The most radical heterodox thinker of the Ming dynasty and the most explosive soul among the later Taizhou school. He authored the Book to Burn and the Book to Hide, using fiery prose to denounce the hypocritical mask of Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucian morality, championing the pure and untarnished "Child-Heart Theory," and advocating individual liberation, gender equality, and freedom of speech. Because his thought was too unorthodox, his works were banned and burned by the Ming court; after being arrested in his later years, he slit his own throat in prison, sacrificing his life on the altar of intellectual freedom.
Li Zhi, courtesy name Hongfu, sobriquet Zhuowu, a native of Quanzhou, Fujian. He passed the provincial examination in the thirty-first year of Jiaqing and served as education official in Gongcheng in Henan, National University academician in Nanjing, and prefect of Yao'an in Yunnan. In office he was known for integrity and uprightness, but he was incompatible with the hypocrisy of officialdom. At fifty-four he resigned in indignation, becoming a tonsured monk without taking precepts, roaming the world in the posture of "wild Chan." After settling at the Zhifo Hermitage by Longhu Lake in Macheng, Hubei, he devoted himself to writing and teaching, publicly accepting female disciples such as Mei Danran, and his discourse grew ever more radical and unbridled. His Book to Burn (Fen Shu) he titled himself, "burning it and then feeling content," knowing his words would not be tolerated in his time. In the thirtieth year of Wanli, he was impeached by Supervising Secretary Zhang Wenda on charges of "daring to promote disorderly teachings and delude the people." He was arrested and imprisoned. In prison, he seized a razor and cut his own throat, using his life to complete the final act of resistance against despotic oppression, becoming a tragic model of dying for one's thought in Chinese intellectual history.
Li Zhi takes the "child's heart" (tong xin) as the foundation of his thought: "The child's heart is the true heart." The child's heart is the natural, pure, unconditioned heart, untouched by worldly teachings and utilitarian motives. Li Zhi argues that all hypocritical moralism and false benevolence arise from the loss of the child's heart; the Confucian classics—the Six Classics, the Analects, the Mencius—are not absolute truth but "the rhetoric of Dao-learning, the lair of falsehood." In his theory of human nature, he boldly主张 that "humans must have selfishness"—self-interested profit-seeking is human nature, which cannot be suppressed or dissembled, thereby overturning the Neo-Confucian moral premise of "preserving heavenly principle and eliminating human desire." In social thought, he advocates gender equality, accepts female disciples, and argues that women's insight is not necessarily inferior to men's. His anti-authoritarian, anti-dogmatic, anti-hypocritical critical spirit reached the pinnacle of ancient Chinese thought.
"The child's heart is the true heart. If the child's heart is lost, the true heart is lost. "If heaven had not given birth to Confucius, ten thousand ages would be like a long night"—all the flattery of false scholars. — Book to Burn (Fen Shu)"
Li Zhi slit his throat, splashing his life's blood for the "true heart." In our age of fabricated personas and nihilistic social media, how does his "Child-Heart" interrogation call us back to personal authenticity?
Li Zhi takes the child's heart as the pure, natural life-force; Nietzsche takes the Übermensch as the will-to-power transcending all moral bonds. Both challenge hypocritical moral systems with the authenticity of life.
Can the appeal to natural authenticity genuinely overcome the power of institutionalized morality? Do the anti-moralist philosophies of Li Zhi and Nietzsche represent parallel discoveries of the same insight, or fundamentally different projects?
Li Zhi exposes Neo-Confucianism as an instrument of power and rule; Foucault reveals the complicity between knowledge and power. Both deconstruct institutionalized truth discourse from a genealogical perspective.
Can the genealogical critique of truth genuinely liberate, or does it merely replace one form of power with another? Do the power-critiques of Li Zhi and Foucault converge on the same insight about knowledge and power, or do their different contexts make them fundamentally different?
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