Li Zehou was born in 1930 in the Chinese city of Hankou and is currently living in the United States. He graduated from the Department of Philosophy at Peking University and was then a researcher and professor at the Research Institute of Philosophy at the prestigious Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS, Zhongguo shehui kexue yuan 中國社會科學院) in Beijing. As an important, renowned, and influential contemporary Chinese philosopher, he is commonly acknowledged as one of the most significant and vital theorists in post-Mao China and “the leader of the Chinese Enlightenment” of the 1980s (Chong 1999a, 3).

Li Zehou’s theory is based upon philosophically innovative and remarkably creative analyses and interpretations of aesthetics, epistemology, ethics and anthropology. It has been variously categorized as neo-traditional, romantic, historical materialist, pragmatist, Neo-Kantian, Post-Marxist, or Marxist-Confucian (Jensen 2005, 461). He advanced exceptionally creative readings of art, literature, and philosophy in the politically, culturally, and philosophically inspired period of the 1980s when it seemed that aesthetics offered the greatest prospect of recovery from the social chaos caused by the Cultural Revolution (ibid.). Among other issues, he played a prominent role in the founding of the most important Chinese philosophical academic journal Zhexue yanjiu 哲學研究 (Philosophy Research). In this journal he published one of his most significant and most influential early theoretical essays “Lun meigan, mei he yishu 論美感、美和藝術” (On Aesthetic Feeling, Beauty, and Art, 1956), with which he quickly entered the national currents of intellectual discourse in the aesthetic debates over socialist realism.¹ With this and some other influential writings, the twenty-something Li quickly became a well-known figure in the progressive academic circles. During this period, he began to actively participate in the so-called Great Debate on Aesthetics (Meixue da taolun 美學大討論) of the 1950s and 1960s,² in which he critically questioned the works of two hitherto most famous Chinese aestheticians, Zhu Guangqian 朱光潜 and Cai Yi 蔡儀. Li soon became one of the most visible proponents of this influential discourse, taking part in all of the most important controversies that decisively formed its development. Hence, it is not a coincidence that he belongs among the pioneers of modern and contemporary Chinese aesthetics.

In 1979, Li achieved scholarly distinction with the publication of his book titled Pipan zhexue de pipan: Kangde shuping 批判哲學的批判: 康德述評 (Critique of Critical Philosophy: A New Approach to Kant).³ In this theoretical reevaluation of Kantian philosophy, Li placed its central framework upon a social and materialist foundation by simultaneously incorporating into it the original Marxist definition of human beings as homo faber, i.e., as living beings developed through practice and their ability to make and to use tools in a systemic, continuous way. Humans are thus, in Li’s view, re-creating both their environment and their inwardness into something he called “humanized nature.” In this book, he formulated the sprouts of his emergent theory on the development of the human mental faculties through “sedimentation” (jidian 積澱). In this context, he redefined Kant’s a priori formations (i.e., the preempirical faculties of the human mind, which help us to perceive and to order elements of our sense impressions) mainly by borrowing and applying to this discourse the dialectical methodology of Hegel and early Marx. In most of his work, he applied a modified version of historical materialism, but selectively drawing additional inspiration from the works of Heidegger, Lukács, the Frankfurt School, Lacan, Piaget, Habermas and others. Li also deepened the problematics of the self in post-revolutionary modernism by putting forward a new concept of human beings as active agents. He expressed this reconceptualization of the human subject with his newly coined neologism subjectality (zhutixing 主體性). By contradicting the passivity of the human subjects, as well as by establishing the dialectical-materialist view of their consciousness as something that surpasses mere mechanical reflection of the material world, Li brought forward an ideational revolution. This revolution was generated in the name of beauty and was directed against all ideologies and doctrines serving the indoctrination and manipulation of human beings and limiting their humanness to a status of passive and obeying objects.

In subsequent years, Li’s influence grew constantly and gradually he gained the reputation of being one of the most important Chinese theoreticians of the twentieth century. In the first four decades after the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, Li was most famous for his work in Chinese aesthetics. His first comprehensive book on this topic was published in 1981 under the title The Path of Beauty (Meide licheng 美的歷程). His other important works on related themes include The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition (Huaxia meixue 華夏美學, 1988) and Four Essays on Aesthetics (Meixue si jiang 美學四講, 1989). These three books were later reprinted and published together in his famous collection titled Three Books on Aesthetics (Meixue sanshu 美學三書).

Because of his huge influence on young intellectuals throughout that period and due to the fact that he was one of the signatories of a petition to the government during the 1989 student movement, he was criticized in the official press after the Tian’anmen incident and indicted of being an exponent of “bourgeois liberalism” (Chong 1999a, 3). In 1992, he left China and has lived abroad ever since, returning merely for infrequent visits and as a guest lecturer at various Chinese universities. He has also been a guest professor at many Western universities, but most of the time, he taught philosophy at the University of Colorado in Boulder. After his retirement, he continues to publish academic writings.

In spite of his great fame in the field of aesthetics and Chinese art history, Li also became an extremely productive writer in other areas of philosophy. He published a wide range of articles, essays, and over thirty books, dealing with his views on Chinese intellectual history, classical Chinese and comparative philosophy, epistemology, philosophical anthropology, ontology, theories of modernization, political thought and ethics. All these works partly include a comparative perspective grounded on Li’s broad knowledge of traditional and modern Western philosophy. Due to his extreme productivity, it is rather difficult to decide which of his works deserve a special mention. Below, I will nevertheless try to point out some of his most influential books and essays.

Among the works that provide an overview of his own philosophical system and explain the crucial concepts of his theory are Wode zhexue tigang 我的哲學提綱 (The Outline of My Philosophy) and Zhexue gangyao 哲學綱要 (Outline of Philosophy). Many essays on related topics can also be found in his influential collections that include, among others, Zou wo zijide lu 走我自己的路 (Following My Own Way) and Za zhu ji 雜著集 (A Collection of Various Essays).

His works on epistemology are also hugely influential, especially those based upon his critique and elaboration of Kant’s philosophy. Besides the aforementioned Pipan zhexuede pipan—Kangde shuping 批判哲學的批判: 康德述評 (Critique of Critical Philosophy: A New Approach to Kant), an overall description and argumentation of his reinterpretation of Kant’s subjectivity and its integration into his newly coined concept of subjectality (zhutixing 主體性) can also be found in his essays titled “The Four Outlines.”⁴

Li also wrote several works on philosophical anthropology and historical ontology. These included, for instance, the well-known article titled Renlei qiyuan tigang 人類起源提綱 (Outline of the Origin of Mankind) and his Lishi bentilun 歷史本體論 (Historical Ontology) was later republished in a more completed and expanded form with the title Renleixue lishi bentilun 人類學歷史本體論 (Anthropo-Historical Ontology).

In terms of his studies in classical and traditional Chinese philosophy, immediately after the Cultural Revolution in 1979, he published the first book of his trilogy on traditional Chinese thought entitled Zhongguo jindai sixiang shilun 中國近代思想史論 (On Premodern Chinese Intellectual History). These were followed in the 1980s by Zhongguo gudai sixiang shilun 中國古代思想史論 (On Ancient Chinese Intellectual History) and Zhongguo xiandai sixiang shilun 中國現代思想史論 (On Modern Chinese Intellectual History), respectively. In 1980, he also published his influential essay Kongzi zai pingjia 孔子再評價 (A Reevaluation of Confucius), which was especially significant because it proved that Li was among the first contemporary Chinese philosophers who struggled for a rehabilitation of Confucianism, which was hitherto sharply criticized and marked as a “feudalistic ideology.” His reinterpretation of Chinese classics entitled Lunyu jindu 論語今讀 (Reading the Analects Today) and an important collection containing his specific theories on the development of Confucianism and its influence upon Chinese culture, namely, the Jimao wu shuo 己卯五說 (Five Essays from 1999) can also be seen as significant contributions to this field of research. In his Shiyong lixing yu legan wenhua 實用理性與樂感文化 (Pragmatic Reason and the Culture of Pleasure) Li elaborated on the intellectual and ideational foundations of traditional Chinese culture; of note as well is his treatise, Dangdai sichao yu Zhongguo zhihui 當代思潮與中國智慧 (Contemporary Currents of Thought and Chinese Wisdom). In recent years, Li upgraded his theories in these fields and published the results in 2015 in a compilation entitled You wu dao li, shi li gui ren 由巫到禮，釋禮歸仁 (From Shamanism to Ritual regulations and Humaneness).

Regarding his specific understanding of Chinese modernization, we have to point out his famous and most controversial reversal of Zhang Zhidong’s 張之洞 slogan advocating “the preservation of the Chinese Substance and the application of Western Function” (Zhongxue wei ti, Xixue wei yong 中學為體, 西學為用). This approach sought to preserve the Chinese tradition in the face of modernization, which, however, was understood as being limited to assimilating Western technology and administration. Li inverted this binary opposition by defining modernization as the transformation of the substance, in the sense of general social consciousness, production, and lifestyles. Various explanations of this reversal are included in numerous aforementioned books, but Li also elaborated on this problem in his article Man shuo “Xiti Zhongyong” 漫說 “西體中用” (A Simple Lecture on “Western Substance and Chinese Function”) which was published in 1999, and in his book Shuo Xiti Zhongyong 說西體中用 (On Western Substance and Chinese Application) that followed in 2012.

In his middle years, Li increasingly began to lay stress on his studies in Chinese and comparative ethics, which serve as the main topic of the present book. Besides being published in numerous essays and interviews dealing with his ethical thought, Li’s views on ethics and morality are summarized in the book Lunlixue gangyao 倫理學綱要 (An Outline of Ethics) published in 2010. The recently published (2015) book Shenme shi daode 什麽是道德 (What Is Morality) is based on his important differentiation between ethics and morality and on ethical and philosophical debates that he carried out in 2014 at the Huadong Normal University in Shanghai. In Huiying Sangde’er ji qita 回應桑德爾及其他 (A Response to Michael Sandel and Other Matters), which was first published in 2014, he discusses his own system of ethics and political philosophy and places it in relation to Western liberalism. One important work from the broad range of his writings in the political dimensions of ethics is Makesizhuyi zai Zhongguo 馬克思主義在中國 (Marxism in China), published in Hong Kong in 2006. Li’s reinterpretations of Marxist theories can also be found in Gaobie geming 告别革命 (Farewell to Revolution), a book he coauthored with Liu Zaifu 劉再復. His hitherto last theoretical book on ethics was published in 2017 under the title Lunlixue gangyao xupian 倫理學綱要續篇 (Outline of Ethics—Continuation).

Although Li has a huge influence on Chinese scholars, he is still relatively unknown in the Western world. Until recent years, translations into English of his works were limited to those on aesthetics, which represented his main field of interest in the 1970s and 80s. His books mentioned above that dealt with the introduction and analysis of Chinese aesthetic thought were translated into Western languages under the following titles: The Path of Beauty: A Study of Chinese Aesthetics (1994),⁵ Four Essays on Aesthetics: Toward a Global Perspective (2006), and The Chinese Aesthetic Tradition (2010).

During the last two decades of the twentieth century, a few of his essays on such topics as the rehabilitation and revival of Confucian thought, interpretations and upgrading of Kantian philosophy, and studies of Chinese Marxism have also been translated into Western languages (see Chong 1999a, 15; Rošker 2019, 10). Most of these translations, however, were published in journals or monographs with a relatively narrow range of distribution and impact in the Euro-American region. Somewhat more influential and certainly very valuable is the special issue of the journal Contemporary Chinese Thought, which was published in 1999 and edited by Woei Lien Chong. It contains seven translations of Li’s articles on various topics, ranging from his theories on the origins of human beings, his concepts of sedimentation and subjectality, to his elaborations on Chinese modernity.⁶

During the last few years, especially since the launching of the international conference Li Zehou and Confucian Philosophy that was organized in 2015 by Roger Ames and Peter Hershock at the East West Center of the University of Hawai‘i, substantial efforts were made to translate at least some of his most important works into English.

In 2018 and 2019 respectively, three of his most important books were published in the English language, namely Jeanne Haizhen Allen’s translation of his Pipan zhexuede pipan under the English title A New Approach to Kant—A Confucian-Marxist Viewpoint, Andrew Lambert’s translation of Li’s book Zhongguo gudai sixiang shilun, entitled The History of Classical Chinese Thought, and Robert A. Carleo’s translation of his You wu dao li, shi li gui ren, entitled The Origins of Chinese Thought: From Shamanism to Ritual Regulations and Humaneness. The first English monograph on his philosophical system entitled Following His Own Path—Li Zehou and Contemporary Chinese Thought (2019) was published by the SUNY Press in New York (Rošker 2019). After the aforementioned conference at the University of Hawai‘i, its proceedings were published in a special monograph entitled Li Zehou and Confucian Philosophy. The book was edited by Roger T. Ames and Jia Jinhua. In January 2020, a special issue of the journal Asian Studies was published in Ljubljana. It is focused on Li Zehou’s ethical and aesthetic thought and dedicated to him on the occasion of his 90th birthday. It is my hope that the publication of these texts will make different aspects of Li Zehou’s thought available to a wider Western audience.

In 2016, the journal Philosophy East and West published the first English translation of Li’s work in the field of ethics. This was Paul D’Ambrosio’s and Robert A. Carleo’s translation of Li’s eighty-page dialogue entitled “A Response to Michael Sandel and Other Matters” from September 2013; as mentioned, the Chinese publication titled Huiying Sangde’er ji Qita 回應桑德爾及其他 was published in Beijing in 2014. Based on Li’s specific philosophical system, this work treats various central issues he has developed over recent decades and places them in relation to Western liberalism and the ideas of harmony and justice. In this book Li deals with a relatively wide spectrum of different social and political, but primarily ethical, issues. The issues addressed include reinterpretations, completions, and critiques of Kant’s deontological ethics; an analysis of the relation between reason and emotion; treatments of several complex questions linked to ethical substance; and the Chinese relational (guanxizhuyi 關係主義) paradigm and its comparison with the model of individualism, which underlies Western modernity. Other translations are underway in order to enable broader circles of Western readers to gain access to his philosophy of ethics and to explore his inventive ethical thought, which will be introduced and critically analyzed in the later chapters of this book.