Li Zhi, Confucianism, and the Virtue of Desire

Pauline C. Lee

Description

Li Zhi (1527–1602) was a bestselling author with a devoted readership. His biting, shrewd, and visionary writings with titles like A Book to Hide and A Book to Burn were both inspiring and inflammatory. Widely read from his own time to the present, Li Zhi has long been acknowledged as an important figure in Chinese cultural history. While he is esteemed as a stinging social critic and an impassioned writer, Li Zhi's ideas have been dismissed as lacking a deeper or constructive vision. Pauline C. Lee convincingly shows us otherwise. Situating Li Zhi within the highly charged world of the late-Ming culture of "feelings," Lee presents his slippery and unruly yet clear and robust ethical vision. Li Zhi is a Confucian thinker whose consuming concern is a powerful interior world of abundance, distinctive to each individual: the realm of the emotions. Critical to his ideal of the good life is the ability to express one's feelings well. In the work's conclusion, Lee brings Li Zhi's insights into conversation with contemporary philosophical debates about the role of feelings, an ethics of authenticity, and the virtue of desire.
Acknowledgments

Conventions

1. Introduction

2. Life Stories: Reading A Sketch of Zhuowu: Written in Unnan

3. The Heart-Mind: Reading “On the Child-like Heart-Mind”

4. Virtue: Reading “Miscellaneous Matters”

5. Genuineness

Appendix A: “A Sketch of Zhuowu: Written in Yunnan”

Appendix B: “On the Child-like Heart-Mind”

Appendix C: “Miscellaneous Matters”

Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• East Asian religions
• Confucianism

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 06 mars 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438439280
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 4 Mo

Extrait

A volume in the SUNY SERIES IN C HINESE P HILOSOPHY AND C ULTURE

Roger T. Ames, editor

Li Zhi 李贄, Confucianism and THE VIRTUE OF DESIRE
Pauline C. Lee

Cover image entitled Five Colors of Peonies by Zhang Zhaoxing;used by permission of Corbis Images.
Published by STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS Albany
© 2012 State University of New York All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
For information, contact State University of New York Press www.sunypress.edu
Production, Diane Ganeles Marketing, Michael Campochiaro
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lee, Pauline C.
Li Zhi, Confucianism and the virtue of desire / Pauline C. Lee.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 161) and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-3927-3 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Li, Zhi, 1527–1602. 2. Confucian ethics. 3. Desire (Philosophy) I. Li, Zhi,1527–1602. Sketch of Zhuowu. English. II. Li, Zhi, 1527–1602. On the child-like heart-mind. English. III. Li, Zhi, 1527–1602. Miscellaneous matters. English. IV. Title.
B128.L454L44 2011
181'.11—dc22
2011005364
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In memory of my grandfather 公公
(1914–2010)
who preserved his beautiful heart
through all his days.
And for sweet Nadya 達樂,
this book on the child-like heart.
Acknowledgments
Completion of this book gives me the treasured opportunity to express my deep gratitude to the people who have supported, taught, and inspired me through these many years. There are three to whom I owe an immeasurable debt of gratitude, and without whom this book could certainly not have been written. Philip J. Ivanhoe has been, and through time and distance always remains, a steadfast mentor and friend from the first day of my scholarly journey seeking the Dao. I would possibly not be a scholar and without doubt a markedly different one without him. Beata Grant and Robert Hegel, with their distinctive ways of living the Way, are both a ceaseless source of support and guidance; daily I am motivated by the high standards of their scholarship, guided by their wisdom as mentors, and inspired by the depths of their kindness as people. The profound influence of all three is in so many places in my life and work, and certainly everywhere in the following chapters.
My friends and colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis—including Ji-Eun Lee, Jamie Newhard, Lingchei Letty Chen, Steven Miles, Nancy Berg, Carl Minzner, Yufeng Mao, Lori Watt, Daniel Bornstein, Beata Grant, and Robert Hegel—create a deeply stimulating and nurturing environment for life and scholarship, and I am grateful. Tony Chang, head of the East Asian Studies library at Washington University in St. Louis, has been most responsive to questions and requests for books. Fatemeh Keshavarz, chair of the department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures, has been a constant source of support and guidance, and I am grateful to her.
My students have taught me much and I especially would like to thank Laura Vollmer, Scott Paul McGinnis, Li En, and Mimi Li who have also been my research assistants during different parts of the writing process and have given me much needed aid.
I thank much-cherished friends old and new for sharing life and work with me including Shari Epstein, Eric Hutton, Reiko Shinno, Zwia Lipkin, De-nin Lee, David DeCosse, and Jennifer Kapcynzski. I am deeply grateful to David Wang for the countless treasured ways he gives and has given to me through the many years.
Eric Brown, David DeCosse, Eric Hutton, and Ma Zhao generously read through different chapters of my manuscript giving me invaluable comments. Aaron Stalnaker read through the entire manuscript and provided remarkably nuanced, thoughtful, and stimulating feedback absolutely critical to my rewriting process. Tao Jiang has been there to answer my endless questions during the writing process. I thank Erin Cline for inviting me to participate in a conference on “Confucian Virtues at Work” at the University of Oregon in 2008, and Justin Tiwald for including me in a conference on “Neo-Confucian Moral Psychology” at the 2009 Pacific American Philosophical Association; I received such thoughtful responses and questions to my talks, especially from Mark Unno and Yang Xiao, respectively, that were critical to the writing of my conclusion. I thank Steven Owyoung and Margaret Lee for generously taking the time to help me find just the right patch of beautiful peonies for this book cover design. I am grateful for such a rich, stimulating, and nurturing scholarly community.
I would like to thank Diane Ganeles and Nancy Ellegate for steering me through the intricacies of the book production process, and sharing the excitement as the manuscript passed through the various stages.
This book little resembles but began as a doctoral dissertation at Stanford University, and I would like to thank those who first taught and guided me in my work: Carl Bielefeldt, Hester Gelber, the late Susan Moller Okin, Lee H. Yearley, Shao Dongfang, the late Julius Moravcsik, and especially Philip J. Ivanhoe.
An earlier version of Chapter Three is forthcoming as “‘There is nothing more than … dressing and eating’: Li Zhi 李贄 and the child-like heart-mind ( tong xin 童心),” in Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy , v. 11, n. 1, spring 2012. An earlier version of sections found in Chapter Two and Chapter Five is forthcoming as “‘Spewing Jade and Spitting Pearls’: Li Zhi's Ethics of Genuineness,” in Journal of Chinese Philosophy , supplement to v. 38, December 2011. I thank both journals for giving me permission to republish the respective articles.
My daughter Nadya, who arrived into this world when I first started to write my book, has brought into my life such great wonder and joy, and easily convinced me that Li Zhi has it right: our best resources for a life well lived are indeed the marvelous instincts bestowed upon us at birth. And finally, I would like to thank my parents, Margaret Lee and Joseph Lee, who have endlessly supported my journeys in life in every way they can and always insisted on the importance of joyful work in a good life. Without such students, teachers, colleagues, mentors, friends, and family I can only begin to imagine the many more errors I would have fallen into and the misguided turns I would have taken.
Conventions
In light of their accuracy and availability I use the following editions of Li Zhi's works:
Fenshu 焚書 ( A Book to Burn ). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961. (Hereafter FS .)
Xu fenshu 續焚書 ( An Addendum to A Book to Burn ). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961. (Hereafter XFS .)
Cangshu 藏書 ( A Book to Hide ), 2 vols. Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961. (Hereafter CS .)
Xu cangshu 續藏書 ( An Addendum to A Book to Hide ). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1961. (Hereafter XCS .)
Chutan ji 初潭集 ( Collection of Writings Begun at the Lake ). Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1974. (Hereafter CTJ .)
Li Zhi wenji 李贄文集 ( The Collected Works of Li Zhi ), edited by Zhang Jianye 张建业, 7 vols. Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2000. (Hereafter LZWJ .)
During the completion of my book manuscript a new complete and annotated set of Li Zhi's works has been published. See Li Zhi 2009a.
In Romanizing the Chinese, I use the pinyin system. Two exceptions to my use of pinyin are with proper names and published works that have become commonly known under another Romanization system. When quoting translations by other scholars, I have Romanized the Chinese terms in pinyin for the sake of consistency. When I have modified a translation, I indicate that the translation has been “adapted.”
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction

I. LI ZHI'S LIFE IN THE EIGHTEENTH YEAR OF THE WANLI REIGN (1590)
Li Zhi 李贄 (1527–1602), widely known as one of the foremost iconoclastic thinkers in Chinese history, was born in the commercial southern district of Jinjiang 晉江 in the port city of Quanzhou 泉州, the southern province of Fujian, in the sixth year of the Jiajing reign of the Ming period (1527). 1 In the course of his lifetime, he came to participate actively in a wide and passionate discourse of his time that centered around a cluster of notions, including “desire” ( yu 欲), “feeling” ( qing 情), and “genuineness” ( zhen 真). Critical voices from this period—Li Zhi himself, Yuan Zhongdao 袁中道 (1570–1624), 2 Jiao Hong 焦竤 (1541–1620), 3 Tang Xianzu 湯顯祖 (1550–1616), 4 to name just four—differed, often times quite radically, in their focus, conception, and philosophical positions regarding these related ideas. The terrain of this discourse was complex and varied, and disputes were sustained, wide-ranging, and passionate.
Much recent scholarship has drawn attention to this widespread discourse among literati in the late-Ming and referred to voices within it as forming a “cult of feeling” or “ qing .” 5 The late-Ming, 6 of course, is not the only period in Chinese history when we find such intense and feverish debate regarding the spontaneous expression of the self. 7 But the period spanning the 16th and 17th centuries is certainly one of the highpoints in Chinese history on this subject and offers a distinctive variation on this broader theme. 8 In Li Zhi we find one of the most compelling and subtle expressions of this general point of view and a developed philosophical vision that is relevant and significant to contemporary ethics. Li argues for a rich and philosophically viable account of the good life as the spontaneous expression of genuine feelings . He was one of the most central, celebrated, and creative thinkers within the late-Ming “cult of feelings,” and significant aspects of his view