biografia li zii app.

Li Zhi (1527-1602), style Zhuowu , Hongfu ,

Baiquan , or Wenling jushi , was a philosopher of
the late Ming period (1368-1644). He came from Quanzhou
, Fujian. His original name was Lin Daizhi , yet in
1522 he decided to adopt the family name of Li and in 1566
changed his name to Zhi in order to avoid the personal name of
Emperor Muzong , Zhu Daihou .Li Zhi's ancestors
came from a Muslim merchant family in Henan but had already
lost their fortune during the time of Li's grandfather. Li Zhi
himself passed the state examinations and served as a teacher
in Hongcheng , Henan, and then was able to be appointed
professor (boshi "erudite") of the Directorate of
Education(guozijian ) in Nanjing, later in Beijing. He then
served in the Ministry of Rites (libu ) and as vice director
(wailang ) of the Ministry of Justice (xingbu ) in
Nanjing. His last post was that of prefect (zhifu ) of Yao'an
, Yunnan. He then decided to leave public service and
dedicated himself to teaching. In 1602 he was arrested with
the charge of high treason and rebellion and died in prison by
suicide.
As a philosopher, Li Zhi was a disciple of Wang Bi , a son of
Wang Gen , one of the main representants of the Taizhou
School . This school of philosophers avoided to draw its
ideas exclusively from Confucianism and Neo-Confucianism and
instead studied the writings of "the hundred schools of
thought". Political advice was their main focus because only a
practical use of philosophy for the state and the sake of the
people justified its existence. Li Zhi himself identified the
natural Way (dao ) with man, stressing that humans were an
incarnation of the Way and the Heavenly Order (tianli ).
Outside of the human mind, he said, there was no Way, and
man could not exist without the existence of the Way. All
humans are therefore able to personify the good nature of the
Way and can easily rectify themselves once they have
perceived the Way in themselves. All activities beyond the
personal needs of a man and all restrictions imposed upon his

personal needs are not to be considered as part of the Way.

Clothing and food are the basic needs of a man that secure his
surviving and also social order in a very natural way. Once
deprived of food and clothing, man will turn away from social
order. All other needs of a man are similar to such basic things
as food and clothes. Li Zhi criticized Daoists, Buddhists and
Neo-Confucians for their theoretical speculations and for
overlooking that social order and harmony in society and the
empire is only secured if people have sufficient access to their
basic needs. While the Neo-Confucians claimed that man has to
be made free of desires in order to find the Way, Li Zhi
asserted that it is very natural that man, even a worthy and
high-minded person, has desires and wishes and attempts at
making profit (ren bi you si ). Peasants worked their
fields with diligence in order to have enough to eat and
probably also some reserves, and scholars studied books day
and night to "reap their own harvest".
All things under heaven, men like objects, possess an innate
knowledge (sheng zhi ). All humans therefore had the
natural potential to become a Saint (sheng ) or a Buddha (fo
). What a single man perceived as correct or incorrect (shi fei
) was therefore also to be taken objectively as correct or
incorrect. Li Zhi so opposed the Confucian concept of an
objective correctness by granting all individual, subjective
conception the status of objectivity. In other words, Li Zhi
negated the existence of one single objective truth, as alleged
by the Confucians, and instead stressed that there are many,
or even countless individual truths. All humans possessed a
pure, childlike mind (tong xin ) from birth that was only
contaminated and falsified (jia ) in the course of time by
education and intercourse with others. It was especially the
teachings of the Neo-Confucians that polluted the nave
immaculateness of young people. He mostly stressed that man
and woman have equal rights and attacked the Confucian order
of society in which man is superior to woman.
Li Zhi later on changed his mind and studied the writings of the
Neo-Confucian Wang Yangming and of Chan Buddhism
. This behaviour correlated with his proposition of a potential

change of things into their opposite (dao xing ni liu ).

This was clearly to be seen in history, where order and peace
was often replaced by chaos and war. In his eyes, there was
never a constant situation possible, but life and history were
determined by a permanent flux and renewal.
Li Zhi's critique towards Neo-Confucian philosophers and the
official social philosophy of self-sufficiency made him attacked
as a heretic. His philosophy influenced later scholars like Liu
Shipei , Huang Jie and Wu Yu . Li Zhi has written
the books Cangshu , Xu cangshu , Fenshu , Xu
fenshu , Mingdeng daogu lu , Jiuzheng yiyin
and Shuoshu .