塑建出人的 “情理結構”.

Li Zehou and Liu Yuedi 2014b, 20

Regarding the wider connotations of this fusion of reason with emotion, Gu Mingdong points to another aspect of Li Zehou’s theory. According to Li, Confucius’ pragmatic reasoning is—inter alia—also connected to artistic emotions, and hence, it allows the establishment of a direct relation to the Chinese aesthetics:

It is filled with emotional qualities of poetry. Indeed, the Confucian system of teachings admonishes people to live not only morally and ethically but also poetically and artistically. In this sense, Confucius’ way of reasoning easily reminds us of the way Heidegger in the latter half of his career conducted poetic investigations of philosophical issues.

Gu 2018, 77

A good example of such a fusion of reason and emotion can be found, for instance, in Mencius when he talks about the “distinguishing heart-mind (shifeizhi xin 是非之心).”¹³ Such an attitude shows rational judgment and clearly differentiates between right and wrong, but at the same time, it is also includes an emotional approach defined by love and hate. It is hence both emotional as well as rational.

Li sees a strong link between emotions and reason that needs to be cultivated so that they can promote each other’s development. This is how the human psyche, or emotional-rational structures, are advanced, both in the individual and for society as a whole.

D’Ambrosio 2016, 732

However, he also repeatedly emphasizes that in this amalgamation, reason is the primary, dominant, and more important element. It provides regulatory guidelines for human interactions and channels natural emotions as they become cultivated through habitual practice until they become part of the person’s actual psychological structure (ibid., 728).

Li often emphasizes that individuals follow morality only when reason rather than emotion is in control over their moral psychological structure. He points out that reason must under no circumstances become a slave to emotions, and highlights that “Reason is the impetus of morality, while emotions are merely helping hands” (Li, Zehou 2018, 27).

As we have seen in previous chapters, Li Zehou sees the basic emotio-rational structure of human mind as defined by the will and concepts on the one hand, and emotions on the other. The former two belong to the realm of reason, in which the will represents its form while the concepts constitute its content. Similar to all other specific components of human mental formations, this elementary construction has also been shaped in the long-lasting process of historical sedimentation. Even in the framework of pragmatic reason, it is still absolute (in the sense that it is what makes human beings human) and can hence be compared to Kant’s categorical imperative. Although Li Zehou has often criticized Kant for focusing exclusively on rational elements without considering the vital role of human emotions, he still lays stress on the important function of reason, and especially that of the free will,¹⁴ which, in his view, also belongs to constitutive elements of traditional Confucian ethics:

In China, we say, “virtue is established at the highest level.” This kind of uniqueness of each individual existence shows here its incomparable brilliance. Such existence can only become possible through conscious and self-aware rational construction, which takes place in the framework of constructing subjectality. This construction implies practice, behavior, and action, but also emotions, desires, and other sensations, which agglomerate in human reason (similar as in epistemology, in which reason is internalized into sensuous intuition). This is the real free will.

中國古話說，「太上立德」，個體存在的這種一次性，這這裏顯示 出它的無比光輝。而這卻只有通過人的自覺有意識的理性建構才存在。這屬於建立人的主體性的範圍。這是在人的實踐、行為、活 動、情感、願欲等感性中的理性凝聚（如同在認識論的感性直觀中有理性內化一樣），這才是真正的自由意志.

Li Zehou 1994, 469

In the central Confucian endeavor of “shaping and constructing human emotions and sensitivity” (Li Zehou 2014a, 3) they are bit by bit cultivated by (proper) music and rituals until they became the norm. This made the incorporation of reason into emotions possible. Confucianism has emphasized that “pleasure derived from music” (yezhe yue ye 樂者樂也) (Li ji s.d., Yue ji: 32), but they also considered the need to regulate this pleasure (i.e., to control the emotions involved). This could be accomplished through proper (that is, reasonable) regulation of music and rituals¹⁵ (ibid., 9). Li exposes that for the Confucians, people can “find pleasure in regulated rites and music” (le jie liyue 樂節禮樂) (Lunyu s.d., Ji shi: 690). Through such proper, sensitive regulation, people’s natural emotions were molded into a rational form, and this allowed for a fusion of emotion and reason (Li Zehou 2008, 251).

Besides the integration of reason into emotions, Confucianism also stressed the assimilation of emotions into reason. In the ancient Chinese worldview, nature, heaven, and earth were permeated with positive feelings that affirmed the value, the goodness, and the beauty of life. In its very essence, this attitude was by no means scientific, nor cognitive or philosophical, but purely emotional and aesthetic. Therefore, Confucianism is much more than merely ethical teaching. Although it cannot be regarded as a religion, it still far surpassed the scope of ethical regulations and thereby achieved the highest realm of the unity of heaven (nature) and humans, which is comparable to a religious experience. According to Li, this is the realm of the aesthetic.

However, in both cases, the pairing of emotions and reason “reflects the idea that advancements in one area are echoed in the other, and they feed off of one another in a symbiotic relationship.”

D’Ambrosio 2016, 728

In Confucianism, emotions were not linked to any external objects of worship or to any transcendent, supernatural realm. In this unification of reason and emotion, which is embedded into the emotio-rational structure, people are hence never separated from their actual relationships. According to Li, it therefore also represents a foundation of the specific social system defined by relationalism (guanxizhuyi 關係主義). This social system “allows emotion to permeate in interpersonal relations with the sincere emotion of parent-child love as the root, substance, and foundation” (Jia 2018, 156). Thus it is not a coincidence that in traditional China, families were linked to the state through the ideal of a good citizen; in Confucian ethics, a good citizen first had to be a good family member. The core idea behind such an outlook is that regulating the relationships in one’s own family is what leads to a well-ordered state. Here, we could refer to the well-known but controversial story from the Confucian Analects, in which Confucius exposes the primary importance of emotional attachment between family members:

The Duke of She recounted to Confucius, “In our society we have truly upright people: if their father had stolen a sheep, they will bear witness to the fact.” Confucius replied, “In our society we understand uprightness in a different way. Sons cover for their fathers and vice versa. For us, such an attitude is upright.”¹⁶

葉公語孔子曰:「吾黨有直躬者，其父攘羊，而子證之。」孔子曰: 「吾黨之直者異於是。父為子隱，子為父隱，直在其中矣」.

Lunyu s.d., Zi Lu: 18

Li claims that such relationality (primarily between parents and children) and the emotio-rational structure of relationships belong to the crucial topics of the Analects. They are seen as much more important as the public reason alone. In his view (Li, Zehou 2016, 1094), Mencius, who emphasized that compassionate governance arises from compassionate hearts and highlights the importance of sincerity (emotional concordance) in moral action, also proceeded from similar ideas.

In this system, the emotio-rational structure also provides a basis for harmony, which, according to Li, has a higher value than justice that is based exclusively on reason without taking into account human emotions. The effects of the emotio-rational structure manifest themselves in human culture and society through a different kind of regulation, a kind of dynamically balanced “justice,” which considers concrete circumstances and emotions. Li advocates such effects of the emotio-rational structure by arguing that they might correct the liberalist notion of public reason, especially its overemphasis on formal and procedural justice, the atomic individual, and absolute free choice (Li, Zehou 2016, 1130).

As we have seen in the beginning of this section, the focus on the integration of emotion and reason rather than mere reason constitutes a specific feature of the pragmatic reason and reveals the methodological gap between this kind of traditional Chinese reasonableness and the rationality represented by transcendental reason. Therefore, the relation between reason and emotion is also the philosophical foundation for understanding the crucial differences between traditional Chinese and traditional Western ethics:

Humans are still animals, not gods, and cannot completely rid themselves of desires, which is why we have the question of the emotio-rational structure. Aristotle and many other Western philosophers such as David Hume give various distinctions and descriptions regarding how emotions and desires are separate and what it is like to experience them, but they do not get at the root of the issue in their discussions. In contrast, classical Confucian works have stressed the emotio-rational structure from the outset and indeed took it as their starting point.

Li, Zehou 2016, 1069

In Li’s view, this psychological structure should also be taken into account in contemporary societies, which are defined by a surplus of artificial desires:

Traditional Chinese philosophy … views humans as rational while also recognizing them as organisms with instinctual animal desires and natural needs. We cannot simply write off these important factors through rational moral concepts. The market economies we see today open this Pandora’s Box of instinctual desires. They effectively satisfy as well as produce various desires in people, even to the point of creating an overflow of materialistic desire. We cannot adequately resolve this issue by engaging only rational principles and moral laws and failing to discuss the emotio-rational structure.

ibid., 1071

On the other hand, Li also highlights the insufficiencies and dangers of a complete amalgamation of reason and emotions, in which reason does not maintain its primary and dominant role. He points out that in its rigid form, such a blending became an impediment for the balanced evolvement of traditional Chinese society:

Due to the fact that the emotio-rational structure, which was rooted in the “one-world-view,” never produced a strict borderline between emotion and cognition, the instrumental and axiological reason were fused together and formed a single, unified entity that could not lead to a development of modern science and democracy.

由於 “一個世界” 的情理結構使情感與理知沒有清楚劃分，工具理性與價值理性混為一體，也就開不出現代的科學與民主.

Li Zehou 2010a, 10

Li’s opinion was that in spite of the importance and all positive potentialities of the emotio-rational structure, it was also extremely important not to confuse it with a blurring of the dividing line between reason and emotion in the sphere of political philosophy. In this context, he also highlights the need for contemporary China to enact and adhere to a strict division between state and religion. According to him, this is important in order to deconstruct the traditional trinity of politics, ethics, and religion, because in his view, this “trinity” is nothing but the traditional “rule of one man” (Li Zehou and Liu Xuyuan 2012, 16).

Such relicts of traditional Chinese religious morality can lead to favoritism and even to the despotism of so-called human feelings (ren qing 人情), a notion that is still often used to cover up private interests or a greedy desire for power. The Chinese people must not allow these distortions or negative aspects of their own tradition to destroy the legal system (ibid.).

Therefore, the Confucian emotio-rational structure has to be adjusted in a way that could meet the requirements of the modern era. Here, the role of individual autonomy is of utmost importance. In Li’s view, the Confucian veneration for the humanness (ren xing 人性) must be linked to a profound respect for the individual.

Confucianism always regarded humanness as a foundation. Regardless of the particular field on which Confucianism was elaborating, no matter whether it spoke of ethics, politics, or religion, humanness was always of major importance. It was the crucial point of “rituality” and also of “humaneness,” and it was the main concern of both Mencius and Xunzi. Humanness, however, is always directly linked to individual psychological sensitivity. Thus, the emotio-rational structure can only be established on such grounds.

儒學向以人性為根本，講倫理、政治、宗教或統攝或歸結為人性問題。不管是 “禮” 是 “仁”，是孟是荀，人性問題始終乃關鍵所在。人性與個體的感性心理直接關聯， 由此才可能產生情理結構的建造.

Li Zehou 2010a, 10

Li sees such a modified structure as a possible foundation of his own version of “liberalism” (ibid., 12), which could be achieved through a modernized revival of Chinese tradition:

Based on the promotion of modern ideas and aiming to construct a new, future humanness, we can gradually, through education, preserve and modify deep levels of traditional emotio-rational structure.

以宣傳現代觀念為根本，以建立未來的人性為鵠的，通過教育，來逐漸既保存又改換傳統的情理深層結構.

ibid.

In this context, it is also important to note that Li Zehou has always criticized anti-rational and anti-enlightenment thought, constantly supporting and promoting ideals of reason. He also claims, on the other hand, that people should not stop at this point, but rather advance beyond it. The enlightenment movement has brought about numerous significant ideas and ideals, which became an indispensable foundation of modern progressive societies. But ultimately, the enlightenment movement is only a particular stage in the evolution of humankind. It reopens many new, equally (or even more) important questions, as for instance those regarding the method by which the emotio-rational structure, with its connection of reason, emotions and desires, produces humanness and human mind. He emphasizes:

Postmodern anti-rationalism is destructive, whereas I put forth “emotion as substance” and “the emotio-rational structure” as a constructive way of discussing human psychology and human nature. These ideas draw on Chinese tradition and have universal significance. And I hope that these ideas and the practical development of modern China will intersect, cooperate, and mutually influence one another.

Li, Zehou 2016, 1074

In the evolution of humankind, the shaping of the emotio-rational structure took place as a part of the process of the humanization of nature (zirande renhua 自然的人化). Because Li Zehou is mainly interested in the internal aspects of this humanization, he also emphasizes those aspects of the emotio-rational structure, which manifest themselves in the core inner features of humanness as the harmonious concord of emotions with rational conceptions of good and evil, as well as with the free will and other human capacities.¹⁷ Therefore, the emotio-rational structure is a formation of moral psychology. In this sense, it is absolute: unlike the social contents of ethics, which necessarily change with time, this structure is not subject to any substantial modifications. Li understands humanness (ren xing 人性) as referring to the cultural-psychological formation that is particular to human beings and not shared by animals (Li, Zehou 2018, 22). This means that in individuals, it manifests itself in the emotio-rational structure. It is developed and cultivated in the process of cultural sedimentation, but in principle, it belongs to formations that are already shaped on its lowest, widest and most general level, which Li calls “the sedimentation of species (wuzhong jidian 物種積澱).” The difference between this human mental formation and emotions, which are observed in certain animals is, that in the emotio-rational structure, there is also a rational element, yet this rational element is distinct from mechanical rationality.

Regarding the concrete individuals, these formations include innate (e.g., physiological) and acquired (e.g., cultural) differences. This means that the emotio-rational structure sedimented in each individual mind cannot be the same. Here, we must not forget that in Li’s view, sedimentation is an ongoing progression, formation, and process: “It is precisely the individual differences of sedimentation, which create the potential for a breakthrough and change in the original sedimentation. It is surely the different emotio-rational structure of individuals, that gives a person creativity” (Li, Zehou 2018, 25).

Human emotio-rational structure can offer us methods for establishing and developing a well-balanced psychology in order to proliferate social harmony and the cultivation of individual emotions and thus, to achieve “good life” or “common good” (Li, Zehou 2016, 1138). Li Zehou is convinced that replacing one-dimensional views of reason as the only supreme force with the more complex emotio-rational structure could provide us with new, modern, and universalizing means of harmonizing morality and ethics, inner cultivation and social norms, individuals and society, as well as private and political realms. In other words, the emotio-rational structure could show us the “new way of the inner sage and external ruler.” Hence, Li developed his theory of emotio-rational structure, which is based upon traditional Chinese thought, as a possible inspiration for and contribution to the construction of new moralities not only for contemporary China, but also for the humankind. His fruitful and creative combinations of Confucian ethics with Kantian rationality aim to develop this theory further. Through his creative transformation and integration with various modern forms of public reason Li hopes that the Confucian ethics of valuing human existence could become a general ideal and a universal value that “contribute to the remedy of the critical conditions of contemporary times and the new construction of humanity and world cultural order” (Jia 2018, 179).

3 Emotion-Based Substance

Characteristic of Chinese tradition, the “emotio-rational structure” belongs to the most significant and central theoretical models constituting Li’s philosophy in general and his ethical thought in particular. The concept of qing 情, which is central to this model, is also a key component of another important notion of Li’s system, one which underlies the specific development of Chinese culture. This is the notion of the so-called emotion-based substance (qing benti 情本體).¹⁸ Because both terms emphasize the significance of emotions, some scholars have difficulties to clearly differentiate between them (see for instance Li Zehou 2014, 3). Li defined the difference between the two concepts in the following way:

They are by no means the same. Their focus is completely different. “Emotion-based substance” refers to that which people regard as the basic value and position. “Structure,” on the other hand, refers to the concrete interweaving of this (emotion) with “reason.” It transmits various types of relations, proportions and dynamic changes of “emotion and reason” that manifest themselves in the complexity of humanness.

不同一，著重有所不同。 “情本體” 是就它對人是有根本價值、地位而言。 “結構” 是就它與 “理性” 具體交織而言，突出的是 “情理” 關係的各種不同比例、比重和變動不居，這也就是複雜的人性.

ibid.

Li uses the concept to demonstrate how emotions are fundamentally constitutive of human psychology and thus of actual human existence on individual as well as communal level (D’Ambrosio et al. 2016, 1061).¹⁹ Emotion-based substance represents the most basic features defining the human mind, for it is something that surpasses the narrow and limited realm of experience (see Liu Zaifu 2016, 2). For Li Zehou, the concept was important especially because human emotions possess the ability to engage with reality in a very direct but simultaneously very profound way. Undergoing an emotion is a way in which the world manifests itself to us (Hatzimoysis 2009, 215). This basic nature of emotion and sensitivity is that which makes them crucial for a philosophical analysis of the way, in which human beings perceive their life and especially in which they—consequently—interact with other people. Hence, questions regarding the sensual, emotion-based perception (or experience) of the relationships in which we live are important ethical questions per se. Therefore, Li Zehou’s concept of the emotion-based substance is not only fundamental for his general theory of anthropo-historical ontology, but also for his ethics.

As we have seen in the previous chapters, Li Zehou established his theory upon a double ontology, which is composed of the techno-social (or instrumental) substance (gongju benti 工具本體) on the one side, and the psychological substance (xinli benti 心理本體) on the other. In the Chinese tradition, the core element of the former is “du” while the crucial part of the latter is “qing” in the sense of emotional responsiveness (Li Zehou 2012c, 72). Hence, the emotion-based substance is typical of the Chinese culture; it was shaped on the corresponding cultural level of sedimentation (wenhua jidian 文化積澱) and represents a major element of China’s traditional religious morality.

Although Li mentioned the concept of emotion-based substance several times in his early works (see Li Zehou and Liu Xuyuan 2011, 9), he provided an integral theoretical explanation of this notion for the first time in his book Pragmatic Reason and a Culture of Optimism (Shiyong lixing yu legan wenhua 實用理性與樂感文化). Emotion-based substance is the core concept, necessary for the understanding of Li’s idea of the specifically Chinese culture of pleasure. He uses the term substance (benti) not in the sense of a noumenon that is different and separated from the sphere of phenomena, but simply as the “basis” (genben 根本), the “root” (bengen 本根), or the “ultimate reality” (zui hou shizai 最後實在) of everything actually existing in the material world.²⁰ This means that emotion, which occurs in the empirical world (Li Zehou and Liu Xuyuan 2011a, 27) is the basic ontological ground of all human life (Li Zehou 2008, 54):

The so-called substance is the ultimate reality, which cannot be further questioned regarding the meaning of its existence. It surpasses the empirical causalities. That, which exceeds the substance of psychology, is god or a spirit. That, which departs from the psychology of substance, is science or a machine. Therefore, the ultimate and genuine substance is actually nothing else but the structure of human sensibility.

所謂本體即是不能問其存在意義的最後實在, 它是對經驗因果的超 越。離開了心理的本體是上帝, 是神; 離開了本體的心理是科學, 是機器。所以最後的本體實在其實就在人的感性結構中.

Li Zehou and Liu Xuyuan 2011b, 54

Because it includes the situational connotation, emotion-based substance is by no means a firmly established, static normative system. Rather, it represents an open structure, which causes human beings with their vital sedimentations to continuously confront new aspects of their life. They can always encounter new uncertainties and it is precisely this coincidental nature of human life that creates the universal and necessary laws of history (ibid.). Therefore, the substance of our life lies in our actual experiences, which continuously give rise to our emotions and unconsciously shape our values. They are inevitably linked to and shared by our fellow people but at the same time, they are the most intimate quintessence of our inwardness. Due to the ontological structure of emotion, the world always matters to us in one way or another, and in this sense, emotion is one of our primary ways of experiencing what actually matters and for which reasons. Li writes:

Perhaps this is the reason why people can overcome death and conquer their worries, troubles, and fears. Only in this way can we experience the ultimate principle that is hidden in our everyday relationships beyond the moral imperatives, without a transcendent god, devoid of all estranged spirits or immovable rational models. We can find it in the warmth of our human interactions, in the joy of springtime. Only in this way can we experience that which is spirit and matter, existence and meaning at the same time. This is the real essence of human life. We taste, cherish, and look back on all these coincidences, mourning our losses and enjoying life, including all absurdness it brings about. We treasure the sensitivity of our existence and thereby do we obtain a genuine understanding of our life. Human beings are not machines, and neither animals. Here, the “absence” becomes “presence.”²¹

也許只有這樣, 才能戰勝死亡, 克服 “憂”、“煩”、“畏”。只有這樣, “道在倫常日用之中” 才不是道德的律令、超越的上帝、疏離的精神、不動的理式, 而是人際的溫暖、歡樂的春天。它才可能既是精神又為物質, 是存在又是意識, 是真正的生活、生命和人生。品味、珍惜、回首這些偶然, 淒恰地歡度生的荒謬, 珍重自己的情感生存, 人就可以 “知命” 人就不是機器, 不是動物 “無” 在這里便生成為 “有”.

ibid.

On a certain level, such a view can be compared to Heidegger’s idea of emotion (see for instance Hatzimoysis 2009). However, Li exposes that there are important differences between Heidegger’s and his own understanding (Li Zehou and Liu Xuyuan 2011b, 55). According to him, Heidegger’s concept denotes a kind of “blind impulses” (ibid.). Due to Heidegger’s distinction between authenticity and inauthenticity, they are in fact empty. For Li Zehou, this is a big mistake and a result of the fact, that Heidegger was not able (or not willing) to surpass the “two-world view” characteristic of Western philosophy. In Chinese philosophy, on the other hand, authenticity is concealed in the inauthenticity, just as the finite is hidden in infinity.

On the other hand, Li points out that Heidegger’s anti-rationalism is emotional (Li Zehou 2016b, 78) while simultaneously relying on standard rational argumentation. It is for this reason that in Li’s view, Heidegger, (and not Plato or Kant), is still the most suitable Western reference for debating Chinese culture and emotion-based substance. Here, he suggests a comparison between Confucius’ famous slogan, “How can you know about death if you don’t know about life”²² (Lunyu s.d., Gong Ye Chang: 19) and Heidegger’s notion, which can be summarized in the opposite question “How can you know about life if you don’t know about death” (Heidegger 2001, 252). Here, the Confucian idea emphasizes the importance of normal everyday life, which becomes the basis for the authenticity. Living in the world and relating to other people is a substitution for the relationship between the individual and god (Li Zehou 2016b, 79). The sacredness of this idea lies in secular life. It is here where we can find the genuine depth of substance. Indeed, the confrontation with death brings about a deep sense of unique individual identity, the awareness that one cannot be replaced, nor return to this world. In fact, even though the only possible mode of our existence is coexistence with others, each person is still a unique, irreplaceable individual, just as every passing moment is exclusive, unique, and discrete.

In addition, Li exposes that Zhu Xi’s critique of Buddhism can be applied to Heidegger as well. Neither was able to explain the question of how something substantial can arise from empty nothingness or from “nonbeing.” In his view, this problem can be solved by a return to the material, concrete world, to the world of human emotions, because the unity of philosophy and religion can be found in everyday life. The world is originally empty, and human beings, which are thrown into it, are also empty because their life as such is meaningless. In the end, we all have to die. In Li’s view, this is what Heidegger implies when he writes that we all are going toward the realm of nothingness or nonbeing (Heidegger 1967, 431; 2001, 343). Confucian philosophy, on the other hand, finds the meaning of life in life itself. We have to appreciate every moment because there is no transcendent reality and no god beyond our actual existence.

Li believes that Heidegger’s Befindlichkeit, feeling, and Dasein are still abstract, rational and universal. Furthermore, after Heidegger’s idea of being-toward-death and Angst, people still need to live (Li Zehou 2016b, 86). Since humans live in concrete social relations and circumstances, attempting to strip away this solid and actual “presence” (you 有) in order to pursue an illusory “absence” (wu 無) is, from the perspective of the Chinese “culture of pleasure” (legan wenhua 樂感文化), just like “trying to catch a fish by climbing a tree” (yuan mu qiu yu 緣木求魚) (ibid.).

However, it is clear that once we say goodbye to the faith in external deities, abstract ideas, transcendent ultimate reality, or other supernatural entities, we find ourselves in a difficult situation bare of comfort or security. We are thrown back upon ourselves. Thus, it is important to authentically live our life, because the ultimate reality lies precisely in the sensitivity of our existence. There is no superb and mysterious substance beyond the tangible substance of our emotion (Li Zehou and Liu Xuyuan 2011b, 56). Hence, even though the emotion-based substance is no longer a metaphysical noumenon, it is still called substance, for it implies both the real existence and the ultimate meaning.

Although (the idea and the form of) this substance arose in the classical Chinese culture, its significance is not limited to the Chinese tradition but can also prove itself to be extremely relevant for the contemporary world. It could lead modern societies to a “second Renaissance” by helping us to overcome the mechanistic domination of technology and the alienation it brings about. In Li’s view, the awareness of the emotion-based substance can namely liberate people from the misty realms of postmodern worldviews just as the Renaissance has helped people to defeat the estrangement of mysticism.

In ancient Chinese philosophy, especially in the classical Confucian teachings, emotion-based substance was understood as the ontological foundation of existence not only regarding human life, but also in terms of the entire universe. Hence, Li advocates a return to classical Confucian ethical approaches, which interpret emotions as the foundation of morality (D’Ambrosio 2016: 720). He argues that human emotions are the starting point of the Way (dao 道)²³ and that they manifest themselves in ritualistic aspects of daily life (lijie 禮節).²⁴ Hence, in his view, the foundation of ritual and obligations lies in human emotions, not in any external realm. Here, human emotions are the root or the substance of human existence, since they are based on the innate human heart-mind (xin 心), which is not transcendental or a priori (in the Kantian sense), but is nevertheless surpassing the limitations of the tangible and transitory world. On the other side, however, emotions manifest themselves in daily human affairs, being so natural and self-evident that they are often not even realized. Li argues that in classical Confucianism, concepts such as sincerity, respect, affection, loyalty, trustworthiness, and empathy are doubtless seen as concrete emotional states and not as some rational concepts linked to an abstract mind (Li Zehou 2016b, 73).

Emotions are the essential binder that connects people within discrete relationships. In this way, Confucianism amounts to a moral interpretation of relationships as the fundamental constituents of human life and morality. Relationships bring about and cultivate human feelings and emotions. Through socialization and habitual practice people learn to transform their natural instincts and inclinations into virtues (ibid., 727), which, in turn, must be associated with particular relationships. According to Li Zehou, relationships are not merely rational practices or systems in society. We must not forget that they are acknowledged, accepted, sustained, and developed by emotions.

As mentioned, the idea of emotion as a root of existence or a special substance that is grounded in the tangible, phenomenal world, was shaped and developed in ancient China, especially in the scope of original Confucian teachings. In the pre-Qin era, the concept of emotion was hence highly evaluated. During the Neo-Confucian period of the Song and Ming dynasties, however, emotion (which also included intentions, wishes, and desires) was mainly seen as something negative, something that had to be wiped out.²⁵ However, gradually starting in the 17th century, and explosively culminating in the May 4th Movement (1919), emotion was “rehabilitated” since in this “Chinese enlightenment movement” wishes and desires were seen as important driving forces of scientific progress. However, the negative connotation of the term remained in existence in the advancement of the Modern or New Confucian (xin ruxue 新儒學) stream of thought and in moral philosophies that were created in the scope of this current, because its representatives mainly based their theories on Neo-Confucian approaches. In a longer essay entitled “The Failure of the Song and Ming Neo-Confucian Quest for Transcendentalism” (Song Ming lixue zhuiqiu chaoyande shibai 宋明理學追求超驗的失敗)²⁶ Li sharply criticized their views on the issue. He concludes that similar to their Neo-Confucian predecessors, Modern Confucians failed in creating an intelligible moral metaphysics because they did not pay attention to a crucial difference between the cultural-psychological formations of religious and shamanistic cultures. While the former were rooted in the realm of transcendence and interpreted human life (including its essential value) upon this foundation, the latter—which prevailed in the origins of Chinese tradition—proceeded from the concrete human condition and created human spiritual life based on its tangible physical foundations that were rooted in the concrete material world (Li Zehou 2008, 68). In his view, we therefore need to reexamine the notion of emotion-based substance as the core of Chinese philosophy and culture.

In the shaping of the emotion-based substance during the course of the Chinese cultural sedimentation, the central Confucian virtue of humaneness (ren 仁) played a very important role. This is understandable considering the etymological meaning of the term as explained in the Shuowen jiezi 說文解字 (Interpreting Texts and Explaining Characters). Its author Xu Shen 許慎 (ca. 58–148) suggests the character 仁 indicated that human beings could only exist in communities with other people: thus, the original meaning implies that people depend on each other and that we therefore simply cannot afford not to love, cherish, and help each other. What the original meaning expresses, is therefore a deep feeling of mutual interpersonal empathy (see Rošker 2019, 298).

Confucianism sees humaneness as “the heart-mind of Heaven”²⁷ and emphasizes that heaven and earth, the cosmos and human society, are rooted in harmonious human relationships that are based on a shared sense of community.²⁸ Since in this way, nature and its laws were psychologized (i.e., conceived in terms of human emotions), there is no need “for a religion revolving around a personified deity, nor for the eternity and immortality of the soul that transcends the sensible world of time and space, because eternity and immortality are found within it” (Li, Zehou 1999c, 54).

Hence, Li identifies humaneness as Confucius’s crucial concept and takes it as a basic virtue covering the five abovementioned vital levels that determine traditional Chinese social system, namely the basis of blood (kinship) relations, psychological principles, humanism, ideal personality and pragmatic reason, which conducts and pervades all other, mutually intertwined, levels. Through the reciprocal interaction of these factors, Confucius used humaneness to preserve and develop rituality, which helped people to internalize external ethical regulations in order to transform them into a vital part of individual inwardness. The foundation of all these levels, however, is precisely the psychological principle of emotions. (Li Zehou 1985, 16). In such a framework, secular life was cherished and emotions functioned as the main source through which the world was experienced. Hence, emotions were the very foundation on which people established and preserved their mutual relations:

Every day, every moment, people experience emotions stimulated from their various relations within their family and community: parent-child, lord-subject, brothers, husband-wife, and friends. Emotions are socially, ethically, and interpersonally defined and interwoven to become the substance of human life and community.

In other words, emotions define and accompany the shared experience of human existence and society, and emotional energy is the main motivating force in social life. With ren as the core, moral emotions express themselves in morally respectable actions that harmonize interpersonal relations and maintain social order and sustainability.

Jia 2018, 163

In this context, emotion-based substance generates positive feelings and thereby constructively influences social attitudes. Precisely because of this aspect, the Chinese emotion-based substance has obtained such wide ethical implications. In such a view, ethical life is always emotional and virtues are therefore inclinational.

Scholars such as Jia (ibid., 165) shows that this was not the case in the Western tradition, in which the study of moral psychology had traditionally focused on moral reasoning. This view is somewhat too general and does not apply to the entirety of this tradition, which also contained and historically developed numerous sensualist ideas. Even in the Enlightenment era, which witnessed the formation of the groundwork of modern Western ethics, sensualism belonged to those discourses that were taken seriously in the academic world. However, although the sentimentalist stream of thought—especially its main representative David Hume²⁹—became influential in some areas of philosophy, modern Western moral discourses were still most profoundly influenced by Kant’s views, according to which morality must be based on a duty that applies moral laws through reason.³⁰ Hence, as Jia Jinhua exposes (2016, 758), even though in recent decades Western theoreticians developed a revitalized interest in the role of feelings in ethics and morality, it is still under debate whether key emotional experiences such as love can be seen as moral emotion. Hence, it is important that “Li Zehou’s study of the Confucian ethics of emotion with the general love of ren as its core provides a rich source for filling this gap” (ibid.).³¹ Wang Yunping also notes (2008, 352) that the “Confucian understanding of emotions and their ethical importance confirms and exemplifies the contemporary Western renewed understanding of the nature of emotions.” According to Wang, the reason for the ethical significance of emotions in the Chinese tradition is both that emotions are heavenly endowed and that there exists a union of emotions and reason in Confucian ethics (ibid.). Such a view poses a significant challenge to the predominant Western theories of ethics that have commonly dealt with a search for confirming abstract and normative moral rules.

However, Li’s concept of emotion-based substance has also been criticized (or at least questioned) by some scholars. Wang Jing, for instance, exposes that Li does not primarily define it in terms of individuals, but rather as a kind of shared, collective social consciousness (Wang 1996, 104). In his opinion, such a substance implies the subjugation of the individual to the collective concerns. However, in this context, we ought to remember that in traditional China, ethics was not confined to a strict divide between individuals and society. In Li’s schema of the development of human ethics, we can also clearly see that the shaping of ethics began through a collective emotionality that permeated all human condition, and that it is completed in the individual emotion. Hence, when considering Li Zehou’s work as a whole, it becomes rather clear that he understands emotion as something that embraces both the collective and the individual aspects.

Besides, we must not forget that traditional Confucian ethics was relational; it was a type of the so-called role ethics (see Ames 2011, Rosemont and Ames 2016). This kind of ethics was an integral part of the social system that was based on the special features of what Li Zehou called “relationalism,” which does not correspond with any of the existing Western categories or models, in which the individuals enter into their social relations as independent and isolated selves. In contrast to such views, the Confucian person is constituted by the social roles she lives. In such social networks, human beings cannot be abstracted or separated from their relations with others.³² Because the individual is constituted by social relations and depends on them, it seems logical that the community exists before the individual.

Although the emotion-based substance is an important element of Chinese traditional religious morality, Li Zehou also promotes its incorporation into modern institutions (D’Ambrosio et al. 2016, 1061). Here, the emphasis lies on the cultivation of human emotions on a personal level based on individual rights. Such an incorporation of emotional contents and elements into contemporary ethics could serve as a foundation for generating communal harmony and interpersonal benevolence. This idea is tightly linked to his presumption, according to which “harmony is higher than justice.”

Against this background, it seems only natural that Li’s idea of emotion-based substance was highly influential among contemporary Chinese philosophers. In his prominent book The Ontology of Discourses on Humaneness (Renxue bentilun 仁學本體論), Chen Lai 陳來 proposes to replace Li’s notion with the substance of humaneness (ren benti 仁本體). Wu Ning, a reviewer of this book, summarizes the difference between the two contemporary theoreticians and their central notions in the following way:

After comparing his ontology of humanity³³ with Li’s ontology of emotion, Chen finds some similarities. Nevertheless, the flaws of Li’s metaphysics are evident. For example, it is hard to distinguish the theory of emotional entity from naturalism; also, Li’s interpretation of emotion is not philosophical, but anthropological, historical, or psychological.

Wu 2015, 453

Chen Lai himself seems to see the crucial difference between Li’s emotion-based substance and his own focus on humaneness rather in their basic attitudes toward and relations with Western or global philosophies. He writes:

Li Zehou hopes that Chinese philosophy will appear on the stage in the realm of global philosophy; therefore, he suggests that we should “enter the world.” But my position, on the other hand, mainly emphasizes that we have to adapt, renew, and develop our heritance in accord with contemporary Chinese culture. We should participate in the revival and the evolvement of a new Confucian philosophy in such a way, instead of chiefly proceeding from the foundations of global philosophy. This, of course, does not imply a negation of the importance of confronting the modern world.

李澤厚表達的是要 “走進世界” 即從世界哲學的範圍對中國哲學登場的期盼，而我們的立場則以適應中國當代文化傳承和創新發展、參與中華文化的複興、發展新的儒家哲學的需要為主，並非專以世界哲學為思考基點，但無可否認也包含了針對現代世界的意義.

Chen Lai 2014, 409

In a recent article about his ontology of humaneness, Chen Lai argues that the ontologies of emotion and humaneness are actually related and he seems to point to the possibility that the difference between Li Zehou and himself is to a certain extent only a terminological one. He writes:

Li Zehou also exposes that Confucianism takes humaneness as its root. However, it never occurred to him that actually, humaneness could also be regarded as substance. Especially considering the fact that he saw humaneness as an emotional experience, it seems that in his understanding, this Confucian idea of humaneness as the root was merely another way of expressing emotion as a root.

李澤厚也提到儒家以仁為體，但他從未想過以仁為本體，特別是他所理解的仁是情感經驗，因此他所理解的儒家以仁為體也只不過是以情為體的一種說法

Chen Lai 2014, 50

However, he then criticizes Li for neglecting the possibility of establishing a humaneness-based substance (ren benti 仁本體) and focusing entirely on the sensitive nature of humaneness, emphasizing thereby its role in the human experience of love. In Chen’s own view, however, the notion of humaneness had obtained much wider and, in fact, universal connotations already present in Neo-Confucian discourses, which treated it as a dynamic totality of the continuous flow of vital forces (qi 氣). Therefore, he points out that for Zhu Xi and his contemporaries, humaneness was already seen as an entireness comprising all possibilities for a sustainable evolvement of human life, i.e., as the substance of the Way (2014a, 50–51).³⁴

Regarding his own interpretation of the emotion-based substance, Chen first notes that Li was correct in exposing the characteristics of the traditional Chinese understanding of the substance, which—unlike the Western noumenon—is rooted in phenomena. However, he also cannot help but mention (ibid., 50) that this is a common knowledge, which had already been elaborated at great lengths by Zhang Dainian (and is hence nothing new to experts in Chinese philosophy). He finds additional problematic aspects in Li’s alleged emphasis on the individual and also in his materialist worldview:

In Li Zehou’s anthropo-historical ontology, the substance is equated with the concrete living individual. But substance cannot be the life of any particular entity as such. It can only pertain to the life of innumerable individuals. Furthermore, the individual Li exposes in this context cannot be brought in accord with his overall theory. Especially regarding the “common existence of human beings and the cosmos,” he should not understand it as being linked to individual people. This kind of common existence can only be obtained through the transcendence of the individual. He also repeatedly emphasizes that this common existence of men and cosmos is based on “material synergy.” Now, if this common existence only refers to a material one, then it highlights materialism, but simultaneously, it loses its ethical meaning. In such a case, it can only refer to an inseparable unity between human beings as a biologic and physical species on the one side, and the material attributes of the external world on the other. Such a synergic common existence is then no longer a metaphysical one, but only pertains to physics. Li Zehou thinks that only in such a model can human beings assign their various orders upon the cosmos and the nature, respectively. However, it is completely clear that such a project is not possible if the common existence is reduced merely to the material and physical one. And besides, if the unified existence of everything that exists is only a simultaneous existence in the one and the same universe without any inherent connections, then such a common existence does not make any sense.

李澤厚也認為人類學歷史本體就是活生生的個體人的日常生活本身, 但本體不能是某一個體的生活本身,而應該是無數個體的生活本身 。不過, 這裡強調個體與其總體說不能一致。而且李澤厚講 “人與宇宙共在”，這就更不能在個體意義上講共在，而必超越個體來講共在。他又往往強調人和宇宙的共在是 “人和宇宙的物質性協同共在”，如果共在只是和物質性存在共在，這種共在雖然凸顯了唯物主義，但必然減失了倫理的意義，只能是人作為動物存在的生理物質性與外在世界在物質上一體不分。這個意義上的協同共在，已經不是形而上學的設定，只成了物理學的設定。李澤厚認為有此設定才能使人把各種秩序賦予宇宙—自然成為可能，但很明顯，只有物質性的共在是不可能實現這個任務的。更進一步，如果萬物的共在只是互相間毫無關聯地同時存在於一個宇宙之中，這種共在就沒有意義

ibid., 51

However, in Li’s system the emotion-based substance can by no means be reduced to a mere basis of individual life (even though it is reflected in it). Due to the double nature of Li Zehou’s concept of emotion (Li Zehou and Liu Yuedi 2014, 197; Li Zehou and Liu Xuyuan 2011b, 53), it is simultaneously also a foundation of collective human life (Li Zehou and Liu Yuedi 2014b, 8). While it is true that Li often focuses on problems of the human mind, he also emphasizes that internal psychological aspects of individuals are constructed and constituted through the external factors of community and society in which these individuals live. He often explains:

From externality, we have internality, just as from ritual, we have humaneness (ren 仁) … In terms of the community, ritual (ethics) comes from emotionality (as shared circumstance), whereas for the individual, reason governs emotions.

Li, Zehou 2016, 1076

Hence, Li differentiates between collective and individual emotions. The former can be denoted emotionality, and the latter as (individual) emotion or feeling. From his ethical schema,³⁵ one can clearly see that ritual regulations are based on communal emotionality that arises (as a common reaction) from shared circumstances of social life. In order to clarify this double nature of emotion, he differentiated between intention (neitui 内推) and extension (waitui 外推) of the emotion-based substance. While the former regards the realm of individual human inwardness, the latter pertains to social and political interactions (Li Zehou and Liu Xuyuan 2012, 15). Hence, Chen’s reproach that the emotion-based substance only manifests itself in and is limited to the individual realm, is groundless. The same holds true for Chen’s claim that the unity of people and nature (or heaven) cannot regard individual people, for it must be based on a transcendent human being. As we have seen, Li does not acknowledge the concept of Western-style transcendence in Chinese philosophy, but on the other hand, he emphasizes the importance of his notion of “the transformation of the empirical into the transcendental” (jingyan bian xianyan 經驗變先驗). The understanding of this notion enables us to see why and how the long lasting process of sedimentation causes that human psychological formations are perceived as being “transcendental” by individuals are in fact a product of the dynamic layering of experience and practice. Analogously, what is seen as transcendence of human beings is actually their integration into the totality of humankind (Li, Zehou 2016, 1117). In this context, it is easy to see that Chen Lai’s critique of Li’s materialism likewise lacks a comprehensive understanding of his philosophical system as an entirety. First of all, Chen’s view of materialism as not pertaining to philosophy but rather merely to physics, is highly problematic, for materialism refers to a scope of metaphysical theories (that is theories dealing with the nature of reality) belonging to philosophical monism that hold that matter is the fundamental substance in reality. Hence, Li’s theory doubtless pertains to materialist philosophy and not to physics. The fact that in Li’s view, material practice is the primary basis of human evolvement—and thus for the specific unity of human beings and nature—does not imply that human beings are confined to matter and cannot surpass the laws of their biological conditions. On the contrary, it is precisely the supra-biological nature of human beings, which enables them to transcend the mechanistic laws of physical reality. In this sense, the emotion-based substance belongs to those (culturally determined) formations of human mind that enable people to generate a specific ethics guided by pragmatic reason.

If we want to compare Chen Lai’s concept of humaneness-based substance and Li Zehou’s emotion-based substance, it is important to begin with exposing the crucial features defining the notions of humaneness and emotion, respectively. Both concepts denote cetain kinds of psychological factors that obtained a dimension of ontological fundamentality. However, in spite of this important similarity and even though they are both typical of the specifically Chinese culture and society, there are major differences between them. An often overlooked or neglected aspect, which is nevertheless very important for the investigation of humaneness, can be found in Dong Zhongshu’s elaborations of this notion, because this Han Dynasty scholar defined it as the core of the universe (ibid., 1137). Hence, such a concept of cosmological emotionality reinforced the integration of Confucianism with Legalism. In this way, it has bounded China’s political and religious institutions together for over two millennia (ibid.).

However, we must not forget that in contrast to humaneness, the concept of emotion is defined by much wider connotations, for it does not only imply interpersonal empathy but also includes negative emotions like hate or jealousy, and especially wishes or desires. A human substance, which also influences social ethics, has to take into consideration the entirety of emotions and not only their constructive elements.

On the other hand, humaneness as an important factor of human mind also includes rational (or reasonable) elements. Hence, in the Chinese culture, it is constructed as a part of the emotio-rational structure.³⁶ Indeed, the notion of humaneness is also a significant concept in Li’s philosophy, for it stands for an inner development, which is directed toward an altruistic goal and is based upon the vital importance of interpersonal relationships. However, the emotion-based substance goes beyond such developments, for it represents the fundamental value and the integral role of emotions per se for the existence and development of human beings and their cultures. On the other hand, humaneness in the sense of a central virtue of traditional, especially Confucian China, also plays a dominant role in the process of cultivating human emotion, which is a predisposition for the proper functioning of the specifically Chinese ethics of relationalism. Against this background, it becomes clear that the two notions are different but also stand in important mutual interaction. However, the emotion-based substance has wider and more fundamental implications than Chen’s notion of the humaneness-based ontology, for the concept of humaneness is mainly limited to the metaphysical dimensions of the emotio-rational structure of the (Confucian) human mind.