Li Zehou’s ethics is permeated with traditionally Chinese, particularly Confucian elements. One of the most crucial ones is visible in his continuous (although rarely explicit) emphasis on the importance of education. Here, at the very end of this book, we could contemplate for a moment on the implications that Li’s system can offer to the vast arena of human learning.

In the summer of 2018, during the time in which this book was written, Beijing University hosted the World Congress of Philosophy, which takes place in various regions every five year. This time, the general English title of this huge international congress was Learning to Be Human. In his philosophy, Li also often emphasizes the importance of the same notion. In the Chinese transcription, however, the title differs from Li’s concept. While the Chinese organizers have chosen the phrase Xue yi cheng ren 學以成人 to denote the notion, Li uses a shorter and more explicit version Xue zuo ren 學做人. While the former emphasizes becoming human as a purpose of learning, the latter is a simple description of the process, based upon a statement often and commonly used by the Chinese people when relating to or proposing a form of moral fulfilment and duty. Li often emphasizes that the notion plays a central role in the Chinese social and cultural education. At the same time, he lays stress upon its importance in the realms of social, as well as religious morality.

Hence, it is of no surprise that education is one of the central elements defining his system: as we can see from his Overview Scheme of Ethics, it is the core factor that leads from rituality to the condensation of reason. Together with the laws of historical development, which guide human evolvement from collective emotionality to the rituals, education forms a central power that leads to the shaping of the emotio-rational formation, which is a specific feature of human beings and belongs to their basic fundamentals.

In such a conceptualization, the notion of education is understood in its wider social connotations. The scheme further reveals the value of such an education in regard to the questions of human-becoming. In this view, which is basically defined by Confucian orientations and perspectives, the ontology of humanness (ren xing) is not limited to direct and one-dimensional activities of material practice, even though such practice is a fundamental and continuously evolving root of human existence. The originally pure material practice leads to the formation of reason and emotion and to the construction of language and logical thought. As we have seen from his theory of the transformation of the empirical into the transcendental, these abstract and ideational entities are retroactively influencing, changing and reshaping the material practice. Without them, there would be no progress and no evolution of the humankind. Although in such a (purely fictive) case, the material practice could in theory still mark the foundations of that which makes us human, our existence would nevertheless remain caught into a never-ending circle of qualitatively identical stages of history, directed merely toward a purely physical survival. It is the ideational element that leads to advancement.

However, the interesting thing about education and its role in the forming of human beings is that even though it is commonly understood as something directly and intimately linked to reason, it is—in Li’s system—included in the idea of human material practice. Human material practice has to be learned, and as we all know, learning is a crucial aim of any education. Because it is a part of the human material practice yet is simultaneously linked to reason and emotions, education allows for the shaping of ontologically fundamental psychology (xinli cheng benti 心理成本體). In this view, the human inwardness becomes a crucial field for investigating deepest levels of reality and existence. But since the field as such is posited in a basic materialist framework, the ultimate grounds of being are still connected to the concept of matter.

The continuously, dynamically changing root of our existence is matter. This would normally imply that matter is basically what we are but in Li’s system, matter can only be thought of as something separated from idea. In any concrete reality, it can only exist in mutual amalgamation and interaction with the idea. Hence, in the framework of his anthropo-historical theory, both matter and idea are firmly embedded into this existential origin, even though on the conceptual level, matter precedes ideas and dominates them.

Along with the human will and in addition to the emotion, concepts or ideas are seen as crucial elements of reason. If we speak about education, which orients itself towards reason, but that can also be material, empirical and emotional, we cannot but acknowledge its value and its potentials. “Pragmatic reason,” for instance, could not be maintained or developed without education. The latter is also crucial in the various particular (i.e., culturally and situationally conditioned) methods of shaping moral values. In Li’s view, these are diverse and cannot be judged and even less universalized. And yet, Li remains aware of the specific requirements of the times and spaces in which he lives. He decidedly promotes the current necessity of preserving the values of Enlightenment, such as human will, autonomy, freedom, and human rights. Any of these values could be eliminated or exchanged in future. They are anything but eternal standards, but should nevertheless be incorporated into all presently existing social moralities.

We could add that in most cases, social education serves as one of the most faithful supporters and tools of social morality. Ergo, a positive and constructive education should preserve and promote these Enlightenment values. In Li’s view, they can help us understand who we are.

However, in regard to the traps of instrumental rationality and the exaggerated emphasis on the individual that also accompany modern development, education could also provide models of different communities based upon relationalism (guanxizhuyi) and its specific codes of social conduct. It could teach people how to grasp the proper measure du in their moral decisions.

As we have seen earlier, education lies at the root of human existence. Becoming human always means learning to be human. Human-becoming, on the other hand, is a never-ending process in which people can actively mold and shape new images and conditions of reality. In this regard, education is of utmost importance, for it can help people value their humanness in spite of all difficulties encountered in (and created by) the current world. It is precisely our humanness that makes possible the realization of our free will, through which we can achieve new possibilities of active participation in the shaping of our realities by our autonomous decisions. But in order to understand the genuine grounds of such decisions, we might envisage for a moment the idea that humanness is not something self-evident because becoming human has to be earned, and, more importantly, learned.